SERVER MIGRATION THIS WEEKEND – SYSTEM INTERRUPTION OVERNIGHT

To increase capacity and improve system availability, we will be migrating eLab to a new set of servers this coming weekend.   The migration will occur between midnight and 8am EST on Saturday, May 11 to minimize any impact on users.  If you have any questions or concerns regarding this upgrade please contact us as soon as possible.

eLab: Time Zones, Surveys, LMS Integration!

Three new eLab features are now available! Effective immediately, you can:

• Set Time Zone Preferences. Outside of the Eastern time zone? Your eLab courses can now be set to reflect times that align with your time zone. Update your eLab Profile to change the time zone for all courses/evaluations, or use the Manage and Course Description links to update time zones for individual courses/evaluations. The time zone selected will apply to all dates/times associated with the course or evaluation, including times for tests, assignments, mail and discussion forums. Note: If you do not change the default, it will be set to EST.  

• Conduct Surveys. Get immediate feedback from your students with this simple survey tool. Create True/False, Multiple Choice, and Short Answer/Essay questions and store them in your Question Bank for future use. Once you’ve selected the questions for your survey, a link is automatically generated that you can distribute to students via email, a website, or course postings. Completed surveys are stored for automated, detailed analysis and reporting, including individual survey responses, response distribution, and answered/skipped question counts. All survey data can be printed or exported for further analysis and/or storage.
• Integrate your LMS using LTI 1.0. Give your students a seamless learning experience with this simple, standard method to establish a secure link between eLab and any LTI compatible learning management system, including Blackboard, Moodle, D2L, Canvas, and others. With this simple integration, students can access any eLab content directly from your core LMS system with their single, LMS login.

You can view these changes by logging in to your eLab account at http://labyrinthelab.com/.

New eLab Feature: Share!

New eLab Feature: Share your course or evaluation group!

We’re pleased to announce the release of our new Share feature, allowing the sharing of courses and evaluation groups with other eLab instructors. This release follows our recent releases of Project Grader and the eLab Skills Evaluation tool.

Now, with the click of one link, you can share your course or evaluation group with any other instructor on eLab. Just click Share and enter the email associated with his or her account, and the item is shared. No need to contact Technical Support for assistance. It’s quick. It’s convenient. It’s simple.

Instructors receiving a shared course or evaluation group will find It under a new menu item: Shared Resources. Just click on the course to organize it in the category of your choice.

You’ll be able to see these changes by logging in to your eLab account at http://labyrinthelab.com  beginning Tuesday, April 2nd!

To accommodate these eLab upgrades, the Labyrinth eLab website will be unavailable between the hours of 12:01 am and 4:00 am EDT on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013.

eLab – Project Grading Coming March 13

If you are having trouble viewing this email, open it here: http://www.lablearning.com/1308.

We are pleased to announce the upcoming availability of automatically graded, project-based assessments for your Office 2010 courses. Future Office 2013 titles will have similar assessments.

Project Grader exercises are available for the following titles:

MS Office 2010: Brief
MS Office 2010: Essentials
MS Office 2010: Comprehensive Introductory
MS Word 2010: Comprehensive
MS Excel 2010: Comprehensive
MS PowerPoint 2010: Essentials
MS Access 2010: Essentials

Beginning Wednesday, March 13, you will be able to access Project Grader exercises through your eLab™ assignment library. All project grader exercises will include an icon    in the assignment title. In addition to the settings for standard assignments, project grader exercises will include the following options:

• Point Value. You can set a point value for each step in the exercise.
• Partial Credit Scoring. You have the option to provide partial credit for steps having multiple tasks.

All other fields are the same as when setting up other eLab assignments. Students access and submit Project Grader assignments just like they do all other eLab assignments. The only difference is that in Project Grader assignments, students will always download at least one file. Once submitted, projects are automatically graded and detailed feedback can be provided directly to the student.

To explore the new assignments, login in to your eLab account at http://labyrinthelab.com/ beginning Wednesday, March 13. And for a live demo of this new functionality, sign up for one of our upcoming eLab instructor workshops at www.lablearning.com/webinars.

- Best regards from Labyrinth Learning

Adobe FLASH Player Issues with Videos and Simulations

A new concern has arisen where a student may encounter a "you need to have Adobe Flash Player 9 installed" message upon clicking on a video or Simulation question in eLab.   The message may appear randomly at times even though the computer being used appears to have all the latest software updates available.

If the above scenario is encountered, the problem may be that you are running Microsoft Windows 64-bit edition and are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 64 bit Edition web browser but have installed the 32-bit version of the Adobe Flash Player.  Unfortunately, Adobe.com does not verify which web browser bit version you are using when you go to download Adobe Flash Player so the possibility of downloading the incorrect bit version is high.

The issue can be easily resolved by installing the 64 bit version of Flash Player. Please follow the link below for a step-by-step guide in installing the 64 bit flash player version on 64 bit Microsoft Windows computer:

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/flash-player-64-bit-operating.html#main_Check_whether_you_have_64_bit_Internet_Explorer