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

eLab SET – On Demand Enrollment

Instructors now have the ability to create and enroll students into their courses via a simple form.   In you’re my evaluations, navigate to the MANAGE > MANAGE LEARNERS tab and click on the "Add Learner" button, and the following form will appear.  A Student ID field is being added also as an optional field.

eLab Dashboard Upgrade

If you are having trouble viewing this email, open it here: http://lablearning.com/1228.

Effective November 19, three new usability improvements to your eLab Dashboard will be released. You’ll be able to:

• Organize your Courses and Evaluations. You will now be able to drag and drop your courses/evaluations to organize your dashboard how you want it. Move your courses and evaluations from one category to another. Re-order your categories in the order you want. Or re-order courses and evaluations within categories.

• Collapse or Expand Course/Evaluation View. Simplify your dashboard by collapsing detail for some or all courses or evaluations. One easy click to minimize detail, click again to expand.
   
• Access commonly used pages from menu links. We’ve added short-cut menu links to speed access to often used pages directly from your Dashboard.

                  

You’ll be able to see these changes by logging in to your eLab account at http://labyrinthelab.com/ beginning Monday, November 19!

To accommodate these eLab upgrades, the Labyrinth eLab website will be unavailable between the hours of 12:01 am and 4:00 am EST on Sunday, November 18.

eLab – More new features!

We recently told you about some new eLab features that were released October 17, and our new eLab Skills Evaluation Tool (SET) which was planned for October 29 (this has been rescheduled for October 30). You can read the full announcement of these features on our blog at http://labyrinthelab.blogspot.com/.
As we finalized plans for our eLab SET release, we were able to add some additional educator-requested improvements that will make using eLab even easier. Effective October 30, along with the eLab SET release, the following improvements will be released:

• Gradebook enhancements.

• Resubmissions - the gradebook has been updated to highlight resubmissions so you can quickly identify when an assignment has been resubmitted, and a link will take you to the specific student assignment that was resubmitted so you can quickly evaluate the resubmission and update the grade.
   
• Navigation – you will now be able to click “Back & Save” to return to the gradebook following an update to the grade 

• Student dashboard upgrade. Students will be able to view eLab license key activation history directly from their dashboard.
   
• Registration form improvement. We’ve added an email confirmation field to ensure students are entering their email address correctly when registering. 

You’ll be able to see these changes and all the features previously announced by logging in to your eLab account at http://labyrinthelab.com/ beginning Tuesday, October 30!

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, October 30.
~ Best regards from Labyrinth Learning

eLab - New Release Coming Oct 17th.

We are continuing to improve and extend the functionality of eLab™, and two new releases are coming in October. You will see improvements to eLab for your courses, and the release of a new tool, the eLab Skills Evaluation Tool (SET), designed specifically for creating and delivering computer skills inventory tests and other evaluations.

Phase 1: Beginning Wednesday, October 17, you will be able to:

• Copy Assignments. Now you’ll have the same ability to copy assignments that you’ve had with copying tests. Copy existing assignments to any course in your account.
   
• Send Custom Messages upon Enrollment. You’ll be able to create a custom email message that will be automatically sent to students when they enroll in the course.
   
• Improve your posts in the Discussion Forum. New editors have been added for improved functionality and ease of use for both instructors and students. And now you can attach a file up to 8MB to each post. 

Phase 2: On Monday, October 29, we’ll be releasing our new eLab Skills Evaluation Tool (SET), providing everything you need to create, administer, and grade computer literacy tests to gain an accurate evaluation of student knowledge. This tool is intended for testing only – no course management or training. You can confirm pre-requisite skills for computer or online courses, or demonstrate the skills learned following a course. A few highlights:

• Flexible, Online Access. Testing can be done anytime, on any online computer. You decide when, where, and how often tests can be accessed.
   
• Pre-enrollment or On-Demand Registration. Register students in advance so they are pre-enrolled at the time of test, or register at time of testing.
   
• Comprehensive Question Library. Spanning introductory to advanced topics in computer basics, the internet, email, Microsoft Office applications, and more.
   
• Highly Realistic Simulation Testing Environment. eLab SET uses the same simulation testing environment that you currently use.
   
• Affordable licenses as low as $3 per student. eLab SET is an economical and easy way for institutions to test knowledge outside a regular eLab course.

With this release, we will be referring to your current eLab, with the complete course management functionality, as eLab Course Management System (CMS). Licenses for purchase on our website and elsewhere will be identified as eLab CMS licenses, while licenses for the Skills Evaluation Tool will be identified as eLab SET licenses. You’ll also see a few changes to your eLab interface, including the change from My Courses to My Courses/My Evaluations, and the option to create a new Skills Evaluation Test when creating a new course/evaluation.
For more information on our new eLab Skills Evaluation Tool, visit our website at http://www.lablearning.com/Store/eLab-SET/

To accommodate these eLab upgrades, the Labyrinth eLab website will be unavailable between the hours of 12:01 am and 4:00 am EST on Wednesday, October 17 and on Monday, October 29.
~ Best regards from Labyrinth Learning

Assignment Tool Upgrade - Released

Dear Instructors,

The moment has finally arrived and the Assignment Tool Module has received a major upgrade.  As of 6:00AM EST today many new features have been made available to you that will help in making your use of eLab more efficient and productive.  We thank all who helped contribute to this update by providing feedback and suggestions this past year and we appreciate any new suggestions you may have for future releases.

Thank you for being part of our community and supporting the evolution of eLab.

What's New:

• Enhanced assignment copy. Similar to the feature that is available for tests, instructors can now copy assignments to any course they have access too in their account.
  
  
• Delete uploaded assignment file.  Instructors now have the ability to delete a graded assignment file they accidentally upload to a student's assignment submission attempt.
  
  
• Show grade after viewing feedback. Some instructors asked for the ability to hide a student's score on an assignment until they reviewed the instructor's feedback.  This option is now available under the assignment settings and when enabled, students will be required to click "view feedback" to reveal their grade.  This update affects the assignment homepage, gradebook, and assignment details pages.
  
  
• Assignment file download time-stamp.  A time-stamp is now recorded when a student begins an assignment (download's assignment ancillary file) and when they complete an assignment (file-upload submission timestamp).
  
  
• Assignment Print button.   A print button has been added to the assignment preview and submission pages in student view to allow students to print assignment instructions if they so wish too.
  
  
• Preset “Select # of files to upload”.  Under assignment settings, instructors can now predefine how many files a student is required to submit when turning in their assignments. On the student's side they will automatically see the designated number of file upload form fields as set by the instructor.
  
  
• Enhanced assignment feedback textbox. The assignment feedback textbox has been expanded to allow up to 500 characters.
  
  
• Custom column for student records.   Per request we've enabled the ability to setup a custom column to assign any type of record you may need to differentiate one student from another.  This is particularly useful for instructors whom may use a single eLab course section to manage multiple students from different campuses.  In this example, from Manage Students, the course instructor can assign students to different campuses and the new custom column will appear in the gradebook and the assignment module.
  
  
• Assignment Library, assignment usage tracker.   Assignments that are grabbed form the Pre-built Assignment Library are now marked so you know which have been added to the particular course you are working in. No more guessing which of the 50 or so assignments Labyrinth provides has been used and which have not.
  
  
• New WYSIWYG editor. On all assignment tool pages the WYSIWYG editor has been upgraded to a new more robust editor.  Now enjoy a full feature WYSIWYG editor so you have more control of your assignment instruction formatting.
  
  
• Updated assignment submission page layout (Student View).  Following a suggestion to improve the student's experience we've made three modifications to the assignment submission page:
  
  
  1. We moved the Select # of Files to Attach form fields above the Notes area so it is more visible to students with smaller screen sizes.
     
     
  2. We reduced the height of the Notes textbox by half so that the "Save" and "Cancel" buttons are more visible at the bottom of the page.
     
     
  3. We added the "Save" and "Cancel" buttons to the top of the assignment page so students always see them no matter the height of the page.
     
     
• Previous | Next links for assignments preview page.   Fly through your assignment grading task by selecting all students that have submitted assignments and start grading them in a sequential fashion by using the new Next and Previous buttons without having to return to the assignment submission page.
  
  
• Global Settings for assignments.  Setting up your assignments just got easier.  Instructors now have the ability to predefine general assignment settings. Every time you create a new assignment you can choose to pre-fill the available options by selecting "Use Global Settings" and you're done in a snap.
  
  
• Updated the display and functionality of the instructor's ability to view student's notes.  When instructors view a student's assignment submission they now have a limited view of the student's notes.  If they want to see more they can click a "View More" link that will pop open the current dialog box showing the full notes.
  
  
• Assignment date calendar upgrade.  We've enhanced the date picker feature in assignments with a jazzier calendar with a pre-formatted input box so you don't need to worry about hyphens or dashes when manually inputting a date.
  
  
• Save state of student list in assignment tool.  Your pain is our concern so we've made a update that remembers the last viewing mode you selected when reviewing student assignment submissions. Now when you’re grading an assignment and click "Show All" to see a list of all students in the course, if you click on a student's name, grade their assignment, and return to the student list the system will remember your previous view and you will not need to click on "Show All" again to see the full list of students.
  
  
• New "Save & Back" button on assignment review page. When you grade an assignment, you now have a new option along with the current "Save and "Back" buttons.  Welcome the "Save & Back" button which streamlines your grading by providing you with a quick way to save an evaluation of a student's assignment and return you back to the student assignment submission list all in one click.

October Trio - eLab Test Issues

Development Update: Fixes were made to three issues that were reported in October. We believe that all have been corrected, but if you notice any irregularities in your course, please contact us at help@labyrinthelab.com. The issues fixed were as follows:

1. New Office 2010 Simulation Questions. After a student completed a test and viewed the results, the report mistakenly indicated that the simulation questions were Not Answered and the student was given 0 points for that question.
   
   
2. Simulation or Hotspot Questions. When instructors edited a quiz, test settings that were previously set to Full Credit were mistakenly being reset to Partial Credit. If the instructor did not notice that the setting had been changed, students were only given partial credit for the simulation and hotspot questions.
   
   
3. Update Points Feature. A bug was detected with the ‘Update Points’ feature in Step 3 of the test creation process that triggered several other problems:
   
• When an instructor created a new test or edited a Concept Review Quiz and then changed the points for each question type using the ‘Update Points’ feature, the Total Points for the test/quiz did not update correctly. In addition, when the instructor viewed the Test Information in the View Results tab for a particular test or quiz, the Max Possible Points row showed dashes (---).
  
• When a student completed the test/quiz, the maximum points possible was incorrectly set at 0, resulting in the following reporting issues:
  
• The student's score was displayed over a maximum possible points of 0 (ie 25/0)
• The percentage grade showed a 0.
• The Score Statistics table in the View Results page was incorrect.

What to Do: We believe that corrections have been made and that these issues should no longer exist. If you use Full Credit test settings and have recently edited your tests or quizzes, please check your settings to ensure they were not changed. Again, please contact us at help@labyrinthelab.com if you experience any irregularities related to these or other issues.