eLab: Enhancements for Instructors and Students

Two new eLab enhancements are now available! Effective immediately, you can:

Add More Text for Feedback Notes.  We have increased the character limit from 500 to 1000 in the feedback field where instructors can provide feedback to students for an assignment.

Easily Submit Assignments. We have updated the page when a student views assignments from their assignment page.  Now, both the Assignment Title and Submit Assignment links go to a page that provides details about the assignment and includes a place where they can attach the files and submit the assignment.

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

eLab Instructor Workshop - Training for Current Users

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LABYRINTH LEARNING WEBINARS eLabTM Instructor Workshop - Training for Current Users Start the year off right with an eLab Webinar Are you an instructor planning to implement eLab? Or, are you already using eLab and ready to learn advanced features? If so, take advantage of this workshop. Designed as a training session for instructors, this one-hour session will provide a brief 20-minute interactive eLab demonstration with the remainder of the session focused on answering specific instructor questions. Upcoming Instructor eLab dates: Thur Jan 9th - 12noon Pacific / 2pm Central / 3pm Eastern Fri Jan 24th - 10am Pacific / 12noon Central / 1pm Eastern Thur Jan 30th - 1pm Pacific / 3pm Central / 4pm Eastern Give your students a headstart with eLab. Starting this January, Labyrinth Leaning will host a series of eLab webinars geared to students who will be using eLab. Spread the word and help your students be more successful with tests and assignments. Upcoming Student eLab Dates: Wed Jan 8th - 11am Pacific / 1pm Central / 2pm Eastern Wed Jan 22nd - 1pm Pacific / 3pm Central / 4pm Eastern Tues Jan 28nd - 9am Pacific / 11am Central / 12noon Eastern lablearning.com

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

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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