Release Candidate 1

All,

http://assistment3.cs.wpi.edu

There's a new release up there! Students can now tell what assignments they've completed/not-finished, the preview window now scrolls, and the student tutor has a fancy new look! There's other new changes in there, but I just can't remember right now.

Anyway, restarting assignments and smarter sequences/sections are on the horizon in the next couple days. As always, let me know of any issues you have. Thanks!

Want to preview Assistments?

You got it!

http://assistment3.cs.wpi.edu/

You'll notice all the content (assignment, sequence, assistment) you view as a content creator/teacher has a preview link next to it ... if you click on that you'll get a pop-up window that will let you preview the content.

If you think the pop-up is a little intrusive ... I agree with you, and I'm planning on using something like Lightbox (http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/ ) to show the preview. Also, I'm aware the pop-up window doesn't have scroll bars ... sorry about that; ... I'll figure out why for the next release. If you have any other ideas, let me know.

To quickly address the "Fill in the blank" problem type, it actually should be just called "fill in" ... since it's only intended to be one box regardless of the number of possible answers. However, for the next update, I will make "fill in" work properly, and actually get what you all expect "fill in the blank" to be working.

technorati tags:release

Problem Types

All,

http://assistment3.cs.wpi.edu

We now have problem types! These types are:

Multiple Choice (select 1 correct answer)
Multiple Multiple Choice (select all correct answers)
Rank
Fill in the blank
Algebra Evaluation

I've set upan Assistment called "Problem Type Test" so you can see these things inaction, so *just* create a teacher and student account and assign it toyourself to check it out. Sorry about the hoops you have to jumpthrough to see this, but when I enable previewing of Assistments thiswill be much easier! =)

As always, you can post bugs to SourceForge or email me directly.

technorati tags:release

Assistment 3.0 "pre" Release Candidate 1

All,

http://assistment3.cs.wpi.edu

Assistment 3.0 preRC1 is live! This release includes:

1.) New 3.0 User Interface (Firefox tested only)
2.) Straight-forward creation of Assistments and how they are assigned to students
3.) Teacher Class/Assignments/Roster management, including multiple teachers in a class.
4.) Student Assignments and tutoring.
5.) User profile management

Mostly this release focused on refactoring and unit/functional testing. We have a lot of work going on in other branches, almost ready to be committed to the trunk. These features include:

1.) Knowledge Component/Transfer Models. (Thanks Abe)
2.) Non-linear options for dispatching Assistments to students (Thanks Derek)
3.) Problem Types (multiple choice, fill in, algebra equivalence, etc) (Thanks Danny for the algebra equiv)
4.) Assignment and Assistment reports (Thanks Duc)
5.) User account management for admins and teachers
6.) Assistment/Assignment searching
7.) Real content, including Assistments (Thanks Abe, Jozsef, and Igor)

We will release these features as they become available, so keep your eyes open for these. Please submit any bug reports/feature requests to https://sourceforge.wpi.edu/sf/tracker/do/listArtifacts/projects.assistments/tracker.defects_releases (make sure to select "Pre Release Candidate 1" when submitting).

Enjoy :)

Upcoming Milestone

Friday, April 6th, is our scheduled release candidate, woohoo! Unfortunately, features will continually be added after this point, but the subsequent releases will be frequent (1-2 a week) and there will be plenty of testing time before our release date of April 21st.

I will be giving a talk about this release in the Fuller Labs Beckett Conference Room (FL 246) at 11:00 a.m on Thursday, April 5th, so if you want a first-hand experience come check it out!

... more information will come on Friday.

You're probably thinking, "What happened to the beta"? That was a unreleased beta, and just decided to push through to release. I know, not ideal, but just the way it is.

UI Redesign

Yes, it's been a very long time; but the wait will be well worth it.

If you were a little unsure about your love for the new user interface, you're not alone! It was really intended to be a stepping stone to this:

http://nth1.wpi.edu/~jschementi/ui/designs/layout/layout2-html/

All the image mock ups can be found at http://nth1.wpi.edu/~jschementi/ui/. Please let me know what you think of it, as this new look to Assistment will probably be around for a while!