myCourses: What’s new?

myCourses recently underwent maintenance which included some fixes and feature updates to myCourses. Here’s what’s new:

  Cloud Storage
Instructors can copy files from their favorite cloud storage solutions when authoring Content Items or creating Assignments. Students can submit assignments from their favorite cloud storage solutions. Cloud storage that is supported includes OneDrive, OneDrive for Business,  Google Drive* including G suite accounts, Dropbox, and Box.
Record Feedback

An instructor or grader can create personalized feedback recordings for individual gradable item attempts or manual gradebook items. Each recording can be up to 5 minutes long and can be both video and audio.

Collaborate in Groups

Collaborate is now available as a tool in Groups for easy collaboration. Session creation is limited to members of the group.

Discussion Board

Users can now sort by Replies to me in the Discussion Board for easier sorting in large discussions.

Grading

Cleanup: Instructors can now delete several columns at once out of the Grade book.

Anonymous Grading: Instructors can now grant an additional attempt for scenarios when the student needs one and the prior attempt can’t be cleared because it is in an anonymous state.

 

Accessibility improvements

When a user first logged into myCourses, an overlay appeared on the screen to highlight key navigation elements. The overlay caused a frustrating user experience for those using assistive technologies and has been removed to improve overall accessibility. The responsive design also allows users to resize windows and view on smaller screen sizes.**

Box Assignment

The ability to download annotated assignments for both students and instructors from Box has now been added.

Fixes

 Safari and Assignment submission: Papers submitted using Safari now do not have an error associated with the submission

*Although Google docs can be attached to course items, they do not render within the assignment tool when submitted. When downloading Google docs, users need to choose an application to open the files. We recommend using a standard format for documents in myCourses such as .docx and .pdf.
** When viewing on smaller screen sizes the course menu may collapse but can be opened by hovering over the left side of the screen and clicking on the arrow to reopen.