This month's update includes added features to:
What's new with Constructor LMS?
Overview
- Enhanced activity scores and grades display
- Ability to create time constraints for course activities
- Signing in with Google profile
Enhanced activity scores and grades display
Instructors and administrators now have granular control over how scores and grades are presented for learners: for the entire course or for all individual course activities.
This feature covers various use cases. For example, instructors can configure a course to implement its content flow based on passing scores for specific activities. Therefore, activities will be classified as 'Completed' or 'Passed' depending on these configured thresholds. Alternatively, instructors can use the course grading scale with the minimum passing grade to determine the 'Passed' status for each activity within the course. In this case, the overall grading scale is used to determine the status of every course activity.
Ability to create time constraints for course activities
Instructors can now set time constraints for activities in a course, such as availability dates, due dates, and result visibility dates. These constraints can be set for each term, which is defined by grading periods or learner cohorts determined by dates. Tenant Administrators and Master-data Administrators configure terms individually for each tenant. Specific time constraints apply only to learners enrolled in the corresponding term. Therefore, multiple rules may be set for each term available in the system.
Signing in with Google profile
In tenants where self-registration is enabled, users can have an option to sign up and sign in with their Google accounts. This saves users the time they previously spent selecting an email and creating a password to access our platform.
What's new with Constructor Virtual Lab?
Overview
- New main page UI for better lab management
- Enhanced software management in Jupyter Notebook labs
- Content teams support
- Full-size image view in labs
- Configurable Internet access for the labs
New main page UI for better lab management
We implemented a new UI for the main Labs page. It offers enhanced performance, adaptive layout for various screen sizes, quick filters for selecting different types of labs, and improved search capabilities. This update provides a more modern and consistent look and feel, and allows users to manage labs more effectively.
Enhanced software management in Jupyter Notebook labs
Now users can use the apt package manager with Jupyter-based labs to manage software in the lab environment. This feature enables a more flexible software configuration for various learning scenarios.
Content teams support
The content teams feature is now enabled for Virtual and Coding Labs. It allows the separation of content specific to each team from other content within the platform. Members of a team can now view and manage only the content associated with their team, which includes labs, virtual machine images, and environments. Platform administrators can assign to users the Author role in different teams. If an author is a member of multiple teams, they can quickly switch their active team, simultaneously switching the lab content they’re working on. Isolating content created by different groups enhances data security.
Full-size image view in labs
Now learners can view images in lab instructions in full size. It allows authors to supply better quality assets with the lab instructions, for example, software screenshots. Learners can use these images to understand their goals and steps better or compare their environment with the required one.
Configurable Internet access for the labs
Now lab authors can select one of the two preconfigured virtual networks for their lab virtual machines:
- public — learners working with virtual machines in this network can access the Internet from the VM
- secure — learners working with virtual machines in this network cannot access the Internet from the VM
These networks are applied to the lab environments and can be configured on the Environments page.
With the new network configuration options, lab authors can configure more secure virtual environments for their labs. This way, authors allow or restrict Internet access according to their scenarios, and minimize possible effects of malicious code execution in the labs.