Sapling Learning v1.12 Release Notes

When we released SaplingLearning.com in Fall of 2008 as a homework system independent of any specific textbook, we decided to call that "version 1.0." Others had been using our software for a few years by then, but we considered what we were able to do on our own a brand new product compared to what they were using.

Today we released the 12th major update to our software. Version 1.12 started off as a simple, relatively small bug-fix release, but it grew into a bit more than that. Here are some of the updates you might notice:

Activity Editor:

• Filters: You can now filter the question library by title or description, allowing you to find questions that mention particular words in those fields. For example, now you can find all questions anywhere in the book that mention "acetic" in the description, or that do not have the word "alcohol" in the title.
• Locate in Library: Each question in Your Activity now has a "locate" button, allowing you to find that question (and other questions like it) in the question Library.
• Layout: We've updated the column widths to better match how you probably use the tool. We also consolidated the scrollbars in Your Activity, making it easier to see what questions are in the activity.
• New Buttons: Grades, Stats, and Preview have been integrated directly into the Activity Editor, freeing up space on the Activity Editor page.
• Time Settings: Everything else in the system uses the Timezone configured in your User Profile, but the Activity Editor was using your computer's timezone. This caused some unexpected results, especially if the Activity Editor was unable to determine your computer's timezone. The Activity Editor now respects the setting in your profile, regardless of what your computer clock says (and therefore matches the rest of the site). The Activity Editor also now limits times to 5-minute intervals to match the rest of the site.
• Undo/Redo: We've expanded the undo/redo functionality in the Activity Editor, allowing you to undo/redo any setting in Your Activity.
• Safeties: A popup has always warned you when students had already started an assignment (and thus changing that assignment might have undesired effects), but now the tool "understands" those effects, and can guide you through the changes. For example, if you remove a question from an active assignment, the tool will warn you that you may want to let your students know about the change, and will immediately update your students' versions of the activity (and their scores).
• Assigned Column: The first column in the Library half of the Activity Editor tells you whether or not a question is in the activity you're editing. Now you can use that column to add and remove questions, simply clicking the square to toggle whether that question is assigned.
• Various Bug Fixes: Sometimes the hover text in the Library didn't match what your mouse was over, and sometimes clicking on the top edge of a question selected the question above it. These and other minor bugs have been fixed in the Activity Editor.

Gradebook:

• "Incomplete" Activities: In 1.11, we removed the "Submit" button from activities, instead logging student scores as they work on the assignment. In 1.12, we've updated the interface for assignments in your gradebook, allowing you to quickly see the difference between an assignment that hasn't been started, an assignment that's in progress, a completed assignment, and an assignment for which the due date has passed without the student finishing one or more questions.
• Column Totals: The columns totals for assignments previously included in-progress assignments; now they only count completed assignments (or, after the due date, all assignments).

Activity Creation:

• Removed Extra Settings: The Activity Creation screen (reached when you first create an activity or by clicking "Update this Activity" from the Activity Editor) had a few settings that didn't actually do anything for assignments. For example, we never removed the "Auto-Submit on Due Date" or "Prevent Late Submissions" setting that corresponded with the "Submit" button in assignments. We've removed these settings from Activity Creation.

Our developers are actively working on more features and bug fixes for release 1.13, including a large suite of features for students (those might not make it into 1.13, though; I'll have more about those here soon). If there's anything you'd like to see in an upcoming release, let us know in the comments.