The Entrada project team is pleased to announce the release of Entrada version 1.6.0. This newest release includes some very exciting new features, and significant refinements to some existing features, further empowering our users within Entrada. I would like to thank each of our Entrada Community Partners for your extensive contributions to this release.
What’s New?
In addition to many user interface and user experience improvements to existing areas within Entrada you will find the following platform enhancements:
AAMC Curriculum Inventory Reporting
As part of our commitment to developing a highly flexible, interoperable and robust integrated teaching and learning environment we have added the ability to export the curriculum within Entrada to the MedBiquitous Curriculum Inventory data standard (ANSI/MEDBIQ CI.10.1-2013). This XML formatted export allows you seamlessly upload your curriculum to the AAMC Curriculum Inventory Portal. This exciting feature is available to Entrada Community Partners as part of consortium membership. For more information on using or obtaining this feature, please contact us.
Recurring Learning Events
Creating repeating events within Entrada just became a whole lot easier thanks to the new ability to schedule recurring Learning Events. This powerful feature enables you to create daily, weekly, or monthly recurring Learning Events with a variety of advanced options. Updating content within these recurring events can be done at high level or a very granular level, empowering you to leverage your recurring events without being handcuffed by cascading changes that you didn’t want to make.
Synchronize Course Enrolment
Having course enrolment synchronized with your institution’s Student Information System was previously possible within Entrada through the use of a scheduled script. However, thanks to a new feature, administrators and course directors can now synchronize on-demand to get students into their courses without any waiting.
Synchronize Small Groups
In addition to being able to synchronize course enrolment on the fly you can now synchronize small groups for a course. This feature will detect if there are any small groups already being maintained within your Student Information System and if any groups are found the group structure will be duplicated, synchronized and maintained within Entrada automatically.
Learner Activity and Statistical Information
This new feature gives administrators and faculty members the ability to see how many of their learners have accessed the learning event and it’s material. These statistics and history can then be used to identify which learning events are being accessed less than other events so that action can be taken to improve the quality of these events, and the learning material associated with them.
BasicLTI Integration
Our continuing effort to increase the interoperability of Entrada with third-party learning tools has brought us to add BasicLTI Consumer support to Entrada. System administrators and faculty members can now connect to external BasicLTI Providers through the Course Website / Community system, as well as through Learning Events. This feature works great for connecting to Library systems, Publisher platforms, and external learning tools.
MeSH Keywords Support
Administrators and faculty members now have the ability to link MeSH keywords to both Courses and Learning Events within Entrada. This important features allows for impressive reports that demonstrate where exactly linked MeSH keywords are taught throughout your entire curriculum.
Clinical Encounter Logging Enhancements
Entrada Mobile now allows learners to log clinical encounters easily and efficiently from within the mobile app (available for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry 10). This feature gives your learners the freedom to enter what they learn on the fly while it is fresh in their minds.
Quiz Module Question Grouping
When attaching quizzes to Learning Events or Course Websites, faculty members can have the option to randomize the questions within the quiz. In most scenarios this feature has worked very well, except for when certain quiz questions needed to be grouped together. The perfect example of this presented itself when a quiz had case based questions in it and those questions needed to remain in sequence. Randomizing such a quiz would move case based questions in with other random quiz questions resulting in a question sequence that did not make sense. Now when authoring a quiz, faculty members can group those sets of questions together, while still having the benefits of randomizing the overall quiz.
First Time Login Terms of Use / Copyright Agreement
System administrators can now configure Entrada to require users to accept a terms of use or copyright agreement, along with attesting that any material uploaded does not violate any copyright laws. This feature ensures that all users have acknowledged that their use of the system is bound by institutional policy.
Course Specific Learning Event Calendars
Faculty, staff, and students can subscribe to their own activity-based Entrada calendar, or they can subscribe to specific calendars for specific courses. Providing Entrada users with even more ways to view and manage their schedules.
Linking Gradebook Assessments to Learning Events
Included in Entrada 1.6 is the ability to link assessments to learning events. This feature allows you to maintain linkages across your whole curriculum; linking assessments to events, events to courses and curriculum objectives to all four. This provides you with a powerful tool for tracking and reporting on your curriculum in both how it is delivered and how it is assessed.
Learning Event Draft Schedule Import Enhancements
Importing Learning Events into Entrada just got easier. The CSV import tool now allows administrators and faculty members to import Comma Separated Values (CSV) data in any column order they wish. The new column mapping feature then allows you to map required and non-required Entrada fields to the columns in your file.
Gradebook Assignment Dashboard Notices
When attaching an Assignment Dropbox to a Gradebook Assessment administrators and faculty members now have the option of automatically notify the affected learners through a Dashboard Notice.
Default Community Template Facelift
Entrada communities just got a whole new look and feel thanks to the redesigned default template. The redesigned template gives your community a sleek more modern look and feel while making the user experience that much more enjoyable. Entrada 1.6 also allows for media to be embedded within announcements, discussion posts, and more.
Developers Rejoice
As part of the Entrada 1.6 release we have upgraded many of the internal components that make Entrada tick, such as Zend Framework, ADOdb, CKEditor, HTMLPurifier, Smarty, etc. This makes working within Entrada a breeze for developers looking to leverage new features within these components.
For more detailed information on any of these features you can go through the closed Issues for the 1.6.0 Milestone on GitHub.
For further information or clarification regarding information contained in this release announcement please contact:
Matt Simpson
Manager, Education Technology
Faculty of Health Sciences, Queen’s University
Website: http://entrada-project.org
Telephone: +1 613-533-6000 x78146
E-Mail:[email protected]