On behalf of the Elentra Consortium community, I am pleased to announce that Elentra ME 1.19 and the 1.18.1, 1.17.2, and 1.16.3 maintenance releases are now available.
For more detailed information and changes related to this release, please read our comprehensive What’s New in Elentra ME 1.19 for administrators documentation or the associated Jira Release (1.19.0, 1.18.1, 1.17.2, 1.16.3) for technical staff, which includes a total of 275 completed issues.
Features to Know in Elentra ME 1.19
CBME Enhancements
Contributors: Queen’s University
Elentra’s world-renowned support for Competency-based Medical Education (CBME) receives continuous enhancements with every release. This version introduces a Program’s ability to use multiple contextual variable options on the same assessment plan within the Assessment Plan Builder. Learners can now also see some Entrustable Professional Activity (EPA) progress details directly from their personalized Dashboard.
Dashboard Visual Calendar
Contributors: Elentra Consortium, Washington University in St. Louis
The visual calendar on the Elentra Dashboard has historically been reserved for learners in order to visualize their learning event schedule. Faculty members and staff have often requested that ability, so this release of Elentra standardizes the Dashboard visual calendar ability for learners, faculty, and staff. It now also allows users to overlay events from Communities they’re a member of, as well as selectable course calendars. These customizable calendar selections are saved on the Dashboard and in any subscribed calendar applications (e.g., Google Calendar, O365, Apple Calendar).
Learning Event Resource Time Estimations
Contributors: Elentra Consortium, Washington University in St. Louis
Faculty members can now provide the estimated amount of time it should take a learner to review each of the learning event resources added to an event. By collecting this data, administrators can now generate system reports showing the amount of time their learners spend on resources before, during, or after class.
Learning Event Geolocation-based Attendance Tracking
Contributor: National University of Singapore
By providing the longitude and latitude information of physical buildings within Location Management, administrators can unlock faculty members’ ability to enable learners to mark themselves as present during Learning Events that utilize attendance tracking. Learners will only be able to do so if their computer or device is physically within (or close to) the building.
Team-based Learning Support Beta
Contributors: Kaiser Permanente, Elentra Consortium
Support for facilitating in-class or online Team-based Learning (TBL) sessions is now available in beta form. By enabling TBL support in a Learning Event, instructors can administer in-class or online Individual Readiness Assessment Tests (iRATs), Group Readiness Assessment Tests (tRATs), and an MCQ-based Application Exercise.
Course Gradebook Improvements
Contributors: Elentra Consortium, Western Michigan University
Several smaller improvements to the Course Gradebook have been completed in this release. There is a new Curriculum Tag selector for managing objectives tagged to Gradebook Assessments. Course administrators now have improved control over releasing Gradebook Assessments to learners, also the ability to specify a Grading Scale as a marking scheme input.
Course Website Improvements
Contributors: Elentra Consortium, Washington University in St. Louis
Course Administrators can now create and publish course notices (announcements) directly from their course website instead of going to Admin > Manage Notices. Course Administrators have the option of displaying a live view of the Course Gradebook on the course website.
Curriculum Explorer Improvements
Contributor: Elentra Consortium
Users can now visualize indirect curriculum tag mappings within the Curriculum Explorer. This functionality allows users to see what Courses, Learning Events, and Gradebook Assessments are mapped to a Curriculum Tag mapped to another Curriculum Tag. For example, if someone selects to explorer “AAMC PCRS 1.1,” they will see any Courses, Learning Events, and Gradebook Assessments that have been mapped to any curriculum tag that is mapped to “AAMC PCRS 1.1”.
Assessment & Evaluation Enhancements
Contributors: University of Toronto, Queen’s University, Rush Medical College, NOSM
The Assessment & Evaluation module is one of the largest and most sophisticated modules in Elentra and continues to benefit from many improvements and enhancements by consortium participants. Some of the highlights included in this release include:
- Additions to the Assessment & Evaluation Dashboard to show more information about deleted tasks and task details (e.g., course/event name, start date, end date).
- A new Form Responses Report that allows a report creator to view all assessment or evaluation tasks and responses.
- Ability to apply embargo conditions to CBME Rubric Forms, which will prevent the form from being viewed by a target until certain conditions are met.
- A new Distribution Method called Reciprocal Distributions is now available, which supports use cases such as sending a faculty evaluation task to the target of an assessment so that the learner can also evaluate their assessor.
- The Distribution author no longer needs to specify Targets for Rotation Schedule Distributions, as assessors/evaluators can select the Target when completing the Task.
- Expiry dates are now configurable for on-demand assessments.
New Notices Module
Contributors: Elentra Consortium, Washington University in St. Louis
The Notices module has been rewritten using Elentra JS 2, our new frontend application framework based on Vue.js. While functionality has not changed significantly, user experience improvements and modernizations have been made throughout the module. One new feature is the ability for authors to send notices to specific Course Enrollments, as well as Course Groups. Course Administrators also have the ability to create Notices directly from Course Websites as well.
New System Reports
Contributor: Queen’s University
Several new System Reports have been added, including:
- Teaching Report By Faculty Member By Course (hourly)
- Learning Events by Course Missing Objectives
- Learning Events by Faculty Member
- Course Objectives by Events Tagged (COBET)
- Student Objective Competency Report
- Assessments without Tagged Objectives
Technical Changes
Contributors: Queen’s University, Elentra Consortium, Washington University in St. Louis
- Ability to have Elentra automatically provision new user accounts during a successful SSO sign-in.
- Increased local password strength requirements to meet NIST 2020 Password Guidelines.
- Several mobile device responsiveness improvements to areas within the application (e.g., Dashboard, Assessment & Evaluation).
- Ability to integrate an external room reservation system via API when scheduling Learning Events.
- A required deployment process change to use Deployer.
- Elentra API upgraded to version 4.1.
- Elentra JS upgraded to version 2.1.
For further information or clarification regarding information contained in this release announcement, please contact:
Matt Simpson
Associate Director, Elentra Consortium
Faculty of Health Sciences, Queen’s University
Website: https://elentra.org
Telephone: +1 613-533-6000 x78146
Email: [email protected]