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Features to know in Elentra ME 1.27

A galaxy

We are pleased to announce that Elentra ME 1.27 and the maintenance releases 1.26.1, 1.25.2, and 1.24.3 are now available to all Consortium participants.

These high-level release notes contain a brief description of the key changes included in Elentra ME 1.27. Additional enhancements, bug fixes and more detailed information related to this release can be found in Elentra Collaborate here (login required).

Key Changes in Elentra ME 1.27

Update to Clinical Experience

Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core Team, Queen’s University, Elentra Corporation 

1.27 includes significant changes to the Clinical Experience module. These changes include updates to the Lottery the Location Module, and Manage Instructors. The majority of the contribution comes from the Elentra Corporation with additional enhancements created by Queen’s University.  

Lottery

The new lottery module allows learners to rank their order of preferred rotations, swap schedules and/or sites and preceptors. Swapping gives learners the ability to fine-tune their clinical experiences. Administrators can quickly upload the available options for learners via CSV, making it easier to run and maintain lotteries.

Locations

The updated location module now gives administrators the power to add contacts, site visit records and agreements to their location sites, buildings, or room levels. The location module has a robust search for sorting and filtering locations. Administrators can link locations to instructors, and link locations to curriculum tags for a more nuanced and detailed rotation schedule. Learner can now view this information to get a more detailed look at sites they may encounter during their clinical experiences.

Instructors

The new instructor module provides an enhanced way for administrators to manage the information associated with clinical faculty. Administrators can associate instructors with locations and curriculum tags to surface important data about preceptors to learners. Administrators may add notes to an instructor’s profile for administrative purposes or show them to learners. Images can be added to profiles, making it easier for administrators and learners to put a face to the name. Files may be associated with instructors to allow document management for clinical faculty members, including dedicated functionality for managing agreements.

Preferred Names

Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core Team, UCLA

Users may now choose to display a preferred name in place of their first name throughout most of Elentra. First name may still appear in some areas of Elentra, as a result we recommend using this feature for shorter forms of longer names or anglicized names.

Thank you again to all of the contributing members of our Consortium community for helping to create Elentra ME 1.27.

Features to know in Elentra ME 1.26

A galaxy

We are pleased to announce that Elentra ME 1.26 and the maintenance releases 1.25.1, 1.24.2, and 1.23.3 are now available to all Consortium participants.

These high-level release notes contain a brief description of some key changes included in Elentra ME 1.26. Additional enhancements, bug fixes and more detailed information related to this release can be found in Elentra Collaborate here (login required).

Key Changes in Elentra ME 1.26

Update to Elentra Javascript Libraries
Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core Team

Like all software, Elentra relies on underlying technologies to support its function. These technologies (e.g., Bootstrap, Axios, CKEditor, etc.) need to be routinely updated so that improvements and security fixes within each of them are applied to Elentra. The Core Team work included updates to multiple Javascript libraries, resolving bugs related to those updates, and removing duplicated and unnecessary libraries. The effect of this work is to improve the security and stability of Elentra while also making it easier for developers to work with the code in the future.

Competency-Based Education Error Messaging
Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core Team

Following a community evaluation of the updated competency-based education (CBE) tools and curriculum framework builder, improvements to error messaging to improve the user experience were identified as a priority. The Core Team has implemented over a dozen new error messages to help users effectively navigate Elentra when configuring curriculum for use with CBE.

Assessment and Evaluation Confidential Item Type
Contributor: Duke-NUS

This new item type lets you included a place for assessors/evaluators to make narrative comments on forms, but have the responses hidden from the person the form is about.

Improvement to Assigning Graders in Gradebook Assessments
Contributor: UCLA

This enhancement to the Gradebook allows an administrator to import a csv to populate the grader to learner relationships for an assessment. This can save administrators significant time, especially in a course that includes multiple assessments with tutors or others consistently grading the work of the same learners.

Release Process Change

For the release of ME 1.26 the Core Team also piloted a process to include a community tester in our release preparation phase. We appreciate the time dedicated by staff from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to help us in our work. We are excited to evaluate the pilot and explore how we might further engage our community in our release cycle.

Thank you again to all of the contributing members of our Consortium community for helping to create Elentra ME 1.26.

Features to know in Elentra ME 1.25

A galaxy

We are pleased to announce that Elentra ME 1.25 and the maintenance releases 1.24.1, 1.23.2, and 1.22.3 are now available to all Consortium participants.

These high-level release notes contain a brief description of some key changes included in Elentra ME 1.25.

Key Changes in Elentra ME 1.25

Laravel 9 Upgrade
Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core Team

Laravel is the web application framework that the Elentra code relies on. The version of Laravel we were using was coming to the end of its life, so to ensure that we continue to receive the latest security fixes to Laravel, the Core Team upgraded from Laravel 6.20 to 9.0 in ME 1.25. This upgrade reduces security vulnerabilities and helps ensure a more stable product.

The Laravel upgrade also required a PHP upgrade which the Elentra Core Team addressed in Elentra ME 1.24. All schools should note that upgrading to Elentra ME 1.25 requires PHP 8+.

Creation of Seed Data and Writing Functional Tests for the API (application programming interface)
Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core Team

The Core Team have completed work to write functional tests to address virtually all end points in the Elentra API. The API is what lets Elentra send information from databases to the user interface. Creating functional tests for the API allows us to more easily test Elentra and make sure that when we pull in new code Elentra remains as stable as possible. With these tests included in ME 1.25, developers from Consortium schools now have a model to follow to write tests for their own code contributions. This supports our strategic goal to eventually require functional tests for all new or revised API end points.

Also included in Elentra ME 1.25 is seed data for developers to use. This provides an initial set of demo data to use when using Elentra.

Event Attendance Self-Reporting for Learners
Contributor: Northern Ontario School of Medicine

NOSM’s work introduces a new event attendance option that allows learners to self-report their attendance status from an event page without requiring a geolocation check. This feature enhancement optionally integrates with the existing Absence Management dashboard to allow for approvals of requested absences as desired.

Improved User Experience for Competency-Based Education Tools
Contributor: Elentra Consortium Core Team

Following user experience best practices, the Core Team implemented a series of changes to the user interface to continue to improve the experience of using the Curriculum Framework Builder introduced in ME 1.24.

Increased Options in the Assessment Plan Builder (Competency-Based Education)
Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core Team, University of Toronto

This feature enhancement introduces the ability to define dependencies across contextual variable responses in an assessment plan. It will allow post-graduate medical programs to better track learner progress towards meeting assessment plan requirements in Elentra.

Learner Self-Assessment Option in Learner Dashboard (Competency-Based Education)
Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core Team, Elentra Corporation, Queen’s University

This enhancement allows courses/programs to allow learners to self-assess their status on a curriculum objective on the learner dashboard. This can be enabled per course/program.

Thank you again to all of the contributing members of our Consortium community for helping to create Elentra ME 1.25.

Features to know in Elentra ME 1.24

A galaxy

On behalf of the Elentra Consortium community, I am pleased to announce that Elentra ME 1.24 and the maintenance releases 1.23.1 and 1.22.2 are now available to all consortium participants.

These high-level release notes contain a brief description of the changes you can expect to see in 1.24. Smaller enhancements, bug fixes and more detailed information related to this release can be found here.

Competency-Based Education (CBE)

Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core Team, Elentra Corporation, Queen’s University

Queen’s University with the support of the Elentra Corporation and the Core team is pleased to announce a more flexible competency-based module. This new framework will allow schools to build their curriculums using their own nomenclature.

With CBME the foundation of CBE, schools will easily be able to migrate their existing curriculums over to the new framework.

While this module was specifically developed for Competency-Based curriculums, there is functionality that may be applicable to other use cases. The Core team is happy to work with you to see if CBE is the right tool for you.

PHP 8

Contributors: Elentra Consortium Core

Release 1.24 is also now compatible with PHP 8.0, in addition to PHP 7.4.

PHP 8.0 changes that required fixes in Elentra to support it includes changes to how String to Number comparisons work, warnings that are now errors, notices that are now warnings and other backward incompatible changes in PHP 8. Schools are encouraged to test their custom changes with PHP 8 before deploying 1.24 to production. More information on PHP8 backward incompatible changes can be found here.

Although 1.24 is compatible with PHP 7.4, schools are recommended to update to PHP 8.0. Upcoming release 1.25 will only be compatible with only PHP 8+.

Entrada ME 1.10.0 Released

Northern Lights

Over the past three months, the Entrada development community has contributed over 90 bug fixes, feature refinements, and enhancements into Entrada ME, and today we are pleased to announce the immediate release of Entrada ME 1.10.0 Consortium Editions. The release of Entrada ME 1.10.0 Open Edition will follow, but is unavailable at the time of this release.

Entrada ME 1.10.0

Introduction of Laravel based REST API and VueJS (Entrada Core)

In June 2016 the Entrada development community decided to move Entrada towards Service Oriented Architecture (“SOA”), a path that would facilitate a non-disruptive modernization of Entrada’s underlying architecture. After a review of available frameworks and options, the SOA working group decided to adopt the Laravel PHP framework for our RESTful API, and VueJS to power the front-end user interface. This version of Entrada ME realizes that community decision by introducing the first RESTful API end-point, “Auth”. The new RESTful Auth end-point replaces our previous authentication server + client and continues to provide the flexibility and security needed for Entrada. We have also included a “Sandbox” module to demonstrate to developers how the Entrada ME + API + VueJS pattern works.

The path to completing the transition to SOA will be a long one, but this is the first step in that journey.

Accessibility Improvements (Entrada Core)

Entrada ME 1.10 introduces support allowing content authors to ensure the content they are entering into the platforms meets Accessibility guidelines. This Accessibility Checker icon is now available within all rich text editor windows.

Curriculum Search within Learning Event Resources (uCalgary, Entrada Core)

The Curriculum Search engine is now able to search within the contents of most Learning Event resources allowing users to gain a better understanding of where search terms appear within the curriculum. Currently, the indexing works only for PowerPoint, Word, PDF, HTML, and Text documents as they are uploaded, but future releases will be able to index existing content as well.

Flexible User Disclaimers (Entrada Core)

If your institution requires all users or certain types of users to read and accept agreements, policies, or attestations (i.e. terms of use, acceptable use, privacy policy, academic integrity, etc.) then you will pleased to learn that each organization within Entrada ME 1.10 now has the ability to configure and monitor these disclaimers. Configuration options include being able to specify when they appear (i.e. on login, when accessing courses or communities, etc.) and what happens when if they decline (i.e. auto log out, blocking of content, etc.).

New Visual Dashboard Calendar for Learners (UBC)

The visual calendar that appears on the Dashboard for learners has been updated and now includes the ability to view events by Day, Week, and Month views. It also accurately displays the custom colors selected for courses or learning events.

Significant Improvements to the Learner ePortfolio (WSU)

Improvements to the facilitated learner ePortfolio module have made it easier and more visually appealing to use. Learners can now easily see and track what artifact requirements are outstanding, and they can also see when their mentor/advisor has reviewed an artifact. Another important and exciting addition is that ePortfolios can now also be directly attached to the Course Gradebook, which allows markers/graders a very simple and efficient way to review and mark portfolios.

Improvements to AAMC Curriculum Inventory XML Generation (UT Southwestern)

Entrada continues to improve the quality and robustness of the AAMC Curriculum Inventory XML that is generated by the system. UT Southwestern has contributed several enhancements that help to correctly identify the length of Clerkships and improve performance.

Improvements to Gradebook Assessment Form UI (Queen’s)

User interface styles for grading rubrics and assessment item types within the Gradebook have been refined and improved for this version of Entrada, as well as several bugs have also been addressed

Custom Series of Learning Events (Entrada Core)

The Recurring Event feature within Learning Events now supports the creation of a custom series/schedule of events. For example, if you would like to create a single event that occurs at six different times, you can now easily create a custom series of six events and specify the custom date and time of each event.

Exam Module Improvements and Fixes (UCLA)

The first version of the Exam module was introduced in Entrada ME 1.9, and we have since discovered and resolved several bugs and user experience issues. We have also added an important new feature in this version, which is the ability to automatically transfer exam/quiz/test grades directly to the learners’ Course Gradebook.

Mapping Medbiquitous Resources to Learning Events (Entrada Core, WSU)

Entrada has had the ability store the Medbiq Resources for a number of versions, but we now give faculty and administrative staff the ability to map this terminology directly to Learning Events in the user interface. This information will shortly be reflected in the AAMC Curriculum Inventory XML file as well.

Importing and Exporting Data in Entrada ME (Entrada Core)

Administrators can now import new Entrada ME users directly through the user interface. This feature did not previously exist because typically users were synchronized as a background process from an authoritative source such as a SIS or faculty database; however, this feature will ease the initial adoption of Entrada by new schools.

We have also added the ability to import and export Cohorts (classes) of learners and Course Groups through the user interface. This will allow for more efficient management of groups of learners by curricular coordinators and administrative staff.

User Profile Name Generational Suffixes and Post-Nominal Letters (UCLA)

By enabling the new profile_name_extensions setting Entrada administrators are allowing people to indicate generational suffixes of their name, as well as any post-nominal letters they may have.

Unified Pagination Strategy (Entrada Core)

To reduce the number of different pagination strategies employed by modules throughout Entrada we have introduced a new Entrada_Pagination class that should be used in most cases by developers, and have also converted most modules to use this new class.

Other Technical Improvements Include

  • Added language translations for Clerkship and Communities (NUS)
  • Fixes and improvements when exporting Learning Events in Admin > Manage Events (Entrada Core)
  • Ability to customize the default Learning Event Type duration (Entrada Core)
  • Improvements to Assessment & Evaluation module admin dashboard (Queen’s)
  • Improvements to customizability of how dates and times are displayed throughout Entrada (NUS)
  • Improvements to how My Communities are displayed in the sidebar (Entrada Core)
  • Improvements and fixes to user session timeout notification (Entrada Core)

For further information or clarification regarding information contained in this release announcement please contact:

Matt Simpson
Technical Director, Entrada Consortium
School of Medicine, Queen’s University
Website: http://entrada-project.org
Telephone: +1 613-533-6000 x78146
Email: [email protected]

Entrada ME 1.9.0 Released

Space Nebula

Over the past three months, the Entrada development community has contributed over 165 bug fixes, feature refinements, and enhancements into Entrada ME, and today we are pleased to announce the immediate release of Entrada ME 1.8.1 and 1.9.0 Open and Consortium Editions.

Entrada ME 1.9.0

Secure Testing / Exam module (UCLA)

Entrada ME 1.9 can conduct both secured or non-secured exams, tests, and quizzes using a standard web-browser and optionally coupled with Open Source or Commercially supported computer lock-down technology. This feature also includes the ability to facilitate remote Proctoring of Exams by audio, video, and screen recording the exam taker. The Exam module supports a Question Bank, Exam Builder, and several item types including MCQ, short answer, essay, matching, text, and fill-in-the-blank.

My Bookmarks feature (UCLA)

Entrada ME now includes an optional internal bookmarking feature that allows users to quickly access pages, reports, or system functionality they use most frequently. Bookmarks are searchable and sortable.

Room & Location Management (UCLA, uCalgary, Entrada Core)

Physical building and room management have been a long requested features within Entrada. Administrators now have the ability to manage buildings and rooms. Once rooms have been created, they are selectable within the Learning Events setup section.

Curriculum Matrix enhancements (Entrada Core)

The Curriculum Matrix now shows the number of times each objective is tagged throughout the curriculum. With this information easily accessible, users can be made aware of objectives that are not being covered adequately.

Faculty & Staff as Learners (Queen’s)

Added the ability to associate faculty and staff members as the audience within a Cohort or Learning Event

Improvements to Assessment & Evaluation (Queen’s)

Significant improvements and refactoring to many aspects within the Assessment & Evaluation module, including the Dashboard, Distribution Engine, Form Builder, and Item Bank (Queen’s)

Learning Event module refinements (Entrada Core)

Added option to indicate a parent + child Learning Event relationship when creating recurring events

Color Code Courses & Learning Events (UBC)

Added the ability to color code Courses & Learning Events

Accessibility Improvements (uOttawa, Entrada Core)

Removed the 5-second pause between actions within the Entrada Community module

Other Technical Improvements Include

  • Entrada now requires PHP 5.6.3+
  • Updated Medbiquitous Resources to reflect recent changes (Entrada Core)
  • Entrada CLI’s model –create utility has been significantly improved (Entrada Core)
  • There is now an option to lazy load data into our AdvancedSearch jQuery plug-in (Queen’s)
  • Configurable regular expressions in settings.inc.php: KIOSK_MODE_CARD_PARSER – defines the format of the “student number” when swiping cards in “Kiosk Mode” for attendance tracking, and VIDEO_EMBED_REGEX – to specify the allowed video sources for embedding video (WSU).
  • Configurable option in entrada.settings table to determine whether or not to display Podcasting and My Bookmarks sidebar items (NUS, Entrada Core)
  • Increased the default Community soft quota size from 100MB to 1GB (WSU)
  • Added the ability to customize the visual layout of the Learning Events > Event page on a per-organization basis (WSU)
  • Added a JMeter load testing template (UBC)

Entrada ME 1.8.1

We have also decided to do a subsequent 1.8 release as well to resolve several bugs within the 1.8.0 code base. These fixes included:

  • Deleted unused API files.
  • Fixed several bugs within the Clinical Rotation Scheduler.
  • Made the province/state selector optional for countries without provinces or states.
  • Added the ability to enable/disable the Podcast sidebar.
  • Fixed several bugs with the facilitated learner ePortfolio.
  • Added a missing database table index to the objectives table.

For further information or clarification regarding information contained in this release announcement please contact:

Matt Simpson
Technical Director, Entrada Consortium
School of Medicine, Queen’s University
Website: http://entrada-project.org
Telephone: +1 613-533-6000 x78146
Email: [email protected]