September 1, 2011 Release – Populi Knowledge Base

This release is comprised primarily of a rewrite of course instances and some considerable enhancements to files in Populi.

We switched courses to the new tab-based navigation
Tabs include: Dashboard, Info, Assignments, Lessons, Discussions, Tests, Gradebook, Roster, Calendar, Reporting
Course actions (email, finalize, clone, etc.) subsumed under action gear
Dashboard includes Bulletin Board as well as new course Alerts and Discussion updates
Assignments now come in three flavors: Grade-only, Test, and File
Test assignments create a corresponding online test
File assignments feature a feed that lets instructor and student correspond and exchange files and comments
Discussions can now be course-wide or lesson-specific
Lessons now feature the Large File Uploader and permit embedded media (more below)
Tests have two new question types (True/False and Matching)
Embed media right in test questions (more below)
New course Calendar displays every course-related event, including meeting times, assignments, tests, etc.
Reporting features the course Performance Dashboard and Change Log
Files can be imported from other courses (in addition to standard cloning and syncing)

Read more about our new files setup on the Populi Blog.

File size limits raised to 32MB for all users
The new Large File Uploader in courses (Info and Lessons tabs) lets you upload files up to 2GB in size
Video files automatically encoded into multiple formats for optimized playback on a multitude of devices
Audio and video files can be embedded into and streamed from Lesson content, Test questions, and News items

Single sign-on (SSO) capability: let your Populi users log in and change their passwords via a web-based app of your own design

ISIR imports now based on Processed Date and not the order in which they were imported

Program data added to Data Slicer

Plus numerous bug fixes and minor tweaks, trickled out over the past several months