There have been a number of fixes to CW in the last few months so I would like to summarize them here. I’ll also use this as an opportunity to give some resources for finding more detailed information.
Perhaps the biggest change is the integration of the standalone syllabus tool Stanford Syllabus with CW. The basic change is that now instructors only have to upload to either CW or Stanford Syllabus and their document will be visible in both. Unfortunately, this means that where we were able to upload multiple documents to CW syllabus, now only one is permitted, because this is what was allowed in Stanford Syllabus. Apparently, they are trying to migrate the syllabuses from the last year over to the new tool. If someone needs more than that, please send me the course name, number and year, as well as some justification for doing this, and I will make the request.
Another big change is that the timed assignment setting works. There was a bug that created a wide range of errors and eventually lost the student’s work if the autosubmit had to kick in. This has apparently been tested pretty thoroughly, but personally, I am still nervous about composing anything in an online text box. Copy and paste from Word, Notepad, whatever, seems like it would be much, much safer.
One new feature that they added in response to requests is the ability to edit published documents. From the release notes: “Instructors can modify existing questions as well as the delivery date options, feedback delivery options, and gradebook options under Settings.” What this means is that you don’t need to unpublish an assignment, then create a new one with a different name. However, it is important to note that many of the settings *cannot* be edited: Assignment Title, Assignment Released to, High Security, Timed Assignment, Assignment Organization, Submissions, Submission Message, Feedback Authoring, Grading, Graphics, and Metadata. The recording applet has not been fixed yet, and so we still need to restrict ourselves to one applet per page – this was often set using the Assignment Organization setting, but since we still cannot change that for published assignments, it is very important that you make sure it is set correctly from the beginning.
Other issues that have been resolved are: access to the Discussion tool, access options and email notification for Drop-box items, email notification for new files in Materials, and section specific content in automatically managed sections. Please see the Release Notes for Spring 08 Releases 1 and 2 for more details.
Other useful pages include:
- Current Issues in Production (Recently resolved and as yet unresolved current issues)
- Functional Gaps between CourseWork v3 and CourseWork v5
These come from the CW5 Help Resources, which can also be accessed through the Help Resources link in the left menu on the CW home page (before you login).