We are currently developing version 2 of our learning platform for SharePoint, and today I can give you a glimpse of the new features. The release will hopefully come later this month.
Teacher controlled self-studies
Study Manager gives teachers, instructors and trainers a platform where they can create and manage self study material – texts, sound, images, videos, links – in SharePoint. Many standard SharePoint and Office 365 features are used, so Study Manager is easy to learn and work with ‒ or as a teacher in a subscribing organization expressed it: "All students, also those who are not used to computers, can work with the exercises, as Study Manager is so easy to use."
Get the right answer or not?
The students work online with exercises that contain various tasks to solve. When one task is solved, they click on a Next button to reach the next task of that exercise. By default, the next task is not displayed until the current one has been solved correctly. When a student fails at the first attempt, Study Manager automatically gives hints to help the student to solve the task and continue with the exercise.
In version 2 we will give the teachers two more options. For each task they can opt to give the correct answer after three failures, and for each exercise they can opt to let students continue with the next task even if the answer is wrong.
Evaluation
When an exercise is set to allow students to continue through all tasks without seeing the correct answer until the exercise is finished, Study Manager can be used for testing and evaluation.
Study Manager also gives teachers and students statistics on their progress, and teachers can see how much time each student has spent to perform a task and how many attempts were needed to solve it.
Exercises and tasks can be updated quickly, so if something turns out to be not optimal teachers can correct it without delay.
Version 2 of Study Manager will have seven different task types. This diversity makes work more interesting for the students, as each exercise can have various kinds of tasks. The task types span from self correcting tasks like multiple choice to work with documents.
Connect with image
One of the task types is new: "Connect with image". It shows the students two columns, one with images and one with text. The task is to drag and drop the right text to each image.
The teacher who creates a "Connect with image" task just have to give image links and words or phrases in the correct order. Then Study Manager will randomize how the text is shown to the students. Study Manager will also give the images a suitable size.
Subscriber suggestions
All these enhancements have been suggested by subscribers, and we are grateful for all input from people who really use our products. You are the ones who know best what is needed. We are the ones who can figure out how it should be implemented!
Peter Kalmström
CEO and Systems Designer
kalmstrom.com Business Solutions
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