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Release notes for August 28, 2023

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Release notes for August 28, 2023

These notes provide information about the release of Engageli 3.1.34 including new and enhanced features, improvements and resolved issues.

Engageli 3.1 takes the best of Engageli to a new level with a focus on stability and ease-of-use. Based on feedback from partners, we've improved the Engageli classroom to better support teaching and active learning and provide a flexible learning environment for all participants. In addition to a variety of new features, Engageli’s team has enhanced the overall teaching and learning experience in many ways. 

Exciting New Features

  • Dial-in support (Beta)
  • Lock Tables 
    • Instructors can lock tables to stop learners from moving between tables to better manage their learners and class activities.
  • Peek at Tables
  • Two Instructors Using Web Browsers
  • Collaboration Spaces
    • New Playback Room features allow for collaboration spaces where learners can review course material and complete assignments and supplemental material in groups.
  • Self-Paced Assignments
    • Engageli’s self-paced materials have been enhanced to allow completion tracking and customized tasks that can be completed individually or in groups.

More New Features and Enhancements

Accessibility

  • Users with the TA or instructor role can provide manual captions. 
  • Instructors can manually replace transcribed captioning files. Learners with accommodation may need additional help via transcription in the Playback Room. If the institution uses third-party transcription services, these files can be used within Engageli. 

Localization and Language Compatibility

  • Users can change the application UI language (English, French, Spanish, or Japanese). 
    • Some English remains (e.g. End User Terms of Use)
  • Instructors can change the language detection for closed captions.
    • Chinese (China), Australian English, British English, American English, French (France), Canadian French, German (Germany), Hindi (India), Italian (Italy), Japanese (Japan), Korean (South Korea), Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish (United States), Thai (Thailand)

Asynchronous Experience/Playback Rooms

  • Users can mark their Playback Rooms as public or private. Public Playback Rooms allow any user online to join.
  • Users can request help from within the Playback Room and an alert is sent to the instructor.
  • Instructors can enable email notifications to instructors, TAs, or both for new questions posted in the Playback Room Q&A.
  • Playback Room users who invite others (the Host) can mute and request to unmute the other participants.
  • Users can use the PDF Share to display documents in the Playback Room.
  • Users can message an AI Assistant in the Chat for basic queries. (English only)
  • Users can create permanent links to share to meet in the same Playback Room on different occasions.
  • Users can easily find class recordings with the newly designed Playback Room UI that provides a visual representation of recordings.

New for Instructors, TAs, and Learners

Advanced Controls

  • New option to make classes accessible to learners only when the instructor who is logged in enables it. Other restrictions: 
    • Disallow anonymous chat
    • Disallow anonymous Q&A
    • Disallow file uploads to the chat and whiteboard
    • Filter to disallow inappropriate messages in the chat & Q&A (English only)
    • Class recordings are set to private by default 

Audio Experience

  • Noise reduction setting that uses machine learning-based technology to distinguish human speech from background noises for an enhanced audio experience.
  • Hybrid Meetings
    • Audio settings to maximize the user experience in multi-location synchronous settings. For example, if three learners are sitting together in the same location all logged into their Engageli virtual live session.
    • Table mode is not supported.

Class Recordings

  • Table whiteboards are included in class recordings viewed in an Engageli Playback Room.
  • The PDF live share quality is improved in class recordings.
  • Instructors have the option to make recordings private by default rather than immediately have them available in the Playback Room. Instructors can make edits if needed and later publish the recordings to the Playback Room for learner access. 
  • The Class Gallery can be included in the class recording.
  • Highlighted tabs in the live session indicate to the instructor what is being recorded.
  • Screen share and PDF share annotations are included in the class recordings to improve the viewing experience for asynchronous learners.

Chat, Notes, Q&A

  • Instructors can turn on AI-powered chat functionality to detect and block inappropriate messages to maintain safe learning environments on Engageli. (English only at this time.)  
  • Anonymous chats can be disabled by instructors in the class configurations.

Class Gallery

  • Users can open the Class Gallery in the right side panel.
  • Learners only see the Class Gallery in Room Mode. In Table Mode, learners see the Tablemates Gallery. 
  • Users can search the Class Gallery by Active and Not Active (not present) participants.
  • Learners can deselect “My Video First” in the Sort gallery options. If deselected, the user’s video will no longer appear in the top left position of the gallery, to reduce virtual classroom fatigue.

In-class Teaching Tools

  • Polls 
    • Text input (word cloud) poll answers are shown on user video feeds in the Class Gallery so instructors can easily see each learner’s response.
    • Improved UI for creating table arrangements based on poll responses. 
  • Screen Share
    • Instructors and TAs see an improved UI when learner screen share approval is needed.
    • For Mac users, a new permissions page that includes screen share permissions is prompted at login to avoid screen share issues. 
    • Staff and learners can annotate a screen share to provide visualization or highlight important concepts during instruction or class discussions. 
  • PDF Share
    • Staff and learners can annotate a shared PDF. 
    • Users can navigate directly to a specific page in a shared PDF.
  • Whiteboards
  • Tables
  • Instructors can use table presets during free seating.
  • The Seating Arrangement drop-down menu has been updated for better usability.
  • Instructors can adjust settings to open the classroom in Table Mode. 
  • Improved UI for creating random table arrangements. 

Login Simplification 

  • All users have the same login link (instructors, learners, TAs).
  • The login screen UI and flow have been improved for ease of use.
  • Staff and learners now have a “My Class Portal,” personalized landing pages for easy access to classrooms, Playback Rooms, assignments, and class recordings. [Not available with LTI integrations]

Podium

  • Instructors can hide their video to allow for a producer mode with one instructor facilitating the session out of learner view.
  • Instructors can go back to the podium after visiting tables more easily with the “Leave” icon on the instructor video.
  • Instructors can enable meeting mode to disable the fixed podium to create a working space for meetings or sessions without an instructor presence at the “front” of the classroom. 

Notifications

  • Audio notification (English) when the recording starts or is paused. 
  • Notification for instructors and learners when the instructor directs the class to a different view.
  • Improved notification when an instructor might replace an existing instructor in a live classroom. 

User Experience/User Interface

  • Users can double-click on a screen share to display it in full-screen mode.
  • Visual display of speakers who are not on the podium when the class is in Room Mode.
  • Improved UI for staff and learner controls and settings with updated visual icons and written descriptions. 
  • Product version number listed in the media settings. 

Administrators

Admin Portal

  • New section for Administrators called Class Management. Classes can be deleted or archived in bulk. 
  • Individual class management is now called Classes. 
  • New additional site-wide privacy, security, and Playback Room-related settings.
  • New settings allow administrators to customize virtual background options as well as upload custom background images.
  • Instructors and administrators can generate links for shared Google docs for multiple tables to save time copying/pasting links.
  • Instructors and admins can add links for shared class documents, MS 365 or Google, so they are already available in the live class. 
  • New tabs to make the classroom & Playback Room settings easier to find: 
    • Common configuration
    • Live configuration
    • Playback configuration 
  • The 15-minute Class Timeout setting can be disabled.
  • New option to enable short token format class URLs. 
  • Attendance data is generated for a class without a specified schedule that lasts at least 15 minutes. 
  • New button to open the instructor My Class portal from the Admin Portal. 
  • New button to Download all chat from the Admin Portal. 
  • New link to Live Configuration page to update attendance settings.
  • The “Self-paced polls” section of Classes is changed to “Async Polls”
  • The Attendance Analytics now includes a filter for Combined attendance for attending a live session and viewing a recording in a Playback Room. 

Infrastructure

  • Media-related auto-scaling improvements.
  • Support for 3000 concurrent learners on a sandbox.
  • Support for larger classes (600 learners in a class and more per prior agreement).

Integrations

  • New admin settings to hide instructor app or Admin Portal LTI link placement from the deep linking selector.
  • New LTI integration to enable instructors or admins to insert specific Playback Room Recordings and Assignment links to an LMS course.
  • Notification improvements in the login flow to direct learners back to their LMS.
  • New Occurrence Id admin setting to allow the identification of LTI class launch by individual LTI link placements in the LMS. The Occurrence Id will be available in the event stream API.
  • New admin setting to redirect users from LTI provisioned classes to a specified URL.
  • Coursera and OpenLearning LTI integrations are now fully supported.

Support

  • Limited support for Safari on iPads and iPhones.  Although we suggest Chrome/Edge for a better experience, Safari can be used with Engageli 3.1 on iPads and iPhones.
  • Virtual backgrounds are not supported when the user’s device/browser doesn’t meet certain requirements:
    • Chrome version 91 or above on Windows, Mac or Linux
    • Edge (Chromium) 91 or above on Windows or Mac
    • Hardware acceleration turned on
    • A browser that supports WebGL
    • A 64-bit operating system
  • Minimum System requirement has been updated. Check Your Technical Requirements – Engageli Help Center

Deprecated Features

  • Instructor guest link
    • This is no longer necessary as any user can be temporarily elevated to the instructor role. 
  • Self-paced materials in the Playback Room’s Present menu
    • Self-paced materials can now be added to and found in Assignments. 

 Need more help? Contact Support.

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