10/31/22 Update

10/31/22 Update

Greetings! Our development team has been busy spinning out new features and enhancing your user experience. Here is a summary of recent changes that you will want to understand and communicate to your learners and colleagues. 

Google Template's Made Easier

There are two updates in the Project Builder related to assigning Google Templates:
  1. The Google Template assignment gets its very own button
  2. It's easier to select Google Sheets and Google Slides from your file picker (but watch out for huge files!)
1. The button to add a Google Template now sits to the right of the check boxes and has been relabeled as "Assign as Google Template." Once added, the link to the template is displayed immediately under that button.  Adding your hyperlink resources from your Resource Library follows the same flow as before. 

2. When adding a Google Template from your Google drive, it is now possible to select Google Sheets or Google Slides directly from your drive file picker; it is no longer necessary to search for these files by name and then add them from the search bar.

Pro tip:
Please remember that Google Templates are only used for interactive documents of a reasonable size. Do not use this feature just to provide read-only resources. If you are providing your learners with information not intended to be modified and returned to you, add the resources in the description, or add it as an evidence or step resource. 

Big files caution:
The load times of extremely large Google files in LiFT's artifact viewer can be slow. If your template assignment is very large (or will become very large over time) don't assign it as a template. For a faster experience, ask your students to create the assignment in their Drive and submit it as a standard URL within LiFT.  

Filter your Class Progress with Clickable Summary Counts

Within your Class > Projects view, there are columns with summary counts to show how your class is progressing on each Evidence assignment. The columns display the number of learners whose status is Assigned, In Progress, Completed or Overdue. Click on any summary count to display only those items. Note that assignments 'Review Requested' and 'Revision Requested' are considered 'In Progress'. 


Filtering the Evidence list this way makes it easier to see who is at what stage in a Project, and to be able to update specific groups of students using Bulk Action. (Have you played with the Bulk Action button in the upper right corner?)

Add Class Evidence Directly to Portfolios

Ever want to add Evidence to a Portfolio directly, without going to the Class>Project page?

Now you can click on the Add Evidence button in the Portfolio, and a new window will open giving you the opportunity to add any other Evidence from your Class. For convenience, the assignments tagged to this specific skill will appear first, along with their scores and ratings. You can add evidence tagged to other skills, too, but these artifacts won't carry ratings or scores into this portfolio. Currently, only one Evidence can be added at a time.



Anything Goes "In Portfolio"

Remember when adding Evidence to one of many portfolios automatically changed the status of an assignment from In Progress to In Portfolio? Now, Evidence of any status can be added to a portfolio, and the status won't change, so students won't lose track of what needs their attention. Work can remain In Progress until it is complete for all tagged target skills.

Pro tip: You can add work to a Portfolio in advance, and still score it later. The Portfolio will automatically update with the most recent score.


Use The Outcomes Tab for Class-level Reporting

Let your learners know how they are doing in your class with a Narrative Comment and an "On Track" indicator. The On Track status and most recent Narrative Comment will be available on progress reports. 

In the Class > Outcomes tab, select On Track or Needs Attention from the On Track column. You can do this in bulk, as well.
Add your narrative feedback in the Teacher Comments column. 


Whoops! Can I take that Back?  "Undo Submit" Button for Students

Ever click a button too soon? Students do that too.

When a student clicks their orange Send for Review button, the Evidence Status on the teacher side automatically updates to Review Requested. If they hit that button in error, or want to make some changes before the teacher sees it, there is now an Undo button for them to click. This changes the status back to what it was before (either Assigned or In Progress), and restores the orange Send for Review button so that the student can re-submit the Evidence when they are ready.


Resources & Hyperlinks in Projects

Any Resources that you add to Steps or Evidence, and any hyperlinks that you paste directly into a Project or Step Description will now open in a new tab so you can continue working in LiFT.

Got Custom Grading?

If you are using policies to auto-suggest Portfolio Grades and Class Grades, contact us to hear about some new options, such as using Alternative Text for rubrics and new ways to calculate grades for groups of portfolios. 

Expand Artifact View

Have you found the handy-dandy Expand Artifact icon yet? It's in the upper right corner of the Artifact Preview window. Click on that icon (or the blue View button below the Artifact) and the preview window expands to screen width to make your review of Evidence easier. 


Learner-Created Projects

In our learner-centered world, it's great to invite students to create their own projects. The button to Create a Project is on their Class page, and opens a Project Builder nearly identical to the teacher Project Builder. They can build projects, assign evidence with due dates, curate resources, and even tag to the competencies. These Learner-Created Projects appear in your class view for review. 




To find learner-created Projects in your Project Library, be sure you are filtering by All or Created By Learners. Note that when you delete a project that students have already worked on, to preserve their work, LiFT changes the project from Created by Teacher to Created by Learner. Learners can hard-delete these learner-created projects if they wish. 




We hope these updates help make your use of LiFT easy and efficient. Keep the feedback coming!
The LiFT Team





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