Release v18

When creating assessment activities, teachers now have the ability to differentiate assessment for individuals or groups of students. This can improve teaching and learning, and help to support those students who may need a little extra guidance, as content can now be customised for them.

This feature will allow you to differentiate both the assessment description and assessment dates. You can apply these alterations to single students or groups of students, which allows effective streaming or individualised learning plans.  

Additionally, when using the exclusion feature, you are able to set enrichment activities for specific students, excluding them from view for students who aren't meant to participate in them. This new section is found under 'Grading' and is called 'Participation and Learning Plans'.

Metacognition, or the awareness of one’s own thought process, and self-reflection are key components of learning, which is why Schoolbox now supports teachers to implement assessments with self-reflection.

This can be as simple as a comment completed when the assessment is submitted, but is most effective when coupled with a rubric. When the assessment includes a rubric, our self-reflection feature will ask the student to reflect against the capabilities and descriptors in the rubric, which provides them with more context for their self-reflection.

We’ve also improved support for offline submissions and made it possible for students to self-reflect and self-assess, even if they’re not submitting their assessment online. This can be done by selecting the “I have submitted my work in person” option in the submit screen, which will then direct the student to the self-reflection or self-assessment page. 

Rubric History

With the introduction of student self-reflection and self-assessment capabilities, our rubrics have also undergone a major change…for the better!

Rubrics are now individually attached to each piece of feedback given, which makes it possible to mark multiple rubrics, as well as view a full history of rubric feedback. This means you will no longer be limited to a single rubric result, and you can now provide many rubrics as a student develops their response towards the final assessment.

Managing Rubric Capabilities

Previously, there were two ways you could manage rubrics: through the homepage or a component link called "Edit Indicators". Now, we have made the "Manage Rubric Capabilities" option consistent throughout the system and available in the courses area, or through the course homepage.

Total Mark Decimals

In v18, we have made it possible to submit decimal values with two decimal places for due work marks. Previously, rubric totals were defined as integers, where a decimal would be rounded to the nearest whole number.

Force Push Activities from Course to Class

Have you ever imported your course to a class, only to find a spelling mistake in an assessment shortly after doing so? Previously, you would need to go to the course and all the classes and update them all individually to correct this.

Now, teachers can modify existing due work, quizzes and tasks at a course/unit level and force activities onto the classes they wish to import the new activity to. This action replaces the existing assessments on the class page/s, so just be careful that this will also remove any submissions or marks on the assessments being replaced.

Course Import Limited to Current Classes

In the past, importing a course to a class could get a little confusing as the class search would often show results for all folders throughout the system, including rolled-over classes. Now, search results will be filtered to contain folders that have a current group or class code, which will hide archived classes. This should help in cases where class names are similar or the same as ones used in the past.   

Changes to Courses Inside Courses

Previously, the ‘modify’ option in the course form allowed users to create a course within another course. Moving forward, you will no longer be able to create a course inside a course from the create/modify view.

It’s now easier than ever to get to know Schoolbox! As well as providing release notes and instructional documentation about new updates and features, we will now also introduce feature tours as part of your introduction to Schoolbox. 

Moving forward, these tours will become available throughout the system for a range of different users and purposes. These tours will automatically appear the first time you open a new area of Schoolbox. The tours will take you through a quick walkthrough of the features on the page, or you can easily skip through them. 

Please note that you will not receive a walkthrough of the system if you have logged in three times or more. 

To kick this feature off, we’re introducing a tour of the Schoolbox dashboard for all staff that have not logged in before. So, whether you’re a new user or just trying out a new feature for the first time, there will always be a guide to help you along the way!

Security Upgrades - CSRF

In order to deliver the maximum level of security for our customers, we’ve implemented Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) protection across the board. This is designed to avoid malicious sites hijacking a user’s browser and turning it against the Schoolbox system.  

The information stored in Schoolbox has become more sensitive and valuable over time, so we will continue to upgrade our security to defend against any external attacks that could potentially compromise your school’s privacy.

Email as Username

In some cases, parents may need to log in via email, rather than a username. If you have your ADFS configured to allow alternative logins, this setting can enable you to allow parents to use either a username or email to log in.

Please contact Schoolbox support before using this feature, as it may create unexpected results or prevent people from logging in if not used correctly.

Street Addresses Removed from Profile Pages

In v18, street addresses will no longer be displayed on profile pages. Although users’ street addresses will still be shown in the parent directory, they will no longer be seen anywhere else.

Add Content to the Academic Reports Page

We have now made it possible for schools to add customisable content to the top of their Academic Reports page, underneath the title. This can be accessed in Administration - Settings - Document Management.  

Moved SAML Authentication Settings

To make them even easier to locate than ever, we have moved our SAML authentication settings into their own tab in Schoolbox. These can now be found in Administration - Settings - SAML. 

Many schools now connect to our database for reporting and analytics purposes, which is why we now include basic notes about changes to the schema, so you can review them if you're impacted.

A big change to the schema is that rubric marks are now attached to the submission_return table. This means that we can have multiple rubric results per assessment. We generally consider the most recent submission return to be the valid result. This change brings rubrics inline with the rest of the return object, making it easier to know which rubric is the result.

To help with this change, here is an updated schema diagram for the assessments area.

New tables added

• tour

• tour_audience_role

• tour_trigger

• tour_step

• tour_status

• tour_step_modal

• participant_plan

• participant

New fields added

• submission_box.self_reviewability

• submission_return.review_route

• rubric_mark.return_id

Removed fields

• submission_return.is_confirmation_of_submission

• submission_errors.is_default_for_new_submissions

Foreign Keys added to the following tables, includes data sanitisation to ensure foreign keys can be applied

• etherpad_pad

• poll

• eotc_event

• eportfolio_page

• myFile

• myFolder

• eportfolio_component_filelist_item

• eportfolio_component_blog

• eportfolio_component_blog_comment

• eportfolio_component_blog_image

• eportfolio_permission

• eportfolio_coverphoto

• submission_return