We hope everyone has had a great summer and are ready for the start of another academic year. All of us at Junction have been quite busy preparing for your return, so in this post we’ll summarize the top five new features that we’ve added based on your feedback.
5. Search
This is the one everyone has been clamoring for, and here it is! Search is available via the magnifying glass icon on the top right-hand corner of every page. Click the icon and a text entry search box slides out to the left-hand side of the icon. Enter a term and results will appear below with a helpful icon indicating the type of primary learning resource on the page – videos, text readings, etc. – so learners can choose their preferred resource types.
4. Faculty Insight Center
If you’re an instructor, when you log into your course you’ll be presented with a convenient summary of what’s happening with your class in Junction. Drilling into individual student performance and benchmarking against the class, seeing what alerts Junction has triggered and to which students, or getting a quick take on participation in online discussions are all just one click away. You can also reschedule assessments, send messages and get to your gradebook. Take a look at our help videos on the Faculty Insight Center for more details.
3. Student Insight Center
If you’re a student, don’t worry you haven’t been left out. You also have a new insight center that will greet you when you log into your course. Before we get to the charts and graphs, one thing you’ve asked for is a convenient way to resume a study session – you’ll now find a link at the top to your last recorded activity on Junction so you can jump back in without delay or having to remember where you were. We’ve also added another frequently requested feature, a progress bar! Mastery of learning objectives drives filling the bar – those mastered fill in green, those tested but not yet mastered are red and those learning objectives in the course that you haven’t been assessed on yet are grey. Get a nice green bar by the end of your course and you should be in great shape for a final! A calendar with upcoming assignment due dates is here as are new charts showing you scores across lessons vs. the class average and two charts showing how top performing students in your section are spending their time – by lesson and by individual page within lessons. Now you’ve got a good idea for how much time you need to spend each week preparing for your course and which resources other students are finding most valuable.
2. Bookmarks
Ever notice those grey star icons on different pages within Junction? You can use those to bookmark resources you find to be particularly important, helpful, or that you want to revisit later when you have more time – hey, is that the bus? Whatever resources you bookmark as you go through lessons will be added to your Study Center. Click on the name to open the page or when you feel comfortable that you understand the material just check the box for ‘Got it!’ and they move into the Completed Items section.
1. Adaptive Study Center
Did you notice the Recommended list in the Study Center graphic above? All Junction courses are now adaptive out of the box. Note that all students using Junction will have a common study and learning experience which facilitates collaboration and simplifies instructor interventions as students are working from the same set of learning resources. But now students also have access to a personalized set of study resources – displayed in the Recommended list above – to review based on results from Junction’s adaptive learning algorithms. Students can reassess themselves in the associated lessons demonstrating mastery or indicate confidence by checking off items from their lists as they go. Resources don’t disappear, they move to the Completed Items section so continue to be available for review without serving as a distraction. By giving students the option of choosing the types of resources they prefer to use, they take an active role in directing their learning promoting awareness and engagement.
What else have we done? You’ll notice (or hopefully not notice, but appreciate) lots of smaller changes we’ve made to improve the user experience including more consistency in visual design throughout the application. All are aimed at improving usability, reducing the number of clicks to get from point to point and maintaining student focus. Have feedback on the changes? Drop us a line at Support, we’d love to hear from you. Have a great Fall!
