Release Update - August 2024

Summary of new features released and bugs addressed.

New Features & Improvements

• Assessment Plan Templates
  This is a new section under Setup > Assessment > Plan Templates.
  
  Coordinators can become more efficient with the ability to create assessment plan templates, with defined sections. Sections add another element of organization and governance. Each section can have one or more defined measures, which include Canvas Assessment, External Assessment, Qualitative Measure, and Embedded Dashboards.
  
  The Embedded Dashboards are a new measure that can be added to sections of assessment plans and assessment plan templates. This allows Tableau dashboards to be added to the measure by pasting in the dashboard URL or Tableau embed link. Coordinators can also add a title and description of the dashboard. The embed link should be copied from Tableau Public, otherwise the dashboard will require a login to view it. We also added a button called Link Dashboard to the Results page to allow coordinators to embed dashboards before finalizing results. 
  
  Mission, goals, and objectives from the cycle definitions can be included at the head of the assessment plan template, enabling coordinators to present more comprehensive narratives without additional work. If both are included in the plan template, the goals and objectives will appear below the mission in the narrative.
  
  Coordinators can also assign approvers to the sections to ensure results are reviewed before publishing. Approvers can be assigned to both section level and overall plan approvals.
  
  NOTE: Any assessment plans created prior to this release will need to have reviewers and approvers added. Click the Update Section button after adding them to save the changes. 
• Improvements to Findings & Recommendations
  To help coordinators build governance into the creation of their narratives, we added reviewers and approvers of findings and recommendations. This enables reviewers to enter findings and Recommendations, and allows approvers to edit and finalize them. Findings and Recommendations can be pulled into either a section or the overall assessment plan.
• Qualitative Measures Helper Text
  Helper text can now be added to qualitative measures in assessment plans, allowing coordinators to add rich text and links as guidance for completing the qualitative measure.
• Insights Terms & Academic Years
  This is a new section under Setup > Data Interpretation > Term Management.
  
  To enable coordinators to do long range planning of cycles and to consolidate management of Canvas Terms, we added the ability to add terms that are not yet set up in Canvas and group existing Canvas Terms into Insights Terms buckets. When a new Insights Term is created, Canvas Terms with matching date ranges will be automatically associated to it.
  
  With this feature release, all existing Canvas Terms are put into the Default Term area of Terms Management. This area represents Canvas Terms that are unassociated with Insights Terms. Once an Insights Term is created, any Canvas Term from the Default Term area with matching date parameters will automatically associate with the corresponding Insights Term instead. 
  
  We also added the ability to view and plan by academic year to help coordinators manage rollouts of new plans and versions. These are groupings of Insights Terms.
  
  When building and managing assessment plans within the Plan area of Insights, Insights Terms are pulled into the Collection Terms field, and associated Canvas Terms are pulled into the Canvas Terms field. This allows coordinators to be more efficient and organized when building plans that span over long periods of time. When building juried or external assessment, the Insights Terms will pull into the Assessing Terms field. The designation of Canvas Terms within existing assessment plans will not be impacted by this release. 
• Uploading Course Learning Outcomes to Context
  Coordinators can now upload CLOs to external assessment contexts. This allows coordinators to upload separate outcomes for course components that might not be listed or available in Canvas, such as Student Services assessments or labs.
  
  The external context must first be created in the Course Groups. This will add the external context to the bulk CLO template and to the list of courses shown on the Outcomes page. The upload can then be done at the course level by using the Upload Outcomes button for that course, or by using the Bulk CLO Template, which can be downloaded from the top of the list of courses on the Outcomes page. 

Bug Fixes

• Assessment Plan Deploys Partially
  A limited number of users were seeing assignments deployed to some course sections and not others. This behavior was due to a bug where the assessment plan being pushed was timing out. The bug has been resolved. Users should see all assignments deploy now.
• Multiple Subjects Not Displaying Outcomes for Program Coordinators
  When a program coordinator is assigned multiple subjects, only the first assigned subject was displaying courses on the Outcomes page. This bug has been resolved. Program Coordinators should now see all the subjects assigned to them in the Manage Department Associations area of Setup.