This article contains this release's feature updates, user interface changes and bug fixes.

Release date	Environment
24th of March 2023	Stage (stage.ans.app)
2nd of April 2023	Production (ans.app) Education (edu.ans.app)

Changes to the platform

Changed the flow of submitting a digital test to include a submission screen

Based on user feedback and the input left in the Ans community, we have changed the flow of submitting a digital test to include a submission screen. The main motivation for this is that this allows for a separate exit page that can signal to lockdown solutions that a participant has submitted their test and can leave the application. It also allows for clearer alerts about unanswered questions and the time limit for a test running out.

We have also renamed the 'resume' button to 'back' which is better recognised by participants in a reflex.

Improved visibility of warnings that participants have unanswered questions when submitting a digital test

We have improved the visibility of warnings that participants have unanswered questions when submitting a digital test. This will decrease the chance that participants miss the warning for unanswered questions at the end of the test and submit a test with answers missing. This also improves the warning for participants when leaving an exercise they cannot go back to (for example due to forced one-way navigation).

The warning is illustrated in the image above.

Set fixed locations for buttons in the navigation bar of a digital test

Based on user feedback and several issues of participants accidentally clicking the submit-button after answering the last question of their test, we have decided to set the buttons in the navigation bar of a digital test to a fixed location.

Setting fixed locations for buttons will make submitting a digital test without meaning to less likely, preventing the panic experienced by participants in such a situation. The submit button can now consistently be found in the bottom-left corner of the screen. The bottom-right corner of the screen houses the next- and previous question buttons, for convenient navigation.

Added tooltips for icon buttons

We have added tooltips to icon buttons in Ans. This will help first-time users with more information on what the various icon buttons in the platform do.

The affected icon buttons are in the mail toolbar and the navigation of a digital test.

Added a progress indicator to the 'Preparing test'-screen

In the situation that it takes a little longer to start a digital test, the participant now receives feedback that the application is still running as expected.

Added a warning to the code editor when the assignment has already been taken

We have added a warning when opening the code editor after the assignment has been taken to warn users about the danger of changing the script.

Extended the search for exercises within an assignment

The search in assignments has been extended to make it possible to search exercises with question, choice and match content. The new and improved search can be found in the question overview, grading scheme overview and questions insights.

Sending marks with LTI 1.3 has been moved to the background job

Sending marks with LTI 1.3 has been moved to a background job and a detailed log will display the information of the marks sent per student. This change has been made as the request for sending grades would often take too long for the page to load and to keep in line with our other background services.

Changed set-up time for ProctorExam to 15 minutes from 30 minutes before the start of a digital test

Previously, students could start their session in ProctorExam 30 minutes before the start of the actual exam. We have changed this parameter to 15 minutes based on feedback from multiple users.

Especially for live-proctored exams, it previously could happen that the proctor was not yet ready, but the student had already signed into the ProctorExam session. This could mean there was no response to a participant's questions in ProctorExam. With a shorter window, this is easier to prevent.

Aligned the styling and placement of the 'default' indicators in settings

The ‘default’ button in the themes menu was shown on the righthand side of the menu of themes, while it was shown at the lefthand side in the assignment labels menu. This has now been aligned on the right across the platform.

Renaming of multiple elements in the platform

Based on your feedback, we are working on multiple interface inconsistencies and improvements. Below you can find the element(s) that have been renamed, including the place in the platform where it changed. The change is applied to all translations of the platform unless indicated otherwise.

Renamed 'Digital test' to 'Taking' at the overview students see before starting a digital test. This applies to the English version of the platform only.
Renamed 'Digitale toets' to 'Afname' at the overview students see before starting a digital test. This applies to the Dutch version of the platform only.
Renamed 'take' to 'start' in the group settings.
Renamed 'Multi-factor authentication' to ‘Two-factor authentication’ in the school settings.
Renamed 'Review per participant' to 'Review per group' in group assignments.
Renamed 'Digital test layout' to 'Theme' in the dialog title in school settings. This applies to the English version of the platform only.
Renamed 'Use calculator' to 'Calculator' in the assignment accessibility settings. This applies to the English version of the platform only.
Renamed 'Position' to 'Positie' in the position field label when setting the position of an exercise in a written assignment. This applies to the Dutch version of the platform only.
Added the 'Type' label to the dropdown menu of the calculator in the assignment accessibility settings.

In addition, we have adjusted a few minor spelling corrections:

Added a space between 'Questionbanks' in employee privileges.
Added a space between 'school' and 'year' in the menu on school level.
Added a dash to 'Hand in assignment' on question bank level.
Renamed 'Authorized' to 'Authorised' in the Proctorio settings to align with the British English used throughout the platform. This applies to the English version of the platform only.
Removed 'stick' in the STEP banner. The banner was changed to: 'This assignment is only accessible by using STEP'.

Open beta feature changes

Beta features are features which can be enabled and disabled on school level. Our available open beta features can be found in the school settings of your school. By default, all open beta features are disabled upon release. Only administrators can view and activate open beta features. As beta features are eventually released as feature which is enabled by default for all users, we encourage administrators to enable and test open beta features on the stage environment. Your feedback can help shape the feature before it is moved out of beta.

No additions have been made to open beta features this release.

Custom roles feature additions

Assign default roles and disable base roles

As part of the custom roles beta feature, it is now possible to assign different default roles and to disable base roles. First we will explain what base roles and default roles are:

Base roles
For each level within the Ans application, Ans provides different base roles. The authorisations of the base roles can’t be changed. At this moment, Ans provides the following base roles:

School level
Administrator, Department admin, Staff and Repro

Course level
Instructor, Invigilator and Reviewer

Question bank level
Publisher and Author

The base roles determine the range of the authorisation within the levels of the application. A user with the administrator role has access to all courses within a school, where a user with the staff role only has access to the courses where this users is added to.

Default roles
Per level in Ans (School, Course and Question bank), there is a default role. The default role is the role which is provided in case the user is creating entities within Ans. For example, if a user with a staff role is creating a course, the default role on course level is set, which is now always instructor.

With the new possibilities in this release, it is possible to assign other default roles. Besides that, you can now disable base roles as well. It provides administrators more control on the roles that can be used within a school by assigning a custom default role and disabling base roles.

You can ensure all new users are assigned a school-specified (custom) role by default. Also, if the school does not wish to use the base roles at all, these can be disabled, and all existing users with that role will be converted to the default role. The base role is then hidden in the interface and can not be assigned to new or existing users.

API updates

Summary: We have added the following extensions to the API V2:

Added the possibility to link classes to courses through API V2
We have added the option to link classes to courses via API V2.
Added fill_content to API response when viewing a question
We have added the fill_content to the API response when viewing a question. The fill_content contains the gaps for a fill-in question.
Manage the assignment integration STEP via the API
The STEP integration on assignments can now be viewed and managed via the API.

Important changes

We wanted to remind our users that for next release, one important change will be deployed. This change was already announced in an earlier stage.

7th of April 2023 - Adjustment to timing of release on stage environment
Currently, our release cycle consists of three stages carried out over a three week period. This means that every three weeks a new version of the platform is deployed on our production environment. One week prior to the production release, the new version is deployed on our stage environment.

Based on your feedback, we are going to extend the time that the new version of the platform is on the stage environment. It will be extended to two weeks. This will allow users more time to check the new version and to provide feedback. To give you more insight, we have included a visual below which includes the schedule of the timing of the upcoming releases on both the stage- and production environments. The first release on the stage environment with the updated timing is marked in red and will take place on the 7th of April (instead of the 14th of April).

Screenshot_2023-03-03_at_12.07.24.png

In addition, two new important changes have been added this release.

23rd of April - Scan issues will no longer be flagged, but will be marked as ungraded

For written assignments, Ans can detect issues while detecting the answers on multiple choice questions. Up until the release of the 23rd of April, Ans will flag all situations where an issue is detected. From the release of the 23rd of April onwards, we will no longer flag any multiple choice question. Instead, Ans will mark them as 'ungraded'. The reason for this is that many of our users have indicated that solving a flag in a written assignment takes a lot of unnecessary time and clicks. To improve this process, we have decided to mark all unrecognised multiple choice questions answers as ungraded starting from the 23rd of April.

In this way, users will not have to both solve flags and correct multiple choice questions, but only correct the unrecognised multiple choice questions, which saves clicks per situation. It also makes it easier to distinguish (important) manually created flags from automatic scanning flags.

We are aware that this change makes the distinction between scanning flags and to-be-graded open questions less clear. However, the multiple choice questions can still be corrected per exercise via the same page as before. Additionally, we also understand that the error messages that are shown in the flags will no longer be visible. The advantage of having less clicks per unrecognised scan outweighs the textual explanation of the error which is also visible during grading.

23rd of April - Assignment integrations can no longer be disabled by sending "{}" as the value through the API

On assignment level, Ans provides several integrations which can be managed via the API. Sometimes, you would like to disable an integration via a PATCH request. At this moment it is possible to disable an integration with "{}" and with the value "null". Following best practices, we have decided to change the way integrations are disabled via the API. From the release of the 23rd of April onwards it will only be possible to disable an integration with the "null" value. The "{}" value can only be used to turn on the integration with the default integration settings.

Below we have provided an example how the new way of using "{}" and "null" values is used to disable and enable integrations via the API. We are using Ouriginal in the example below. All other integrations that can be set via the API are working in the same way.

To enable the Ouriginal assignment integration:

{
  ..,
  "integrations": {
    "ouriginal": {}
  },
  ...
}

To disable the Ouriginal assignment integration:

{
  ...,
  "integrations": {
    "ouriginal": null
  },
  ...
}

The overview of all important changes that may require an action from administrators can be found here.

Bug fixes

Fixed an issue where an exercise would not show that it was out of sync when the assignment had been taken and the exercise script had been changed
When the assignment had been taken and a change was made to the exercise script, the sync would not appear even though a change could be made.
Fixed draft status not being updated after sending the message
When editing a draft message in a discussion and clicking on send, the message would stay a draft. We now make sure the message is send, when clicking on send.
Fix result export dialog for group assignments

When exporting the results of a group assignment, the question content box was greyed out even after selecting the dropdown 'Information*' > 'Points per question'.
Fixed an issue where it was not possible to add hotspot areas for the hotspot question after the assignment has been taken
It was previously not possible to add a hotspot area after the assignment was taken, now this option is available.
Fixed an issue where it was not possible to delete groups that contained users with results after the assignment was removed
If a group assignment with results is trashed, it is now possible to delete the group from the course.
Fixed an issue where null bytes would be taken into account in the word counter during grading
The word counter would count null bytes as words, causing the word counter to show too many words. This change applies also to all taken questions as we calculate the word counter when viewing the students answer.
Fixed an issue where the > symbol would be incorrectly converted in written assignments
When writing a > 0 or b > 0 in a written exam, we would unintentionally add a double quote character.
Fixed an issue where the expanded answer was not recognised as correct answer
We fixed an issue in the mathematical equation question where the expanded answer was not recognised as the correct answer.
Fixed an issue where the value of the random function could be larger than the specified max value
When using a maximum value that was not in the list of generated values, we would sometimes return a value larger than the maximum specified in the function. For example, when using the following function $x=random(0.9,0.95,0.1)" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; line-height: 0; text-indent: 0px; text-align: left; text-transform: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 16.65px; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; word-spacing: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 1px 0px; position: relative;" x = r and o m (0.9, 0.95, 0.1)$ , we would return 0.9 or 1.0 as value. We now return 0.9 and 0.95.
Fixed showing alerts on the sign in page in the users language
Some pages contain the wrong translation for error messages in the pop ups that are shown in the bottom left. The error messages would default to the English translation even though the rest of the page is in Dutch. The translations now match the users language.
Fixed 'allow asking questions' functionality not working when creating a new timeslot
When the discussion datetime was set incorrectly due to being outside of the allotted publication datetime, changing the publication datetime to a value that would make the discussion datetime valid, would not cause the conversation datetime to be valid.
Fixed an issue where the P- and Rit-values for written assignments where not calculated
The P- and Rit-values were not calculated for written assignments that only consist of automatically graded questions. This change only impacts newly created assignments.
Prevent unnecessary webhook events while scheduling an assignment from the question bank
When copying a question bank assignment to a course, we would send an assignment update event for every question being created.
Fixed a duplicate error in the dialog for creating a student account
When clicking on ‘new student’ in the student overview on school level and a student with an existing email and a different student number was fill in, the error message was presented both in the bottom left corner (as expected), but also at the top of the dialog. This has now been fixed.
Fixed issue where dropdown menu's would be hidden behind toolbars
We received two similar reports in a short timespan of users not being able to select all options in the dropdown menus 'author' and 'label' in a question bank exercise. This was due to their screen being small and/or using Microsoft Edge. The navigation bar at the top prevented the view from a few selections. This has now been fixed.
Fixed issue where the callback URL would not be filled automatically when enabling the ProctorExam integration for the first time
This issue caused problems with the ProctorExam integration.
Fixed issue where employees with a custom role could not be converted to student
Changing an employee account with a custom role to a student account was not possible. This has been fixed.
Reverted the Schoolyear integration V2 upgrade back to V1 to allow for publications using Schoolyear
The Schoolyear integration upgrade to V2 has been reverted back to V1 to resolve issues that it caused with using Schoolyear for publications in Ans. The 24 hour restrictions has been applied more tightly in Schoolyear V2 which resulted in students not being able enter Schoolyear exam outside the exam date in the current implementation. We are currently discussing a better way to implement Schoolyear V2 in Ans to prevent this from happening again.