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The user interface has been retained, but quite a few new and useful functionalities are available, related to courses, tests, exercises, educational progress, the page editor, mail, etc.
Overview of the new functionalities available in ILIAS 5.x.
„Who is online?“
This is a tool that allows users to see which of their contacts are currently online.
New object: Curriculum
The curriculum is a summary of the entire training that the user must complete. Each program consists of something like separate lessons that must be completed – otherwise, the training is not considered successfully completed. With the help of the Curriculum, in addition to grouping the learning materials, better management of educational progress can be achieved, as well as alternative ways of completing the training can be defined, such as:
„To complete the training, you must successfully complete either course B1 or course B2.”
New functionalities for tests
• In ILIAS 5.x, tests can be used to trigger achievements in skill levels. For this purpose, a configuration with skill questions/tasks must first be created, as well as competence level thresholds must be specified.
• Improved shuffling of answers while taking a test. At present, the distance learning system shuffles the answers to test questions each time the question is called up again. This often confuses learners. In the new version, the answers to each question are shuffled only once per participant, regardless of how many times they have opened the specific question.
• A new question type is available. It can be used in two different ways – to select an answer from a long drop-down menu or to fill in a text field based on the specified possible answers.
• Difference between clicking from question to question and submitting an answer. ILIAS can now distinguish between questions that have been seen but not answered and those that have not been seen by the user and therefore have not had correct answers indicated.
New functionalities for exercises
• Feedback criteria based on indicators defined in the system, such as text quality, number of words, etc. In ILIAS 5.1, exercises can be assessed by a catalog of criteria. Such catalogs can be created for each exercise, and the specified criteria can be used to automatically calculate educational progress.
• Minimum number of characters that the feedback must contain.
• Access to feedback after submitting the exercise.
• Limited number of files that can be submitted as a solution to the exercise.
• The option to specify a second deadline for users who were unable to submit the exercise on time.
• Option to edit the teams created for solving a given exercise. Administrators can create a new team or disband an existing one at any time, even if the exercise is closed.
• Creating teams from groups. In the new version of the distance learning system, users who are members of groups can be imported into teams at any time. The groups that are in the parent course are shown together with their members, and administrators can select users to be imported into a team. Of course, users who are already part of a team exercise cannot be selected.
• Giving feedback among learners. Administrators can link feedback to the completion of a given exercise. This feedback can be optional, the learner must give at least one feedback entry, or the administrator can specify a required number of feedback entries.
New functionalities for course management
• Automatic filling of the waiting list for a course/group/session. The administrator can automatically fill the available places according to the dates on which users requested to join.
• Deadlines for canceling courses/groups. This functionality is especially suitable for blended learning, which requires additional resources such as renting rooms, accommodating participants, etc. With this option, administrators can specify a deadline by which, if not enough people have enrolled, the course can be canceled – automatically or manually by the administrator who has received a notification that there are not enough enrolled users.
• Improved display of courses in the portfolio. In ILIAS 5.x, the title of the learning objective must be linked in order to open the relevant course; new sorting options are available, etc.
• Creating courses directly linked to learning objectives. New functionalities are available, such as creating separate tests for each learning objective (in previous versions of the system, one test could be used for all learning objectives). The test can be taken more than once, and by default the last attempt is considered the final result.
• Specifying a start and end date for courses. Until the release of the new version of ILIAS, course administrators could only specify an activation period. This is fine for fully distance learning courses, but for blended learning, where there are events held „live“, it is useful to specify exactly in which time interval they will take place. This is now possible.
• Receiving an email including all news related to groups or courses. In previous versions of ILIAS, this required two different emails.
New functionalities for the page editor
• Carousel – templates, styling classes, the ability to edit templates, etc. are available.
• Activating images for a specified period of time. To make training modules more personalized, administrators can specify different images to decorate their training courses for holidays, special events, etc.
• Option to add superscript and subscript in paragraphs.
• Option to add a link to a user profile in a wiki object. Users who use wiki objects can link a word from the text to a specific user's profile (if that profile is public).
New functionalities for educational progress
• Educational progress for files is available. The task is considered completed if the file is downloaded.
• Educational progress for media files is available. The administrator can specify exactly which media files should be part of the educational progress, as well as the conditions under which the task is considered completed – watching a video, listening to an audio recording.
• Educational progress for training modules is available. If all pages of a given module are visited, it can be counted as completed. A minimum stay time on a page can be set – if the user has stayed on that page for less than the specified time, it is not considered completed.
• Educational progress for surveys is available. Administrators can choose the option for the course to be considered completed only if the users have completed the survey.
• The ability to send emails directly from the „Educational Progress“ tab – this is done with the help of templates, and the option is available only for courses and SCORM modules. With this option, instructors will be able to notify learners much more easily, for example, that they have not started the course.
• Exporting educational progress data and the ability to use them in another system.
New functionalities for mail
• In ILIAS 5.x, text emails sent to an external email address can be displayed using an HTML template, which can be used to give them a more attractive appearance.
• Course administrators can now use templates to ask learners whether they encountered any problems during the training, for example. The template must be defined in the course settings and contain a subject and text.
• Option for automatic deletion of old emails.
Other functionalities
• Displaying portfolios in the Personal Desktop - in list view.
• Activating and setting additional metadata for wiki objects and dictionaries, but only if this metadata has been defined beforehand in the global administration.
• Searching the forums and the online help section.
• Specifying a start and end date in reservation objects.
• Improved Web Access Checker.
