Release October 2021

Mr. WISEflow

Updated 14 October 2021 15:15

WISEflow v2021.2

We are releasing a new version of WISEflow v2021.2 on the 1st of October 2021. This article will be updated with text and pictures continuously until the release. All guides relating to the new features will be published after the release.

The following features will be included in the new version of WISEflow:

FLOWlock browser versions

The new versions contain important updates and are available in WISEflow from the 17th of September. The new versions are:

Windows: 2.0.7.06
MacOS: 2.0.7.05

These versions will be required from the 2nd of October. In the following weeks, you will receive reminders about updating your browser version.

Release webinars

We're hosting webinars to run through all the significant features in this release.

Recording from the Danish webinar

Share the video here: https://vimeo.com/625747664

Recording from the English webinar

Share the video here: https://vimeo.com/632051028

Recording from the Norwegian webinar

Share the video here: https://vimeo.com/631416832

Recording from the German webinar

Share the video here: https://vimeo.com/631977096

Manager

Rubric allocation

With this new feature comes a completely new manager subpage for rubrics, where you can add several rubrics and decide whether to allocate them to all assessors or to freely allocate them to some assessors.

Before the October release, it was only possible to add a single rubric to a flow and every assessor on the flow must use this rubric. You can enforce assessors to map the points from the rubric into a final grade, but the actual mapping is done per assessor. This inflexible in the general marking process has now been freed, so rubrics can be used more widely.

Below are two use cases for rubric allocation.

One assessor using rubrics: Only one assessor needs to use a rubric, with or without grade mapping, to set a final grade. The participant will only have shared rubric feedback from this assessor.

Split paper assessment with regular grading: Two assessors or more have two different rubrics assigned whereby they can assess different parts of the paper. Grade mapping is disabled. If Agreement between co-assessors is enabled, they still need to submit the same grade; else they can use Approval by reviewer.

Rubric Based Assessment

While the new rubric allocation described above increases the flexibility and broadens the use cases of rubrics on flows, a new development termed Rubric Based Assessment (RBA) adds a cross assessor score level to the use of rubrics, making it possible to grade participants from a set of submitted rubric scores. Using RBA on a flow changes the grade process from being driven by assessors submitting their final grades on participants, to assessors submitting their final points from their allocated rubrics instead. This leaves the manager to aggregate those scores into a final score and use this score to map it into a final grade.

A new manager progression overview is likewise developed to handle the process of scores and map them into a final grade. It is also possible to configure the calculation method, by choosing either to use sum up or average points for the same rubric and to decide whether to use sum up or average scores between rubrics.

Below are two use cases for RBA.

Split paper assessment with automated grading: If RBA is enabled, each assessor will only have to submit the filled out rubrics, whereby the points will be available to the manager. The point range is defined by each rubric, and the manager can sum up the points from all rubrics per participant and map them into a final grade.

Assessor one submits 55 points from rubric A and assessor two submit 45 points from rubric B. Those points are displayed in a table for the manager and sums up to 100 points. This sum can be mapped into a final grade using the mark converter.

Support for multiple assessors using same rubric: Two assessors or more have been allocated to the same rubric. RBA is enabled and they all submit points from the same rubric. The manager can select the final points based on the average of the submitted points. The final points per participant can be mapped into a final grade by the manager.

Rubrics on FLOWmulti

Our work with rubrics will also include the possibility to use rubrics on FLOWmulti, which has been a long standing wish, and likewise leverages all flow types to be used on our FLOWseries Portfolio (by use of the new RBA). Adding rubrics to a FLOWmulti is done the same way as on other flow types. If you use a rubric to handle the scoring process, then the usual option for Section Based Assessment will no longer be available, as you now will be using RBA instead. Be mindful that rubrics on FLOWmulti in this case cannot support "Rubric per Section".

All the new rubric related features have been made in collaboration with UNIT in Norway.

Third party apps in FLOWlock and FLOWmulti

The third party apps service that was released in March v2021.1 has over the summer undergone refinement and more steps regarding the practical implementation into WISEflow.

The service consists of a participation setting where you as a manager select the appropriate remote image to be used (virtual machine image with desktop applications installed), depending on your remote application needs for the exam or assessment. The virtual desktop with the third party apps is available as a new appendix tool added within FLOWlock/FLOWmulti, and where you as a participant can initiate the remote application and upload your work as appendices to your paper.

How to get the module

The third party app support module is being rolled out and made available in a phased process, as to secure and support larger scale use.

The module is available from the October release and forwards, but as it requires custom made images (virtual machines with desktop apps), it is not just “plug and play”. As there are also dependencies on the set of required applications in use, we will need to engage in a clarification process together with you, prior to acquiring and using the module. The clarification session will clarify application needs, licence setup and expected usage. The output is an estimate of the running cost for the customer per participant/hour and the cost of having the images setup initially on the licence – as these are all different variables.

For any interest, please reach out to us, and we will engage with you accordingly to clarify all this.

The third party app support module has been made in collaboration with UNIT in Norway.

FLOWoral preallocation & Default Slots

FLOWoral has for quite some time been supporting the process of building precise timetables for the planning of oral examinations based on the participants on the flow. In Scandinavia, but also elsewhere oral exams are used widely, and thus FLOWoral gets tightly coupled into many different exam and assessment modules – either alone or in combination. As oral exams require a lot of planning and time plotting, we have enhanced FLOWoral to also support the pre-processes leading up to the final timetable. This has resulted in a FLOWoral preallocation feature enhancement.

As the process of setting up the timetable is rarely done in one go and can't necessarily wait for all participants to be enrolled to a flow or for them to have formed their eventual groups, the manager is in need to start the timetabling and assign assessors to periods/days allocation in advance. An exam day is very often having the same structure of lunch and coffee breaks and the actual time provisioned for different sizes of groups institutionally regulated and thus the same each time. For that we have developed support for placeholders or default time slots.

FLOWoral Default slots

Now managers can start planning with placeholders for the expected groups in order to assemble the puzzle of slots and breaks of an exam day. As a manager it is possible to build and maintain flows independently with sets of default slots and breaks containing the needed pre-set time ranges. You can for instance create a two-person group default slot and set it up to have 20 minutes of preparation, 40 minutes of examination, 10 minutes for voting and set up a standard lunch break to last for 45 minutes.

When setting up timetables you can add default slots as placeholders instead of adding participants/groups directly. When the participants are enrolled and the groups are formed, you can then drag them into the placeholder.

The feature supports managers better in planning ahead of time, while the result of participants etc. have not been finally set. The solution has been made in collaboration with the Danish University College Sector.

Author

New Author Tool becomes the default tool for authoring

The new Author Tool, released as a beta in March v2021.1 has been refined and consolidated into a non-beta version, bringing many new features and enhancements.

Switch to new Author Tool

The new Author Tool will be the new primary way into authoring in WISEflow. Today the beta version is linked in the header of the existing author tool. Starting from October v2021.2, clicking Author in the header will lead to the landing page of the new Author Tool, but this page will be expanded with links back to the old author tool activities, rubrics and flow tabs. The old author tool will continue to work as it does today but requiring an additional click if you want to access the assignments there.

Content from the old author tool will not be automatically migrated to the new one. However, it is possible to easily select and export any relevant content from the old author tool, as the new Author Tool supports this with the import/export functionality. Thereby you can adopt the new author tool at your own pace and leave deprecated work behind to not clutter up your new view. At a later stage we will phase out the old author tool but inform all users in due time.

Import/export & bulk editing

It is now possible to import content (sections and/or assignments) from external sources (e.g. Blackboard, Moodle) like in the old author tool, but with the addition of importing from Assignments (legacy).

Importing from Assignments (legacy) is as mentioned above the way for authors to port their existing content to the new Author Tool. Bulk editing assignments or content bank sections is furthermore a way to quickly adjust more than one item at a time.

Labelling

Labelling is providing the same ability to add personal labels to your content as known from the old author tool, which then can be used to organise your content.

API

API Webhooks

The WISEflow Public API is experiencing increasing popularity both amongst existing production scale customers and as a go-to-integration strategy for new onboarding customers. A next step in the expansion of the API is the introduction of web hooks.

Webhooks introduces the ability to push events happening in WISEflow instantly to external systems subscribing to those events. Thereby an external system can now rely on being told when a certain thing has changed in WISEflow and then only call the API once for the relevant updated data.

To start with we offer the opportunity of being able to subscribe to two key participant events:

When a paper is being submitted or withdrawn.
When a final grade is registered as a participant.

This provides great value to many integrations – for example ones to Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), where you as a participant might be sent to WISEflow to do some work. A few seconds after submitting in WISEflow this event will be able to be reflected in the external system, so the participant or professor/assessor will be able to view that the paper has been registered. Likewise, at the same minute as an assessors submit a final grade in WISEflow, it can be fetched and displayed in the external system.

The API enhancement with Webhooks and both cases above have been made in collaboration with Coursera.

New user API endpoints

During the summer, new user endpoints has been added to our WISEflow API. It is now possible to retrieve and update basic information including email on the users on your licence with a userID as the identifier. As a new option you can also PATCH emails so only the email on the user will get updated.

These user endpoints can be found in our API documentation and are already available on production.

New rubrics API endpoint

Together with the new Rubric allocation feature, we are introducing a new version of the rubric endpoint. The new endpoint is called rubrics and with this you can retrieve information from all rubrics on a flow.

Since the new rubrics endpoint can retrieve both one and multiple rubrics on a flow, then we are deprecating the old rubric endpoint as seen in the picture above. We recommend that you use the new "/flows/{flowId}/rubrics" instead.

Design guideline

Accessibility enhancements

WISEflow has been along for more than 10 years, and the user interface (UI) have had challenges of a rapid developing frontend tech area and from time to time also a rapid pace of feature development. This inevitably leads to inconsistencies in the design and the look and feel of things when working your way across roles and features in WISEflow.

The Accessibility Project

Together with Open University’s accessibility and usability experts, we have for the last 12 month been working towards enhancing important accessibility key functionality in WISEflow. As accessibility requirements and compliance can be implemented in different ways, we have teamed up with experts to get it right. Based on a thorough report on the experience of the accessibility and usability of WISEflow, we have been working to enhance 6 areas:

Text alternatives to non-text content (screen reader support)
Contrast Ratio (distinct visual appearance)
Page titles (screen reader support and better distinction between browser
tabs)
Keyboard support (motorically impairment)
Zoom and text size (visually impairment)
Tooltip's appearance (keyboard accessible)

Each area has been dealt within a three-step process:

Identify the best approach for addressing the area and manifest it for future development.
Implement the conventions and findings into the current UI to ensure that all new features would utilise the conventions.
Ensure that older areas of WISEflow gets vital parts of the conventions implemented.

The accessibility enhancements should provide a much better and accessible WISEflow today, but at the same time support our general compliance with the WCAG 2.1 AA standard and help us secure that WISEflow in the future gets even more accessible and inclusive for its users.

The accessibility project has been made in collaboration with the Open University in UK.

Minor adjustments and improvements

New changelog structure

With this release comes an update to the changelog structure, both visually and content wise. As we would like to be even more transparent regarding our working on WISEflow, we have added Hotfix to the changelog, which indicates what has been resolved outside of the releases. These hotfixes could as an example be an error in WISEflow that has been fixed.

The new UI for WISEflow Changelog

The changelog also has got a new design where you are able to filter between hotfixes, major and minor releases. From the overview you can open any listed items and read their description to what has been fixed or released.

You can find the changelog link either in the footer of almost every WISEflow page or by accessing it here: WISEflow Changelog.

SIS synchronisation improvement

Due to an error with the nightly synchronisation, we have experienced that duplicated users can get created if a new user gets added through the SIS code. This has been registered as a known issue which will now be resolved with the release.

The synchronisation engine of users flows, and their relations have been reworked so that every step will have its own transaction. The user transaction will then have to be finished before it moves to the next transaction of flows and relations.

We hope this bring better insights as to the status of synchronisations.

Download paper in FLOWmulti

The current version of a FLOWmulti supports from a participant’s perspective download of paper both with or without the lockdown browser through the invigilator menu or if the participant goes offline. When the invigilator password is not set on a FLOWmulti without the lockdown browser, then the option to access the invigilator menu will also disappear and thereby remove the option to get the Download paper button if needed by the participant.

With this release we have added a modified invigilator menu, meaning that the only options available will be the Download paper and Manuel reconnect buttons.

Search by Flow ID as Supporter

As a Supporter in WISEflow you have the option to find and search for all flows on your licence through the Flow lists tab. A new column has been added to improve the ability of finding a specific flow only by searching for the Flow ID. This will make it possible for the Supporter to quickly help their managers or other colleagues with any problems or questions related to the flow.

Maintenance

We are always working on improving WISEflow. For this release we have made some internal optimisations to make it more secure and improve the performance for your exams.

Switch to new database

The change of database to Amazon Aurora will primarily improve the scalability of WISEflow to handle large scale flows. With Aurora it will also improve the internal maintenance of our database, which leads to better performance and experience with WISEflow for our users.

Change of API gateway

Beside the above switch of database, we will also change the API gateway to KongHQ. This change is the first step in improving management of API keys and the possible amount of API requests that a licence can send (also known as rate limits).

Data protection management

As previously announced and due to the new set of regulations mandated by the EU regarding data transfer in the light of the Schrems I and Schrems II ruling, we implement new data security measures where we implement customer-managed encryption keys. This is in order to heighten data protection and to strengthen and expand our Technical and Organisational Measures (TOM), as we use Amazon Web Services (AWS). Even though all data processing is guaranteed inside EU (in Ireland), the fact that AWS is US owned, requires us to act with extra security measures.

We now encrypt all data regarding WISEflow, as we used to, but now we do it by using encryption keys, which we manage ourselves and are not available for AWS. This is a vital measure in order to be fully compliant with the new EU regulation, so that your encrypted data remains safely within EU and is further protected from foreign meddling, should any non-EU parties have a legal aspiration to get it.

Please also be aware that within the coming weeks, your institution will receive a new Data Processor Agreement based on the standard contractual clauses for the transfer of personal data pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/679. The new standard contractual clauses will replace the existing Data Processor Agreement in your current contract and needs to be signed by your DPO or similar. We will reach out to you separately on this.