? Student preview for assignments is here!

Ben Leddy

Hi all,

I'm very excited to share that this morning, we released a highly-requested feature in the LMS: a student-view version of assignments for teachers. You can get the full details in our September 14 What's New letter, but I also wanted to take a moment to share the backstory and highlights here.

We heard from you, both in the community and through our My Day call for feedback, that the new assignment details design interrupted a workflow that many of you had previously used: screensharing or projecting an assignment for students. While the new assignment details view for faculty was built to give you increased information about students when grading, we learned from you that there were two outstanding needs:

• The ability to see how an assignment will actually look and feel for students
• The ability to display an assignment for students without revealing student information

Student preview aims to meet both these needs. To access it, click the context menu for an assignment or discussion and click See student preview:

See student preview from the context menu

This will lead you to a new page that is a close approximation of how students will see the assignment. There is NO student information displayed from this view. Descriptions, downloads, and links are fully shown and functional.

Student preview example

A heads up: your students may note that the page doesn’t exactly look like their current experience when you screenshare. This is true: there are currently some differences in design and functionality, such as the lack of a student submission area in Student preview. Other differences are unavoidable: LTI links aren't shown in this view because students and teachers have inherently different experiences of those tools. Through future releases, we will work to make sure the student experience is more closely aligned with the Student preview interface.

While some items are still coming soon to Student preview, like rubrics and discussion threads, we hope even the current functionality helps you and your students to feel more informed and comfortable when it comes to discussing assignments. If you’ve got further ideas or feedback, we’d love to hear it.

Huge thank you to everyone who took the time to voice this need over the past few weeks. We look forward to sharing more updates soon!

Best,

Ben

Kathy Hannon

This is awesome Ben - is this a slow update? I am not seeing the option on our teachers assignments this morning

David May

Also not seeing any data when doing this.

Chris Felinski

I can see some of the updates from today, but not all of them. I am seeing the student preview on mine, but not seeing the diploma updates that are supposed to be released today.

Ben Leddy

It is possible that the update was still loading at the time you checked. David and Kathy, I've checked both your environments and I'm able to see the See student preview with data from assignment list view. Do let me know if that still isn't the case for you.

Kathy Hannon

yes we are able to see the option now. YAY

Sara White

The update is live for us - awesome. Thanks

Paul Tidmore

The student preview is available for us as well. However, downloads are not opening in this view right now. Getting a 404 - File Not Found error when trying to open them.

Ben Leddy

Thanks, Paul – we're on it.

Ben Leddy

@Paul Tidmore Downloads are now functional as of this morning. Thanks for alerting us!

Lisa Ulery

This is a great feature, Ben! When will all schools see this update? It's still not available for us this morning.

Lori MacConnell

This is fantastic news, Ben. Thank you!

Ben Leddy

Hi Lisa - are you able to see it now? If not, I would recommend clearing your cache or trying a different browser. Please do shoot me a message if it's still not showing for you.

Lisa Ulery

That worked, Ben, thanks!