New Features

A log of all new feature releases.

Release Notes #1026

New Features and Functionalities

  • Kialo Edu now supports Blackboard and Canvas through our LTI integration. Other platforms can also be used, but may require contacting our support team to get the configurations set up.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Some minor styling issues have been fixed.

Release Notes #998

New Features and Functionalities

  • A new major feature has been released for Kialo Edu, Grading! With the Grading feature, educators can now provide grades and feedback to individual claims, as well as the discussion as a whole. This individual claim grade can then be calculated to an overall grade automatically or the educator can provide an overall grade for the discussion manually, in addition to overall feedback. An overview of all students can be found in the new grading sidebar for educators, as well as a more detailed view that includes number of tasks completed, the number of claims graded, the average grade for the claims and a list of all of the claims the student has written or linked. Students will be able to use the new grading sidebar to see their overall grade and feedback, in addition to the grades and feedback on individual claims.
  • The amount of automatic scrolling in discussions has also been reduced so that users have a less jarring experience when opening and closing some page elements.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • A minor aesthetic issue has been fixed with longer names on the team page having additional team pages options cut off.

Release Notes #995

New Features and Functionalities

  • With the latest release, now users will be given username recommendations should their desired username already exist. The flow has been simplified so that users simply need to click on the recommended username to fill in the field for them.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • A number of minor aesthetic improvements have been made to various dialogs on the platform.

Release Notes #992

User Stories and Features

  • The latest release has an update for the new Sunburst feature in a discussion, which allows users to toggle the Sunburst feature on and off directly in the discussion itself in real time, rather than being located in the user settings page.
  • A new Topic Library Dialog has also been released, enabling users to browse available discussions when creating a new discussion, then selecting a discussion from the library to auto-fill the new discussion with the selected one as a template.

Release Notes #991

User Stories and Features

  • A new, major feature has been launched with this latest release – Kialo discussions can now be integrated into Moodle courses using the official Kialo plugin for Moodle. Once installed in a Moodle instance, educators can easily select the discussion they want to include in their course, and students can then join the discussion directly from the activity, without having to manually set up accounts on Kialo. In addition to all other available plugins on the Moodle platform, the Kialo plugin is currently being approved and will be available soon

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • Some minor aesthetic changes have been made to our login and signup dialogs.
  • Tooltips have been introduced for Discussion Actions to provide information on those actions before users needing to click them.

Release Notes #980

User Stories and Features

  • A new, experimental feature bringing the sunburst minimap, currently seen on the discussion info dialog, to the discussion page itself has been released. Users now have the option to enable this feature via the user settings. Enabling this setting will replace the discussion tree seen in discussions with the navigable sunburst minimap.
  • The teams feature has also been improved in regards to functionality when teams are owned by users that are deleted.

Bug Fixes and Improvements

  • It is now easier to edit claims on EDU with the new improvements to the workflow.

Release Notes #960

  • A major update for the Create Discussion Wizard has been released, making the creation of discussion a more streamlined experience, with the layout and navigation having been optimized.
  • A new feature, Custom Defaults, has been introduced for the Create Discussion Wizard, allowing users to define their own discussion setting defaults and save them for future discussion creations.
  • Additionally, countless minor fixes and improvements have been released.

Release Notes #952

  • An improvement has been released for the Instant Access feature, in which it has now been made possible to utilitize Instant Access in multiple discussions at the same time, with an improved user experience as well.
  • Additionally, minor bug fixes and performance improvements were released.

Release Notes #948

  • The invitation workflow has been streamlined for educators with a new feature, allowing them to invite students via Google Classroom to participate in discussions.
  • Additionally, a number of usability and accessibility improvements have been introduced.

Release Notes #932

  • In order to help users identify each other better but give users flexibility with their profiles, a new feature has been released for Kialo Edu. Now, users’ email addresses will be displayed in various locations, such as their profile preview tooltip, contact list, mention picker, etc. Users can choose whether or not they would like to have their email address displayed or not by toggling this feature on or off.

Release Notes #922

  • A new feature has been added with this release, which allows moderators to clean a discussion before turning it into a template. This keeps our templates looking like fresh discussions without changes, comments, etc.
  • Additionally, this release included numerous usability and performance improvements.

Release Notes #917

  • User and display name changes will now be seen without having to refresh or navigate into the discussion again.
  • A new section has been added to the “My Kialo” navigation page that displays all discussions that are relevant to the user, including those that the user was explicitly invited to but never visited.

Release Notes #916

  • With this release, educators can have students participate in disussions without first having to create an account via the new “Instant Access” mode for discussions. When enabled, a user who is not logged in can access a discussion via an invitation and have an account automatically created for them.
  • Also introduced with the latest release is a new feature that allows educators to create teams directly from Google Classrooms rather than creating the team first and importing afterwards.
  • In addition to the two new features, numerous improvements and bug fixes were also released.

Release Notes #908

  • With the latest release, educators utilizing Kialo Edu will be able to create new discussions from a selection of curated templates. These templates cover a variety of topics and include some starter claims to make it easy to dive right in.
  • Additionally, a lot of old minor and aesthetic issues have been resolved

Release Notes #902

  • With this latest release, discussion invites sent from anonymous discussions will now show the actual account profile of the inviter, rather than the anonymous identity, so that discussion admins can avoid deanonymizing their discussion identity when inviting others to their discussion.
  • Additionally, a couple of usability improvements have been released.

Release Notes #898

  • With the latest release, Kialo Edu is now an official Clever application partner, meaning that students and institutions utilizing this service can now use this SSO login to access Kialo Edu as well.
  • Additionally, there have been countless minor fixes and improvements included in this release.

Release Notes #885

  • A new display names feature has been released. Now users’ names can include spaces and international characters, like Arabic and Mandarin letters.

Release Notes #870

  • An upgraded search feature on Kialo Edu has been released. Search results are now more intuitive and meaningful for the user, in addition to showing results for discussions or claims which have been visited in the past.
  • QR codes have been added and can now be generated for discussion and team invite links.
  • Additionally, minor bug fixes and performance improvements were released.

Release Notes #862

  • The Anonymous Participation feature has been released. This feature allows educators to anonymize discussions so that participant’s identities are instead given a placeholder name, while the true identity/user can still be seen by the educator.

    For more details on this new feature, please visit our Help Center article regarding Anonymous Discussions.

Release Notes #860

  • The profile preview has been revised as part of a larger coming change in how names/profiles are displayed on Kialo. Additionally, compatibility with touch devices has also been introduced to the profile preview with this release.