A new page for our website has been rolled out with this latest release. Our “Pricing” page details why Kialo is free and available to everyone at no cost.
Release Notes #1099
New Features and Functionalities
New: Our latest major feature, Small Group Mode, was released in the past weeks which enables educators to create multiple groups simultaneously and automatically assign users within those groups for their courses. With this release, this feature is now supported in Moodle via both plugin and standard LTI integration.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
Some minor fixes have been made to animations that were causing certain elements to not be seen or made them illegible.
Various elements of the grading feature have also been improved for a better user experience.
Release Notes #1097
New Features and Functionalities
With the latest release, the screen reader functionality has been improved to include live-updated content, meaning that certain content gets dynamically updated on the page and no longer needs to be re-loaded for the screen reader to have that information available.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
Some minor visual improvements have been made to the sidebar.
A minor improvement has been made to the student participation text when auto-assigned in Small Group Mode for clarity.
Release Notes #1091
New Features and Functionalities
With the latest release, a new feature has been added to Kialo Edu – Small Group Mode. Small Group Mode enables educators and discussion admins to create groups within a discussion. The new feature allows educators to split students into groups and work in isolation from one another, while only seeing contributions from their group, all the while educators can create and manage all groups and contributions in the discussion itself.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
A minor issue with some graphic elements not behaving as expected on the Kialo Edu homepage has been fixed.
Release Notes #1077
New Features and Functionalities
A new version of the kialo-edu.com homepage has been released! The new webpage features improved navigation, new designs and an improved user experience. Additionally, the new homepage includes our most current educational certifications, a video highlighting the benefits of using Kialo in your organization, and a clear overview of all the platforms we support.
Release Notes #1062
New Features and Functionalities
A new section has been added to Kialo Edu – Integrations. With the integrations section, it has been made easier to see what integrations, such as Moodle and LTI, are supported by Kialo Edu. The new section can be found in the “Sharing” tab in the discussion settings.
Release Notes #1059
New Features and Functionalities
With the latest release, there has been an overhaul of many visual elements and features. Over time, numerous features and interfaces have been added to the platform. In order to help tidy up the UI and make it more visually appealing, as well as making it more user-friendly, the latest release makes the user experience less overwhelming and more straightforward.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
Some minor changes have been made to the logic for username creation and selection when creating a new user.
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.