Today we released the latest and greatest updates to Collaborize Classroom. As many of you know, last month the Collaborize Classroom Topic Library launched. With a single click, teachers can share individual question-based topics that have already been proven successful in individual Collaborize Classroom websites around the world. If you haven’t yet checked out the library you can here: http://library.collaborizeclassroom.com.
This month we’ve added some more long-awaited features to Collaborize Classroom:
Permission-Based Categories
We’re excited to have delivered the feature that has been most requested by our users! You can now set group-level permissions on your topic categories. The benefit of this feature is that students will only see the topics that are relevant to them.
To use this feature, start by creating student groups. Roll over Manage at the top of your site and click Groups.
The Manage Groups section will appear, which lists all of the groups you have created in your site. To set up a new group, click Create New Group.
Once you’ve created your groups you can set permissions on any category so that it is only visible to members of the group(s) you select.
On the Manage Categories screen (the second tab in the “Manage Site” area), you’ll see the current visibility setting for each category. Collaborize Classroom defaults the setting to “Visible to Everyone.”
Click Edit and the Category Visibility window will appear. You have the choice to make the category you’ve selected visible to everyone, just the site moderators or the site moderators and the groups of your choice. Check the box(s) for the groups that apply and click Save Changes.
No Email Required for Student Registration
Another request we’ve heard from many of our users is for students to be able to join a Collaborize Classroom site without using an email address. With this release, we provide a link on the registration form for students to register without an email address:
If your students choose to create a username, it must be at least 6 characters in length. Just like an email address, they’ll use their new username to sign in to your Collaborize Classroom site.
Easy Access to Managing Categories
We’ve heard from many of our users that they were having a hard time finding where to go to manage their categories. To address this, we’ve added a simple way to navigate to the Manage Categories section. On the top right of the Categories list, you’ll see a pencil icon. Simply click on the pencil and the Manage Category section will appear. From this menu, you can add, delete, edit and rearrange categories. You can also set your visibility permissions using student groups, as described above in Permission-Based Categories.
We are always looking for feedback from our community of teachers. If you have an idea, feature request, or anything else you would like to share, please send it to us at feedback@collaborizeclassroom.com or find us on Twitter at @Collaborize.
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