KlickerUZH v3.2: Release Information

KlickerUZH: Announcements
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Dear KlickerUZH community,

We are excited to announce the latest release of KlickerUZH (v3.2). The majority of the functionalities included in this release have already been available since the beginning of the fall term 2024 in mid September.

This post will summarize the new functionalities. More information, as well as a detailed explanation of the new functionalities, can be found in our official documentation at https://www.klicker.uzh.ch.

As always, we are excited to hear any feedback you might have, experiences and use cases, as well as suggestions and feature requests.

Wishing you a great autumn semester,

Team KlickerUZH
Teaching Center, Department of Finance, University of Zurich

What’s New?

We have released many new features throughout the spring semester and before the fall semester 2024. For an overview of what changes have been introduced and what we are planning to do in the future, check out our latest talk at the UZH Teaching Inspiration Week HS24 (in German):

Teaching Inspiration Week

Refer to KlickerUZH - Teaching Inspiration Week HS2024 - UZH for the full recording.

The highlights of our latest release (v3.2, September 2024) are further showcased and introduced below:

KlickerUZH v3.2 - Highlights
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Element Stacks

  • Similar to the concept of blocks in live quizzes, practice quizzes and microlearnings now support the creation of element stacks. This format allows to group related elements together – for example, questions in a case study - and show them to the student at the same time, while continuing to sort the stacks in their entirety according to our spaced repetition algorithm for the best possible retention rates.
  • Optionally, lecturers can define custom display names and introductory descriptions on these stacks (supporting images, formulas, and formatting), containing materials to be used in all questions. This content will be displayed above the elements in the student app.
  • In the near future, live quizzes will be rebuilt to be based on the same stack concept, allowing the use of content elements in live quizzes (e.g., for introductory instructions or repetition of content during the quiz) and making the overall experience more consistent.

Evaluation of Asynchronous Activities

  • A new evaluation view is available for practice quizzes and microlearnings, allowing lecturers to gain insights into these activities the same way they do in live quizzes. It can be accessed through the actions section on the corresponding element on the course overview.
  • More extensive analysis functionalities for asynchronous activities are planned within the scope of learning analytics. For more information, please refer to the corresponding section below.

Randomized Group Assignment

  • To further strengthen the use cases of KlickerUZH in collaborative settings, we now also support randomized group creation. After the specification of the preferred and maximum group sizes by the lecturer, students can choose to be assigned to groups randomly. KlickerUZH then continuously creates groups, while adhering to the specified group parameters as accurately as possible.
  • In addition to the continuous creation of groups, KlickerUZH also offers the possibility to assign all students in the random assignment pool of a course at once. This opens up new opportunities for synchronous applications of group activities, which are planned to be avaliable soon, alongside a which are coming soon, together with aA correspondingly extended didactical use case on our website will be coming soon.
  • For randomly assigned students to get to know their peers, a simple group messaging functionality on the group overview allows for a direct exchange. Groups could work together anonymously through this communication channel, but also have the option to meet up and discuss the group activity in person.

LTI-Integration

  • KlickerUZH now supports the use of the LTI 1.3 standard for its integration within learning management systems like OLAT and offering automatic login functionatlities.
  • To simplify the integration of KlickerUZH activities into UZH OLAT, the OLAT-Team has simplified the required configuration steps.
  • For more information on the integration and an introductory video, demonstrating the functionality in an UZH OLAT-course, please refer to our documentation.
  • To check out what the integration looks like from a student perspective, check out our demo OLAT-course on OLAT - lms.uzh.ch.
  • In collaboration with the OLAT-team we are continuing to further simplify the integration, including the planned availability of designated KlickerUZH-OLAT blocks in the near future.

Improved Activity and Course Management

  • As requested by many users, all KlickerUZH activities and courses can now be deleted. Because a deletion can be impactful regarding the student experience, all associated items that will be deleted are listed transparently in the deletion dialog.
  • All activity creation editors have been redesigned to offer a more streamlined experience, while also providing extended information on our available documentation.
  • The course settings and the associated editors have been redesigned and extended to accommodate the additional settings required for randomized group creation.
  • Equivalently to live quizzes, practice quizzes and microlearnings can now easily be duplicated to re-use them in similar courses over the years.
  • All asynchronous activities now follow the same scheduling and publishing structure if start and end dates are set. Unpublishing and editing is possible for all activities in a draft and scheduled state.
  • All KlickerUZH activities now automatically assume the gamification settings of the course they are linked to; no manual settings are required anymore.
  • All participants and participant groups are now shown on the course overview, while an illustration of the group leaderboard is planned to be available soon.
  • The course leaderboard can now be exported (CSV). The exported data includes the email address of the students, which can be useful to, for example, award prizes in gamified settings.

Further Improvements

  • The grading logic on live quizzes and the number of distributed bonus points can now be customized through a corresponding modal in the live quiz creation wizard.
  • Since there have been numerous cases where students forgot their passwords required to access their KlickerUZH account, we have added the possibility to log in with a one-time email token. Once logged in, they can simply change their password through the usual interface.
  • Free-text questions without sample solutions are now available in both practice quizzes and microlearnings. For all other element types, the definition of a sample solution remains required to ensure the correct functionality of the automated grading and evaluation processes.
  • We have extended our documentation at https://www.klicker.uzh.ch with more information on group activities, group assignments, gamification and all available element types. Moreover, most of these entries are supplemented with demonstration videos, which we highly recommend to familiarize yourself with these features.

Outlook

Our current and future work is mostly focused on the remaining use cases that are part of our P-8 project (see KlickerUZH). These use cases are centered around the topics Learning Analytics, Integration of AI, and Competencies.

KlickerUZH v3.2 - Outlook
KlickerUZH v3.2 - Outlook3206×642 114 KB

Learning Analytics

  • We have already started to actively work on the integration of learning analytics into KlickerUZH and expect them to become available for beta testers later this year.
  • Within the scope of these developments, lecturers should be able to gain more insights into the student submissions to asynchronous activities, identify trends in learning behavior and be able to counteract unwanted effects.
  • For students, the new learning analytics functionalities should offer the possibility to get more information on their own learning progress, while also showcasing achievements through continuous learning efforts.
  • Want to test it? We are currently looking for lecturers who are interested in testing these new functionalities before they will be rolled out to all UZH and KlickerUZH Catalyst users (planned for the Spring Semester 2025). To sign up as a beta tester for learning analytics, simply fill out the following form: Microsoft Forms

Integration of AI

  • With its large potential in the areas of content and feedback generation, we are currently evaluating different use cases for artificial intelligence, and large language models more specifically, inside KlickerUZH.
  • To simplify the process of content generation and lower the hurdle and required time for using KlickerUZH in more interactive lecture settings, we have already started working on the integration of large language models for content generation.
  • Beyond the creation of content on the lecturer side, we are currently also evaluating the possibility to provide formative feedback for open questions to students through their app. Should you be interested in this functionality, we would be happy to hear about your ideas and use cases.
  • Want to test it? We are currently looking for lecturers who are interested in testing these new functionalities before they will be rolled out to all UZH and KlickerUZH Catalyst users. To sign up as a beta tester for artificial intelligence functionalities, simply fill out the following form: Microsoft Forms

Competencies

  • We are currently working on the integration of competency frameworks into KlickerUZH. These frameworks are planned to be available across courses and can be linked to any element stored in the KlickerUZH element library.
  • When students answer elements correctly, solve certain types of activities, etc. they will automatically extend their capabilities within specific categories. Together with the learning analytics functionalities that are currently being developed, both students and lecturers can get insights into the participant’s progresses with respect to specific categories.
  • Want to test it? We are currently looking for lecturers who are interested in testing these new functionalities before they will be rolled out to all UZH and KlickerUZH Catalyst users. To sign up as a beta tester for our new competency framework integration, simply fill out the following form: Microsoft Forms

OLAT-Integration

While a simplified use of KlickerUZH content in OLAT is already available now through the new LTI 1.3-based integration, we strive to simplify this process even further. Correspondingly, we are working together closely with the OLAT-team at UZH to provide custom KlickerUZH building blocks.

Import and Export using QTI

While originally scheduled to be available in Q2 2024, we have unfortunately encountered some unexpected technical challenges during the implementation of the QTI standard and its realization in the OLAT LMS. We are, however, continuing to work on this important functionality for content export and import and expect it to be available around the end of the year.

Deprecation of the v2 Migration

The migration from KlickerUZH v2 to v3 will be removed at the End of October 2024. Even though we originally planned to offer it only until the End of March 2024, we had no technical reason to remove the functionality and found that many users still wanted to migrate their accounts before the fall term 2024. However, future architectural changes to KlickerUZH will make a continuation of the migration infeasible. The migration functionality will therefore be removed at the end of October 2024.

If you still have data in KlickerUZH v2.0 after the removal of the migration, please contact us at klicker@df.uzh.ch and we will provide you with a structured database export of your data within v2. This export will not be useable to import into v3 but might help you manually transfer your data to the new platform. We cannot provide any further support in terms of the migration.

Changes to Support

As announced in our last release announcement, our support team is now reachable at klicker@df.uzh.ch for users at UZH/USZ and participants of the KlickerUZH Catalyst program. The old e-mail (klicker@bf.uzh.ch) is no longer available.

For users outside of UZH and our Catalyst program, we continue to deliver best-effort support through this community plattform (https://community.klicker.uzh.ch). If you are not affiliated with UZH/USZ or participating in our Catalyst program, we are unable to guarantee a response to any tickets created via e-mail.