🚀 We're not slowing down | The AO July 2022 Update

We weren't joking when we said at the beginning of spring that development on our product was moving at least twice as quickly as before. 😎

We kept the bar raised in July and released tons of cool updates and new features that make your work with AcademyOcean even better and more productive!

✅ Exam grading checklist

Does checking your exams require a lot of time and effort? We've simplified the process for you by developing a checklist for exam graders!

All you have to do is configure the checklist when creating an exam: set the criteria for different answers and corresponding points.

Now managers who check exams don't need to know every correct answer to exam questions. They'll have a checklist to help them determine whether or not a learner's response meets all the criteria. The system will calculate the points automatically!

This will prove very useful when:

• the users who grade are different from those creating tests and assignments
• you'd like to hire a specialist from outside your company to test knowledge
• multiple users are involved in grading, and you need to standardize the process and make it objective

📚 Lesson chapters

We've added a feature for assigning lessons and quizzes to different chapters, effectively dividing courses into parts. This lets you add further branches to your course structure and organize content so that it can be better absorbed.

There's no limit to the number of chapters you can have in a course, and they can be added in the settings of each lesson.

This also lets you divide courses into different stages of learning. Use this feature in conjunction with lesson release dates.

For example, a course can contain multiple sections, which are released weekly. Each section can contain different lessons and tests.

🔻 Exporting lessons as PDFs for offline access

Give your learners a unique learning experience. Now they can download entire lessons as PDFs, not just as individual files.

There are obvious limitations for video and audio content, but lessons with text and images work perfectly.

Show your learners you care — this is an excellent option for learners with weak Internet connection or learners who want to learn where there's no Internet connection at all.

You can set the ability to convert lessons to PDF in the settings of each lesson. You have complete control over the security of your content! Specify exactly what can and can't be downloaded.

A new way to calculate test points

Our platform provides a variety of ways to check what learners have learned. We're constantly improving these methods to help you evaluate learner progress as accurately as possible.

Let's say you add a multiple-choice question with six choices, four of which are correct. What should happen if a learner selects only three of the correct answers? Should this be considered a correct or incorrect response? The choice is yours!

There are now two ways to calculate points: soft and strict.

With strict calculation, if a learner chooses only some of the correct answers, the system will count that as an incorrect answer.

Now you can choose how to calculate points for multiple-choice questions!

New additions to learner profiles

Learner profiles now show information about learner variables (or parameters).

For example, if a learner fills out a Welcome pop-up prompt and specifies the city they work in, their city will be displayed in their profile.

This comes in handy when you use dynamic courses or dynamic content, and it makes it easy to see which variables (and values) are associated with different learners.

❌ Permanently deleting learners

We've expanded how deleting learners works. There are now two options:

Simple delete. Learners are hidden from stats and lose access to the system. They can always come back.

Permanent delete. Learners are completely deleted from the academy.

You might need this option to meet security or GDPR requirements.

AcademyOcean is GDPR-compliant, and even before this update learners could delete their profiles. The difference is that now admins can permanently delete learners too.

Sorting courses and teams

All courses assigned to a team are now grouped together and shown at the top of the list of all active courses.

When you want to add a new course for a team, you'll be able to easily and visually figure out which courses are already assigned to them and find new ones to add.

New automation features

Why do manually what you can easily automate?😉

We've added a new API feature that lets you transmit stats on all learners in a specific course. If you have a large number of learners, this is indispensable when it comes to transferring data to your CRM or another system.

In addition, we've set up a ready-made Zapier action for automatically inviting learners to teams. Now you can easily invite new learners or entire lists of learners to a specific team.

🇺🇦 Coaching for Ukraine

We hosted three new webinars as part of our Coaching for Ukraine project, which were attended by more than 500 Ukrainian HR and L&D specialists.

Our speakers in July were:

• Robin Hoyle, organizer of the World of Learning conference
• Aparna Gupta, certified coach and course creator
• Irina Ketkin, most popular creator of L&D courses on Udemy

We'll be inviting more world-class experts to speak and welcome anyone who wants to join our initiative!

📑 We also have a new interview on our blog, featuring L&D and adaptive learning expert Stella Lee:

Stella Lee: “L&Ds should always begin with the end in mind”

Don't miss out on our future updates — we'll see you next time!🤗