Instructors can customize grading preferences and manage student work more powerfully in the CourseCompass online gradebook. Instructors can:

• Display grades in a variety of formats including percentages, letter grades, and other customizable options
• Revise gradebook item scores by downloading, editing in another program such as Microsoft® Excel®, and then uploading
• Add new gradable items, such as class participation or attendance, that you can either hide or display to students on their Grades page
  
  

Instructors gain greater flexibility when creating and managing online quizzes and tests. Assessment improvements allow you to:

• Make content changes to available tests without removing existing grades from the online gradebook
• Add assessments and TestGen tests to any content area of your course
• Upload test questions authored offline and then review or modify them in CourseCompass
• Choose test presentation mode, for example, you can display test questions all-at-once or one-at-a-time
• Randomize the question order for each student
  
  

Instructors can customize your CourseCompass course further with new content types. You can add new content types such as URLs and course links (in addition to existing content types like items, folders and learning units) in all content areas of your CourseCompass course. For example, you can create a course link in the Course Documents area to lecture notes in the Course Information area—making the most of hypertext links in your web-accessible course.

Another new content type—assignments—is also available. Use this content type when you require students to turn in an essay or other document for grading. Assignments can include file attachments that students download and complete, and then return to you. Because you can work with assignments in the online gradebook, they provide greater content management benefits compared to the Digital Drop Box.

Both instructors and students can enjoy improved navigation features in your course pages. You can add, rename and modify the navigation buttons that appear on the left side of course pages. Additionally, you can link these buttons to particular areas in the course or to websites outside of the course.

You and your students can even hide these navigation buttons to view more course content on the page.

Use an enhanced Virtual Classroom to communicate more efficiently with your students in CourseCompass. With the new Virtual Classroom, you can set up a real-time session with your students to: display content located in your CourseCompass course (via the Course Map), review a portion of a Microsoft Word (or other format) document, or view a website.

Additionally, you can communicate in real-time with your students using the Virtual Classroom's Lightweight Chat feature. Similar to instant messaging, this low-bandwidth tool provides instant text-based communication that is Section 508 compliant (accessible to people with disabilities). Lightweight Chat works with the Virtual Classroom, and is also available as a tool on its own.

Include mathematical and scientific notation text in any content area, assessment and in the Virtual Classroom. CourseCompass users can write and edit equations in CourseCompass using either of the new tools: the WebEQ™ equation editor or the MathML equation editor (use to code MathML, a subset of XML used to display equations on the Web).

Review the following CourseCompass features:

• Overview
• New Features - Available Now!
• Recently Added Features
• Update Course Materials
• Teaching Assistant User Role
• Research Navigator