Qwickly Course Tools New Experience

Qwickly Course Tools Experience Update 

On August 3 2022, we began allowing clients to move to an updated instructor experience for all Qwickly Course Tools clients.  The new look will be rolled-out on December 14, 2022, ALL CLIENTS will be migrated to the new experience starting December 14 and will be completed by December 15, 2022.

How do I get the new experience?

Log into your instance, and select Manage Course Tools.  Under preferences, you can enable the new look. Remember that you can have Qwickly Course Tools installed on your test systems as a separate instance so previewing the new experience doesn't cause confusion for your users.

Why did we update Course Tools?

We take client feedback into consideration with everything we do. Since the launch of Qwickly Course Tools, we’ve collected feedback from clients via support tickets, demos, training, pilots, and more to identify common pain points. This update addresses a number of those pain points - both big and small. We also made a significant number of changes to improve accessibility. Everything we have done has been with the goal of making Qwickly Course Tools more powerful and easier for instructors to use.

When is it happening?

These changes will begin rolling out to all Qwickly Course Tools users.  Administrators can select the new experience in the Qwickly Course Tools Settings page in their instance manager.  The new experience must be selected instance by instance.  

What is new?

• General Updates: 
  • Updated navigation menu that organizes tools into similar groups, making them easier to find; is also keyboard accessible
  • 
  • Ability to select a language (English, Chinese (Simplified), Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Spanish)
  • 
  • Ability to sort course list according to course name, course code, or course term
  • 
• Filestack
  • Filestack implementation which will allow instructors to select multiple files simultaneously, and from a wider variety of sources.  Filestack is the leading file uploader and will allow for rich integration of uploads and links.
  • 
• Tool Updates:
  • UX/UI improvements for all tools in all three LMSs
  • Create Assignment
    • Ability to set availability and due date per course - this is new for all three LMSs. Previously you could only set the same availability and due dates for all selected courses.
  • Create Content
    • Ability to set availability in Blackboard and D2L. Previously you could not set availability at all. Canvas does not currently support this feature.
  • Create Discussion (Canvas Only)
  • Create Event
  • Send Announcement
  • Send Email
  • Send Message (Canvas Only)
  • Check Links
    • Ability to select all courses 
    • Ability to sort links by Status, Title, or URL
    • Ability to see which courses links were found in (if multiple courses are selected)
    • Links will check automatically, eliminating the need for the “check links” button
  • Course Availability
  • Change Dates (BB Only)
    • Ability to sort by Title, Due Date, or Due Time
  • Manage Groups (New! Blackboard Only)
    • Ability to create a new group set in one or more courses, and the ability to import an existing group set to one or multiple courses

Administrative Updates

Administrators will no longer be able to customize the names of tools. We made this change for a few reasons:

• This option was originally created to provide non-English speaking users the ability to name the tools in their instance accordingly. Since Qwickly Course Tools now supports the ability to select your own language, this option is no longer necessary. 
• We reorganized the Qwickly Course Tools menu in alphabetical order and according to similar functions. For example, Create Assignment, Create Content, Create Discussion and Create Event are grouped under one “Create” bucket.
• Lastly, uniform names help maintain consistency when it comes to product help and resources created by Qwickly. This past year we added in product “how to” cards with instructional copy and demo videos for each tool. It could create confusion if an instructor launches a demo video for a tool that is called one thing in their instance and something else in our “how to” copy and demo video.

Original Qwickly Course Tools Opening Screen:

Updated Qwickly Course Tools Opening Screen:

Qwickly Course Tools Timeline: