February 6, 2022 Release : Beyond Labz

For this release we have updated a wide range of elements across the platform. All of these updates are thanks to Instructor feedback.

1. Syllabus Templates

All Beyond Labz activities have been aligned to the major US Higher Education and High School textbooks, including popular OER sources such as Open Stax.
On the Activities menu you can choose a subject, such as General Chemistry or Organic Chemistry. Then you can choose a common textbook, or a generic topic-sorted syllabus. Based on the chapters within your chosen textbook or generic syllabus, you can then see all of our content that fits within that unit. You can sort by duration of activity, type of activity- pre/post lab vs. lab replacement, or if the activity is quantitative vs. qualitative.

2. Instructor features

Lab Cam

From the LabBook menu you can now open the Lab Cam. This allows you to quickly see how long each student in your Groups has been active in each session they have had in a lab. You can also load the Lab Cam view for your own activity in the labs, so you can see the types of data collected.
When you click on a Student Name from the Student Lab Book Menu you can then see an icon on the right hand side labeled View Lab Cam. Clicking that expands the list of Lab Sessions that student has had. Beside each Lab session you will see the date and time stamp for when the session started and the elapsed time from when they entered the Lab and their last action in the lab.
If you expand a Lab Session you will see a list of actions that were performed in the lab. You'll see actions for things like loading a preset, moving beakers on the table, transferring solutions, opening the Lab Book. Each action performed is time stamped with when it was performed since the lab session started.

Co-Instructors

Groups can now have multiple Co-Instructors. If you have multiple instructors working with a class, you can now share your Group code with the Instructors and they have a button for Join Group now. If they enter the Group Code and join the Group, they now have the ability to see & comment in student LabBooks, see Student Lab Cam data, and make assignments for the whole group.

3. Lab features-

Identifying Indicators in the Beakers

Titrations now has the ability to let you use different indicators in each beaker. If you aren't sure if indicator was added to a beaker (because it is transparent) or if you just want a quick view of what is in each beaker, there is now a button to label each indicator. The Reveal Indicators button is in the pH meter section in Live Data. When the button is clicked you will see text above each beaker indicating what indicator is in the beaker.

Switching Practice to Assigned Unknown

Titrations, Inorganic, Calorimetry, and Density all allow the creation of Practice Unknowns. These unknowns are useful for student practice- so they can test themselves over and over again to gain confidence in the required analysis. However if Instructors want to see a report of what the students have been assigned and what they predicted, the instructors need to use the other type of Unknown. Assigned Unknowns report the identity of the Unknown to the Lab Book and also record what the student predicted. It is now easy to convert a Practice Unknown to an Assigned Unknown.
Once you have created a practice unknown with the lab setup as you want, click the Save Lab button to create a Preset
for the lab. You can change the name of that link either from the Portal Labz + menu or the My Saved Labs menu in the tray.
In the portal load the Presets Menu and select My Saved Labs. In that list you will see the link you just created. You will see a column labeled Unknown Type and your unknown will be labeled Practice. If you click the box with the arrow facing to the right you will see that the Unknown Type is switched to Assigned. You can then copy the link for that preset and send that out to your students.

4. System Improvements

February 6, 2022 Release Print