New assessment features: peer and self-assessment

This was previewed during the LabNBook Meetings: we have extended the functionality of our rubrics assessment tool so that it can be used for self-assessment or peer assessment. In a nutshell:

  • You can now associate several rubrics with an assignment.
  • In the team setting, you can choose to have these rubrics used :
    • by the teacher (traditional assessment)
    • by the students for self-assessment
    • by the students for peer assessment

When it comes to configuring the self-assessment and peer assessment options, we’ve tried to strike the right balance: enough to meet your needs and not too much to avoid overly complex interfaces. As always, don’t hesitate to give us your feedback!

A new look and feel for LabNBook

You’ve probably all noticed by now: at the end of 2024, we changed our logo and, more importantly, gave our user interfaces a lick of paint.

It’s mainly students who will benefit from the refurbished interface: as well as a design that we hope will be more appealing, the tools for messaging, comments, assessment, etc. are now integrated into the page and no longer float above the reports. We have also added a task planning tool so that students can organise their collaborative work in LabNBook.

On the teachers’ side, the colours have changed slightly and some icons have evolved. On the functional side, there have been no notable changes.

We have also updated the user manuals, but they are still in French. If anyone would like to translate them or make videos from them, we’d love to hear from you!

All the latest features of the data processing tool

There have been many changes in the latest updates to the data processing tool; some of them date back to last spring, but we forgot to mention them.

Histograms can now be drawn from one or more data series:

New options have been implemented for importing and exporting data:

The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm for automatically fitting a model to experimental data has been recoded. It now works on more cases. In addition, uncertainties on model parameters are calculated:

A menu of fitting options has been added. It includes a wealth of information accessible via icons (i):

New feature: students in a class can easily pool their data

Here’s a new feature long requested by teachers. In missions, it is now possible to propose “shared labdocs”. All mission designers have to do is click on a small box when adding a labdoc:

A shared labdoc is common to all reports defined in the same team-up. This means that all the students in these reports can modify the labdoc, always in turn.

As you can see, a shared labdoc behaves very differently from other labdocs. This is why the teacher’s choice is final. The teacher cannot stop the sharing of a labdoc, nor can he/she transform a classic labdoc into a shared labdoc. Shared labdocs are always at the end of the report section, and cannot be renamed, deleted or modified by students.

Best practice seems to be for students to have their own labdoc and copy-paste their data into the shared labdoc. If they need to process data from the whole class, they duplicate the shared labdoc, which then becomes their own report and can no longer be updated by other students.

The LabNBook plugin is in the Moodle Directory Plugin

It’s official: the LabNBook plugin for Moodle is now in the
Plugin Directory de Moodle. The latest version (1.1.4) was released today.

What does this mean? The plugin has been validated by Moodle. Administrators of Moodle platforms at universities are therefore more inclined to install the plugin on the platform they administer.

What does this plugin do? It creates a link between your university’s Moodle and a LabNBook platform. More information here and here.

A new tool for writing experiment protocols

The tool’s interface has changed a little, and the protocol looks more like a “classic” laboratory protocol. We hope that the tool is more mature and easier for students to use.

The most important new feature is for teachers. The new tool makes it possible to propose experimental design activities to students. From a pedagogical point of view, we are convinced that such an activity is beneficial to the understanding of the experiment carried out in the lab. The new tool makes it possible to create pre-structured protocols to support the design of the experiment for students.

A word of advice: to configure the protocol labdoc, you need to be familiar with the basic protocol tool (the one accessible to students by default).

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