On the morning of Wednesday 24 July (AEST), we released significant upgrades to Academy, focusing on enhancing assessment capabilities, streamlining workflows, and improving the overall learning experience for both facilitators and learners. Here’s a detailed overview of the key changes and enhancements included in this release. Whether you're a long-time user or just getting started, these updates will help you make the most of Academy's features.

Deliver Graded Programs & Courses

Holistic Evaluation: You can now evaluate learners based on their overall performance in a program or course, not just individual activities. This holistic approach ensures a comprehensive assessment of each learner's journey.

Custom Grading Scales: Create custom grading scales tailored to each program's unique learning objectives or reuse templates across multiple programs. This flexibility ensures that your grading criteria are perfectly aligned with your educational goals.

Gradebook: Track and manage learner progress with the new Gradebook, which provides a centralised view of grades, feedback, and areas for improvement. Streamline your assessment workflow by reviewing, grading, and providing personalised feedback—all within the Gradebook.

Badge Requirements: Learners will only receive their badge if they achieve a passing grade in the program, ensuring they meet the required standards.

"My Gradebook" Page: Empower learners with the "My Gradebook" page, where they can easily track their progress and view their grades and feedback.

Improved Learner and Reviewer Task Experience

Enhanced Task Activity: Tasks are now embedded directly into the program page for learners, making the learning journey more intuitive. Assessors and reviewers have a dedicated reviewing interface to evaluate submissions and provide timely, focused feedback.

Expanded Grading Capabilities: Our grading capabilities now include "unsuccessful" or "fail" outcomes for a more nuanced assessment of learner performance.

Dedicated Actions Area: We have created separate action pages at the platform and program levels to centralise all your important tasks. These pages allow you to review activities, view At-Risk dashboards, review applications, approve points claims, and manage invoices, all in one place.

More Flexible Evaluation Options

Enhanced Program Evaluation: Facilitators now have the flexibility to unlock evaluations at any time, integrating them into your workflow and enhancing program completion rates. Evaluations have moved from the Program Wrap-Up page to a dedicated Evaluation screen within the learning journey.

Flexible Unlocking: You have full control over when evaluations are accessible to learners. You can manually unlock them or schedule automatic unlocking on specific dates and times. This feature is especially useful for in-person programs, allowing evaluations to be completed before the course ends.

Tracking Completion: Facilitators can easily monitor learner completion status directly from the Evaluation page, ensuring you gather essential feedback to enhance your programs.

Customise Certificate Designs at a Program Level

Badge Certificate Library: Design and store a collection of customisable badge certificates that reflect your unique branding and program styles. This new feature allows you to create a library of certificates to match the perfect certificate to each badge, providing learners with personalised and professional recognition of their accomplishments.

Other New Features

Some other new and updated features to keep an eye out for:

Quick Admin Access: Quickly access your most important programs by marking them as favourites, ensuring you can manage them efficiently.

Primary Coordinator for Programs: Designate a primary coordinator for each program to streamline communication and ensure a consistent point of contact. This person's name can be included in program-related email communications, adding a personal touch.

Enhanced Resource Appearance: You can now use customised icons and thumbnails for your document, link, and diagram activities. This feature, initially released in May for other activities, has been extended to resources to ensure all aspects of your learning journey are visually engaging.

We’re confident these updates will significantly improve your experience on Academy and provide even greater support to your learners. Stay tuned for more exciting updates as we continue to innovate and enhance our platform.