ORA Update 2024

Owned by Daniel Silber-Baker
Last updated: Mar 14, 2024
3 min read

Overview

The Aurora team has launched an exciting update to improve the student experience of Open Response Assessments (ORA). The updated UI will offer a distraction free experience where users complete one step of the ORA process at a time in a distraction free environment, allowing for focus to be on exactly what the student is working on at the time.

Distraction free “Create your response” :

This update will also provide an improved environment for peer grading, giving students a better experience grading their peers.

Improved “Grade your peers” experience:

 

Additionally, this release will include more clarity around how a student’s grade is actually calculated, including separating the assessment scores that count towards their final grade and those that don’t, as well as an additional text block explaining how the grade calculations work for the specific ORA a student is looking at.

Clarity about how grades are calculated

 

What else is included in this update?

In addition to the new features highlighted above, we have made a number of other improvements including:

  • Adding “Preview” and “Download” features for uploaded files

  • Improved progress statuses and messaging

  • More clarity on where you are in the process of ORA

  • Simplified in-course experience

  • Leveraged Paragon design system components to match LMS UI patterns

What is NOT included in the 1.0 of this update?

There are some ORA configurations that will not be supported in the first release of the new ORA UI. Support for these will come in future releases. The features not included in the initial release are:

  • ORAs where the Teams feature is in use

  • ORAs that use the Leaderboard feature

  • Inline content rendering in Studio

ORAs using one of these unsupported configurations will automatically fall back to the legacy experience.

There are plans in the next quarter to add support for the Leaderboard feature. 

It is unclear when/if support will be added for teams and inline content rendering in Studio.

Do we plan on supporting the old UI?

We plan to support the old UI for a period of 6-9 months, after which point we are hoping to depreciate the old UI completely.

The aurora team can work with partners during that 6-9 months to identify and work to resolve any limitations/blockers to courses transferring to the new UI.

Additional FAQ

  • Other then the features mentioned above, the functionality of ORAs remain the same, and only the UI has changed

  • This update will not have any impact on the staff grading experience