Tag: Courses

Commons 1.19.0

I’ve just released version 1.19.0 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This is one of our twice-yearly major feature releases for the site.

The centerpiece of the release is a complete redesign and rebuild of the main home page. This redesign, years in the making, includes a few new features:

  • “Featured” sites and groups, allowing the Commons team to highlight content
  • A new “shortcuts” section, giving easy access to useful links based on a logged-in user’s role (student, faculty, etc)
  • A personalized section at the top of the logged-in home page, with links to a user’s most recently active groups and sites
  • Suggested groups and sites based on a logged-in user’s campus affiliations

Through the redesign process, we’ve emphasized best practices for modern web design, including compatibility across devices, accessibility for screen readers and other devices, and a simple, readable aesthetic.

We also built a number of features around the site:

  • A toggle that allows users of the Courses directory to filter for only those courses that are public
  • A flag that allows group and site creators to indicate that their Teaching-focused content is OER-related, and a filter on directories that allows users to browse for content that’s tied to OER
  • The ability to edit the Instructors associated with a Course
  • Improved visibility settings for a user’s Pronouns field

For complete details, visit the 1.19 milestone, or the post announcing the release on the News blog.

Commons 1.18.10

I’ve just released version 1.18.10 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release includes the following fixes:

  • A new Conference Site template when creating sites
  • Ensure that forum attachments are deleted from Group Library when the corresponding forum item is deleted
  • Order the Semester dropdown chronologically on the Courses tab

For complete details, visit the 1.18.10 milestone.

Commons 1.17.2

I’ve just released version 1.17.2 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release includes the following fixes:

  • Fix blog name uniqueness check during blog creation
  • Automate the deletion of Courses when the corresponding groups/sites are deleted
  • Improve behavior when logging into subdomain admin panels
  • Fix the creation of library items with long titles
  • Improve appearance of notifications on group acceptance management pages

For complete details, visit the 1.17.2 milestone.

Commons 1.16.8

I’ve just released version 1.16.8 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release is a major-update release for plugins and themes. The release also addresses the following issues:

  • Improvements to the Subject and From fields in email notifications related to group forum posts
  • Fixed bug that could cause slider navigation on Courses directory to be hidden or inaccessible
  • Improved footer navigation on mobile devices
  • New CommentPress-focused theme

For complete details, visit the 1.16.8 milestone.

Commons 1.16.0

I’ve just released version 1.16.0 of the CUNY Academic Commons. Version 1.16.0 is our “major release” for Fall 2019, one of two yearly releases that focus on the introduction of new features.

Major features for 1.16.0 include:

  • An overhaul of the Courses tab. This includes a Featured Course slider at the top of the page, a set of tools for fine-grained filtering and searching of the Courses directory, and display improvements for the items in the directory.
  • Group calendar subscription and import tools. It’s now possible to perform a one-time event import to a group calendar, by uploading an .ical file. You can also configure a group calendar to subscribe to an external calendar feed, so that new items on that external feed are automatically detected and added to the group calendar.
  • A tool that enables users to request membership to a non-public site. Previously, these sites could only be joined via invitation, an obstacle for student onboarding.
  • Interface improvements to the Reckoning plugin, including the display of post categories when viewing user summaries.
  • Improvements to the group file folder interface, including a tool to delete folders.
  • Design improvements to Sites and Groups directories.

For complete details, visit the 1.16.0 milestone.

Commons 1.14.8

I’ve just released version 1.14.8 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release addresses the following issues:

  • Increase the number of items shown per page on the Courses directory
  • Improved performance for certain post queries
  • Fix bug in Lucid theme that prevents social icon markup from appearing
  • Fix bug in Reckoning plugin that prevents certain UI options from working properly
  • Improvements to the appearance of the sitewide footer

For complete details, visit the 1.14.8 milestone.

Commons 1.14.6

I’ve just released version 1.14.6 of the CUNY Academic Commons. This maintenance release fixes a number of bugs, including:

  • Fix bug that caused Teaching Template not to be applied properly to new sites in certain cases
  • Fix BuddyPress “Export Data” screen
  • Add new embed support for Padlet, Sutori, Voicethread
  • Sort Courses directory primarily by course term, with alphabetical as a secondary sort
  • Fix some formatting errors in groupblog emails

For complete details, visit the 1.14.6 milestone.