With the upgrade to Moodle 5.1, eClass has some exciting AI enhancements coming! Read below for what will be available this May and what’s already in eClass for instructors and students now.

Note: The data provided to all AI features in eClass is neither shared nor used to train third-party models—all data remains with �첥��Ƶ, and all information remains private.

Coming soon! AI Accessibility Fixer

The AI Accessibility Fixer is available to all users in the eClass text editor. This handy tool references Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and can help identify and fix issues in your content to make it more accessible to all users. Check if the accessibility icon is red before you post! If so, the fixer tool will tell you how to improve the accessibility of your text and can make the changes for you. Watch the icon turn green when there are no further suggestions.

Coming soon! AI Generate Text

Instructors can use the AI generate text button within the text editor in eClass to brainstorm ideas or draft content to add to their course. This feature is only available for instructors’ use (it is not accessible to students), and instructors must first choose to enable AI tools in their course to see this option.

Use Generate Text to quickly brainstorm examples, scenarios, or discussion topics for students

Use Generate Text to create templates or supplementary exercises for students

Coming soon! AI Summarize

Where enabled by instructors, the AI summarize feature is available to both instructors and students. This tool generates a short summary of the text within an activity or resource.

Use Summarize to condense content for slides or notes

Students: use Summarize to quickly review content when studying

Coming soon! AI Explain

Where enabled by instructors, the AI Explain feature provides both instructors and students with further information and context on content within an activity or resource.

Use Explain to explore more ways to describe concepts to learners

Students: use Explain to gain more context or get ideas for further research

AI Settings

The new AI Generate Text, Summarize, and Explain features are controlled by instructors at the course level and activity level.

Course Settings

At the course level, instructors choose whether to allow AI tools in the course. If set to No, AI Generate Text, Summarize, and Explain will be disabled across the course. If set to Yes, these AI tools can be toggled in each activity’s settings.

Activity Settings

When AI tools are enabled in the course, AI Generate Text, Summarize, and Explain can then be individually controlled for each activity. Note that these tools are set to On by default for all activities once AI tools are enabled in the course and the generate text tool is only accessible to instructors and not visible to students even when set to On.

AI Tools Available Now

AI Course Assistant

The AI Course Assistant is a block with two tools: the AI Course Assistant and an AI Learning Companion. By uploading documents such as your syllabus and course Q&A and selecting course materials in eClass, the AI Course Assistant becomes your trained, interactive assistant that can help answer questions about your course. Alongside that is the AI Learning Companion, a helpful tool that can act as a tutor for students to discuss or be quizzed on course material.

Both the AI Course Assistant and Learning Companion are hidden from students by default and must be set up by the instructor before being shown.

For more information on how to use these in your course, check out and .

SAVY

SAVY is an AI virtual assistant that is extensively trained on material about �첥��Ƶ. Chat with SAVY directly in eClass to quickly find resources and get answers about the York experience.

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Course Organization

The icons have been removed from the course navigation bar to simplify course appearance and provide more space to display course content.

Topics format has now been renamed to “Custom Sections” to better reflect how people are using this customizable format. 

Sections and activities are more clearly organized with defined boundaries. You can also now break up content and activities with subsections. Even better, for instructors who use the Menu/Tab course format, these subsections will automatically become tabs within your course (no need to enter the HTML code!).

And navigating these sections has been made even easier with the new Expand all/Collapse all option in the course index (left-side menu). 

Bulk actions are now available to modify your course homepage more efficiently, including changing visibility settings, duplicating, or deleting multiple items at once.  

Text Editor

The Atto text editor has been removed as Moodle no longer supports it. Instead, with improved accessibility and usability, TinyMCE is now the only text editor for users. Editing text in eClass is now as intuitive as using any popular word processor, and creating content has never been easier with the added drag and drop option for uploading media and the new screen recording feature. Embedded third-party buttons from the previous Atto editor will still be included in the TinyMCE editor. 

AI

Generate, Summarize and Explain

Moodle has introduced AI features that allow users to summarize, explain, and generate text. As an Instructor, you have complete control over which AI tools can be used at the course level and at the activity level---you can leave AI tools off across the course or turn them on and choose exactly which tools are available and where they appear. If enabled, instructors can use the generate text tool directly in editing spaces to quickly produce text to support course content. And for students, while generating text is limited to instructor-use only, AI summarize and AI explain are two new features that instructors can enable on individual activities and resources to enhance students’ learning experience.

Note: If AI tools are enabled at the course level, any activities or resources created will have AI summarize and AI explain turned ON for student use by default. This can be changed within each activity’s or resource’s settings.

You can also be assured that any course content and prompting is not shared nor used to train the AI.

Click on the two videos below to see the tools in action and visit AI in eClass for more information on the AI available in eClass.

Accessibility Fixer

The new AI accessibility fixer is available to all users for an easy way to both flag and fix issues within content created with the text editor. Using Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the fixer makes suggestions and is colour-coded (red when improvements can be made; green when no issues are detected) for quick checks.

Activities

It's now more intuitive to add activities to your course with the redesigned Activity Chooser, which groups activities by purpose: assessment, collaboration, communication, resources, and interactive content—so that you can quickly find what you need.  

Activity icons have been redesigned with an accessible color palette, so that you can spot what you need faster.  

File resource icons now display the file type with a simplified, consistent design, making it easy to identify PDFs from PowerPoints from Word documents, etc. while still maintaining a cohesive course page. 

There’s now an Activities Overview page to allow you to view all key dates and details for all course activities and resources in one convenient, organized place. 

And for those who use groups, instructors can now filter the activity completion reports by group to track their progress.

External Tools

The External Tool activity type has been removed from the activity chooser. Now, each external tool will be its own item in the activity chooser, and you can manage the external tools in your course by selecting LTI External tools under More in the course navigation bar.  

Gradebook

You can now collapse individual grade items in the grader report to reduce horizontal scrolling when viewing the report. You can also search by user to find student grades faster and view feedback for grade items directly from the grader report.

Quizzing

You can now create grade items within your quiz structure, assigning grade totals to groups of questions and allowing yourself and your students to review achievement by content focus or question type.

Additionally, the question bank has been modernized to be more organized with less effort. While questions created within a quiz are now added to a quiz-specific bank and cannot be reused or shared, you can now create multiple question banks to easily share and modify questions across all of your courses. Find your questions with ease using the six new filters within the question bank, including searching by question type, time modified, and question text or general feedback; and stay organized with the ability to drag and drop question categories within the bank.

For more information on question banks in 5.1, check out Moodle’s documentation .

Discussions

Within discussion forums, the “Post to all groups” option is now easier to find. You can keep everyone updated with just one click.  

Assignments

To make grading more intuitive, bulk actions are visible on the grading screen and key assignment actions are now at the top of the screen. You can now also filter assignments by graded status.

And for those who utilize advanced grading options in eClass, the assignment grading space has been updated to allow resizing of the grader panel, giving you more space to view rubrics and marking guides when providing feedback. 

Removal of Progress Bar

The Progress Bar block is no longer supported and has been removed. Instead, the Completion Progress block should be used as it serves the same purpose with improved usability (go to  for more information). 

Playground Courses

The button to create playground courses has been moved to the My courses space to keep all your courses and course creation in one place. 

The post eClass Upgrade 5.1: What's New for Instructors appeared first on eClass.

Hey students! We’ve made some new changes to make learning in eClass better—from quiz and assignment notifications to help you make every deadline to a new set of AI tools to enhance your learning.

AI Tools

If enabled by your instructor, you can use the new AI tools to summarize or explain course content by using the AI features option(s) at the top of the course page.

Course Organization

There is now an Activities Overview page accessible from your course navigation bar. Here, you can find all your course activities and resources along with any key dates and details in one convenient, organized place. 

There’s also now an Expand all/Collapse all option within the course index (left-side menu), making course navigation even easier. 

Quizzing

New quiz notifications remind you when your quiz will open, confirm you successfully submitted your quiz attempt, and let you know when feedback is available to review. Additionally, no need to worry about losing your progress! You can now view when your responses were last auto-saved during your quiz attempt. And it's now possible for your instructor to provide grades for individual sections of a quiz, so you can see which topics or areas you can improve on and which you best understood. 

Assignments

The upgraded eClass makes managing due dates easy as you now receive notifications for upcoming assignments both one week and 48 hours before the due date as well as notifications if your assignment submission becomes overdue. 

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