1. The most noticeable change in the new release is the new VSTAR Portfolio UI. The blue bar at the top is consistent across the entire VSTAR platform, including Home and Learn. The most commonly used applications, Home (represented by “VSTAR”), Learn, Portfolio, and Help are listed across the top. Additional Apps are included in the Apps dropdown menu. Administrative functions are found under your name in the right hand corner. As always, to get to your Portfolio “Home” page, click on the “VSTAR Portfolio” link in the upper left hand corner. The other differences you will see are color changes.
2. A notes feature is now available within activities. This must be enabled for each activity created. After an activity has been completed, any Advisor with access to the activity can highlight portions of the activity and create notes. Notes may be visible to the student or marked as private. Notes may also be flagged to show on the Student Dashboard.
3. Improvements to the Learner Competency Dashboard are included in this release. These datapoints may now be sorted by competency, filtered by subcomptency by clicking on the chart key, and have datapoints that are color coded to the type of assessment they are associated with – Self Assessments, Open Assessments, Peer Assessments, or Faculty Assessments.
4. Student Assessments have been renamed Faculty Assessments.