Modulus Mercury Release Notes
By: Daniel Wei
Tags: Software Development, Release Notes, Startup, Edtech

New Features:

There’s five main new features we think you love!

Introductory Tour Guide

Wao! So slick!

We have a new tour guide that’ll introduce you to the basics of how Modulus works, how courses are laid out, and how to make courses as a teacher and navigate the web application interface. We think our interface is intuitive enough that it’s not really necessary ;) but in case you need it — it’s here!

2. Invite and Block Students

Useful for blocking those students that somehow got the join code…

The workflow’s been revamped from the ground up, and now we have separate tabs for different course views. As a teacher, one new tab is the “Manage Students” tab, which lets you invite students via a Join Code, as well as manage the students that are already enrolled. Each student’s name and email is available to you, and if someone’s there that shouldn’t be, the flip of a switch will remove them. If you want to add them back at any time, simply flip the switch back on!

3. Redesigned Course Editing

It’s incredibly simple and intuitive to edit course content (why does no one else do this??)

We did mention the workflow’s been revamped, right? Through extensive rounds of user testing, we’ve simplified and streamlined the entire user experience. Editing the course happens on the “Edit Modules” tab entirely now, which means you have a central place to make all the changes you want. Add modules, delete modules, rename modules as you see fit. Module items are edited just as easily — change course contents, links, files, documents, assessments, and lectures in a simple, guided process. Where we could, we even provided guides! So that if you’re new to YouTube or Google Drive, it won’t pose any barrier to getting started publishing your courses online.

4. Vastly improved Course Creation

Inspired by program installers, you can now click your way to being a teacher!

More user testing meant more suggestions, and one of our favorites was a plan to redesign course creation! Instead of one large course creation dialog on a single page, we’ve split it up across four, focused, concise steps. In order, you can set the course name, course description, course visibility, and course subject, with no impediments to an intuitive workflow.

5. An open library of free, online courses

Democracy arrives in the educational sphere at last!

Of course, with so many teachers making so many great courses, we couldn’t resist making an open forum for education. After all, Modulus is all about promoting the work of independent tutors and teachers outside of large, locked-in establishments and institutions, and building peer-to-peer networks of students and teachers, rather than hierarchical imbalances of authority figures and their pupils. The logical continuation of that, of course, was an open platform, where anyone can publish their course contents for anyone else to join and use. As a teacher, you can choose to make your course public, and it’ll automatically be added to this open catalog, for anyone, anywhere in the world to join. As a student, you can enroll in as many of these free, open courses as you want, and learn anything available on our site.

6. And so, so much more!