We've released a swathe of new settings that allow you to easily customize assignments:

• Whether or not to show hints
• When to show feedback to students. This includes whether or not they answered a question correctly or not, when to show automated feedback, or when to show comments you've entered.
• Override the total amount of points on the assignment
• Disable randomization
• Override question attempt limits

Hi there,

Here's a list of the new and revised activities, new features and bug fixes we are releasing today.

New and Revised Activities

We have MANY updated and revised activities in our library. Whether you are preparing for the AP Exam or preparing your students to finish the course, our library is full of refreshed and updated activities in all content areas. Here is a highlight of one activity from each content area!

• (Biology) Biomes and Climate Students explore factors controlling the distribution of terrestrial biomes. In this mostly auto-graded activity, students explain the role of incoming sunlight on temperature fluctuation and the role of water as a temperature regulator. By the end of the activity students will be able to describe the relationship between albedo, the amount of energy reflected and absorbed, and temperature, and relate specific human impacts (deforestation, urbanization) on terresterial biomes.

• (Chemistry) Heat of Solution: Explaining the process of dissolving We have two versions of this activity: one for on-level chemistry and one for advanced courses. Both activities are 100% auto-graded and require students to collect and analyze data abut energy transfer during dissolution to build a particle representation and create a potential energy diagram. The advanced version includes sections for students to discover a pattern that connects the number of moles of a substance dissolved and the amount of energy released or absorbed

• (Earth/Environmental) Math Practice for AP Environmental Science: Unit 9 Students use relevant math practices including dimensional analysis to solve problems related to Unit 9, specifically analyzing scenarios about the environment related to air pollution.

• (Physics) Rotational Collision: Slab Dropped on Disk. If you're teaching about angular momentum, then this activity is great for you! Highly scaffolded and 100% auto-graded, this activity requires students to apply conservation of angular momentum to determine the rotational inertia of a non-uniform object.

New Features

• Indicate randomized values in rich text in teacher previews. We're working to make it easier to understand when activities contain randomization. Now, when number within a question is set by a random variable, the number will be highlighted with a shuffle icon, and you can hover over the variable to get more information.

• New options for drag and drop conditions: it's now possible to make a condition that matches any choice or no choice at all.
• Clicking on links and vocabulary tool tips in the editor is now more intuitive: you can click anywhere on the link to edit.
• Better error messages about validation errors in the activity editor. Now when you have a validation error when editing an activity, you'll get a warning message that will let you jump directly to that error.

• Styling changes to the activity preview: Learning objectives now appear with a teal background to make them more visible. We'll be making other improvements to the teacher and student views of activities soon.
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Bug Fixes

• enable translation on rich text content. You should now be able to translate any content in an activity with tools like the Google Translate Extension.

We're always looking for ways to make Pivot Interactives even better, and we love trying to solve the problems science teachers are facing. If you've got a problem, or an idea for a new feature, please feel free to share it in this chat.

We're excited to announce the release of two long-desired features: Co-Teachers and Individual Due Date Extensions!

Co-Teachers

You can now add additional instructors to your class in one of two roles:

• Grader - assign activities, grade student work, manage due dates
• Instructor - All of that + add additional instructors/graders

More details can be found in our help article.

Individual Due Date Extensions

You can now grant due date extensions to one or more students while keeping the overall due date the same for the rest of the class. Read more on that here.

Looking to maintain the hype after watching Oppenheimer? Ever wanted to show your students nuclear radiation without worrying?

⚛️Types of Nuclear Radiation⚛️

In this blockbuster activity, students will explore alpha, beta, and gamma radiation in a cloud chamber. By the end of the activity, students will be able to:

• Build a model to characterize the types of particles formed by different radiation.
• Connect radioactive decay to energy.

Oh, and did I mention it's 92% autograded? That's only 3 open-ended questions!!!

You can now hide any single component (questions, instructions, data tables, etc.) until a question immediately preceding that component is answered correctly. See the animation below to see what this looks like to students. Click to enlarge it.

Please note that the question will not be shown as hidden while an instructor is Previewing an activity.

Quality-of-life changes to our new Drag and Drop feature. As one of our newest features, we're constantly adding new improvements and updates. We also want your feedback! Let us know by opening up a chat.

Updates:

• Click-and-drag resizing of drop targets

• Incorrect Drag and Drop answers shown.

• Preview what drop answers will look like while editing.

Looking for a way to check for understanding after your gas unit? How about this randomized and FULLY autograded activity?!

💨Applying Boyle's Law💨

In this quick activity, students apply Boyle's law to several situations. The activity features several of our Drag and Drop questions (beta*) to make previously manually graded questions now autograded AND randomized.

Meet our new Card View in the Pivot Interactives Libraries

😍Features You'll Love -

Activities now have...

1. Banners with NEW (first published in the last 60 days) and Updated (first published more than 60 days ago, but updated in the last 60 days)
2. Total question counts - our example shows there are 23 questions
3. Autograded percentages - that 91% percent means that only 2 questions need your input!

Go see it now in the Pivot Interactives Library:

During a recent professional development, I got my most common question – and the question that I have the hardest time answering, despite the answer being two small words: "How long does this activity take?" So, let's answer this together!

Determining an activity's time commitment can feel like a complicated Calculus question. But in today's blog, we'll make it as easy as 1, 2, 3!

This week's release allows for equation formatting using LaTex to be used with our Drag and Drop feature. See a preview below, and take a look at our deep dive on creating and editing Drag and Drop questions for more details

When creating a new Drag and Drop component, click LaTex at the bottom of the component.

Use the syntax \droptarget{numberID} to create a drop target. For example, \droptarget{1} would render as

If you wanted to have students drag and drop the correct variables for an equation, such as for kinetic energy, you can do that!