Administrative Staff Release Notes

For assistance with logging into Elentra Collaborate, please either reset your password or contact collaborate@elentra.org.

Technical Release Notes

The Elentra Consortium relies on participant contributions in order to continue expanding the features we offer. Schools frequently develop features that they require but that might be useful to other consortium members as well.

If you have an idea for a new or improved component of Elentra we recommend speaking to a project manager or software developer at your local institution. They can reach out to other schools within the consortium to identify potential solutions or overlapping needs. Beginning in February, 2021 the Elentra Consortium introduced a Request for Change process, administered through the Elentra ME Product Management Committee. Consortium participants should use this process to facilitate any substantial changes to the core product.

Together, we'll continue to build a great integrated teaching and learning platform.

At present our monthly webinars are not posted on this site, but can be found on our Elentra Collaborate Intranet Portal https://collaborate.elentra.org/community/elentra-learn. If you are employed at a consortium member school and wish to access a past webinar and have not been added to the Elentra Collaborate site, please contact Alice Rush-Rhodes on Slack or via email (arush@queensu.ca).

Past webinar topics include:

Elentra Learn #43 (Oct. 2022) - What's New in Elentra ME 1.24

Elentra Learn #42 (April 2022) - What's New in Elentra ME 1.23

Elentra Learn #41 (Nov. 2021) - What's New in Elentra ME 1.22

Elentra Learn #40 (May 2021) - What's New in Elentra ME 1.21

Elentra Learn #39 (January 2021) - What's New in Elentra ME 1.20

Elentra Learn #38 (Nov. 18, 2020) - Workflows in Elentra ME 1.19

Bonus Content (Sept. 2020) - Team-Based Learning in Elentra ME 1.19

Elentra Learn #37 (Sept. 16, 2020) - What's New in Elentra ME 1.19

Elentra Learn #36 (August 12, 2020) - Curriculum Mapping in Elentra ME 1.18+)

Bonus Content (July 2020) - Absence Management Module in Elentra ME 1.18

Elentra Learn #35 (July 22, 2020) - Clinical Experience: Lotteries in Elentra ME 1.18

Elentra Learn #34 (June 3, 2020) - What's New in Elentra ME 1.18

Elentra Learn #33 (May 13, 2020) - Rolling Forward to a New Academic Year (ME 1.18)

Elentra Learn #32 (April 8, 2020) - Clinical Experience Rotation Schedule in Elentra ME 1.18

Elentra Learn #31 (March 11, 2020) - EJS (Technical Focus)

Elentra Learn #30 (February 5, 2020) - GraphQL (Technical Focus)

Elentra Learn #29 (January 15, 2020) - CBME Program Dashboard

Elentra Learn #28 (December 18, 2019) - What's New in Elentra ME 1.17

Elentra Learn #27 (November 20, 2019) - Elentra API (Technical Focus)

Elentra Learn #26 (October 23, 2019) - Elentra JS 2.0 (Technical Focus)

Elentra Learn #23 (July 17, 2019) - Introduction to Elentra CPD

Elentra Learn #22 (May 15, 2019) - What's New in Elentra ME 1.15.0

Elentra Learn #21 (April 10, 2019) - Elentra Collaborate Intranet Portal

Elentra Learn #20 (March 6, 2019) - AAMC Curriculum Inventory Report

Elentra Learn #19 (December 5, 2018) - What's New in ME 1.14

Elentra Learn #18 (November 13, 2018) - Scheduling Tools in Elentra

Elentra Learn #17 (September 5th, 2018) - How to Contribute to Elentra as a Developer

Elentra Learn #16 (August 8th, 2018) - What's New in Elentra 1.13

Elentra Learn #15 (July 11, 2018) - Distributions in Assessment and Evaluation in ME 1.12

Elentra Learn #14 (June 6, 2018) - Elentra Grab Bag: Things you might not know about ME 1.12

Elentra Learn #13 (May 2nd, 2018) - User Experience Development and Process

Entrada Learn #12 (April 4th, 2018) - What's New In Entrada ME 1.12

Entrada Learn #11 (March 7th, 2018) - Using the Entrada API

Entrada Learn #10 (February 7th, 2018) - Communities (types, pages, etc.)

Entrada Learn #9 (December 6th, 2017) - Curriculum Search, Explorer and Matrix

Entrada Learn #8 (November 22nd, 2017) Competency-Based Medical Education in Entrada ME 1.11

Entrada Learn #7 (November 8th, 2017) - Curriculum Management in Entrada ME 1.11

Entrada Learn #6 (October 4th, 2017) - Deep Dive into Exams in Entrada ME 1.10

Entrada Learn #5 (August 30th, 2017) - Deep Dive into Assessment & Evaluation in Entrada ME 1.10

Entrada Learn #4 (July 26th, 2017) - What’s New in Entrada ME 1.10

Entrada Learn #3 (June 28th, 2017) - Setup and Maintenance of Courses in Entrada ME 1.9

Entrada Learn #2 (May 31st, 2017) - Deep Dive into Entrada ME 1.9 Gradebook

Entrada Learn #1 (April 26th, 2017) - What’s New in Entrada ME 1.9

There are a number of support and communication channels used by the Elentra Consortium in order to adequately address your support needs. If you are new to Elentra development or administration please contact your local designated Elentra Consortium contact or reach out to us at doorbell@entrada.org.

Communication Channels

• Elentra Consortium Slack Team

• Elentra Mailing Lists (to subscribe please email arush@queensu.ca with your name, job title and institution)

  • Community List - used to distribute the agenda for the bi-weekly community call, make release announcements, promote the Elentra Engage conference, and raise general issues

  • Elentra Learn List - used to distribute invitations to webinars, and other training activities including monthly informal chats

  • Developer List - used to distribute technical information and high priority security announcements; used to promote monthly developer chats

• (optional) Weekly School Check-In Web Conference

• Bi-Weekly Elentra Consortium Community Call

• Elentra Learn Training Webinar

• Annual Elentra Engage Conference

We recommend using Elentra on Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

We recommend Microsoft Edge based on Chromium (released in January 2020).

Elentra no longer supports Internet Explorer.

There are over 200 database settings options in Elentra to allow you to meet the needs of your organization. These setting options are controlled through the database, not the user interface, and therefore must be enable/disabled by a developer. You can view the complete list of database settings in the Technical Documentation. Additionally, each feature landing page (e.g., Gradebook) in this documentation includes the database settings relevant to that feature.

For ME 1.23, the following database settings were introduced:

• assessment_reminder_by_target_enabled

• assessment_reminder_limit_enabled

• event_resource_external_upload_default_timeframe

• exams_purpose_mode

You have landed at our administrative user training documentation. A range of topics are listed on the left and clicking on each will open a subset of menu options. We also recommend using the search tool in the top right.

If you do not find what you are looking for, please feel free to reach out on the Slack #help channel if you have access to the Elentra Slack team or submit a question to questions@elentra.org.

For additional documentation including technical documentation and the Elentra Mobile User Guide, please see here.

In Elentra, organisation refers to an entity using and managing its own curriculum map version, layouts, tags, courses/programs, learning events, gradebooks, etc. Examples of organisations include undergraduate medicine and postgraduate or graduate medicine. Another example could be nursing or rehabilitation therapy.

You can add and manage organisations through Admin>System Settings. While Medtech:Admin and Staff:Admin users have access to System Settings, ONLY Medtech:Admin can add a new organisation.

How to add a new organisation

• Note that this tool is only available to Medtech:Admin users.

• Navigate to Admin>System Settings.

• Click 'Add New Organisation'.

• Provide the required information noting the following: Interface Template: Stock Elentra has one default interface. If you are testing things on an installation with dummy data provided by Elentra, and have different interface options available, we recommend using them only if it has been recommended to you.

• Click 'Save'.

Additional interface template information: The Elentra template is entirely configurable by a developer and if you would like additional interface templates, that is customization that your institution can do. Many schools apply their own branding to the look of Elentra or you might create different templates for different organisations using your installation of Elentra (e.g., undergraduate and postgraduate or graduate medical education organizations).

How to edit an existing organisation's metadata

• Navigate to Admin>System Settings.

• Click on the name of the organisation you want to manage.

• Click on the pencil icon and 'Edit' in the top right to change the existing information.

• Make the required changes and click 'Save' in the bottom right.

Assessment characteristics should be configured if you plan to use course gradebooks. Within a gradebook you will need to define the assessment characteristic for each assessment added. Each assessment type has different extended options for recording data (e.g. the type of included questions for quizzes and exams, or whether to track late submissions for papers and projects).

Elentra comes with a set of assessment types. These include assessment, exam, paper, presentation, project, quiz, RAT, rating, and reflection. Within each assessment type you can further specify assessment characteristics (e.g. oral exam, written exam, OSCE). While there is no user interface to change the list of assessment types, the assessment characteristics list is completely configurable through the user interface. Assessment characteristics can also be mapped to MedBiquitous Assessment Methods if required by an organisation. Whatever is created as an assessment characteristic can later be applied to the assessments listed in a course gradebook (see image above).

• Navigate to Admin>System Settings.

• Click the name of the organisation for which you want to manage assessment characteristics.

• Click 'Assessment Types' from the left sidebar. A list of existing assessment characteristics grouped by assessment type will be displayed.

• Click 'Add Characteristic' to add a new assessment characteristic.

• Complete the required fields. The description is optional and is not often seen in other parts of Elentra. (It's possible that in the future if you mouseover an assessment characteristic you'll see its definition but that is not a current feature.)

• Click 'Save'.

• The newly added assessment characteristic will now appear on the Assessment Types list.

• To modify an existing assessment characteristic click on it.

• Edit it as needed and click 'Save'.

• To delete existing assessment characteristics click the checkbox beside the characteristic you wish to delete.

• Click 'Delete Selected'.

• Confirm your choice.

• You will be returned to the list of Assessment Types.

Configuring grading scales allows you to apply a grading scale to course gradebooks, weighted collections, and assessments. When managing assessments you can optionally allow learners to view their results using a marking scheme (e.g. percent, numeric) and/or a grading scale (e.g. Honors, Pass, Fail). Both marking scheme and grading scale all also displayed to users when entering grades in Admin > Manage Course > Gradebook.

Currently all grading scales do require a corresponding percentage to be stored in the database and no two letter grades can share the same percentage value.

How to add a grading scale to an organization

Only users with access to Admin > System Settings (e.g., medtech:admin or staff:admin users) can edit Grading Scales.

• Navigate to Admin > System Settings.

• Click the name of the organization for which you want to manage a grading scale.

• Click 'Grading Scales' on the left sidebar.

• A default grading scale is provided. If your school only has one grading scale it may be fastest to modify the existing default scale to suit your organization's needs. If so, click on the default scale to edit it.

• To add an entirely new scale, click 'Add New Grading Scale'.

• Complete the required information noting the following:

  • Title: Provide a title for the grading scale. If the grading scale applies only to one cohort of learners or is in effect for a specific period of time that might be useful to include it the title. Users working in course gradebooks will see the grading scale title when they are specifying a grading scale to use in a collection or assessment.

  • Ranges: This is where you enter the grading scale information.

    • The system requires that there be a 0 start percentage to be valid so make sure to include one.

    • The information you provide in the Letter Grade column is what will display to learners if you choose to display their results in the Gradebook using a grading scale.

    • GPA is not required and currently doesn't integrate with Elentra unless you have a customization.

    • Notes is optional and is not seen outside the Grading Scale page.

    • Click 'Add Range' to add additional rows.

    • The rows will reorder as you add them so that they display in order. You can click the arrow in the Start % column header to show the percentages ascending or descending.

    • Note that you do not enter a number to denote the top of the range.

    • To delete a range click the red X icon in the far right column of the appropriate range.

• A Description for the grading scale can be provided. This is optional and is not seen outside the Grading Scale page.

• When you've added all the required information, click 'Save'.

• You will get a green success message and be redirected to the list of existing grading scales.\

• To edit an existing grading scale click on its title.

• Make the necessary changes.

• Click 'Save'.

• To delete an existing grading scale click the checkbox beside its title.

• Click 'Delete Selected'.

After your Elentra installation is active, you'll need to configure some system settings before using other modules and features of the platform. Users with the group:role of medtech:admin or staff:admin will be able to access Admin > System Settings. Here you'll be able to configure things like assessment types, event types, location management, grading scales, and departments. Generally this is content that will remain consistent across an entire organization and will not frequently change.

Note that these system settings are at the organization level in Elentra so you can have different system settings for different organizations running on the same installation of Elentre (e.g., undergraduate and graduate medical education).

Which system settings you configure really depends on how your organization will be using Elentra. See the list below for some quick start ideas.

• If you want to add users: configure departments (optional) and build cohorts before importing users

• If you want to create courses: build curriculum layout and periods in Admin > Manage Curriculum

• If you want to schedule learning events: configure learning event types and locations (you'll need courses via Admin>Manage Courses and for rotation scheduling you'll also need to build blocks in the relevant curriculum period but that is done in Admin > Manage Curriculum)

• If you want to input grades: configure assessment types (you'll need to configure curriculum layout and periods, and build courses as well but that will be completed elsewhere)

• If you want to report using the curriculum inventory: configure assessment and learning event types, and curriculum layout and periods (you'll also need courses, events, and gradebooks setup but those are managed elsewhere)

Instructions for managing some system settings are included here. Other instructions are included with their related module. See a sample list of system settings below.

Assessment Flag Severity is a feature that allows an organization to optionally set levels of severity on prompted responses in Assessment and Evaluation items. Instead of treating prompted responses as either used or not, you can create a more nuanced approach to acting on a prompted response item (i.e., if it’s flagged at a certain level, do something).

The default behaviour of a flagged item response on an assessment form is to simply set the “flag” property of the response to 1. On submission of the assessment, flagged responses are checked, and if a particular distribution indicates that specific users (or groups) be notified of a flagged response, an email goes out to them.

The Flag Severity functionality adds another layer on top of this (in addition to also being independent of a distribution). Instead of simply setting the flag property to 1, it sets it to the primary key of the record in the flag severity table.

In the Competency Based Medical Education feature, there’s a flag called “CBME Concerns Notify Directors and Coordinators”; if enabled via an Elentra setting, program coordinators and directors (of the relevant programs) are notified when items that are flagged with this particular severity are submitted. From the forms interface, if there are any organisation specific flag severities defined, the item editing interface presents the editor with an option to select one of the predefined flags (instead of presenting them with a simple checkbox). Form templates (i.e., CBME on demand assessments) use this flag severity functionality to notify program directors and coordinators when someone submits an assessment where the “Concerns” rubric has one of the responses set to “Yes” (meaning there are professionalism concerns, for example).

A list of departments, divisions, faculties, schools or units can be maintained in Elentra and applied in user profiles. This information is in turn used in some reporting tools (e.g. Faculty Teaching Report By Department).

If you import users using a CSV, you can include a column for department and add multiple departments as needed.

How to manage the list of departments

• Log in as Medtech:Admin or Staff:Admin.

• Navigate to Admin>System Settings.

• Click on the name of the organisation you want to manage departments for.

• Click 'Departments' from the left sidebar.

• Click 'Add Department' to add a new entry.

• Complete the required information noting the following: Department Type: You can select a department type from a dropdown menu. The options include department, division, faculty, school, and unit. There is no user interface to change this list.

• Click 'Save'.

• To delete existing entries, click the checkbox beside the item name and then scroll down and click 'Delete Selected'; confirm your choice.

The list of departments will display alphabetically.

Linking departments and divisions

As of Elentra ME 1.12 there is no user interface to link departments and divisions. There is space in the database to create a relationship between a department and its affiliated divisions and a developer with access to the database can do this work if it is required by your organisation. In a user profile you can assign someone to multiple departments and divisions in order to show their multiple affiliations.

Custom Profile Fields

Each department can configure custom profile fields to collect additional information from their members. This allows an administrator to define the custom profile field in terms of the type of information to collect and then create a space in the user's profile for them to provide said information.

Creating a Custom Profile Field

• In an administrator role, navigate to Admin>System Settings, pick the appropriate organization if required, and click Department from the left sidebar.

• Click on the appropriate department.

• Click Department Profile Fields

• Click Add Field

• Provide the relevant information, noting the following:

  • Field Type allows you to customize how information can be collected. The options are:

    • Rich text

    • Plain text

    • One Line text

    • Checkbox

    • External URL (e.g. for people to provide a link to their research project page)

  • Indicate using the checkbox if this custom field will be required

• Click Add

• The newly created field will display on a list of custom profile fields. You can edit, delete, or reorder the custom profile fields using the pencil and trash icons, or the Reorder button.

Completing a Custom Profile Field as a User

Users can complete their custom profile fields in their user profile, accessible by clicking on the user's name in the top right. Within their profile tab options, they will see a Department Specific Information tab and can provide the required information there. In the example below, there is a one line text item.

Assessment response categories (e.g., excellent, good, needs improvement) are used when creating items in the Assessment and Evaluation Module. The categories can also be applied to specific rating scales and when those rating scales are applied to items the response categories will pre-populate.

Adding Assessment Response Categories

Response categories are displayed in the order they were added to the system, so use the search function to quickly look for existing categories and prevent creating duplicates. Results will appear as you type.

• Navigate to Admin > System Settings.

• Click the name of the organisation for which you want to manage assessment response categories.

• Click 'Assessment Response Categories' from the left sidebar.

• Click 'Add Category'.

• Enter the response category.

• By default, all categories will be available in reports so uncheck the box if you don't want the category to be available in reports.

• Click 'Save'. Remember your new category will be added to the end of the list.

• If multiple categories have been created and are overly similar, or you have imported data from another tool and have duplicate categories, you can merge selected categories. To do this, click the checkboxes beside the categories to merge, then scroll down and click Merge Selected.

• To delete categories, click the checkbox beside the category you wish to delete and then scroll down and click 'Delete Selected'.

Use of assessment response categories in scales

Use of scales when building assessment and evaluation items

This page does not need to be configured. It is part of an old clerkship lottery functionality which has now been replaced.

You can configure a list of hot topics and assign those topics to learning events. If you do you can optionally indicate if a hot topic was 'major' or 'minor' when assigned to an event.

Before you do this please be aware that there is very limited reporting for hot topics applied to events, and hot topics can not be applied elsewhere in Elentra (e.g. to gradebook assessments, exam questions, etc.). We recommend that instead of using Hot Topics you create a curriculum tag set that includes the things you want to track in your learning events.