The Populi development team put in some overtime last night, taking the application down for about nine minutes in the wee, wee hours to release the newest update.

You probably noticed when you first logged in: we have a new look for our login screen. Beyond that, we improved course cloning—now the instructor can clone courses, and can clone different elements from different terms (as in, "this term's assignments and that term's reading list"). There's a new option to show by-degree GPA's on transcripts, should your school need it (just contact us to flip that switch). And under the hood, an across-the-board speed increase in how we deliver pages to your browser; this will really help our users when they have to use a slower internet connection.

Oh, and one more thing...

Course management features.

Populi can now effectively handle your college's online learning programs with the addition of tests, lessons, and forums. Online testing features include question-creation, automatic grading for certain question types, partial-credit options, time limits, images, and more. Lessons feature a WYSIWYG content editor, lesson-specific links and files, assignments... and forums, which are open to faculty and students, and which also integrate with the course Performance Dashboard when it comes time for professors to evaluate their students.

Of course, the new features are integrated with Populi's other course management features like assignments, gradebooks, and cloning & syncing.

With the addition of the new course features, Populi now incorporates into one program a breadth of features that usually requires three or four different software packages.

And, as usual, numerous minor enhancements, patches, security upgrades, and bugfixes accompanied the big-ticket items on this release. Users can read a thorough list of the new release features in the online help system (just look for the September 10, 2009 Release post in the “Release Notes” forum). And, as always, please feel free to contact us with your questions and comments.