Hello again WISE community!
We hope all is well with all of you. We enjoyed a bit of warm (hot) weather here in Berkeley with temps rising to the mid 80s for a couple days! Back to cooler temps and even some more rain this past week, but looks like the warm weather will return again soon. We’re definitely moving into spring/summer mode here, as the semester at UC Berkeley winds down.
Dynamic Components are live!
As mentioned in our last couple updates, we’ve been working on the new Dynamic Components feature that allows WISE authors to show and hide step content based on a variety of criteria options. We’re happy to announce that this feature is now live! You can read more about it and see it in action in this announcement post.
Step authoring improvements
We’ve been working on improvements to the WISE curriculum authoring tools to make them easier to use and understand. One example of this is a change to the Step authoring interface that we recently implemented. Now each component in a WISE step is clearly delineated with a containing border and can be collapsed and expanded for editing:
Clicking or tapping on a component’s header will expand or collapse it. “Expand All” and “Collapse All” buttons are also provided to quickly allow authors to view or hide all the step content.
This structure allows authors to more easily view the overall content of each step and the order of its components. The new interface should also help curriculum authors more clearly identify and select the components they want to modify. We plan to implement more improvements in the future, including supporting drag-and-drop for reordering step content, as well as more intuitive tools for copying, deleting, and batch editing step content.
UC Berkeley artificial intelligence lecture series
Throughout the spring semester, we’ve been watching and discussing intriguing and thought-provoking talks from UC Berkeley’s lecture series on the status and future of AI in society. As a group, we’ve been discussing the implications that emerging AI and machine-learning technologies are having on society and how these technologies can be understood and applied in the context of a variety of human experiences. We’re especially invested in continuing to explore how AI and large language models can be used and applied in educational contexts to help both students and teachers in the learning process. We’d love to hear any thoughts you may have on these topics!
Technology update for WISE researchers
Finally, the WISE technology team presents periodic updates to the wider community of WISE researchers and curriculum developers here at Berkeley. We wanted to provide a link to slides from our most recent update a couple weeks ago. Check it out for a quick overview of some of the additional features and improvements we’ve been working on!
Thanks again for reading and please do let us know if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions. We always love hearing from the community!
-The WISE Technology Team