Versal Releases Version 3.0
Versal, a San Francisco-based learning platform for companies and educators, has just released Versal 3.0. It’s designed to encourage the sharing of knowledge in new and creative ways and engage learners on different levels.
Here’s a breakdown of the new features:
- Course Creator: The course user interface (UI) in Versal 3.0 is rebalanced to help authors develop more engaging content with Versal’s interactive gadgets. And when learners view the course, the new UI provides a more natural focal area to keep learners progressing smoothly, according to a news release.
- Collaborative authoring: A longtime feature of Versal gets a significant makeover with real-time commenting. Now multiple people can work together simultaneously and communicate in the context of a lesson.
- Gadgets: They’re the building blocks of Versal’s course authoring platform, and Versal is introducing several important new ones designed to bring content to life.
- With the new Curriculum gadget, users can deliver a scheduled learning path to help students navigate prerequisites and a complete curriculum of courses.
- Users may record voice-overs or upload audio directly within lessons with the new Audio gadget. Users can supplement written and interactive content with verbal context, record quiz instructions and more. Users can even record multiple versions in different languages — they’re auto-detected by web browsers to serve the version that matches the learner.
- Users can add topic-specific learner discussions, creating in-lesson forums and encouraging collaboration among users with the new Discussion gadget. They can also schedule a time for an online discussion and review course material live with a group of learners.
- Users may also build in-course surveys to solicit feedback from learners or course topics, the learning experience and more. This feature includes single response, multiple response and free-response question types.
- Assessment results (premium accounts): Phase one includes .CSV downloads of quiz results (only available for new quizzes completed today and onward). Publishers can download all results or filter based on several criteria. The .CSV files offer easy portability of data into other systems.
- Native course embedding (premium accounts): In addition to its standard embed system, Versal has added a native option for embedding clean, no scrolling, no branding courses into a website, intranet or blog.
For more information on Versal 3.0 and the platform’s new features, visit the company’s website.
About the Author
Richard Chang is associate editor of THE Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].