The Month on the OpenLab: 1.7.23

On August 15, version 1.7.23 of the OpenLab was released. It included updates for all themes and plugins, as well as for WordPress and BuddyPress, the software that powers the OpenLab. The release also included a few new features and plugins.

New Features

1. One of the new features included in this release is a change to course cloning functionality, called “shared cloning.” This feature can be enabled to allow other faculty to clone a course that is designated as available for shared cloning. This functionality will likely be especially useful for sites like Open Educational Resources (OER) and course coordination sites, but, it can be activated on any course site.

Once enabled, other faculty will be able to clone the course, creating an exact copy of the existing course, including all content created or uploaded by the course admin, which can be reused, remixed, transformed in the new version. Cloned versions of the course will include a list of credits on the course profile and in the site sidebar with attribution to any of the original courses. If the original course was itself a clone of another faculty member’s course, that course, as well as all previous iterations, would be included in the credits list as well.

You can find instructions on shared cloning in our help section.

2. Another new feature is the addition of an OER badge, which appears on the avatar of a course or project designated as an OER. Courses and projects with an OER badge can also be searched for in course and project directories. You can read more about OER badges in our help section.

3. OpenLab members can now use “@” mentions in a few places around the site. In the four places listed below, when you type the “@” symbol and then begin typing another member’s display name or username, suggestions will appear after a moment:

1. When writing a private message
2. When writing a discussion topic or reply in a course, project, or club.
3. When writing a post on a site Dashboard
4. When writing a comment on a site

After published, the @-mention will link to the member’s profile, and in all cases except a private message, the person mentioned will receive an email notification.

New Plugins

We added two new plugins in this release:

1. Embed Comment Images, provides an easy way to include images in comments.

2. TablePress provides a very robust but simple way to add tables to any post or page. It is mobile-friendly and allows anything from simple to more complex tables that can be sorted or filtered, or split into multiple pages.

As always, please contact us with any questions!