Thank you for your patience, we have completed the new interface update for ManageBac.
You are probably wondering why we keep changing things, given that this is the second time in less than six months.
The short answer is we were not happy with the old design.
The full answer is that the March update did not address the nuances that existed between the three programmes – in particular for PYP, where curriculum planning by teachers was the main focus area versus the DP and MYP, where students were more engaged in the system.
The structure that worked for DP & MYP did not support PYP well, and it was a mistake for us to make that assumption (e.g. to require e-mails for PYP student users among many other tiny things).
We learned our lesson and this update is a reflection of that together with an improved design that we have borrowed from our admissions & enrollment system OpenApply, which was built earlier this summer.
In summary, these are some of the key design and functional changes:
- Streamlined navigation between the three programmes (DP, MYP, PYP).
- New and improved blank slate screens (i.e. what you see when you first login prior to setup).
- Focused the PYP system on two core areas: (1) planning the Units of Inquiry and (2) Assessment & Reporting.
- Simplified PYP navigation by eliminating unnecessary and infrequently used tabs (e.g. IB Manager, Groups, Messages, Files).
- All information in the PYP system is now centered on the Units of Inquiry.
- Improved the report card template manager with helpful hints and a smoother PDF report generation process.
- Greater flexibility in PYP reporting to allow for assessment of learning outcomes within each subject, more than one criteria (e.g. Achievement vs. Effort) and optional comments.
- Allowed the Scope & Sequence to be defined by Grade (or Year) levels, rather than only via Phases 1-5.
- Allowed for the bulk CSV import of Scope & Sequence data to enable you to easily build in your standards & benchmarks.
- Added custom and criterion options & rubrics in the MYP and DP settings, which allow you to define custom fields or criteria for your term grades submission (e.g. if you want to add a specific assessment criterion for Language A in DP only).
That’s all for today folks, but we will keep you posted on new changes as they are released. There is still a lot of work in-progress that is not on this deploy, so we will be posting updates here and on Twitter with higher frequency over the next few weeks.
Help tutorials and QuickStart guides will be updated by the end of the day Wednesday. If you notice anything funny, please submit a support request in the lower right hand corner and we will look into it straight away.
