Xerte 3.13, released on 31 October 2024, includes a number of significant innovations and additional features. These foreshadow radical and exciting developments in the next major release, summarised briefly at the end of this post.
In 3.13 new roles have been created in the Management page, which enable institutions to allocate different responsibilities to a wider range of their staff, while at the same time ensuring the integrity and security of their installation. You can, for example, give admin staff access to user accounts, enabling them to create, edit and close accounts and groups, but without access to critical installation settings.
Two new XOT pages have been added in 3.13. Audio Recorder embeds a recorder in a Xerte page so that learners can record short audio clips, with the option to compare them to an example piece of audio supplied by the project author. Compare Image allows learners to use a slider to compare two images, with one image superimposed on the other. This can be used to compare, for example, “before” and “after” images.
New features or enhancements have been made to 18 existing XOT pages. These include: Tailored Feedback for the Inventory and Opinion pages, allowing for differentiated feedback depending on performance profiles; better customisation options for the Results page; the option to set scored pages (e.g. Categories, MCQ, Gap Fill: Fill in Blank) for use as “opinion” tasks, where responses are not scored.
In Bootstrap there have also been several enhancements, including the following: a number of supported video platforms have been added; any Glossary page can now be linked to from other pages; a transcript can now be added to any audio section.
There have been significant accessibility enhancements in both XOT and Bootstrap: all drag and drop tasks can now be performed by mouse-click alone; all links are now underlined as standard; all images can now be captioned, providing an alternative to alt text for screen readers; colour contrasts for text on background have been checked for all standard XOT themes, and a number of appropriate adjustments have been made.
We are very excited about the next major release, which will be a real game-changer for users. There will be major improvements to the look and feel of the Workspace, allowing for a more personalised interface and better support for novice users. Generative AI tools will be integrated with editors, providing optional assistance in the drafting of text and interactive tasks, saving authors a lot of time. Initial feedback from users attending sessions on these features, during the November Xerte Conference, have been extremely positive.
For more information go to the 3.13 page in Xerte Release Notes.
Jonathan Smith
The Xerte Project