On September 23rd, 2021 you'll find a whole set of new features in your school that enable you to take a people-first approach to guiding your learners and giving timely feedback.
Tip: You can follow along, view recorded live sessions, and more in the Season 2 Path:
Here's a tour of every core feature launching with Season 2:
Home > People
Visible to everyone
Your Home Screen now includes two areas:
1) Paths: All the courses you're learning, teaching, or designing. This area works like before, so there's nothing to relearn.
2) People: A new screen that helps you start People-first. You can assess progress and give feedback all from one screen.
On the People screen, you'll see all of the members of your Cohorts and Mentor Groups (a new feature we'll cover up ahead).
You can view people in two ways:
Active: helps you spot which members in your group are currently learning or perhaps dropping off.
Groups: manage the members of your Mentor Groups and Cohorts all in one screen.
๐ก Tip: use the search feature to quickly find anyone. You can also search for "waiting" or "feedback" to see everyone who has something that needs review.
Profile Cards
Visible to staff members with access. (Coming soon for learners too.)
When you tap or click on any person, their Profile Card appears to the side. Each Profile Card shows a member's picture, name, last active time, and a link to email them.
Below this information, you'll find three helpful areas that organize everything you might want to do for a person all in one place:
1) Paths: All the course paths they're taking or have already completed.
You can click into any course path to see what steps they've completed, skipped, or are pending review.
๐ก Tip: If you notice a learner seems to be stuck on a particular step, tap that step to open the Feedback panel and send them a message - they'll get a notification with your message and a link to the step they left off on.
2) Activity: A timeline of a learner's activity across all the paths they're in. From here, you'll have one-tap access to their discussion posts and replies, step completions, new course registrations, and more.
๐ก Tip: if learners complete multiple steps in one session, you'll also see a time estimate which is a great way to get a sense of how long people spend learning through different lessons.
3) Review: An all-new section that includes a learner's completions that are pending review or reviewed in the past all in one place.
Select a completion, and the feedback panel will appear on the same screen, so there's no need to navigate in and out of paths and scorecards to give feedback or grade work.
๐กTip: use the dropdown to reveal any person's step completions that are pending review, already reviewed, and more.
Add to Path
For administrators. (Coming soon for teachers, mentors, and moderators)
Mentors help each learner explore just the right next path for them. Now you can easily add to any individual learner's personal path in just a few taps:
You can add as many course paths as you'd like, select the cohorts they should join, and even include a personal message.
Once you've added to a learner's path, they'll be notified and see it as ready to start on their Home > Learn screen right away, without needing to click an invitation link first.
Review-friendly Submit Blocks
For path designers, teachers, mentors, and moderators.
Speaking of giving feedback, we have two updates to Submit Blocks for you that make it easier than ever to collect work and review it. Here's what's new:
1) Submit multiple files & file types
Learners can now upload multiple files โ images, docs, etc. โ to a Submit block so there's no need to create different blocks for each aspect of a project.
You can use the "any file" option
2) Preview files without downloading
Now you can preview submitted Word Docs, images, PDFs, and more without having to add yet another downloaded file to your desktop:
Mentor Groups
Managed by Administrators; visible to Mentors and Group Admins.
Mentor Groups are an entirely new way of offering personal guidance to anyone using Pathwright. If you're a mentor, coach, or tutor who personally guides people through a tailored learning experience, then you'll want to give them a try. Here's how they work:
As an Administrator, you can create a new Group in two places:
The "Manage" button on your Home > People screen.
Your School Dashboard > Community > Groups.
Each Group has three member roles:
Member: anyone who you'd like to coach, tutor, or personally guide across all the learning paths they take.
Mentor: someone responsible for guiding each member of the Group and giving them feedback on reviewable work. Mentors also receive in-app and email notifications whenever a member submits a step that's marked for review, even if they aren't a teacher or moderator for the cohort.
Group Admin: a new staff role that can add members to a Group, assign roles, and create sub-groups.
Mentors see all the members of their Groups on their Home > People tab with single tap access to their Profile Cards and everything they need to guide each person.
Group Admins see all the members of their Groups as well as the additional tools for organizing and managing the Groups. But Group Admins don't receive in-app or email notifications for reviewing submissions.
Ways to use Mentor Groups
Over the past three years, we've developed Mentor Groups in beta with an increasing number of partners. But just about everyone organizes and uses their Groups to educate in a different way.
We saw so many different uses of Groups during the beta that we can't wait to see how people use them more widely. But we know it can also feel a little overwhelming to start out, so here are a few starter ideas:
Engage your team's experts: invite your team's leaders and experts to mentor team members as they learn new skills.
Offer 1:1 coaching: offer personal coaching and feedback (perhaps as a premium subscription option) in addition to or instead of teacher-led courses.
Create a competency-based education program: instead of a traditional course-based approach, design your paths to teach specific skills and knowledge expertise. Then use the mentor features to help each learner take a unique path through all the skills instead of moving along with a cohort or schedule.
If you'd like to explore creative ways to take a mentor approach to your teaching, we'd recommend signing up to join Christian in an Ed Labs session
Mentor Groups Pricing
Every plan includes at least one Mentor Group with all the features above. You can upgrade to create more Groups anytime.
Here are the details:
Trial account: 1 group
Starter: 1 group
Essentials: 5 groups
Complete: 20 groups
Enterprise: Unlimited groups
Mentor Digest
A new weekly email with everything you need to know to keep your group on track week to week.
The email digest includes:
Pending review: Every step that needs to be reviewed or graded along with how long it's been waiting. Use this to give timely feedback without letting anything slip through the cracks.
Progress last week: a snapshot of each group member's progress (or lack of progress) for every course path they've started. Use these snapshots to keep tabs on where learners are focused (or not focused), and intervene as necessary.
๐กTip: you can turn the Mentor Digest off or on for any Group where you're a Mentor or Group Admin by using the Group Options menu:
Pricing Plan Updates
If you're on any standard plan, the good news is that you'll have access to one Mentor Group for your account as soon as we launch (and your plan fees will not change.)
The number of Mentor Groups included with your account will vary by plan:
The Starter Plan includes one Mentor Group
The Essentials Plan includes five Mentor Groups
The Complete Plan includes twenty Mentor Groups
The Enterprise Plan includes unlimited Mentor Groups
Not sure which plan is right for you? Check out our plan guide.
Season 2 Feature Drops
Each Season comes with a bundle of new features at launch and continues with a series of Feature Drops.
Feature Drops expand what you can do with Pathwright around the Season themeโso in this case, Mentorship.
Find more on the completed Drops for Season 2 here:
Season 2: Mentor > Drop 1: Inbox - give timely personal feedback in one place
Season 2: Mentor > Drop 2: Make Reviewable - how to easily share personal feedback on projects, reflections, assessments and more
Enhanced Profiles - upcoming