How can we improve Packback?
Packback's product team wants to hear your suggestions about how we can make the Packback platform more useful, friendly, and curiosity-inspiring!
Here's what each of the statuses below mean:
Under Consideration: We are aware of this suggestion and agree that it could be valuable, but are still gathering data.
Planned: This suggestion is in our product backlog and is planned for release in the next 3-6 months.
Not Planned: Based on our product purpose and current team resources, we do not expect this suggestion to be worked on in the next 6 months.
Already exists: This suggestion already existing in Packback.
Done: This improvement is now live in Packback!
Please note: This list does not reflect Packback's full roadmap; the list below is limited to improvements and iteration on existing features in the Packback platform. Large-scale features are not included here.
Reminder notification to students to complete their posts before the deadline if they haven't yet
This suggestion is to send a reminder alert by email and in-app to students ~1 day before their weekly course deadline to complete their Packback practice work, if ...
Allow instructors to require specific formatting for Citations
Add a tool like easy bib which could check that students follow guidelines for the citation requirements their professor set
Indicate which students have had Featured Posts
I try to distribute the Featured Posts across students so that all are getting praise over the course of the term. My suggestion is to create an easier way to see ...
Introduce "Topic" tagging on posts to make it possible to navigate the main feed by topic.
This suggestion is to add the ability for posts to be tagged by topic (e.g. "Chapter 1" or "Mitosis"), and enable navigation/search in the community by topic. ...
Allow users to merge 2 accounts and/or connect multiple school emails to the same account.
When students have multiple emails for the same school, or have been enrolled at multiple institutions while using Packback, accounts are currently tied to a single ...
View the entirety of each student's threads (question and replies) on one scrollable page.
Currently, we have to click the student's names in the grade book to access their posts. We then must click "View Post" to see the entire thread, including the ...
Hiding the Learner Leaderboard from students
Making it possible to hide or disable the Learner Leaderboard if professors don't want the students competing with one another.
Add filter "unread."
An unread filter could show posts that the user hasn't read through yet. This could help us interact with new material easily.
Do not include instructor in the Packback Participation reports
I do not need to record or upload my instructor Packback scores to Canvas. But if I forget to delete the row for my information (when I edit the report in Excel ...
Update the Learner Leaderboard to reset rankings weekly (by default).
Currently, the Learner Leaderboard shows an "all-time" ranking only.
This suggestion is to add an additional leaderboard sort option for "This Deadline Period" ...
Allow for "make up" work
It would be useful to be able to identify make-up work in the grade book. Right now, when I assign make-up work, I have to manually identify that the student did ...
Award half credit for LATE questions in a weekly assignment
I have spoken to a few professors who would like to see the ability to award half credit for questions posted late. The default is a 0 for late questions, and then ...
Instructor ability to download all student questions and responses in date range
It would be useful for providing individual feedback through the LMS grade book, as well as saving example questions and responses for future semesters, if the ...
Display alert for post that was previously moderated for course team
Create a badge (like the coaching hand) that shows the course team a post that was previously moderated, and republished. That way they can review more closely to ...
Provide option to require students to post before seeing other posts for the week
Most LMS discussion boards have an option that requires students to post on a given discussion board before being able to see other posts. I wonder if allowing this ...
Allow responses to supporting and counter points
I would like to be able to respond to responses, and for students to do the same. That way, a back-and-forth conversation can emerge more easily, rather than ...
Allow me to generate a report on my own, based on my own parameters
I want to be able to do boolean searches on various fields to build my own report. Here are examples of fields to make available:
1) Number of sparks received for ...
Navigation while viewing a post
When I'm in a post I want to go forward or backward to sequentially read posts. This is better than clicking back or returning to the entire list and then clicking again.
Expand/collapse format for discussions
When responding to a question, you'd then have to click twice to get back to the main community discussion. This could be an issue when pages took a while to load. An ...
• Would be nice if the “back to community” button took us back to the individual section we were jus
• Every time I read a complete post and I want to go back, I press the “back to community” button.
• But the problem is that it goes back to ALL my students, not the ...
Validate citations upon posting
Curiosity points seem to be awarded for any value entered into the citation field. Packback should verify citations upon submission. Instructors should be given the ...
Make text highlighting possible for instructors
Because I select the featured post of the week, and students will be tested on the content, I realized it would be useful to have a highlighting tool where I could ...
Freeze header row on the Participation Report
When you are grading and scrolling through the students in the report, the headers scroll out of view, making it difficult to tell what each column refers to. Freeze ...
Auto-moderate posts containing gibberish
Students posting nonsensical words or using Loren Ipsum text should be auto-moderated. One student wrote a post that was relevant for the first 1.5 paragraphs, but ...
Allow Instructors to choose when the Curious Reader's Digest is sent out.
Professor Feedback:
If faculty can choose what day the Curious Reader Digest gets submitted, it could be a lot more helpful. For my students, very few students ...
Add "response to professor's question" option in the gradebook
Instructors requiring students to respond to their question at some point during the semester, currently have no way of checking who did it and who didn't by looking ...
Packback Questions Should support Multi-factor Auth
To increase the security of student accounts on Packback Questions, it should support an additional form of authentication, such as two-factor auth.
Sliding scale for CP
A professor suggested that we allow a range of CPs to award points like this:
Curiosity score <55 = 1 point
Score 55-70 = 2 points
Score 71-100 = 3 points ...
Be able to make copies of the same poll
Some professors have multiple sections of the same course and resuse polls. They don't want the students to see the prior student's responses, but want them answering ...
Allow for download of participation report to see CS for each individual post by student
Right now when the participation report is downloaded (custom or auto gradebook) - you see average curiosity scores for all posts. What would be more accessible and ...
"Lock mode" for small groups where students are unable to change section after assigned
Students can change their section at will and they do, it causes a lot of confusion and annoyance for the course team when they are able to do this.
Add built in infrastructure to do Lab Reports on Deep Dives
I think with some UI switches you could position Deep Dives for lab reports if there were some built in settings or something you could click to indicate it's a lab ...
Allow instructors to send M+M to students with highest growth
Students who have the highest growth %s are already filtered in our EM reports, so this is data we already have and are pulling. It would be really valuable to allow ...
Deep Dives - Create Tables
Professor would like students to be able to create charts and tables in Deep Dives.
Create penality for students who plagiarize multiple times in 1 term
Students who are moderated for plagiarism, say, 5x or more should face some form of penalty in either being temporarily removed from the community pending professor ...
More citation styles in Deep Dives
It's great that Deep Dives can check that students are citing their resources, but not everyone uses APA or MLA. I need to professionalize my students into using ASA ...
Identify Grading Periods when students post
My students often post too early (or too late!) If you could reword the "Post" button to identify Grading Period, or have another way of reminding them which Grading ...
Gradebook to include Packback Questions and Packback Deep Dive grades
It would be convenient to see the grades within the gradebook for the Deep Dive assignments and the Question discussions. It would be easier for my TAs and me to ...
Easier way to find great responses
I like that I can sort the Learner Leaderboard to find the best questions. I wish I could do the same for finding responses, since responses are an equally important ...
Add Additional Stats to the Custom Date Range Report
The Custom Reports feature gives a lot of great stats about the community. But more would be helpful to help gauge involvement over time, and perhaps even allow us ...
One-Page Drop-Down of "View Post" Feature
Currently, when we want to view an entire post, we need to click "View Post" and then a new window opens up. After reading the post, we must navigate back to the ...
Allow professors to schedule polls
Professors want to be able to write polls ahead of time and them release them automatically on a given date (instead of manually making them available).
Allow users to include and display pronouns on their Packback accounts
With an option for them not to display them at all if that is more comfortable for them
Add weekly student participation expectations on their main dashboard
I think it would be INCREDIBLY helpful if we had something showing students weekly expectations on either their main dashboard or even their community feed. Perhaps ...
Differentiate what type of plagiarism students are being moderated for so they know how to edit it
Explain if it's internal plagiarism vs external plagiarism vs majority quoted content. Without the differentiation, it's tough for students to edit properly
Search option within Deep Dives to build prompts and rubrics quickly
Having a search option available when building prompts and rubrics would help professors and EMs find assignments quickly without scrolling through every draft ...
Remove instructor from Leaderboard
I would like a way to exclude the instructor from the rankings on the Leaderboard. Right now I'm ranked higher than most of my students, which is misleading because I ...
Add an "Account" page, instead of having all Account options listed in dropdown menu in the top nav.
To improve the Account Settings experience on Packback, we plan to add an "Account" page where Packback users can access a menu of available account settings, instead ...
More editing tool options
It would be nice to have the strikeout option or to have the ability to have the highlight stay, not just turn into an underline. This will improve the clarity of ...