How can we Improve Packback Questions?
Packback's product team wants to hear your suggestions about how we can make Packback Questions 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.
Done: This improvement is now live in Packback Questions!
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 Questions platform. Large-scale features are not included here.
Add links to profile avatar images to make it easier to access student community profiles.
We've observed that some students do not notice that their name is 'clickable' in the community, as a way to navigate to their community-level user profile.
This ...
Under consideration
General User Experience
Add a "Request new Avatar feature" option to take in requests for new hair, features, colors, etc.
We want to make sure every learner can create an avatar that represents them in their community. If we are missing a feature (accessory, cultural garb, hair color, ...
Planned
Account Settings
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 ...
Planned
Account Settings
Option to increase curiosity scores for peer reviewed work.
Getting students to separate out reliable sources from those that are less reliable is more important than ever--think about our nation's debate over vaccines or who ...
Under consideration
Override Gradebook
Professors want the ability to override gradebook grades, possibly with a different color number, just incase there is a learning curve for students and they ask ...
Planned
Remove supporting/counter points, or change them.
The problem I have with choosing between a supporting/counter point is that I typically don't fully agree or disagree with a response that someone has. I am often ...
Under consideration
Accidental Deletion of Student Post by Prof
I was trying to delete my post and not the student’s post. Unfortunately, I made a mistake as it wasn't clear how to delete (or in fact edit) my post. My feedback ...
Planned
Is it possible to have all of the posts automatically checked for plagiarism?
A student's post was copied from a website, and I discovered it with a Google search, but I'm afraid I could be missing others, or might not catch it in time. I see ...
Under consideration
Add new course subject 'tags' for additional subjects that aren't currently available for tagging.
This is a suggestion to add some additional specific course subject 'tags', so all communities may be tagged by their most relevant subject-matter tag.
Please ...
Under consideration
Professor Tools
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 ...
Under consideration
Avatar Inclusivity and Password Help
It would be wonderful if a hearing aid could be added to the avatar options! In regards to password help, having the ability to toggle viewing the actual password ...
Under consideration
Mobile app for Packback users
Create a mobile app for Packback so that students can sign on through their smart phone!
Not planned
Add a 'praise' or highlighting method to an entire thread
Right now, at least the way I understand it, I can praise a specific post or response, but I don't see a way to highlight the whole discussion thread (question and ...
Under consideration
Better Previews of Questions/Reponses
A professor said she doesnt like the amount of clicking it takes to see everything.
She asked if the see full post button could not take you to a separate page ...
Under consideration
Stop removing the space between the last and second to last paragraphs
In the text editor, all paragraphs are spaced evenly with two line breaks between each paragraph. However, once a post is submitted, one of the line breaks between ...
Under consideration
Please Consider Improving the Hyphen Suggesting in Instant Feedback
This Professor, Cynthia McCarthy at University of Pittsburgh believes the suggestion to hyphenate "decision making" is incorrect grammar.
Under consideration
Add emojis to PBQ text box
Students would like a better way to indicate tone in their posts, especially as they're engaging in online discourse where they might not agree.
Under consideration
Add a box to the Community Creation page to identify community as Sandbox/Demo community
Problem to solve: Our reps have a process to create "Demo" communities for their professors as a way to show a customized example to their professors. We need to ...
Done
Photo Editing Abilities for Uploaded Pictures
Tools to rotate, crop, adjust brightness and contrast for uploaded pictures on questions and responses. This would be helpful for art courses who use uploaded ...
Not planned
Refined sourcing as an Instruct feature
It has been suggested many times to offer refined sourcing options. The premise would be to help students either build MLA and APA sources or even build it for them.
Under consideration
Optional leaderboard hiding
Can it be made to where only the professor can see the leaderboard and not the students? Struggling students consistently at the bottom and high achievers "fighting" ...
Under consideration
Sort Leaderboard by Section
I have 3 sections (3 classes) of the same course in my community. Having the ability to sort the data for each section individually would simplify the instructor ...
Under consideration
Allow teachers to aggregate supporting and counter points
Provide teachers a quick way to locate students supporting and counter points without having to look through entire discussion threads.
Under consideration
Make or let weekly replies be to the previous week's questions
With several years' experience using Packback, I notice a strong tendency for students to submit their weekly questions very close to the deadline, whenever the ...
Under consideration
organization of poll questions
It is _vital_ that polling questions can be organized. for example... the instructor should be able to write in class poll questions for multiple days in advance, ...
Under consideration
Allow sorting of student questions and answers by substantive criteria/search terms
Ditto, I would love to have the ability to analyze student responses/posts/question by substantive commonalities, and then, to respond, collectively but also ...
Under consideration
Add formatting tools to Feedback
Can we make 1 feedback box with formatting tools, including the ability to embed links? Make this box not fully opaque so instructors can see the post that is getting ...
Under consideration
Allow for point differentiation for Peer Responses or Instructor Responses
Professor requested for the ability to have student responses to instructor questions be worth more than responses to peer questions.
Under consideration
Can we add the half hours as possible deadline times
An instructor would like to make a deadline of 12:30 instead of just noon and 1:00 pm
Under consideration
Feedback Drafts
Allow for TAs and Professors to drafts feedback to allow for collaboration
Under consideration
Preloaded questions
"A very useful suggestion for an improvement would be to allow instructors to prepare their questions ahead of time and then activate them on Canvas when the ...
Under consideration
Allow users to download individual post (s) that can be exported as PDF or in the form of Journal
I am aware that Packback grants users genuine opportunities to download or request their contents or posts but not in the format that these posts are being presented ...
Under consideration
Print Out Weekly Discussions
I would like a capability where it is easy to print out the questions and their answers for a weekly discussion period. As an instructor it is easier to refer to a ...
Under consideration
Allow for quick view of submission points.
When I am looking at a students name and grade it would be helpful to have a quick summery of what was deducted from where . Do they have a 75/100 because one of the ...
Under consideration
Have possible names appear as you type students name
When in gradebook, I have to type the whole students name then press enter to see that student. This is sometimes troublesome when a student has three or more names. ...
Under consideration
Add Full Deadlines list to syllabus insert document
The syllabus insert document is auto-generated based on the requirements set in each community, now that there are more variable options to customize the deadlines ...
Under consideration
Suggest sources by discipline/subject
Could/Should Packback suggest sources by discipline? Maybe if the professor has had a community in the past, Packback could suggest the top 3-5 cited sources from it? ...
Under consideration
Add the citation on the curiosity feed beside the truncated post for each student
A large portion of my course focuses on information literacy. It is not so much that the student used a source, but what that actual source was. This does not factor ...
Under consideration
The system is too stringent on paragraph length.
The following comment occurs any time I link two sentences together.
"Improve readability with formatting.
- Breaking up a longer post with formatting can improve ...
Under consideration
Student notifications specifically when their professor submits a post
We have had some students reaching out to support wanting to get specific notifications for when their professor posts because typically its for their weekly ...
Under consideration
Add "Public" and "Private" to the Praise and Coach Buttons
The Feedback Praise/Coach buttons need to have the words Public and Private added below them so instructors are constantly aware of the public nature of Praise. ...
Under consideration
Allow instructors to hide curiosity scores
Given that curiosity scores may be related to grades, it may be useful for me to be able to share or view my community with those scores hidden to make it possible ...
Under consideration
Custom Reminders
It would be great to be able to set up reminders which could go out on an automatic schedule and/or could be set up for a specific list of students at certain times ...
Under consideration
Make word count visible for professors on posts.
I've had a few professors tell me that it would be nice to add word count to student posts. A couple of professors have minimum word requirements. Students can, of ...
Under consideration
Options Menu
Be able to click anywhere on the screen to click out of the options dropdown rather than having to click the options button to close it.
Planned
Add Section Information to the Roster
Allow this to be a smoother for professors to control sections
Planned
'Privacy' mode and 'Anonymous' mode
Access to others' posts influences what a student will post. This works well when we want students to interact with each other. However, this may introduce bias into ...
Under consideration
Display user posts without leaving main page
When I look students up by name, I would really like their posts to display just to the right of their name on the same page rather than jumping to another page. ...
Planned