Here are some product updates for those of you in our Teacher plan using our private courses system:

Redesign of the learning experience

We’ve done a modest redesign of slice pages within courses, such that they use the same exact design as lists. The course’s list of slices is at left, and there’s now previous/next navigation at the top of the page:

You can easily close both sidebars to make room for the music as needed. Previously, closing the left sidebar resulted in a slightly awkward arrow over the notation area (to enable you to open the sidebar again). Now there’s no more need for that arrow, as the toggle lives higher on the page.

The slice description, comment thread and performances are now all in the Notebook, in a new “Course” tab. Those all work the same as before; they’re just on the other side of the screen.

Our goal was to unify the design of various parts of our site to be consistent. So now, if you’re viewing a slice within a course, the design will be exactly the same as when you view a slice within a list.

Simpler performance settings

We’ve simplified how you can enable performances.

Previously, you had to do this on a per-slice basis, which required a ton of clicking around. Now, the decision is made at the course level.

When you edit the settings of any of your private courses, you’ll now see these new performance options:

For slices that you share directly with a student (i.e., not using a course), performances are always available. There’s no need to opt into them.