🆕 Enhancement releases
We've been busy! Here's a sneak peek at our latest new features and improvements:
Mark a Question as Extra Credit
Extra Credit arrived!
Teachers can mark any question as “Extra Credit.” Students earn bonus points for a correct answer, but a wrong one won’t lower their overall grade.
Points earned are added to the total score, but the question’s point value is not added to “points possible” — which means students can score above 100%.
Assign Mode Consolidation (Early Access)
Formative's assignment pacing modes have been consolidated into one cohesive workflow under the "Assign" button.
This simplifies the logistics of launching a formative by allowing teachers to manage all delivery settings and modes in one place, streamlining their classroom preparation.
LMS Grade Passback Failure Notifications
Teachers now receive automatic notifications if a student's grade fails to pass back to an external Learning Management System (such as Canvas or Schoology).
These alerts include the student's name and a direct link to the gradebook, allowing teachers to identify and manually sync scores immediately rather than discovering missing data at the end of a term.
Grade Free Response Questions with Luna
Grade with Luna helps teachers score free response questions faster and more consistently.
When a student submits a written response, Luna can review the question, the student's answer, and the rubric. If a rubric does not yet exist, Luna then suggests rubric levels and provides a short explanation for each rubric decision.
Teachers can review, edit, and approve the suggested rubric in a dedicated editor before it is finalized and used for grading.
Teachers can also review Luna's suggested grade for a student, adjust it if needed, and continue grading from the Results page.
Assign Modal Learning Tools Redesign
The "Learning tools" section in the Assign settings modal has been redesigned to reduce clutter. The inline list of tools is now replaced by a single "Learning tools" row that opens a dedicated sub-view for managing individual settings like the calculator and student translator.
Unified Class Creation
Combined manual and rostered class creation flows into a single "Add Class" button.
Improved Luna AI Math Question Generation
The Luna AI assistant has been optimized to prioritize the "Numeric" question type when generating math content involving TeX formulas. This change ensures that math expressions are rendered clearly using KaTeX and that student answers are evaluated with appropriate numeric logic. This leads to higher quality AI-generated assessments and a more professional experience for both teachers and students.
Add drag-and-drop question support to Luna
The AI assistant, Luna, now supports the generation of text-based drag-and-drop questions. Teachers can request this specific question type through the assistant, which will correctly generate sentence stems with blanks and a corresponding pool of draggable answers. This enhancement broadens the variety of interactive content Luna can create automatically.
Inline Review for Luna Next Steps (Balanced Assessment by Formative)
"Luna Next Steps" now utilizes the inline review flow for generated follow-up questions. Instead of questions being added to a new formative automatically, they now appear as pending suggestions that a teacher can accept or reject individually. This gives teachers complete editorial control over AI-generated content before it becomes a permanent part of their follow-up assessments.
Lesson Builder Sidebar Previews
The sidebar now displays rich-text previews for slides, video thumbnails with play badges, and distinct icons for embedded content to help teachers navigate lessons.
Teacher Booklet PDF & Printed Formatting
The layout of printed booklets has been updated to move point values to the right of the question text. This change creates a more standard testing format and improves readability for students. It also assists teachers in quickly scanning point allocations during grading. The update applies across all printable question types, ensuring a consistent look and feel for all physical exam materials.
A new "Teacher Booklet" variant has been added to the PDF print flow. Unlike student booklets, this version includes a dedicated cover page with standards coverage summaries, correct answer keys for every item, and aligned standards codes. This allows educators to generate comprehensive physical reference keys for any formative with a single click.
Add demographics to admin tracker exports
Organization administrators can now opt-in to include student demographic data in Team Tracker CSV exports. A new toggle in the export modal adds columns for gender, race/ethnicity, and designations such as Special Education and Economically Disadvantaged. This provides administrators with richer datasets for external analysis and state reporting requirements.
"Resources" Hub
The "Support" menu has been renamed to Resources and reorganized to serve as a consolidated help hub. It now features an embedded "Feature requests" portal via, a new Facebook community link, and updated labels for certifications. These changes provide a cleaner navigation experience and more intuitive access to product updates and feedback channels for all users.
New Subjects
Added Hindi, Telugu, Humanities, and Law to the subject categorization menus.
Criterion-Level Standards in SPOT Report
The Standards Progress Over Time report has been updated to honor and display standards tagged at the individual criterion level. When students provide answers to rubrics with tagged criteria, the report will now accurately break down performance by those specific standards. This provides teachers with more granular data and better alignment between their grading criteria and standard mastery reporting.
Add Panel for Presenter Notes
Teachers using our advanced editor can now insert specialized "Presenter Notes" panels, including Guidance, Tips, Pacing, and ELD support blocks into the Teacher Instructions field. These color-coded panels help organize instructional strategies and can be collapsed to reduce visual clutter. This provides teachers with a more structured way to embed pedagogical notes directly within their content.
Settings Panel for Expression Graphs
Teachers using expression-based graph questions now have access to a settings panel to configure tick types, axis labels, and axis steps. A new info banner also appears when custom axis ranges are set to warn users that their expression might be partially obscured. These improvements provide greater flexibility and clarity when authoring complex mathematical content.
🛠️ Fixes
Every technological tool runs into hiccups here and there. If you run into any technical issues please submit a report to our team so we could go ahead and fix it!
Text to Speech (Read Aloud): speak inline-choice dropdown options/selection
The Text to Speech accommodation has been enhanced to support inline-choice dropdowns. Instead of reading a generic placeholder, the tool now announces available options for unanswered questions or reads the selected answer in context. This update significantly improves the experience for students relying on assistive audio by making fill-in-the-blank content meaningful.
Emoji Behavior Update
Upgraded the rich-text editor for performance and refined emoji triggers to require two characters (e.g., typing :sm) to prevent accidental emoji replacements.
Administrative Accessibility Enhancements
Team management and authentication modules were updated with visually hidden labels for screen readers to improve accessibility for student and team lists.
Accessibility Support for Reduced Motion
New scrolling utilities now automatically disable "smooth" animations when a user's system preferences are set to "reduced motion." By forcing instant scrolls in these cases, the platform becomes more accessible to users with motion sensitivity. This update also improves the reliability and speed of automated tests by removing unnecessary animation wait times during navigation.
Clever v3 Support
Administrators can now use Clever v3.0 and v3.1 URLs in roster settings.
Practice Set Visual Artifact
We resolved a visual bug in the Practice Set editor where a stray dark bar appeared behind the title field when using the default theme.
Editor Clutter Reduction for Collapsed Items
To simplify the formative editor, the "add item" (+) bars are now hidden between collapsed items unless an item is focused. This reduces visual noise when teachers are reviewing their formative structure, while still providing quick-access controls around the specific item they are currently editing.
Assign Setting Management for Downgraded Plans
Teachers who have transitioned from a paid plan to a free plan can now turn off premium settings that were previously enabled on their assignments. This fix ensures that users are not locked out of managing their formative settings, such as randomization and time limits, after their subscription status has changed.
Enhanced Print Support Messaging
The printable booklet renderer has been updated to explicitly state "Print is not supported for this item type" when encountering audio, video, or file-upload questions. Previously, these items might have rendered as blank spaces. This provides clearer guidance to students and proctors during paper-based assessments, ensuring they understand when content is intentionally excluded from the print view.