Release Overview

The Instructor Generated Content (IGC) authoring tools in vhlcentral have exciting updates that modernize the instructor experience. The authoring tools have been redesigned to be more intuitive and provide enhanced accessibility support.

Look for our step-by-step in-app guided walkthrough in your account when you sign in:

In-platform announcement of new content creation tools.

This update is available to all instructors in the platform. Instructors access the activity and assessment authoring tools from their vhlcentral course.

New Accessibility Support Improvements

This release offers instructors new accessibility features to design inclusive activities without added complexity. By enhancing the authoring experience with clearer guidance, built-in support, and improved compatibility with assistive technologies, we help instructors confidently create content that works for every student.

Alt Text and Long Description Support

The Image Reference now supports alt text and long descriptions, enabling screen readers to interpret instructional images. Instructors can provide their learners with meaningful descriptions of visual content.

Reference authoring tool, showing new Alt Text and Long Description fields. — **New:** Alt text and long description support in the Image reference

Audio Transcript Support

The Audio Reference now includes transcript support. In addition, instructors receive a warning when course‑level transcript settings may conflict with activity‑level needs, reducing unintentional accessibility gaps.

Audio Reference authoring tool, showing the new Transcript field. The screenshot also shows an alert to the user that Transcripts are turned off for this course and the customized transcripts will not be visible until transcripts are enabled in Student Interaction Settings. — **New:** audio transcript support in the Audio reference

Language Support for Bilingual Content

Bilingual content can now include language tags that help assistive technologies pronounce text correctly. Instructors can apply this information using a simple formatting option.

Custom Activity authoring tool, illustrating the language tagging feature. — **New:** support for tagging language in bilingual content with easy to use controls

Authoring Enhancements

What’s New: Assessment Authoring

The new intuitive design easily guides instructors through content authoring options with the same flexible options they’ve always had in a new, streamlined workflow. The new interface gives instructors a clearer structure and improved visibility into the composition of multi-step content.

The new sidebar shows instructors the assessment components clearly, allowing quick addition, navigation, or reordering of sections. It reduces scrolling by highlighting key actions and providing a quick view of the assessment structure.

Assessment authoring tool, featuring the new navigation bar that makes it easier to see and reorder sections. — **New:** Navigate to a specific section, add a new section, or drag-and-drop to reorder sections

Collapse and Expand Sections

Instructors also have the option to expand and collapse all or specific sections of the assessment. The expandable sections let instructors focus on a specific section that they're actively working on, keeping the interface focused and uncluttered. The option to collapse helps to manage complex assessments by keeping the overall structure easy to scan more efficiently, only revealing details when needed.

New assessment authoring tool interface, showing all sections collapsed. — **New:** Customized assessment interface with all sections collapsed.

New assessment authoring tool interface, showing all sections expanded. — **New:** Customized assessment interface with sections expanded.

Assessment Summary

A new Assessment Summary allows instructors to review their work.

Assessment Summary details including Total Sections, Possible Points, and Total Items details. — **New:** Click on Assessment Summary to see more details of Total Items and section types

What’s New: Activity Authoring

As with Assessment Authoring, the new Activity Authoring experience in vhlcentral makes it easy for instructors to create their own activities for students.

When creating a new activity, the menu has been updated with clearer options: the three separate multiple choice options have been consolidated into one template, and “Free Response” has been renamed to “Open Ended” to be consistent with other places in the platform.

Points Per Item

New with this update, instructors can now designate the number of points per item in the activities that they author. (Important note: instructors cannot edit points in VHL-authored activities.)

What’s New: Authoring Templates

This release includes updates to the authoring templates, including tools so instructors can ensure their content is accessible, and improvements like alternative answers for fill-in-the-blanks.

What’s New: Reference Authoring

These updates help instructors meet WCAG requirements, and can help alert instructors when their content might not be accessible to all students. Additional improvements include rich text editing and an option to display word bank lists in alphabetical order. See below for new tools related to accessibility.

Audio Reference

The Audio Reference now supports an audio transcript and alerts the instructor when transcripts are off for the course.

Image Reference

The Image Reference now supports optional alt text and a long description.

Table Reference

The Table Reference has improved validation messages to make it clear when content will not be accessible, simplifying the authoring step with clear information.

Instructor Generated Content: Updated Experience