CATC: Learning portal teaching guide Lecturers view: Topic 1 - Course Layout Adding additional resources Topic 2 Assessments Submission of work Marking Topic 3 Grade book and resulting Grade book on the Learning Portal Uploading results to Hermes Locking in results on the Learning Portal 1
Topic 1- Course Layout This is how the LP page looks like for each subject: Subject Banner Tells the student what subject page they are in and gives them a brief overview of what the subject is about. Welcome Video The next block on the page contains the Welcome Video and Subject outline. The students are encouraged to watch the video before beginning the subject and then click the button to access the subject outline. Some part time courses may not have these. Subject Outline The Subject Outline is the primary document explaining to the students the exact requirements of the course. It is stored in Equella (document management system) and can only be updated by the HAS. Lecturers cannot make updates to the subject outline. If changes need to be made to the unit outline for a subject you will need to contact your HAS. Course Materials The Course Materials are designed to supplement the students learning. They are intended to bridge the gap between the F2F contact students on campus receive online and the experience of online students. To access the course materials students can click on the topic/session/week number they are interested in and this will cause the screen to expand to display the contents available. 2
Before clicking on the table: After clicking on the table: Each title is a link. Once you click on it the browser will either open the interactive pdf in another page or start downloading into the computer. Assessment Brief The links for all assessments for a subject are found in the Assessment briefs The icons with the arrow down are clickable and mean download the brief. The assessments brief are provided as pdf files and contain all the information the student need in order to complete the assessment. The icon with the pencil mean supplied files for assessment. These are normally a.zip file that contains any additional file the student will need in order to complete the assessment (e.g template, images,etc) 3
Assessment Submission The submission links for all assessments for a subject are found in the Assessment submission. The icons with the arrow up are clickable and allow students to upload their work. Adding additional resources All the resources for each unit are already available in the learning portal page. However you do have the possibility to upload any additional resources you would like to share with your class. Adding additional resources to the learning portal involves adding these documents into our document management system Equella. To do this you need to turn editing on at the top right hand corner of the main subject page. This will turn on all the editing functions to manage the content on the page. Lecturers should only add content to the additional resources section of the subject page. Select Equella resource from the add an activity dropdown menu. 4
This will take you into a screen where you can add new items or search for existing items and link them to the learning portal. Click contribute to add a new item. Now click CATC The next screen is where you will fill out the data that allows easy identification of the document you are uploading. 5
On this screen you need to carry out the following steps. You will be required to fill in the fields shown. For this collection they are: 1. Item Type: Select from the item type dropdown. If none of these item types apply select other. a. If you selected other you will then be prompted to free type an item type in the other item type text box. Once you are happy with your new item type click the select button. 2. Subject: Type in the subject code for your item. Once you have typed a couple of letters equella will begin to autocomplete this field. Once you have entered the correct subject name click select. 3. LOR Item Name - additional text: If you have further information you need to enter to provide further information about this item you may enter it in this text box. 4. Attach your document. You have two choices when attaching documents: Option 1: Click the Add a resource button. Once this button is selected you can browse for your file, in the same manner you would add an attachment to an email. You can only attach one file at a time using this method. 6
When the document has loaded click the next button at the bottom right hand corner. This will take you to a screen which summarizes your attachment and allows you to alter the file name. This may make the document name easier to understand for students who save it to their computer. Once you are happy with the attachment name, click ADD Option 2: Launch the File Manager: When attaching multiple items it is easier to use the file manager. Once the file manager has loaded you can drag and drop files from your computer to it and they will all be uploaded in one step. Or you can click the upload file button and browse as before, but you will now be able to select multiple items. Once you have added your items close your file manager and you will be taken back to the contribute summary screen. At this stage all the fields should be filled in and you can see a summary of the attachments. 7
5. You are now ready to publish your item. Click Save at the top right hand corner. This will open a dialogue box with three options. Click Publish if you have completely finished and want your item to become live. Click Save Draft if you want your item to remain in a draft status so you can come back and finish it at a later date. If you click save you will be taken to the item summary screen with all the information relating to this item. You will see that the item name is generated from the fields you filled out during the contribution process. The item title is created using the following logic. If you select one of the regular item types: Item name = Subject + Item Type + LOR Item Name - additional text If you select other as the item type: Item name= Subject + Other Item Type + LOR Item Name - additional text 1. Using this logic ensures all items have item names free of typos and all with consistent spelling and capitalisation. Your item has now been added to equella so you can now link it to the learning portal. To do this click select item. 8
The next screen will ask you if you wish the link you are creating to always link to the most recent version of the item, or link to a specific version. This is the choice of the user creating the link. How should the version option be used? If the item is likely to be update frequently and you would like the end user to see the most up to date version you should select latest available. If the item is updated frequently, but you would like different versions to appear for different students you should pick Fixed to Vx. For example if the item is a Subject Outline where each version is only relevant for a specific teaching period this option should be selected. When the unit outline item is new versioned, the link in the learning portal will continue to display the unit outline relevant to that specific teaching period. However, this means that the link in the learning portal for the next study period will need to be created again in order for it to link to the correct version of the document. Your item is now linked to the learning portal and this link can be moved inside the learning portal to where it is required. 9
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Topic 2- Assessments Assessment Briefs Assessment Briefs for all assessments are stored in Equella. As we have already seen the students can download their assessment briefs from the learning portal in pdf form. Assessment cannot be changed by the lecturers. If you would like to make any changes please contact your HAS. Submission of Assessments Students are asked to submit a number of different types of assessment. These are mostly: Documents Quizzes/Exams How students submit a document When students wish to submit a document type assessment they simple go to the assessment submission link (Arrow up icon). Once they click on that icon they will see the next screen. On that screen they have the ability to browse on their computer for the document they wish to submit. Once they have uploaded their file/s they can view them before clicking send for marking. 11
Once a student has clicked Send for marking they will be displayed a warning message that lets them know once they have taken this step they will no longer be able to change their submission. Once they have clicked this button an email will be sent to the lecturer notifying them of the student submission. Marking Assessments How to mark a submitted document To mark a submitted document you have 2 options: 1. You can use the emails that are generated as students submit their assignments 2. You can bulk mark all submissions at a time that suits you. Option 1: Email driven process When a student clicks the Send for marking button it will trigger an email to be sent to you. If you click the link in this email you will be taken to a grading screen for that submission. 12
On this screen you need to: 1. Download the student submission. 2. Select a grade from the grade dropdown menu 3. 5. If you have selected Unsatisfactory-Resubmission required from the grade dropdown menu, you will need to click revert to draft to allow the student to submit another attempt. 4. 3. Enter any comments in the text box. 5. 4. Upload any feedback files you wish to use as part of your grading process. This could be a marking guide/rubric or the document the student uploaded with comments you have made on it to provide specific feedback to the student. 6. Make sure the Send Notifications checkbox is ticked if you want an email to be sent to the student with the mark that you have given them 7. Click save It is important you follow this order as some buttons/actions lead to the page to be refreshed so you may lose you comments. Also it is a good idea to copy your comments to a word document in case that happens ;) 13
Option 2: Bulk marking of submissions In order to bulk mark all submissions at a time of your choosing you need to click on the assessment submission link on the main page of the learning portal. 1. To view all the student submissions, you then need to click View X submitted assignments. 2. On the next screen you should click Allow quick grading and then Save Preferences. 3.The next screen allows you to perform all the actions you need to grade all submissions. On this screen you need to: 1. Download the students submitted document. 2. Select a grade from the dropdown menu. 3. Add a comment. 4. Make sure this box is checked if you want email notifications to be sent to students with their grades. 5. Click Save all my feedback when you have finished grading. All students who have had their grade changed will be emailed at this point and their grade and comment will be saved to the gradebook. 14
Note: By choosing to bulk mark assessments you will not be able to attach feedback files or revert student attempts to draft. You may still do either of these things by clicking the grade button for the individual student you wish to perform either of these actions for How to mark a Quiz/Exam The term quiz or exam is interchangeable in the learning portal. It is the same item in the portal but can be named a quiz or exam depending on the requirements of the subject being assessed. All multiple choice and true/false questions are automatically marked by the learning portal. The only questions that you will need to mark are extended answer/essay style questions. In order to begin marking an online you need to go the lecturers resources section of the page and click on the link of the quiz you are marking. This will take you to a quiz summary screen where you will need to click on the attempts link in order to view any student attempts. The number of attempts that all students have made so far will display on this screen. The next screen is a summary of all the attempts so far on this quiz. At this point you have 2 options: 1. Mark each student s entire quiz 2. Mark each question for all students Option 1: Mark each student s entire quiz In order to begin marking a particular students attempt you can either click on the link in the Started on column or on the Grade/XX column. Both links will take you to the same place. 15
This will take you to a screen that shows a summary of that student s attempt. You can see that all the multiple choice questions have automatically been marked by the learning portal. Question 1 shows the student has selected the correct answer and received 1 mark for that question. Question 2 shows the student selected the wrong answer and received 0 marks for that question. Question 3 is an extended answer question. You can see the student s response was test answer 1. In order to mark this response you need to click on Make comment or override grade Upon clicking that link a popup screen will open. On this screen you can add any comments you have for the student in regards to their answer and enter a grade in the grade box. 16
Once you have graded and commented(if required) on all the extended answer questions for that student, click Overview to return to the summary of all students attempts and select the next student you wish to grade. Option 2: Mark each question for all students The second option for marking a quiz is to mark each question for all students. To mark this way click Manual grading. This will open a screen with a dropdown menu that will allow you to select the question number you wish to mark. 17
On the next screen, you can click grade next to a student s name to mark that students response, or you can click mark all attempts or all ungraded attempts. If you select mark all attempts or all ungraded attempts you will be taken to a screen on which you can mark all the attempts at once without having to navigate to each attempt. The screen below shows in red the fields that you will need to fill in to give marks to the students, and inside the blue circles are the student s answers. Once you have entered all your grades and comments, you can click save and you will be taken back to a summary of the marks you have given for that attempt. You should then select the next question from the dropdown menu and continue until you have marked all questions. 18
Topic 3 - Grade book and resulting Grade book on the Learning Portal The grade book is the online version of the results spread sheets (issued to lecturers at the beginning of each trimester) To access grade book on the Learning Portal follow these steps (admin): N.B. Lecturers can go directly to their subject page 1. On left hand side go to: Units 2. Choose study mode: CATC On Campus 3. Choose your campus 4. Choose program 5. Choose study period 6. Go to the subject page 7. On lefts hand side go to: Grades Viewing the grade book Now you can view all grades for all students enrolled in this class. When you hover over any grade you can see the comments/feedback provided by lecturer for each assessment. 19
You will also see that the final grade for this subject is in the column: Category total. Each student is marked as Incomplete for the subject until all assessments are completed successfully. Once student completes all tasks the final grade will automatically change to Competent. Working with the grade book When student is marked as Incomplete at the end of the study period, lecturer must provide feedback (comments) explaining why student has been unsuccessful and provide recommendation for this student, which will be presented at the Examination Committee. Feedback needs to be provided in both columns following the Category total column (Comment and Reason). To edit the grade book, follow these steps: 1. Turn the editing on 20
2. You can now view active grade book 3. Next to the Incomplete grade (any grade below 100 points) lecturer must insert Comment explaining reason for the Incomplete grade and recommendation for further action. 21
4. Choose the Reason for Incomplete grade from the dropdown box 5. Once all Comments and Reasons have been entered, Update the grade book (make sure all boxes are ticked next to each student s name) 22
6. Turn the editing off Uploading results to Hermes This section is for administration/student services only To upload results from the Learning Portal to Hermes you need to first ensure that the grade book has been updated by the lecturer (all grades for the individual assessments are entered and lecturer provided comments and reasons for all the final Incomplete grades). 23
Once all results, comments and reasons are entered in the grade book on the portal, follow these steps to upload results to Hermes: 1. Go to the grade book on the Learning Portal 2. Turn the editing on 3. At the bottom of the page press Update to ensure all results and comments have been saved. 24
4. Press: Select All to ensure all students grades will be uploaded and then press: Send to Hermes. A pop-up window will appear: Are you sure you want to upload results to Hermes?; press: YES 5. Turn the editing off Locking in results on the Learning Portal Once results have been uploaded to Hermes, you need to lock in the grade book to prevent any further editing (lecturers updating results directly on the Learning Portal). From this point onwards any change of grades will have to follow the process of submitting Change of Result; Academic Process in Hermes. To lock in results on the portal follow these steps: 1. In the top left hand corner go to different view options and choose: Full View 25
2. In the Actions column on the right hand side clink on the open padlock 3. You can see that all of the other padlocks are now closed. This means that all results and comments for this class only cannot be changed. If the grade has been updated, admin can unlock the grade book by clicking on the locked padlock and unlocking the grade book. Once the grade is updated, the padlock must be locked again. 26
4. Once the grade book is locked in, go back to the grade book view by choosing the Grader report view in the top left hand corner 27