Welcome to Soft Skills Studio, the Online Companion site supporting the Illustrated Course Guide: Soft Skills for a Digital Workplace. This introduction outlines how to use Soft Skills Studio to complete and submit your assignments. For each Unit of the Soft Skills text, there are five corresponding scenarios in Soft Skills Studio to measure your understanding of course materials. This guide will review how to access and complete these assignments. If you have additional questions that are not answered here, please contact Tech Support at http://cengage.com/support/. Assessment Overview Accessing Soft Skills Studio Minimum System Requirements Be the Critic Soft Skills Review Critical Thinking Questions Soft Skills Survivor Practice Soft Skills Accessing Soft Skills Studio In order to view and complete assignments, you must first add yourself to the section using the Registration Code your Instructor provides. Create an Account 1. Open a Web browser 2. Enter http://login.cengage.com in the address bar 3. Click Create My Account. On the next screen, click Student to create your new account 4. Enter the textbook Access Code printed under the tear away strip in your textbook s online companion insert and click Continue to go on to Step 2. Account Information 5. Enter your name, email, and password information. Read and agree to the license agreement and click Continue to Step 3. Select Your Institution 6. Select your Institution and click Register 1 of 7
Register for a Section My Dashboard lists all the resources available for your user account. Click the Online Companion link in the Additional Resources Menu to launch Soft Skills Studio (this will open in a new browser window). Read the End User License Agreement and click I Accept to proceed to Soft Skills Studio. The first time you use Soft Skills Studio for a particular text, the system will ask you to enter a Registration Code. This code will be provided by your Instructor and should be entered in the Registration Code box when prompted. After entering the code, click the Submit button to proceed to Soft Skills Studio. A confirmation box will appear. Click OK to proceed to your Home page. Navigate Soft Skills Studio Your section will be listed in the left Navigation pane (the blade ). Use the arrows to navigate between different Units and Assignments. To launch an assignment, simply click the assignment name and it will populate on your screen. 2 of 7
Minimum System Requirements RAM Disk Space Processor OS(s) At least 500 megabytes (MB) of RAM, 128 MB of VRAM At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk Pentium 1 Gz processor or faster Windows XP (Home Edition), MAC Browser(s) Internet Explorer 7 & 8, Safari 3.0, Firefox 3.0 Flash Resolution Network Speed 9.0.27 or Higher 1024x768 768 kbps 3 of 7
Assignments: Be the Critic Be the Critic turns the assignment from your End of Unit material into an online, auto graded assessment. You willl view the image or text presented in Be the Critic on the left side of the screen and answer a set of 5 objective based questions on the right. Questions in the right pane ask you to apply the soft skills learned in the Unit to the image or text presented on the left. You can answer questions in the order presented or skip between questions using the navigation arrows located in a bar on the right pane under the question area. This navigation pane also provides you with a guide to your progress on completing the assignment. Once every question is answered (and all radio buttons are green), the Finish button becomes available. Click Finish for immediate feedback, including an automatic grade and page remediation to direct studying. The graded assignment also displays the selected answer vs. the correct answer for each question. Note: To change your view of the image, click Enlarge Image to open a pop up display of the Be the Critic image file. Use the Print, Zoom, and Download features to size the image for your optimal use. 4 of 7
Assignments: Soft Skills Review Soft Skills Review uses the assignment from your End of Unit material to create an online, auto graded assessment where you answer a set of objective based questions derived from the text. Like with the Be the Critic assessment, questions appear on the right panel of the screen. This assignment has 18 questions that you can answer in the order presented or skip between using the navigation arrows located in a bar on the right under question area. This navigation pane is also provides you with a guide to your progress on completing the assignment. Once every question is answered (and all radio buttons are green), the Finish button becomes available. Click Finish for immediate feedback, including an automatic grade and page remediation to direct studying. The graded assignment also displays the selected answer vs. the correct answer for each question. Assignments: Critical Thinking Questions Critical Thinking Questions in Soft Skills Studio take each Critical Thinking Question presented in your textbook s End of Unit material online for you to answer and get feedback. Your Instructor will choose whether to assign one, a few, or all of the Critical Thinking Questions. Type your response directly in the text field provided and submit for Instructor grading. 5 of 7
Assignments: Soft Skills Survivor Soft Skills Survivor exercises are multimedia soft skills scenarios that require you to watch and assess a video clip based on the soft skills lessons learned within each Unit of your text. Click Play to begin the movie. After watching the movie, answer the six questions presented on the right side of the screen. If answered correctly, the system generates a notification and will automatically advance to the next scenario. If answered incorrectly, the system generates a notification, the incorrect response is marked, and you must watch the video and answer again. The correct answer must be selected before proceeding to the next question. Once all scenarios are answered correctly, the Finish button becomes available. Clicking Finish generates a grade based on the number of attempts you made before selecting the correct answer. The graded assignment also displays page remediation to direct studying and the selected answer vs. the correct answer for each question. 6 of 7
Assignments: Practice Soft Skills Soft Skills Studio Practice Soft Skills are peer review exercises that measure what you have learned in each Unit of the text. Instructions for completing assignments are provided on the left side of the screen. Read these instructions and exit Soft Skills Studio to complete the assignment in a standard Microsoft Office document. Once completed, re enter Soft Skills Studio to upload your document for review. Once uploaded, your Instructor can grade the assignment; provide you with comments and assign peer feedback projects. Peer Review: To provide peer review, navigate to your assignment in the navigation blade, the select Peer Review. Choose a peer to review his or her work. Download your peer s work and provide constructive feedback in the Student Comments section. 7 of 7