Teachers Manual

Uit Pointcarré

Inhoud 1 Introduction 2 Logging in and out 2.1 The PointCarré homepage 2.2 Logging in to the online learning platform 2.3 PointCarré User agreement 2.4 Logging out 3 Personal homepage 4 Managing a course website 4.1 Introductory text 4.2 Course description 4.3 Learning Path 4.4 Announcements 4.5 Tests 4.6 Peer Assessment 4.7 Documents 4.8 Links 4.9 Forums 4.10 Wiki 4.11 Reservations 4.12 Agenda 4.13 Users 4.14 Chat 4.15 Surveys 4.16 Dropbox 4.17 Groups 4.18 Assignments 4.19 Reporting 4.20 Course maintenance 4.21 Course settings 4.22 Manage reservations 5 Footnotes

Introduction

PointCarré is a web-based electronic learning platform and includes an electronic learning platform and an electronic portfolio. This manual will only cover the electronic learning platform. The electronic learning platform ^[1] offers you, as a teacher (professor, teacher, teaching assistant,...), the opportunity to create and manage course websites and manage them via a web browser (eg. Mozilla, Firefox, Internet Explorer).

Technically speaking, you only need an internet-connection and your favorite web-browser. You will only be asked to type text, press 'OK'-buttons and upload documents from your own PC to your course website. Nothing more.

Many teachers are familiar with the system in less than 2 hours, without any technical training whatsoever. Owing to its user-friendliness, the platform allows you to focus on the most important tasks, more specifically content, a good educational scenario and coaching (or guidance) of your students. This means you can develop your own course website independent of a technical team.

This teacher's manual will pay attention to all modules available to teachers in the online learning platform and explains their operation. Should you have any problems or questions while reading this manual or using PointCarré, you can always contact helpdesk@vub.ac.be. During the course of the following working day, you will receive a reply or solution.

The Quality Assurance & Educational Innovation Unit (Cel Kwaliteitszorg & Onderwijsinnovatie, KZI) also organizes training sessions for using the online learning platform. More information about these training sessions can be found on the website of KZI:

• Leren werken met het teleleerplatform PointCarré - basis
• Leren werken met het teleleerplatform PointCarré - gevorderd

Students can consult the Students manual or they can contact the ICT-service desk for students (http://www.vub.ac.be/ICTS).

Logging in and out

The PointCarré homepage

At http://pointcarre.vub.ac.be, you will see this screen, which allows you to log in to the online learning platform.

1. Welcome to PointCarré.
2. News from the System administrators.
3. This drop-down menu allows you to select the system language. Dutch is used by default.
4. Here, you log in to the online learning platform.(see below)
5. These links bring you to the manual and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), the student portfolio (generic e-portfolio developed by the Quality Assurance & Educational Innovation Unit (Cel Kwaliteitszorg & Onderwijsinnovatie, KZI)), the knowledge management system ARCHeMEDES (in development by the Department of Architecture), the VUB library, VUB webmail and the website of KZI.

Logging in to the online learning platform

To go to the login form click on "login"

To log in, use the username and password of your VUBnet-id. (If you have not activated your VUBnet-ID yet, you can do this via http://www.vub.ac.be/tools/activation.html) Example: Username: pdemesse (max. 8 letters) Password: ******** (VUBnet-password)

PointCarré User agreement

When you log in the first time, you see the PointCarré User agreement. This will point out the legal aspects of e-learning. This agreement also provides information about your quota (100MB) and file formats, open access and open content, user statistics and modifications to the user agreement.

Logging out

If you want to leave your courses, click Logout.

Personal homepage

When you are logged in to PointCarré, you see your personal homepage:

1. An overview of your courses.
2. • My courses: This quicklink brings you to your personal homepage.
   • My profile: This quicklink allows you to edit your profile.
   • My agenda: This quicklink lists all agenda-items from your courses combined.
   • My progress: This quicklink gives you a history of your visits to PointCarré
3. To open the course section of PointCarré, just click on the title of the specific course.
4. If these icons appear behind the course title in your course list, this means that some changes occurred in these courses (eg. announcements; documents, dropbox, agenda) since your most recent visit. You can click on these icons to be taken directly to these changes.
5. Via "curriculum information" you can search for information regarding the VUB curriculum. In "course management", you can register and unregister for courses and sort your courses in (self-created) subcategories.
6. RSS: This link is an RSS feed which you can insert in your feedreader. You will be kept abreast of new items for you in PointCarré via RSS. Find out more about the possibilities of RSS here

REMARK:
It is possible to have 2 or more 'identical' courses in your course list. For example: You are responsible for the course "Current welfare problems", VUB556 and VUB11623, the latter course being a variant of the former. This course is scheduled for 2 groups of students (specifically Social and Cultural Agogy and Ethics). Officially, these are 2 different courses. This means that 2 courses will be displayed in your courselist.
If you only wish to use 1 of these course variants, there are 2 possibilities:

1. Example: You can choose to use the course with code VUB556 and not that with code VUB11623. You announce this to the students that are registered for this course. These students can register themselves for this course via "Manage my courses".
   Remark: It is best to write in the introductory text of the course which you have chosen not to use (in this example: VUB11623) that students should register for the other course VUB556.
2. Merge courses
   The OSC has developed a tool allowing the merge of 2 'identical' courses. With this functionality, you can merge 'identical' courses for different groups of students. All users will then be placed in 1 course.
   At present, we cannot guarantee an optimal result with this tool.
   Beware: Any material in the course that you merge with another course will be lost.

Managing a course website

From the list “My courses”, click on the course title you wish to manage. You will see the screen below:

A startpage contains:

1. An introductory text for the course website, which you can replace with a custom text or which you can simply delete.
2. All modules which you can use in your course are listed as icons with an additional explanation. Modules which are greyed out are only visible to the professor. Students do not have access to these modules. If you wish to enable this module for student access, you should activate this module by clicking on the eye next to it. To disable a module for students, you click on the eye-icon next to the activated module.
3. Below you will see some modules which are only available to course managers (professors).
4. The number of online students, in PointCarré and in your course section. Click on the numbers to see which students are logged in.
5. To switch between professor view and student view.

Introductory text

You can edit or delete the example introductory text. You will notice that you can also add an introductory text for each module.

To change an introductory text, you can click the pencil icon underneath the introductory text. You will see this window:

You can edit the text and change the lay-out, using the html-editor. Click OK to change the edited text.

To delete the introductory text, click the red cross.

Course description

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

Here, you can find an automatic link to the course description (OO-fiche). In principle, you do not have to add any information here as there is already a link to the course description. In case you do wish to add information, you have several options to do so:

General description

Here, you can give your students some information concerning the content of your course and practical matters:

• Where is your course situated in the study program
• Requisite knowledge
• Possible connection between your course and other courses
• Amount of class hours
• Official code of your course
• The classroom for this course
• Your contact information

Objectives

Which leaving competences will your students possess when they complete your course?

Topics

Which topics will be dealt with during your courses? If possible, list them chronologically.

Methodology

Which methods and activities will be used during your course? Examples are: conference, paper(s), labo, group assignment etc. Which PointCarré functions will be used activelly (discussion fora, chat sessions, blog, wiki, group assignment)?

Course material

Which course material is available: a book, a reader, a bibliography, a website, a list of webpages, a wiki,...?

Human and technical resources

Who are the contact persons? Which technical devices and computer classes are available?

Assessment process

How will the students be evaluated: (oral and/or written) exams, paper(s), project survey(s)? Who will evaluate the students: only the teacher or also via peer-review?

Learning Path

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

With this function you can build a guided multimedia learning path for your students. Koen Vanmeerbeek designed a self-study module, a learning path that teaches you how to create a learning path. You can find this module here: http://pointcarre.vub.ac.be/courses/OSC99999/

Announcements

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

With this function you can make announcements on your course page.

Tests

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

With this function you can create self-tests for your students. In courses where knowledge is the key element, it can be useful to evaluate the students on a regular basis. These tests can be useful for several reasons:

• Students can find out whether they comprehend the content sufficiently. If they obtain a low score, they know they have to study again/more.
• You, as a teacher, can find out whether your students have sufficient knowledge about certain important matters. This way you will be alerted if certain matters need some extra explanation/attention.

There are several possible question options, for example:

• Multiple choice
• Multiple choice (multiple possible answers)
• Open answer

Peer Assessment

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

With this function students can evaluate each group member's work and effort during the group process. To be able to use this function, you have to create groups in the learning platform first. More information can be found here: Groups.

If the function Peer Assessment is new to you, you can contact the Quality Assurance & Educational Innovation Unit (KZI) via pointcarre@vub.ac.be. KZI can help you to use the function in a didactically correct way.

NOTE: On a regular basis, the Quality Assurance & Educational Innovation Unit (KZI) organises a course with regard to the use of peer assessment in education. For more information: Evalueren van groepswerk: peer- en self-assessment

Documents

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

With this funtion you can organize your files which your students should have access to. Examples of files can be the following:

• presentations which you showed during your course;
• guidelines for a project/assignment;
• etc..

You can group these files in folders and subfolders.

Links

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

In case you would like to add references to interesting web sites, you can add them by clicking on "Links".

Forums

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

An electronic forum gives students the opportunity to discuss or argue certain topics/statements together. Important is that they argue their opinion (by making reference to the literature you offered them or they searched for themselves). It is an instrument which allows students to reinforce their analytical thinking, reasoning competences, and searching for information, etc. Furthermore, students will learn together and will also learn from each other.

The Forum offers different options:

• Through a forum, your students can communicate with each other and with you on a variety of topics a-syncronically (not simultaneously).
• You can organize the forums in categories so you and your students can easily keep track.
• Remark: Groups (see below) can also have a group-limited forum. You decide for which groups you act as administrator.

Wiki

Wiki derives its name from WikiWiki, meaning fast in Hawaiian. A Wiki is a collection of linked webpages which can be easily modified by the users. Pages form a network. Anyone can modify a Wiki. You can track changes and who made them in the change history and can also easily revert to an previous version this way. Because a Wiki is democratic in nature, it is well-suited for community-building.

Wikis in education

The open character of a Wiki means it is not suitable for educational matters in which trustworthiness and authenticity are paramount. It can be used for cooperation and building on prior knowledge, however, for example

1. As a means of combined knowledge-building
2. Wiki as a tool for cooperation, such as a project environment for groups of students, but also to allow cooperation between teachers.
3. Wiki as an online dictionary (such as wikipedia).
4. Using experts to participate in Wikis.

(source: http://www.digitaledidactiek.nl/wp/?p=1172)

You can click on the Wiki-function itself at "At PmWiki.DocumentationIndex you can find the documentation for using this Wiki." for further explanation about working with this Wiki.

Reservations

In the function "Reservations" you will see the result of the reservation you have made in the function "Manage reservatons". Both functions work thus synchronically. In this function you will see what students get to see. When a student has clicked on the green action button, he has made a reservation for that specific time spot.

You will find more information on how to make such a reservation under the heading "Manage reservations".

Agenda

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

In the agenda module, you can enter all date-related information about your course, ranging from class sessions, practical sessions, to deadlines and fieldtrips. These items are sorted chronologically.

Users

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

In this module you can manage the users of your course website:

Functions:

1. You can review who is registered.
2. You can give assistants and co-professors administrative rights or assign them course development rights.
3. You can define the role of users, eg. student, teacher,...
4. You can undo the registration of users.
5. You can monitor user activity on your course website.
6. You can manage study- and user groups in Group management.

There are 3 types of users within PointCarré.

User	Rights	Who
Course manager	This user has the most rights and can complete and adapt the entire course website.(=manage)	All ZAP-members assigned to one or more courses as well as the AAP members involved in the course.
Student	This user has less rights. He/She can consult the course website and download documents. In some modules (forum, groups, student publications and dropbox) this type of user can add content and communicate.	Everyone, that is registered as 'student' on a course website: All students. All assistants, that do not have administrative rights on the course website yet.
Counselor	A user with a rights level situated between course administrator and student. This user level is not fully defined yet. Currently, this user can only be defined as teacher of a group. A teacher cannot complete or edit anything on the course website.	Example: External experts counseling a project group.

Chat

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

With this tool, you can organize online chat sessions for both classes or office hours.

Functionality:

1. Only text chat.
2. The text-files of the chat sessions are saved in Documents automatically, invisible by default.

Surveys

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

This function allows you to carry out surveys among your student eg. in order to know more about their background, their expectations, etc. This will allows you to better stem your course.

Dropbox

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

In this module:

• students can hand in papers or other assignments.
• you, as professor, can exchange documents with students, eg. for correcting papers.
• you can give feedback on the received files.
• students can deliver tasks to each other and give feedback (peer-review).

Functions:

1. Received files are automatically delivered to your dropbox.
2. Sent and received files are separated.
3. You can sort the sent and received files according to certain parametres, specifically date of last transmission, date first transmission, title, size, author, sender/recipient.

Groups

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

With this function, you can create assignment, study or project groups of students. You can offer certain functions to these groups:

1. sharing documents
2. Assignments
3. Agenda
4. Announcements
5. Forum

These functions are simular to the functions elsewhere in the learning platform. They actually facilitate working together on distance.

Assignments

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

Here, students can make documents available.

Through this page, documents can be shared among students, groups of students and professor(s). This module is particularly useful if you wish to make the papers of all students available to everyone after correction, more so than the dropbox. If you select that new documents are only visible to the course manager(s) by default, you can easily make them available to everyone afterwards with a single mouse-click. If you use the dropbox, you would have to send each document separately to all students. If students publish a document using the group space (with the 'publish' function), a link is created to this document, without moving it.

Reporting

This function allows you to collect statistical data on your courses and your students. There are two sections:

• In the section "Learners tracking", you will find information on the progress made by each student;
• In the section "Course tracking", you will find statistics on the popularity of the different functions, the use of documents and the average results on tests.

Course maintenance

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

The Course Maintenance function allows you to:

• Delete a course
• Make a back-up file of your course
• Recycle (empty) the course
• Copy a course to another one.

Course settings

With this module you can edit some basic properties of your course:

• Enter the URL of your faculty (or another URL) for your course
• You can set the language for your course.
• You can set whether outsiders can access your course materials or whether only registered users have this ability.
• You can set whether students can register for your course.
• You can switch on/off email reports

Manage reservations

For the step-by-step manual of this function, go to this page.

With this function you will allow your students to make electronic reservations for oral exams, appointments, etc. Your students will then be able to make a reservation at a specific moment by using the function "Reservations" (see item Reservations)

Footnotes

1. ↑ The VUB uses the platform Dokeos (http://www.dokeos.com).
2. ↑ Scorm: Sharable Content Object Reference Model) combines a number of e-learning standards in a single reference model. Scorm aims to support the development of re-usable learning contents. Learning contents are defined as "learning objects" in a common technical reference model to realize computer- and webbased learning. (More information at http://www.adlnet.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=scormabt).