2. Export Your Gradebooks! ========
As you work through entries/columns in your gradebooks, please remember
to export your gradebook FREQUENTLY and save these files in case they
are needed for gradebook rebuilding/grades retrieval in perpetuity. To export your gradebook,
choose:
TEACH, GRADEBOOK, EXPORT TO SPREADSHEET. Choose 'all members' and 'all columns' and the defaults for the last two items.
Rename the default filename (perhaps incorporate the date) and save
these either to a network drive, or multiple copies to memory sticks
and local hard drives.
3. Spotlight on "POWERVIEW" ========
A frequent question is "how do I change the order of the documents I've
posted?". By default, the documents will be listed in the order
that they were posted -- new items at the bottom. To reorder the
documents on a page quickly, check out "POWERVIEW" -- by choosing "Page
Options"->Powerview.
Your graphical icon display will be repaced with a linear display of the items on the page.
To move something, click the square box beside it to select
it. Then, click on one of the funny yellow bar things in
the 'move' column to POINT TO WHERE YOU WANT TO PUT THAT THING.
Clicking on the 'move' icon on the same line as the item you want to
move DOES NOTHING -- point to the new location for the document.
Choose "Page options", "Go to basic view" to return the page to the normal view.
4. Left Menu Tools Usage & Hiding Unused Tools =========================
"A simple site is a happy site": M.J. Pilgrim, March 2011.
Please check out the left menu of your course site to review the
learningSystem Tools in use. If you are not using a particular
tool, please hide it! Do so via 'manage course', 'tools'.
Clear the checkbox and 'save'. Specifically, consider
hiding the 'Calendar' tool, the 'Syllabus' tool as most people post
their syllabus to the homepage, the 'Roster' tool, the 'My Progress'
tool, and even the "my grades" tool if you're not posting grades.
5. Anonymous Discussion Topics -- will remain ANONYMOUS forever to everyone! =========================
There is an option in Discussions that will allow you to "make authors
anonymous" under "Topic Behaviour" that is misleading. The
choices are:
Author Identification:
OR
Note that if you choose to make authors anonymous "to students", they
will actually be anonymous to EVERYONE including YOU. Also make
special note of the fact that you cannot revert this setting once chosen. Consider yourself warned! In Latin, "monitus es".
6. Course Item Usage Reports via Teach->Tracking ========================
Teach->Tracking can provide you with lots of useful information
regarding your course materials and the amount of time students spend
viewing them now that the winter term is at the half-way mark.
Try these:
Teach->Tracking->File Usage (set the dates to January 10th to
today) for a full report of how often posted files like lecture notes
were looked at. Watch for a 'Graph' button to display these
results pictorally.
Teach->Tracking->Summary (set the dates to January 10th to today)
for a summary of daily usage like most active hour, least active hour,
etc.
Teach->Tracking->Student Tracking (set the dates to January 10th
to today) for a summary (and complete detail if you select a particular
student) of your students' login habits throughout the term. You
can see everything that a particular student has done "to the
mouseclick".
7. First Call for Online April Course Evaluations powered by the learningSystem ========
This is a general call for Online Course Evaluation setups via
myLearningSystem/WebCT for any Fall/Winter 2010 courses and Winter 2011
half-courses. The LearningSystem has been used successfully
for collecting this sort of data from students for more than five
years. The results from past online course evaluations have not
been surprising -- if the LearningSystem/WebCT is being used as a major
component to the course, then the surveys have been well-responded to.
--------------------------
Standard timeframe for traditional course sections is the last week of classes beginning on Friday April 1st and ending on Sunday April 10th (10 full days of availability).
Standard timeframe for fully online WEB-BASED course sections is Friday April 8th to Friday April 22nd (14 days of availability)
--------------------------
If you have fewer than 30 students, you may not use the online
evaluation option as anonymity cannot be guaranteed to students as we
promise it will be. You must use the traditional paper option.
Thirty enrollment minium has been recently chosen in lieu of the
requirement for 10 in past years to conserve IT resources.
Use the 'back' button on your browser to submit requests for multiple courses and save keying time.
Also, please tell your department secretary that you are evaluating
online so that they don't print/prepare paper evaluation forms for your
course.
For more detail on how the process works, see the March 5, 2008 communique.
Please let me know this week, if possible, if you'll be using the LearningSystem for online course evaluations by using the form link above.
Please do not email this information to me because I usually don't get
all of the information that way that I need to proceed.
Some of you are using the scantron in PSYC for midterm/final
examinations... Here is one way to import the scantron results
into your learningSystem site:
a) First, request student numbers for your site if you haven't
done so already: http://www2.trentu.ca/cgi-bin/stunum.cgi
b) Import the student numbers via gradebook->import from
spreadsheet using the instructions provided with the student numbers.
c) Then, choose the VIEW ALL tab and 'export the gradebook'
from the learningSystem. It has two columns that you'll need --
TrentNet ID and student number. On the export, choose 'all
members', 'all columns' to make sure that you get both of these.
d) Open the gradebook export with Excel when prompted. Delete all
columns except first name, last name, Login ID and student
number.
e) Sort by list by student number.
f) Open the scantron results into another spreadsheet. If you
have several files for different sections, copy and paste the results
so that they're all in ONE file. Sort the scantron results by
student number as well.
g) Copy all columns of the scantron results and paste them into the
gradebook export such that the data is side-by-side and hopefully the
student numbers match up at the top.
They won't all match up, so you'll have to either visually scan them
and move some partial rows down or up until they all do match up.
HINT: You can use an Excel equation to help with the visual matching...
Say that the student number from the gradebook is in Cell D4 and
the student number from scantron is in Cell E4. In the next
available column on the same row, use this formula:
=if (D4=E4," ","no match")
All this does is tell you if the two cells match or not.
You have to keep copying the equation down as cells get moved around.
If this data manipulation just isn't in your repertoire of skills,
forward to me the scantron results and I'll put this together for you as time permits.
Questions, comments?
mj
MJ Pilgrim/Chris Boothroyd/Lily Chumbley
LearningSystem Team
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