When using the gradebook for entering grades, note that there is a
'comment' field directly beside the grade to be entered. Please
know/understand that these comments are for the "audit trail only" and
that your students won't actually see the comments. The only kind of grading comments that a student can see are the
comments attached to the electronic assignment dropbox, and the
comments that can be entered on the bottom of a grading form/rubric.
Gradebook/Dropbox Help for TAs:
We
have recorded a 1.5 hour live session on "Online Communication,
Assignments and the Gradebook" specifically geared towards Teaching
Assistants. All graduate students will see this new item in the
myTrent portal under 'Tools', 'WebCasts' and if you wish your
undergraduate students to also be able to view this, please let me know
and I'll give them access.
SAVE your gradebook often! :
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. To export your gradebook,
choose:
TEACH, GRADEBOOK, EXPORT TO SPREADSHEET. Rename the
default filename (perhaps incorporate the date) and save these either
to a network drive, or multiple copies to memory sticks and local
harddrives.
Students appearing in 'red' in the gradebook:
If you see student names that appear in red with a 'minus sign' icon in
your gradebook, those students have been unenrolled from your course by
my automated routine to process student "drops". You can
hide these 'red students' by choosing "Hide unenrolled members" from
the "gradebook options" button in the top right corner of the gradebook
and then get them back by choosing 'Show unenrolled member data' from
the same dropdown.
3. About the Calendar
=========
Please do not replicate all due
dates from your syllabus into the calendar tool. This can
consume a lot of your time, and if you make a mistake confusion will
reign. Your students have a responsibility to follow the
syllabus.
If you do not use the calendar at all, please hide it. Manage Course, Tools, 'uncheck' Calendar, SAVE.
If you do use the calendar, please ensure that it is set up so that
students cannot inadvertantly post PUBLIC entries. Calendar,
'Calendar Settings', uncheck 'allow student public entries'. SAVE.
4. Posting Lecture Materials
===========
a) Light Backgrounds on Powerpoint slides, please... Just
before you post your Powerpoint PPT files or PDF them as handout pages,
consider changing the 'design' to incorporate black text on a white
background . Not doing so wastes a lot of printer toner.
To do so, choose 'Format', then 'Slide Design'.
b) Scanned Items --
some instructors are posting HUGE items to their learningSystem
sites -- some as big as 1 or 2 Gigabytes! These items stall our
print servers and create havoc in the student labs. Please scan
only when absolutely necessary as scanning generates these files that
are basically "pictures". Consider scanning to more, smaller
documents than one large document.
5. Confirm any 'manually enrolled' students in your sites now?
===========
Instructors are often approached by
'not-quite-registered' students for access to course
learningSystem/WebCT sites.
If you add a "not-quite-registered" student to your
learningSystem/WebCT site, you are giving them "reason to believe" that
they are also properly registered in the course... Students that
complete course requirements without registering are getting a "free
ride" for that course, and the university loses significant revenue
each year because of improper / missing registrations. The
most common reason for students to not be able to register for a course
involves "nonpayment of fees" and not system or Registrar's Office
issues as they may lead you to believe.
ANY TIME that you manually 'enroll' a student into your learningSystem
site, please make a record of this action. After the deadline date
TO ADD COURSES has passed, verify the registrations of these
manually-added students via Colleague/Class Roster or via your department secretary
-- and REMOVE / UNENROLL any student who has not followed through with
their registration responsibility. FINAL DATES TO ADD COURSES
WITH PERMISSION: FA AND F/W COURSES - SEPT. 30; WI COURSES - JAN. 27.
6. Summer 2011 Sites will be hidden from students TOMORROW Friday, September 30th.
===========
All learningSystem
sites from the 2011 Summer session will be hidden from the students
enrolled in them as of tomorrow. Instructors' access has been retained, and no
content will be touched/reset until a later date after I've archived them all.
7. New Instructor Resources: Lectern and Smartboard Videos
===========
Trent IT endeavours to provide the Trent community with simple
step by step instructions on using available technologies. See
"User Guides' from
http://www.trentu.ca/it
for How-To videos on Lecterns, Smartboards, Voicemail and Video Conferencing.
8. LMS Review -- We need input on future directions for the learningSystem
===========
The learningSystem/Blackboard/WebCT in its current state goes
end-of-life in April 2013. We need to determine our future
direction and we need your help! Options include migrating to
Blackboard's new tool called "Blackboard Learn" or switching platforms
to one of the other LMS tools out there. In light of this, we'd
like to have representation from any department that is interested in
participating on a LMS Review Panel. If you are interested,
please communicate this to your Department Chair and consider attending
the LMS Review Kick-off Meeting? I've constructed a Doodle Poll
to determine a mutually-agreeable time for interested parties:
http://www.doodle.com/iyebs6nb747vhssh
