Teaching Online at UTAS

You can add a hyperlink to a website or other resource (such as a PDF) that is available on the internet. Hyperlinks can be added to several locations inside your MyLO unit, including:

• News Items;
• Discussion posts (including a Topic description, Threads and Replies);
• MyLO Emails (emails that you write to students using email in MyLO);
• MyLO Checklist Category and Item descriptions;
• HTML Pages;
• Anywhere that you can add a description; or
• As a link inside a Folder in the Content tool.

These instructions show you how to create a hyperlink in MyLO.

UTAS large teaching spaces feature a range of technologies, including projectors and screens, document cameras, and lectern and radio microphones.

Many of these technologies can be controlled from the control panel (a touch screen) on the lectern in the space. This visual guide shows you how to control the equipment using the control panel in many standard UTAS large teaching spaces.

The control panels used in the Harvard Teaching Spaces are different. You can access instructions showing how to use them here.

The Harvard spaces feature a range of technologies, including front and rear projectors and screens, a document camera, numerous microphones (fixed and portable), and video conferencing functionality.

Most of these technologies can be controlled from the control panel (a touchscreen) on the lectern. There is also a clicker available to allow you to move through slides without returning to the lectern.

This visual guide shows you how to control the equipment using the control panel in the Harvard spaces.

If you use Grademark to provide comments on students’ work, you, or your students, may wish to download or print the feedback.

These instructions should work for both staff & student views in the Grademark interface (known as ‘Feedback Studio’).

First load up the assignment and go into the Feedback Studio area (either by clicking the Originality Report from the Assignment area or by clicking ‘View Feedback’ in grades).

Once Feedback Studio is loaded – locate the toolbar to the right and click on the top-most icon (shown below) – then choose which ‘layers’ you wish to download. You can choose download the grademarks, the originality report or both.

Then click the icon with a ‘down arrow’ on it, as shown below. This will give you the options for downloading. Click ‘current view’ to download the file with your current selections.

When you click an option, depending on your browser, the file with download into your default download directory or you’ll be asked where to save the file.

The PDF that is then created will contain the document with the inline comments shown, some small comments may be shown but larger quickmark comments will likely be shown annotated below the original document.

Whether you’re designing online activities for your face-to-face students or developing a fully online course, you not only need to think about WHAT you’re asking learners to do, but HOW you’re telling them to do it.

The words and sentence structures you choose really do make a difference to the way that your students interact with your content and activities. You may find this blog post by Kim George helpful: Top Ten Tips for How to Write an e-Learning Course in Plan English 

MyLO’s Grades tool is flexible and offers many options for recording, tracking and calculating student grades.

This page is designed to link you to useful resources related to the Grades tool.

This solution would suit scenarios like this:

• You/your tutors monitor students’ participation in weekly tutorials and workshops. Participation is not assessable; however, you wish to collect data about participation to inform the ongoing development of your unit.
• You/your tutors monitor students’ participation in weekly tutorials and workshops for assessment purposes. You would prefer to make a judgement about a student’s participation overall (rather than have MyLO calculate a score automatically), and record a mark based on your judgement.

Grading system and other requirements

This method requires the use of a weighted grading system. You will need to develop your own scoring system for tracking student participation. For example, a simple system might be as follows:

• 0 – indicates non-attendance;
• 1 – indicates attendance but minimal participation;
• 2 – indicates a reasonable level of participation; and
• 3 – indicates a high level of participation.

Your Category will initially need to be assigned a weighting (e.g. if participation is worth 10% of the unit, assign a Weight of 10). This will allow you to track how students perform over time using the Category Subtotal. This weighting is changed to 0% later in the unit, so that it does not impact on the Final Calculated Grade. If you wish to track participation, we suggest that you export the Category and Subtotal to an Excel spreadsheet before you change the Category weight to 0. This way, you will retain a record of the Subtotal. If you wish to manually generate a final overall participation mark for assessment purposes, you should create a Standalone Grade Item and record grades into it before you change the Category weight to 0.

When marking, you will need to record 0 as the grade for any un-submitted Quizzes or to represent non-attendance/lack of participation.

You will need to:

• Create one Category to represent the assessment task (if participation is assessable) to organise your weekly items. Use the options suggested here.
• Create one Grade Item for each week. Use the options suggested here. You must link each Grade Item to the Category that you have created.
• If you wish to manually generate an overall grade for the assessment task, we suggest creating another standalone Grade Item that is not linked to the Category you have created. Weight the Grade Item accordingly (e.g. if the assessment is worth 10%, record 10 as the weight). Use the options suggested here.

To see an example of what this solution might look like in the Grades tool, download this PDF.

You can download a printable copy of this whole page here.

This solution would suit scenarios like this:

• Each week, students complete a Quiz as preparation for class. There are 12 Quizzes. The two lowest scores are dropped, so that the 10 remaining Quizzes contribute 10% each towards Assessment Task 2, worth a total of 10 marks.
• You wish to monitor student participation. Each week, a score is recorded for each student in a standalone Grade Item. The five highest scoring Grade Items are calculated to form the final grade for Assessment Task 2, worth a total of 10 marks.

Grading system and other requirements

This method requires the use of a weighted grading system. When marking, you will need to record ‘0’ as the grade for any un-submitted Quizzes or to represent non-attendance/lack of participation. Once the students have completed their final task, you will need to make a slight alteration to the Category settings so that the Category ‘drops’ the required number of Grade Items.

You will need to:

• Create one Category to represent the assessment task and use the options suggested here.
• Create one Grade Item per task, either standalone (for participation marking) or to be linked to a tool like a Quiz. Use the options suggested here. You must link each Grade Item to the Category that you have created.
• Link each Quiz (where relevant) with one of your new Grade Items. Note that you can skip this step if you have created Standalone Grade Items.

To see an example of what this solution might look like in the Grades tool, download this PDF.

When marking:

The Category Subtotal will calculate correctly only if you record a zero (0) for each un-submitted piece of work. Here are some instructions on how to mark un-submitted items with a 0 quickly.

You can download a printable copy of this whole page here.

This solution would suit scenarios like this:

Students must deliver a presentation for one assessment task. The task is worth 20% of the unit assessment. Students may deliver their presentation at a nominated tutorial time between weeks 5 and 10 of semester. You decide to make students submit their presentation plan/slides to a Dropbox the day prior to their scheduled presentation session. You will provide feedback to students and record their mark via the Dropbox folder.  The issue you need to resolve here is different due dates for different students.
Options

You have three options in this scenario:

• Create a Dropbox with no Start, Due or End Date restrictions and link it to a single Grade Item (see Grade a single assessment task comprising one item). A date will be recorded against each student’s submission, but overdue submissions will not be flagged as late.
• Place students in presentation groups (based on their presentation delivery date) using the Groups tool. Create one Dropbox and associate a Grade Item (see Grade a single assessment task comprising one item). Use the Dropbox Restrictions to add a Special Access condition for each presentation group that specifies a Due date unique to that group. Students will see the due date specified by their Special Access condition. Their submission will be flagged as late if the fail to submit before the due date set as their Special Access condition.
• This is the most complex option. Place students in presentation groups (based on their submission date) using the Groups tool. Create a unique Dropbox folder for each presentation group. You will also need to create a new Grade Item to attach to each Dropbox. You may wish to restrict access to each Dropbox and Grade Item according to Group membership using Release Conditions.

The remainder of this section assumes that you have chosen option 3. If you have chosen options 1 or 2, refer to the instructions for Grade a single assessment task comprising one item.

Grading system and other requirements

This method requires the use of a weighted grading system and the use of a special marking method (refer to When Marking section below).

You will need:

1. Create one Category to represent the assessment task and use the options suggested here.
2. Create one Grade Item per Dropbox and use the options suggested here. You must link each Grade Item to the Category that you have created.
3. Create one Dropbox for each presentation group. You must link each Dropbox with one of the Grade Items that you have created.

To see an example of what this solution might look like in the Grades tool, download this PDF.

When marking:

You will need to do the following:

• Record marks only for those Grade Items that the student needs to complete. Leave the other Grade Items unmarked. For example, if Tam needs to deliver only one presentation, and delivers it during Week 6, record a mark for her only in the Week 6 Grade Item.
• If a student fails to submit an item that they are expected to complete, record a 0 as their grade. For example, View Student failed to deliver their presentation for Week 5 and has therefore received 0 for this assessment task.

You can download a printable copy of this whole page here.

This solution would suit scenarios like this:

Students will deliver a presentation and then respond to questions from teachers and peers for an Assessment Task worth 35 marks. Face-to-face (F2F) students deliver their presentation and respond to questions in class. You will use a standalone Grade Item to provide F2F students with a grade and feedback. Distance students will pre-record a presentation. They will submit a copy to a Dropbox (worth 70%). You make the presentations available for viewing by linking to them to Discussion Topic. You will mark the Discussion Topic to assess how students respond to questions about their presentation (worth 30%).

Grading system and other requirements

This method requires the use of a weighted grading system. See also the instructions for marking un-submitted and irrelevant items below.

You will need to:

• Create one Category to represent the assessment task and use the options described here.
• Create one Grade Item per assessment item and use the options described here. You must link each Grade Item to the Category that you have created.
• Link each Dropbox/Discussion/Quiz with one of your new Grade Items. If students perform a task in class and do not need to submit items electronically, you can skip this step.

To see an example of what this solution might look like in the Grades tool, download this PDF.

When marking:

• Do not record a mark for items that a student does not need to submit.
• If a student fails to submit an item that they are expected to complete, record a 0 as their grade.

In the example below, Tam is studying F2F, while View Student is studying by Distance. Tam has received a mark of 67/100 for the presentation she delivered in class. No marks need to be recorded for the other tasks, as the F2F Presentation is worth 100% of Assessment 3 (A3) for F2F students.

View Student, on the other hand, failed to participate in the Distance Q&A required of Distance students. To account for this, a 0 mark was recorded for this task, bringing down the student’s overall mark (Subtotal) for the assessment task accordingly.

You can download a printable copy of this whole page here.