If you need to keep track of student participation in MyLO Discussion Topics, using the Reports tool will allow you to get a quick overview of who has, or hasn’t, made a contribution.

Step 1

Navigate to your MyLO unit’s Home page (this is the first page you see when you access the unit). You should see a Reports widget to the right hand side of the screen. This contains links to a variety of reports. Select Discussion Access by Forums and Topics.

Step 2

The report will open. You should see a list of all the Discussion Forums and Topics in your unit, presented in a table. Select the Topic that you wish to see results for by clicking on its name (you may need to scroll down to see it). For example, here we will select Discussion Week 2 from the Discussion Monitoring forum.

Step 3

The report you have requested will open in a new window or tab. If you only see some of your students on the page, select 200 from the per page drop down menu, seen to the top right of the table. This will allow you to see the maximum number of results on the one page.

TIP: If you only wish to see a selection of students, you can filter by group, using the View by options seen above the table of results. For example, you could choose to see only off-campus students by selecting the group, Default Group Study Mode External.  This post provides more information about how to filter results by group.

You will be able to see how many Threads and how many Replies students have contributed to the Discussion Topic.

Step 4 (optional)

If you would prefer to have a printable version of the results, ensure that you have the report window selected, then select CTRL + P on your keyboard (for a PC) or Command + Print (for a Mac). This should generate a printable version of the report page. If your students are spread out across several pages, you will need to repeat this process for each page.

In November 2016, Academic Senate determined that actions must be taken to monitor student engagement in all units. A student is considered actively engaged when they undertake and complete activities. Students who display minimal or no engagement with unit activities may be subject to university-initiated withdrawal.

If you are coordinating a unit, you will be expected to participate in the engagement monitoring process from Semester 2, 2017.

What you will need to do

You will need to incorporate two activities that can be used as indicators of student engagement in your unit. Both activities must occur within the first four weeks of semester. Records of student participation in these activities must be recorded in the Grades tool of your unit’s MyLO site. The data must be recorded in the Grades tool by the Friday (5pm) of Week 4.

The university will pull engagement data from your unit’s MyLO Grades tool*: you will need to ensure that your MyLO unit is set up correctly to facilitate collection of the data. This means that you will need to:

• Identify two activities that will be used to measure student engagement;
• Clearly identify the two activities to students in your Unit Outline;
• Set up two Grade Items in your  unit’s Grades tool using the correct naming conventions; and
• Record participation data in the Grade Items. This may occur automatically (e.g. when a Quiz activity is used), or manually.

*Though we were initially advised that a computer script would automatically draw student engagement data from MyLO Grades, it appears unlikely that this technology will be developed in time for Semester 2. As a result, Unit Coordinators may need to review the Student Engagement Activity data that they have recorded in their MyLO Grades tool, and report any disengaged students. We will update this page as soon as we receive further information about the reporting procedure for Semester 2, 2017.

Identify two activities

The activities need to indicate active student participation: they do not need to provide a measure of student learning. You can use activities that already occur within the first four weeks of your unit, or you may wish to add new activities. The following table provides a list of common activities. It also indicates whether reporting to the Grades tool can be automated, or whether a level of manual data input (from the teaching team) will be required. Engagement should be reflected by a simple scoring (assuming that 0 indicates a lack of engagement).

Activity	Reporting to Grade Item
Students…	Auto Input	Manual Input
Students complete a Quiz (could be non-assessable/assessable)
Students complete an assessable SCORM package (advanced)
Students view an introductory video or lecture via Echo360 ALP (MyMedia)
Students submit to an Assignment Submission Folder	(once mark is applied and published in the Assignments tool)
Students attend a class/classes face to face or online (e.g. a web conference)
Students add themselves to a MyLO Group
Students contribute to an introductory Discussion or Discussion Activity
Students participate in a Survey
Students complete a Checklist
Students mark a Content item as complete

Clearly identify the two engagement activities to students through your Unit Outline

The type of Unit Outline that you use may vary depending on your College or Discipline. The latest version of the UTAS Unit Outline Proforma (available here) includes a section called Specific attendance/performance requirements. Here you can record details of your Student Engagement Activities so that students clearly understand what is required of them.

Set up two Grade Items using the correct naming conventions

You must include two Grade Items in your unit’s Grades tool: one for each Engagement Activity. If your College or Faculty has a support team, they may set up the Grade Items for you by request.

The full name of these Grade Items must incorporate the phrase #SEA. When you create or edit a Grade Item, record the correct name into the Name field in the Properties tab.

The way you set up the Grade Items will vary according to the type of engagement activity that you have designed.  These Solutions to Common Grading Scenarios will help you determine the best way to set up your Grade Items. Some Grade Items will be standalone, that is, not connected to any MyLO tool. Others may be directly connected to a tool like a Quiz.

For further advice about setting up Grade Items, please contact your Faculty or School’s online/blended learning support team.

Record participation data in the Grade Items

By 5pm Friday of the end of Week 4, the Grade Items associated with each Engagement Activity must have a score recorded for each student (e.g. 0 for non-engagement, and 1 for engagement). The way you record this data will depend on the type of activity and the way you have set up your Grade Items. Tutors and other members of the teaching team may need some training to ensure that they know how to record these scores efficiently and correctly.

For further advice about recording data in Grade Items, please contact your Faculty or School’s online/blended learning support team.

The following sample rubrics may be useful when you’re:

• sharing your expectations about discussion participation with students;
• getting students to review the contributions made by other students; and
• developing a rubric to aid marking of discussions and provide students with useful feedback.

Palloff & Pratt (2007, p. 211)

This rubric focuses on the quality on the quality of contributions/participation. It does not specify a number of posts or the timeliness of posts.

Source: Palloff, RM & Pratt, K 2002, Building Online Learning Communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom, Jossey-Bass, San Franciso.

Edelstein & Edwards (2002)

Promptness or ‘timeliness’ is included as a criteria in this rubric. This is useful, as it implies that students can’t wait until to last day of the task to post. Instead, it encourages students to post early and keep checking back, helping to ensure a more even flow of conversation.

Source: Edelstein, S & Edwards, J 2002, ‘If you build it they will come: Building learning communities through threaded discussions’, Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, vol.  5, no. 1, n.p., viewed 11 June 2009, <http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring51/edelstein51.html>

Lai (2012)

This is a set of criteria focuses on the demonstration of critical thinking skills in discussions. Levels are not described, with a general description of each criteria provided instead. The following levels are stated: Developing; Competent; Advanced; and Exemplary.

Source: Lai, K 2012, ‘Assessing participation skills: Online discussions with peers’, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, vol.  37, no. 18, 933 – 947, viewed 17 October 2016, <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=anh&AN=83369751&site=ehost-live>

There are a variety of online tools and software applications that you can use to help students create or perform items for assessment, and submit online. Here, we  review some of the tools supported by UTAS.

Respond within a reasonable time-frame.

Respond to questions (in the Ask the Class Discussion) within two (2) business days and apply the same response time to emails. This avoids students defaulting to email thinking that they will get a faster response. Avoid responding immediately, as this feeds the assumption that you are always available. Only respond immediately if the request is urgent (e.g. a student has reported that a Quiz does not appear on MyLO.

Discussion activities for learning require less direct facilitator intervention. These activities usually proceed over a one to two week period. Check in and encourage, correct or re-direct if needed, ideally just before the midpoint of the activity (day 2/3/7), and again just before the end point of the activity (day 5/6/12).

Unless you have a small cohort, it is impossible to respond to every post.

Focus on answering each Q&A style question. Use techniques like weaving and summarising to give the impression of instructor presence in discussion activities for learning.

Include a salutation, preferably addressing the student, or students, directly.

Examples:

• Dear students,…
• Hello everyone,…
• Dear Peta,…
• Hello Peta,…
• Hello ^a{FirstName}/^b{InitiatingUserFirstName} [This can be used to personalise a ^aMyLO Announcement or ^bIntelligent Agent email, as it pulls the user’s first name into the message according to their user details]

Thank the class/individuals for their question or comments.

Thank students by drawing attention to what they have done well, and illustrating this with some important or useful contributions. This will help them recognise that they are ‘on the right track’. Thanking an angry student will help reduce anger levels, as you are responding in a civil and polite manner.

Examples:

• Thank you for your question about…
• Thank you for sharing your concerns about…
• Thank you for alerting me to…
• Thank you for your comment/suggestion about…
• I wanted to extend a big thank you to Peta, who alerted me to a problem with…
• Thank you to Peta for her question about…
• It was great to see you all sharing your ideas. I particularly appreciated Peta’s comment about…

Add a touch of personality (warmth) from time to time.

This helps distance students feel more connected with you, and helps engender a sense of belonging to the class. A short sentence is inviting, but not too distracting from the task at hand.

Examples:

• I hope it is warmer where you are today. In Hobart we’re only expecting to reach a 6 degree maximum!
• Did you watch last night’s episode of Q&A? Some of the questions were directly related to the questions raised in last week’s module. It was really interesting.

Acknowledge errors or problems and apologise for them, even if it isn’t your fault.

Students want acknowledgement that there is a problem and that there may be a solution. While it is fine to tell them what went wrong, avoid lengthy descriptions, laying blame, or the use of emotive language.

Examples:

• You’re absolutely right – the Assessments in the Unit Outline currently add up to 80% and this is an error. I have now uploaded the correct version of the Unit Outline which you will find here. Apologies for the confusion.
• Thank you for spotting that typo for me. I must have looked at that page twenty times and not noticed the mistake! I have now corrected the page according to your suggestions.
• I’m sorry to hear that you had difficulty getting access to last night’s online tutorial. I have now added some additional help materials here, which may be useful. Also, I recommend that you…
• Unfortunately, MyLO was down for unforseen emergency maintenance last night, which is why you couldn’t access the lecture recording at that time. As I use MyLO to email students, I wasn’t able to email you all to let you know about the downtime. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience. The system is back up now, and I have checked that the lecture recording is definitely available.

Provide hyperlinks to resources where possible.

This encourages students to act on your messages immediately and avoids the use of lengthy explanations. To learn how to add a hyperlink to a Announcement, Discussion post or MyLO email, click here.

Examples:

• To access the Unit Outline, click here.
• You’ll find more information about the process here: link goes here.

Summarise the most important message/s in the first few paragraphs.

The first few paragraphs tend to get the most attention from a reader. Supplementary information can be included in later paragraphs.

Use full sentences and an informal tone.

Model the kind of language that you want students to use.  A very formal tone can be intimidating, while he use of slang and contractions can be confusing for students with English as a second language.

Use videos to keep your messages short and interesting.

Using MyLO’s Video Note feature you can easily record a video of up to 3 minutes duration straight into a Discussion post or News Item. For instructions, click here. Alternatively, you could link to a recording you have created with Echo 360 Personal Capture.

Create an FAQ resource to save time during future iterations.

Add common questions and your answers to a Word Document throughout the semester (avoiding references to specific dates, weeks or semesters). Next time you run the unit, upload the document (as a PDF) to your MyLO site, so you can direct students to it, or copy or paste from it to increase the speed of your responses.

Avoid correcting a student’s poor behaviour/breaches of etiquette publicly.

Copy the offending post to a ‘quarantine’ discussion (available to staff only) so that you have a record of it, then email the student to explain what has happened to their post, why you have quarantined it, and how they could post more appropriately in future.

Finish with an informal salutation.

Sign off with something like “Cheers”, “Thanks again”, “Talk soon”, “Kind regards”, “Looking forward to hearing from you”, or “See you soon”.

From time to time, students may post something that you feel is inappropriate. An inappropriate post may contain a swear word, insensitive or offensive comment, or a put-down. Attempts to promote or sell a product or service, or push a certain idea, belief or agenda – especially when it is not related to the unit or topic – are also inappropriate. You may also feel that some posts are inappropriate given the nature of a discussion task, for example, extended ‘off-task’ social chit-chat is more appropriate in the Social Cafe Discussion.

While it is possible to delete Discussion posts, deleting them means that you will lose the record of the posts. You may prefer to quarantine a post so that you have a record of it, which can be useful should disciplinary action be required down the track. These instructions will show you how to quarantine a post.

Note that you should contact the owner of the post (the student) to inform them of the removal of the post, explain why it was removed, and provide suggestions as to how they can post in a more appropriate manner next time.

A Grade Item is a column of the Grades tool dedicated to tracking the grades associated with a particular task. It may be associated with a MyLO assessment tool like a Dropbox or Quiz, or it could be a standalone item used to track classroom participation or presentations.

These step-by-step instructions explain how to create a Grade Item.

This table provides an overview of common MyLO tools, and their relationship to Grade Items. It also takes into account electronic Rubrics, Turnitin and Grademark.

This table outlines common grading scenarios. Each scenario is linked to a solution that can be implemented in the Grades tool, to help you collect, mark and distribute grades in the most efficient manner possible. Full instructions are provided for each solution (click on the name of a solution to link to the instructions). If you do not see a scenario that applies to you, please contact the TSBE Flexible Education Team for further advice.

Choose a scenario from the left column, then refer to the solution shown in the right column.