LC Academic Technology

When setting your delivery dates for an assigment in CourseWork, it is often tempting to fill in all three of the boxes available: the available date, the due date, and the retract date. However, often it is the case that the only one we really need is the due date.

Available date:

Of course, ideally, we are very organized and set up our whole quarter two weeks before it starts: all materials ready for students and all assignments loaded with the appropriate dates. But there are times when we are running a bit behind and we don’t get around to setting up an assignment until the day we want to release it. In this case, you really don’t need a release date, since the assignment will be available as soon as it is published.

Retract date

The question to ask yourself is, “Does it really matter if students see this later in the quarter?” Unless the assignment has very high security content, then most of the time it does not matter. If this is the case, not setting a Retract date will allow you much more flexibility with students who run into difficulty submitting. If you do retract the assignment, there really is no way to get it back, which means that students who had difficulty submitting will not get another chance. The only way to re-release a retracted assignment is to rename it and release it to all students as a new assignment

Retakes

Did one of your students have trouble submitting an assignment? If so, you may be able to allow them to do a retake. Open the Scores link for the assignment and you will see the Overview of the assignment. If you click on Submission Status, you will see the name of each student who submitted and below that there should be an Email link and a link that says "Allow retake?" Click on this link. Note that this only works if the student actually submitted something. If they haven’t, then have them submit a blank assignment and then allow the retake. This will not work if you have retracted the assignment (yet another reason not to retract until the quarter ends).

There have been a number of fixes to CW in the last few months so I would like to summarize them here. I’ll also use this as an opportunity to give some resources for finding more detailed information.

Perhaps the biggest change is the integration of the standalone syllabus tool Stanford Syllabus with CW. The basic change is that now instructors only have to upload to either CW or Stanford Syllabus and their document will be visible in both. Unfortunately, this means that where we were able to upload multiple documents to CW syllabus, now only one is permitted, because this is what was allowed in Stanford Syllabus. Apparently, they are trying to migrate the syllabuses from the last year over to the new tool. If someone needs more than that, please send me the course name, number and year, as well as some justification for doing this, and I will make the request.

Another big change is that the timed assignment setting works. There was a bug that created a wide range of errors and eventually lost the student’s work if the autosubmit had to kick in. This has apparently been tested pretty thoroughly, but personally, I am still nervous about composing anything in an online text box. Copy and paste from Word, Notepad, whatever, seems like it would be much, much safer.

One new feature that they added in response to requests is the ability to edit published documents. From the release notes: “Instructors can modify existing questions as well as the delivery date options, feedback delivery options, and gradebook options under Settings.” What this means is that you don’t need to unpublish an assignment, then create a new one with a different name. However, it is important to note that many of the settings *cannot* be edited: Assignment Title, Assignment Released to, High Security, Timed Assignment, Assignment Organization, Submissions, Submission Message, Feedback Authoring, Grading, Graphics, and Metadata. The recording applet has not been fixed yet, and so we still need to restrict ourselves to one applet per page – this was often set using the Assignment Organization setting, but since we still cannot change that for published assignments, it is very important that you make sure it is set correctly from the beginning.

Other issues that have been resolved are: access to the Discussion tool, access options and email notification for Drop-box items, email notification for new files in Materials, and section specific content in automatically managed sections. Please see the Release Notes for Spring 08 Releases 1 and 2 for more details.

Other useful pages include:

• Current Issues in Production (Recently resolved and as yet unresolved current issues)
• Functional Gaps between CourseWork v3 and CourseWork v5

These come from the CW5 Help Resources, which can also be accessed through the Help Resources link in the left menu on the CW home page (before you login).

As we enter into the school year, there are a few changes and important points related to technology that LC instructors should be aware of. ITS has moved away from Symantec / Norton Anti-virus and Webroot SpySweeper in favor of Sophos, which does both. You can simply uninstall SpySweeper, and then go to Essential Stanford Software ( http://ess.stanford.edu) , download Sophos and install it. This installation will automatically uninstall Symantec / Norton Anti-virus. There are versions for both PC and Mac.

You now have 1GB of AFS space, up from 200MB, which, while you may use as you wish, could be used for securely storing restricted data, such as documents with student data. I would strongly suggest that you get as much student data off of your machines. While we are teachers and need to keep track of our students every quarter, there is no reason not to move data from previous quarters to more secure storage, like AFS, CD-ROMs or an outboard hard disk that is not usually connected. It is a tedious task to clean out your laptop, but it is a mobile device and therefore simply is not an appropriate place to keep student data. More information on AFS can be found at http://www.stanford.edu/services/afs/.

CourseWork has undergone some major changes since last fall. But first, a few reminders:

• When creating sites, set them up ONE AT A TIME (unless, of course, you want more than one class in a site).
• Don’t use the back button (ever).
• Save does not equal submit (unless you check the Auto-submission box in Settings)
• Post your syllabus by 9/20. The CW syllabus is now integrated with http://syllabus.stanford.edu and only accepts one document or set of text.

And my basic advice for CourseWork:

• Allow for student error (don’t set a Retract date, allow for multiple submissions, etc.)
• Set for Auto-submission.
• Check the settings.
• Preview every assignment.

The changes you should be aware of are:

• The recording applet has been greatly improved and now launches from a link, so you can put as many Audio Recording items on a page as you want. It will reliably submit recordings of up to 5 minutes.
• Auto-submission on the due date is now possible.
• It is now possible to edit a published assignment.

There are many more improvements – see the 2008 Improvements page on the LC Academic Technology Resource Website at http://lcatswiki.stanford.edu or the CW Release notes ( https://www.stanford.edu/group/coursework/cgi-bin/drupal/?q=node/123#f1)

For more details see my slides ( http://www.stanford.edu/dept/lc/ats/LCTech2008.ppt)from the LC General Meeting on 9/15/2008. Also, for more general help with CourseWork and all the technology available to the Language Center, please visit the LC Academic Technology Resource Website at http://lcatswiki.stanford.edu. If you are interested in a Workshop, please check the schedule on the Resource Website and RSVP to me (kenro at stanford dot edu).

The other day I was in late and a student knocked on my door asking how to recover a lost recording submission on CourseWork. Apparently she had used up her 2 or 3 attempts on the recording applet, but was still not satisfied, so she clicked the "Remove" link next to the file playback. As a result, not only did she not have any attempts left, she no longer had any audio file left in the assignment. Clicking the "Remove" link does exactly what it says: it removes the file, irrevocably.

I have had other students who somehow ended up with no file and no attempts, and I thought it was a bug in the recording applet, but now I am beginning to suspect otherwise. Instructors should do their best to convince students that the audio response items are not high stakes assignments and they should simply do their best and make a submission.

There have been quite a few questions about the Submissions settings and how to view what the students submit.

The first choice you have to make is the Number of Submissions. I recommend that the Unlimited option be used, but that is usually a departmental decision. If you allow unlimited submissions, then no matter how many times a student submits, you get to choose which one you grade. However, if you limit the number of submissions, then someone, somewhere, is going to run out of chances (with a good excuse) and you are going to have to find a way to get a submission from them.

If you do have multiple submissions set, keep in mind that instructors can always see all submissions, so you should look at them all and decide which one you want to take. The Scores interface, by default, is set to only view only the Highest Submission, so you have to click that dropdown menu and select All Submissions. Note that multiple submissions are very different from recording attempts in the recording applet: Instructors only ever see the last recording attempt, but they see all submissions.

The next setting is how you want to deal with late submissions, which most people leave on the default, which is to allow late submissions but mark them as late. The last setting is new for 2008, Auto Submission on the due date. The default for this is not checked, but I would recommend that you check it: somehow it seems logical that assignments that have been saved should be automatically submitted once the due date comes.

So what happens if you do limit the number of submissions, and someone uses up all of their submissions, but has a good excuse and needs to re-take the assignment? Go into the Scores interface and find Submission Status in the menu links near the top of the tool page. Click on that and you will see a list of the students, but below each name, you will see “Allow Retake?” Just click on this link and the student can re-take the assignment – no need to create a new version or anything. If this link is not active, it means that the student has not used up their submissions, and that you are still before the due date. In other words, the student can simply do the assignment again. Students should be aware that each time they start a new submission, the assignment is blank – previous answers do not carry over. Also, they should be aware that the instructor can see every submission, not just the last one.

As you may have noticed, CourseWork released their winter upgrade on Thursday, and opened up site creation for Winter 2009. There are quite a few changes, but I wanted to point out a few changes that language instructors might find useful. If you would like to see the full list of changes, you can look at the Release Notes.

Probably the most important change for us is the Remove link for audio recordings. For some reason, this link appeared this quarter and many students clicked it, thinking that they would get more attempts at recording. This link has now been removed. If students want more attempts at recording, they should make a new submission (if they are allowed to). Please note that this will NOT replace any previous submissions – instructors can always see ALL submissions if they choose to. If you have set your assignment so that submissions are limited, or if the deadline has passed for submission, you can go into Scores >> Submission Status and click Allow Retake. This means that instructors can address most submission problems WITHOUT creating new assignments, so please let your students know that they should contact you if they run into difficulties.

You will see another important change in creating assignments. They have added a new way to create new assignments quickly with simple markup text. If you want to create assignments in the same way that you have been doing so, you should leave the selection on the default “Create using assignment builder” but if you want to try the markup text, you should select “Create using markup text.” They have provided some examples and brief instructions once you get to the next step.

Another change is one that you will not see when you login to CourseWork. They have added a new Forums tool, but it is only being enabled by specific request. This threaded discussion tool will eventually replace the current CourseForum, which is not integrated into CourseWork and is somewhat, shall we say, challenging to use. At the moment, to get the new Forums tool you can’t get it by just going to SiteInfo >> Edit Tools - you have to submit a HelpSU requesting it (please include the exact site name). You should also note that from now on, this tool should take the place of most requests for course weblogs: I will request that you use the Forums tool rather than a weblog unless you have a compelling reason to create an interactive website that 1) must be public, 2) will extend at least three quarters and 3) will have less than 5 authors.

One change that we have been lobbying for is the ability to upload attachments for student feedback in the Scores page. Many instructors (myself included) have had to use the DropBox for this function, but now if students submit an MSWord document, you can correct and comment on it using MSWord’s reviewing functions, and then upload it as part of the students’ score on that assignment item.

They CW team has also been working on improving the warnings at various points, and has added a Submit for Grading confirmation page for students, which allows them to cancel the submission and return to the assignment.

Finally, for those of you who use the Gradebook, removing a published assignment in your list of assignments now also removes it from the Gradebook.

Once again, there are quite a few changes in this release, so if you are interested in seeing them all, please look at the Release Notes.