While I was digesting my Thanksgiving turkey and catching up on all the ball games over the long weekend, our development team was hard at work on Academic Reports, the promised next phase of Schoolwork. Our team is currently working on training materials to help you understand and use Academic Reports. Watch the MBC Trainers group, and the MBC Orientation Center topic, for more information.
Meanwhile, here are some quick tips to get you started.
Attach standards to your Schoolwork questions
The first step is to make sure your existing Schoolwork has standards attached to all of the questions you want to measure -- standards attached only to the test are not used in these reports. However, results are retroactive -- you can add standards to tests your students have already submitted, and see results immediately.
Create your first report
The next step is to create your first report. Click Academic Reports in the grey navigation bar, select the report type (individual student, or group report), select your standards, give your report a name, then create the report. A group report will look something like this:
Tips to help you use Academic Reports effectively
- Notice that you can "drill down" by clicking a student name, to see individual reports by standard.
- Easily spot which students are meeting your learning goals, and which ones may need extra help with certain concepts. Proficiency results are color coded: scores from 0 to 59% are red, 60 to 74% are yellow, and 75% to 100% are green. We plan to introduce custom proficiency ranges in a future update.
- Another benefit to teachers and students is Adaptive Learning. My Big Campus automatically locates published Bundles with the associated standard, so you can branch and share them with students who need extra help to master a subject area. In a future update, students will be able to access their own academic reports and access supplemental resources directly.
- Yet another is the ability to group related standards in a Learning Target. This simplifies the task of creating multiple reports that use the same set of standards if you teach multiple sections of the same class. The resulting report will be a summary view of all the standards in the Learning Target.
There's more information to come, in future blog posts, training webinars, technical notes, and help pages. If you have ideas, questions, or tips to share with your peers, let me know in the comments.
If you've been watching my blogs recently, you probably know we're updating the Schoolwork interface. In today's blog, I'll talk about what the update means for students.
First of all, you'll see a new Schoolwork Dashboard, that shows your current schoolwork, plus a sidebar that shows you what's due today, and this week.
It's also easier to complete your schoolwork on My Big Campus. The best part is that you'll be able to save your work in progress within schoolwork and return to it later.
Your teacher can assign more types of questions, and can even add images, bundles, videos, and other My Big Campus content to each question.
The Comment area is now more visible in the right side of your screen. If you have a question for your teacher or need help with something, type in the box and click Comment. When your teacher replies, you'll see the reply there too.
The other best part is that you'll also be able to do all this from your iPhone or iPad using the next MBC app -- once it's released from the App Store.
There's more information to come, for both students and teachers. Watch my Blog for updates.
I'm always interested in comments and suggestions related to the subject of this blog post. Let me know what you think!
You know how some teachers let you resubmit assignments to earn a higher grade? That's a bit like what we're doing behind the scenes here at My Big Campus.
The Schoolwork interface got a major overhaul early this year, and we're fine-tuning it again as a result of teacher and student feedback. You'll see the changes after I update the site on Friday evening. In the meantime, here's a quick preview:
Teachers can grade assignments with another teacher
One question I'm asked very often is, "I share my classroom with another teacher. How do we share assignments with each other?" This started out as a complex problem, but turned out to have an easy solution. Friday's update will add a check box on the Edit Assignment page so you can allow group administrators, as well as yourself, to view and grade submissions. Just make your colleague a group administrator, and they'll see shared assignments on the Needs Grading tab. Don't worry, we've built in some safeguards to prevent two teachers from working on the same assignment submission: To prevent edit conflicts, only one user at a time can open a submission for grading.
Teachers can grade assignment submissions more quickly
We've also streamlined the interface for teachers so it will take fewer steps to grade batches of assignments. Select an assignment for grading, click Quick List, then enter your scores and bonus points directly on the page.
Students can save and continue working before submitting assignments
When a student opens an assignment, students will see a new option on the submission form to open an MBC Document. This way, students can save their work in progress and continue working until they are ready to submit the assignment to the teacher.
Everyone's Schoolwork will be easier to find
Students and teachers both reported they sometimes had trouble finding all their schoolwork, because old assignments were hidden unless you changed the View options on the page. We've added a Show All link so students and teachers can see all their current and past schoolwork. And it will soon be possible to search for an assignment from the Schoolwork page.
Students can mark assignments "Dismissed"
Students will also be able to mark assignments as "Dismissed" to remove them from the counter in the left navigation menu.
We're still at work on some other requested improvements to Schoolwork and other new features; you'll see those later this summer. Visit the What's Next for My Big Campus? page in the MBC Orientation Center to stay up to date on development plans for the coming weeks, and find information about updates in the MBC Release Notes topic.
I appreciate the opportunity to learn from you, our customers, about how you want to use My Big Campus, and I hope the work we do gives everyone high marks. Please share your questions, ideas, and suggestions with me in the Comments.
If you're new to My Big Campus, here are a few tips to help you keep on top of your schoolwork, whether you're a student or a teacher.
Keep track with tabs and filters
Use the Assigned to You and Your Submissions tabs to keep track of your schoolwork.
- Sort assignments and quizzes by group, due date, and status.
- Filter the list by Need to Submit and Missed.
- Studens: On the Your Submissions tab, see Graded and Not Graded assignments.
- Teachers: Instantly find and grade new submissions on the Needs Grading tab.
Use the dropdown lists to refine your view by
- Type: All, Assignments, Quizzes
- History: Current, Past, Pending
- Groups: All groups, or a specific group
All lists are sortable: click any column heading to sort from first to last. Click again to sort from last to first.
For teachers
- Use the Save and Continue button while editing a quiz to save work in progress before you publish the quiz.
- Use Student View to “preview” quizzes and assignments as a student, without the administrative burden of creating test users. Click Your View to resume editing.
Save as Templates to reuse quizzes and assignments you create.
- Templates are quizzes and assignments that you can create and save, then publish and re-use as many times as you like.
- Templates contain questions only, not start/end dates, groups, or people.
- Templates can be edited or reused as many times as you like.
- Any existing quiz or assignment can become a template: select the assignment, then click Create Template.
Where can I learn more?
Find quick answers in the Help, and download the Schoolwork technical note from the MBC Orientation Center topic. More questions? Let me know in the comments.
Earlier this week, I promised to give you a sneak preview of some new My Big Campus features we'll be releasing in the next few days.
The first update is for everyone: we’ve made search results more relevant. In the latest update to My Big Campus, your groups, school, and district will be ranked higher in the results. This should make it easier to find people, discussions, and items.
The next feature is for teachers. A lot of you have been asking for an easy way to “preview” quizzes and assignments as a student, without the administrative burden of creating test users. You’ll now see a Student View button when you’re creating or editing a quiz or assignment. Click this button to view the schoolwork as a student. Click Your View to resume editing.
The other major new feature affects the Library. We’ve had requests, particularly from elementary schools, for controlled access to the My Big Campus Resource Library. Although we believe that filtering and manual curation makes the MBC Library safe and appropriate for students, we recognize that some school admins want more control over the age appropriateness of the library.
With the latest update to My Big Campus, administrators can enable or disable the Library with user policies. Here’s how it works:
- If you disable the Library, users will not see the top-navigation link to the Library, nor will they see Library items in search results.
- Users without Library access will only be able to see items shared by their teacher.
- Users will still be able to upload and share personal files in Your Stuff, but may not add items to the Library.
We encourage you to use this new option with care, and only in cases where no other appropriate solution will work for your students. For most middle and high schools, it’s not necessary to disable the library completely.
Rarely, a user will post something inappropriate, where it might be visible briefly until it’s removed by our staff. This is where our user community can help: If you find a Library item that violates our Terms of Use, we encourage you to use the Report Abuse link to have the item reviewed by My Big Campus staff.
I’m always interested in your ideas and suggestions to improve My Big Campus. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Our MBC Development team finished a major homework assignment over the holidays, and presented us with some new features on the Schoolwork page. Here's an overview of the new look, which should be live in the next few hours:
For Students:
The big benefit here is that you can now sort your schoolwork by group and due date, so important assignments don't get lost in the clutter.
- Assignment and Quiz tabs replaced with Assigned to You and Your Submissions.
- Assignments and quizzes are combined in a single list, which you can sort by group, due date, and status.
- On the Assigned to You tab, the Show Upcoming, All, and Past Due options are replaced by Need to Submit and Missed.
- On theYour Submissions tab, you can now view Graded and Not Graded assignments.
For Teachers :
The big deal for teachers is that you can now recycle quizzes and assignments – just create a new Template, or convert existing schoolwork to Templates for reuse. You now also have more control over how to display schoolwork – including a separate view for schoolwork that needs to be graded.
- You'll see some new tabs: Needs Grading (submitted assignments), Assigned by You, and Templates.
- Assignments and quizzes are combined in a single list, which you can sort by group, due date, and status.
- You can now create Templates: re-usable assignments and quizzes. You can also convert existing assignments and quizzes to templates for re-use.
- Quiz editor now has a Save and Continue button to save work in progress before publishing the quiz.
Where do I find the schoolwork for all my groups?
Use the dropdown lists to refine your view by
- Type: All, Assignments, Quizzes
- History: Current, Past, Pending
- Groups: All groups, or a specific group
How do I organize my schoolwork?
All lists are now sortable: click any column heading to sort from first to last. Click again to sort from last to first.
The blue column indicates the current sort order.
More about Templates
Templates are quizzes and assignments that you can create and save, then publish and re-use as many times as you like. Templates differ from regular assignments and quizzes in the following ways:
- Templates contain questions only, not start/end dates, groups, or people.
- Templates can be edited or reused as many times as you like.
- Any existing quiz or assignment can become a template: select the assignment, then click Create Template.
Where can I learn more about the new features?
Find quick answers in the Help, and download the Schoolwork technical note from the MBC Orientation Center topic. More questions? Let me know in the comments.