New to My Big Campus? Or just new to some uses of the site? We offer all kinds of free training options that you can take advantage of whenever it's convenient for you.
We also present free, regularly scheduled, interactive Webinars, where you can learn the basics or get up to speed on specific features.
And, to help those of you who can't fit the live webinars into your schedule, we're going to be recording and posting "best-of" videos of selected topics. You'll find them on this page, in the MBC Trainers group.
Finally, for schools and districts with specific training needs, we also offer on-site or on-line training from our Certified MBC Coaches. Contact us forinformation and pricing.
I want your experience with My Big Campus to be a success for you, your students, and your schools. Let me know in the comments if you have questions or ideas related to the subject of this post.
I got to attend a development meeting the other day, and got the go-ahead to tell you about some of the things they're working on for My Big Campus. I'm excited about the news, and I hope you will be too.
Late this spring, or early summer, you'll see a newly redesigned My Big Campus website, incorporating features that many of you have requested. I'll have more information and screenshots when we're closer to releasing the update, but here the highlights.
MBC Drive
- MBC Drive will replace "Your Stuff" and consolidate all your content: Bundles, Schoolwork, Documents, and file uploads.
- You'll be able to create folders in your MBC Drive to organize your items.
MBC Library search
- Teachers will be able to find published Schoolwork and Bundles in the MBC Library, as well as websites, YouTube videos, and other items.
- Search for your own items, items from your school, your district, or shared by the entire MBC community.
- Other advanced search types: standard, keyword, item type, and more.
Accessibility
- The layout and navigation of the My Big Campus website will adapt for easier interaction on all sizes and types of devices: smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops, and desktop computers. You'll get an idea of how this will work by logging into the Parent Portal from your phone, tablet, and computer.
- MBC will be easier to navigate for users who require assistive technology or who need to use the website in languages other than English.
Mobile apps
- The Android and iOS versions of the My Big Campus mobile app will be upgraded to support more of the features currently available only in the website version of MBC.
Schools: Plan ahead for summer training
If you're responsible for staff training, plan to update your training materials so teachers are up to speed on the new interface before school starts again after the summer break. We know you'll have plenty of questions, so join us in MBC Trainers, where we'll have sample training resources ready for you to adapt by the time the update goes live.
Got ideas and suggestions related to the subject of this blog post? Let me know in the comments.
I have exciting news this week for teachers. Our development team is putting the finishing touches on Question Banks, and they'll be releasing this update in the next few days. Today, I'd like to give you a preview of the new features, and show you some tips on using Question Banks to manage your My Big Campus schoolwork.
Using Question Banks
A Question Bank is simply a collection of questions that you can import into a new or existing Schoolwork. In fact, it's even simpler than that -- any Schoolwork you've already created can be used as a Question Bank for other Schoolwork. You'll find Question Banks as a selection under Add New Question.
Adding Questions from a Question Bank
You can browse Schoolwork or Standards to find questions to add to a test. First, I'll show you how to import a question from an existing Schoolwork.
- Add a new question, and choose Question Banks as the question type.
- Select Schoolworks, then search or browse to the schoolwork item that has the questions you want.
- Click to select a schoolwork, then click to select a Question Group.
- Click Add to copy a question to your test.
Note: You can change the number of points associated with the questions before adding it to a new test.
Adding Questions by Standard
If you've applied standards to individual questions in your Schoolwork, you can browse by Standards to search for matching questions.
Note that you can also browse your saved Favorites to go quickly to the standards you need. You'll get a list of all questions associated with the selected standard, in all your Schoolworks.
Tips to make the most of Question Banks
- Remember that you can import questions from any of your existing Schoolwork.
- Use Question Banks to create multiple copies of the same question, then create variations of the question text or answers -- no more retyping questions and answers.
- Organize questions by subject area, grade level, unit, or question type.
- Remember that you can distribute Schoolwork to your colleagues in Bundles -- a great way to make sure all the important curriculum is covered.
Question Banks will be live on My Big Campus within the next few days. I'm looking forward to reading your tips and questions related to the subject of this blog -- just leave a comment.
I have some exciting news for Bundle creators. In response to many requests to make it easier for students to interact with bundle content, we've added an important new feature, which you'll see within the next day or so in My Big Campus.
We call it Bundle Locks, and it gives you three options:
- Unlock by date and time
- Unlock by user interaction
- Unlock by schoolwork completion
Think of Bundle Locks as a quest -- like a classic adventure story or game, where the hero (or student!) meets a sequence of goals to finish the adventure.
How do I use Bundle Locks?
Add Bundle Locks anywhere in a Bundle: Create or edit a Bundle, click the Content tab, then select Bundle Locks from the "Select type of content" menu. As with all other types of Bundle content, drag your selection from the right pane into the content pane. Bundle Locks hide all content that follows the lock.
Bundle Locks are a good fit for lessons patterned on the four critical PLC questions (PDF):
- What do we expect our students to learn? (Goals/expectations)
- How will we know they are learning? (Assessment)
- How will we respond when they don’t learn? (Intervention)
- How will we respond if they already know it? (Expand learning)
They're also easy to use in the context of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, and Robert Marzano's Classroom Strategies (PDF).
Tips to remember
Bundle Locks work on the website version of My Big Campus. They aren't yet supported in the mobile apps. Teachers should keep this in mind with students who use My Big Campus from a mobile device -- remind them to use the web browser to view Bundles with Bundle Locks.
The Time and Schoolwork locks require configuration.
- For Time locks, click inside the Time field to select the date and time to unlock content below the lock.
- For Schoolwork locks, select a Schoolwork from the dropdown list. Select "Use Schoolwork Threshold" to require students to meet or exceed the Retake Threshold on the Assignees tab of the schoolwork. If you want students to retake the test until they achieve mastery, set Maximum Submissions to an appropriate value as well.
Teachers and students see different views. If you're a teacher, you'll see the Bundle Lock and all content following the lock. Students will have to unlock content according to the type of lock -- by date and time, by clicking a button, or by successfully completing schoolwork.
Bundle Locks are only active for students. Non-student users will see all Bundle content, so keep this in mind when using Bundles in Professional Development sessions.
I think you'll agree that this is an exciting new way to structure lessons and engage students. As always, I'm interested in your feedback and questions related to the subject of this blog -- just let me know in the Comments.
As we prepare to move all users to the new Schoolwork interface, we'll be taking some steps to help the process along. With the next update to the My Big Campus software, scheduled for Friday evening, March 1, everyone will find themselves "opted-in" to the new interface. In today's blog, I'll discuss what that means to students and teachers.
What Students will see
Students were migrated automatically to the new Schoolwork interface when we first deployed it back in September 2012. Whether your teacher created tests in the old interface or the new one, you can see all your schoolwork from a single location. Nothing will change for students as a result of the upcoming software update.
What Teachers will see
This update only changes your default interface to New Schoolwork -- you still have full access to your old quizzes and assignments. You'll find them under the Return to Old Schoolwork button at the top right of the Schoolwork dashboard. When the update goes live, all your existing templates will be imported automatically into the new interface, and you'll find them in your Schoolwork dashboard.
If you have old quizzes and assignments you'd like to keep using, make a template and transfer them into New Schoolwork prior to June 30, 2013. After June 30, your old schoolwork will no longer be available, so start planning now to convert any schoolwork you want to use again next term. To make this easier, we'll be adding a button on the Templates tab to import all templates into the new Schoolwork interface.
While you'll still be able to continue working in the old interface until the end of June, we encourage you to take advantage of our free training webinars and self-guided training modules so you'll be ready for the final switch at the end of June 2013.
I encourage you to explore the great features you'll find in the new Schoolwork interface. Here are the highlights:
Academic Standards & Reports
- Attach Common Core and state academic standards to any or all questions in a test, then measure how well your classes and individual students are meeting the standards.
- Determine at a glance which students are in need of extra assistance with a standard.
- Automatically see suggestions for Bundles to share with students who need help meeting a specific standard.
- Add frequently used standards to a list of Favorites, then apply them quickly and easily to Schoolwork and Bundles.
- Use custom standards entered by your district or corporation.
Simpler navigation
- First, there's no longer a distinction between Assignments and Quizzes. All Schoolwork will now consist of any combination of file uploads, essay questions, true/false, multiple choice, multiple-select, and fill-in-the-blank.
- We've streamlined the Add New Schoolwork interface and made it look and work much like Bundles, with tabs for Description, Questions, Standards, Assignees, and Student View.
- Instead of separate Schoolwork and Templates, we've created a single Dashboard where you can create, re-use, edit, and re-assign schoolwork.
Simpler Management and Creation
- Make use of more question types, and you can use all of these in a single test, in any combination.
- Add anonymous surveys to the list of possibilities for using schoolwork.
- Use the rich text editor for question stems, with support for accented characters, symbols, and formatting.
- Attach files, images, documents, videos, and bundles to individual questions.
- Add standards to questions for detailed academic reporting by standard, student, or group.
- Import ExamView tests saved in Blackboard format.
More options when assigning, reusing, and reassigning schoolwork
- Select new options: password-protected tests, maximum time allowed, re-take threshold, number of attempts to allow, and opportunity to resubmit for a higher grade.
- Show or hide results and correct answers upon submission.
- Assign to a school, a group, or to individual users.
Quicker grading
- View class averages for schoolwork directly from the dashboard.
- Get grading done faster with new workflow.
- Automatically grade quiz-type questions in an assignment.
Got questions about the switch? Let me know in the comments.
Whenever educators get together, whether it's in person at conferences, in their schools, or on MBC in Topics and EduTalk, there's lots of brainstorming going on. Veteran teachers always seem willing to share best practices with those experiencing online learning for the first time, and new teachers bring fresh insights and questions that keep everyone on their toes.
Usually, the collaboration is spontaneous and informal, but lately I've been seeing a push at the district and state level for teachers to work together to develop and share digital curriculum. This is a good thing on many levels:
-
Teachers have the best sense of their own students' needs and interests, and can target these needs without being constrained by availability of textbooks and other offline media
-
Schools and districts can stay up to date with new curriculum, without having to wait months or years for textbooks to catch up
-
Heavy investment in textbooks can be redirected to forward-looking projects, needed infrastructure upgrades, and up-to-date technology
-
The environmental footprint is improved by reducing the amount of paper that is used and discarded with every school term.
The state of Indiana is one example of a high-level mandate for online curriculum. Educators there are free to create their own digital curriculum to replace textbooks. To further that effort, many have begun meeting up inside an MBC topic area, Indiana Statewide Collaboration, to form collaboration groups by grade level and subject area. It's a nice model for educators in other states to follow, and My Big Campus has some excellent tools for this type of collaboration.
-
Bundles -- create complete courses with text, online resources, videos, files, images, quizzes and assignments, to share with students, your whole school or district, the entire My Big Campus community, or any Internet user via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
-
Bundle Exchange -- Find and adapt Bundles created and shared by other My Big Campus educators. Browse by subject area, standard, or keyword, or "subscribe" to a standard to see newly published Bundles
-
State and Common Core Standards -- attach standards to Bundles and Schoolwork questions
-
Schoolwork -- import the pre-designed ExamView tests supplied with many curriculum tools (or import your own), then assign to groups or individual students
-
Academic Reports -- see which classes and students are meeting standards, and who needs extra help
-
NROC and NBC Learn content -- standards-based multimedia courseware, either alone or pre-compiled into Bundles, for you to use in your own Bundles and lessons
-
Training -- our hands-on, free, full-day Indiana Training Camp sessions have attracted huge demand (they're actually oversubscribed and there is now a waiting list), but we have many other training options for those inside and outside Indiana.
All of these tools work well for individuals and groups, and can easily scale to larger groups, as our Indiana colleagues have demonstrated so well. But why stop at the school, district, or even state level? My Big Campus has the tools and the audience to erase boundaries and bring people together. Digital curriculum equalizes opportunities for small and large, urban and rural, advantaged and disadvantaged schools. And My Big Campus is the perfect place to make it happen.
Want to learn more? Got some experiences to share? Let me know in the comments.
Early last fall, we launched a redesign of the Schoolwork interface in My Big Campus. The updated interface brings many new features, makes it easier to reuse assignments, and supports ExamView imports, academic standards, and reporting. We've also made it easy for you to import your existing Schoolwork into the new interface.
We want to remind you that we will be ending support for the old Schoolwork interface on June 30, 2013. After that date, any schoolwork (assignments, quizzes, student submissions, and grades) created in the old interface will no longer be available. If you haven't explored the new Schoolwork yet, I encourage you to do so as soon as possible. Here are a few of the benefits you'll enjoy when you make the switch.
Navigating schoolwork
Schoolwork navigation has been simplified.
- First, there's no longer a distinction between Assignments and Quizzes. All Schoolwork will now consist of any combination of essay questions, true/false, multiple choice, multiple-select, and fill-in-the-blank.
- We've streamlined the Add New Schoolwork interface and made it look and work much like Bundles, with tabs for Description, Questions, Standards, Assignees, and Student View.
- Instead of separate Schoolwork and Templates, we've created a single Dashboard where you can create, re-use, edit, and re-assign schoolwork.
Creating schoolwork
It's now easier to create and manage schoolwork.
- Make use of more question types, and you can use all of these in a single test, in any combination.
- Add anonymous surveys to the list of possibilities for using schoolwork.
- Use the rich text editor for question stems, with support for accented characters, symbols, and formatting.
- Attach files, images, documents, videos, and bundles to individual questions.
- Add standards to questions for detailed academic reporting by standard, student, or group.
- Import ExamView tests saved in Blackboard format.
Assigning schoolwork
There are more ways to assign, re-use, and reassign schoolwork.
- Select new options: password-protected tests, maximum time allowed, re-take threshold, number of attempts to allow, and opportunity to resubmit for a higher grade.
- Show or hide results and correct answers upon submission.
- Assign to a school, a group, or to individual users.
Grading submissions
Grading requires fewer keystrokes.
- View class averages for schoolwork directly from the dashboard.
- Get grading done faster with new workflow.
- Automatically grade quiz-type questions in an assignment.
Upgrading your existing schoolwork
All your old schoolwork remains available while you learn your way around the new features.
- Old and new Schoolwork interfaces will be accessible until June 30, 2013 -- no lost work.
- All your existing schoolwork templates will automatically migrate to the new interface when you make the switch. Leave something behind, you can still make a template and transfer into New Schoolwork prior to June 30, 2013.
- Student experience is completely transparent -- students get the same interface used to create the test, with no need to switch back and forth.
Getting help
You have ample training resources and plenty of time to get up to speed.
- Join free training webinars to walk you through the process. Signup information here.
- Watch a recorded webinar of a past training session here.
- Try our self-guided Schoolwork Tutorial here.
Got ideas or suggestions related to the subject of this blog post? Please leave a comment.
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.
More and more school districts are adopting academic standards to measure student progress and teacher effectiveness. To meet this need, we introduced State and Common Core Standards as part of Bundles, to help teachers align their lesson plans and course content to academic standards required for their schools or districts. We also added Standards to the new Schoolwork interface.
These standards cover the core academic areas for Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, and Technology. In the months since we released these two features, we've had lots of requests to include standards other subject areas, such as Music, Art, and Physical Education. Because My Big Campus has to subscribe to a service that provides standards information, we could only offer the subject areas with the highest demand.
This limitation has now been removed. One of the updates that came out over the Thanksgiving weekend was the ability to add Custom Standards at the District level. District administrators can now add their own standards to My Big Campus, for teachers to use in Bundles and Schoolwork. While we work on adding FAQs, Tech Notes, and other training material for this and the Academic Reporting component of Schoolwork, I wanted to give you a brief overview of Custom Standards.
Adding Custom Standards
To add standards, log into My Big Campus as a district administrator, then navigate to the District tab on the Administration page. Click the District name, then choose Custom Standard. Click Add Custom Standard, then fill in the form. Click Save, and the standard will now be available to all teachers in your district, from the Select Other Standard dropdown list on the Standards tab in both Schoolwork and Bundles.
Using Custom Standards
You can attach custom standards to Bundles, Schoolwork, and Academic Reports. You'll find them under the Select Other Standard dropdown list.
I think the applications for Custom Standards go well beyond K-12 subject areas, such as Professional Development for teaching and non-teaching staff, and extracurricular activities. I'm interested in your questions, ideas and tips for how you plan to use Custom Standards -- let me know what you think in the comments.
New to My Big Campus? Or just new to some uses of the site? We offer all kinds of free training options that you can take advantage of whenever it's convenient for you.
We also present free, regularly scheduled, interactive Webinars, where you can learn the basics or get up to speed on specific features.
And, to help those of you who can't fit the live webinars into your schedule, we're going to be recording and posting "best-of" videos of selected topics. You'll find them on this page, in the MBC Trainers group.
Finally, for schools and districts with specific training needs, we also offer on-site or on-line training from our Certified MBC Coaches. Contact us for information and pricing.
I want your experience with My Big Campus to be a success for you, your students, and your schools. Let me know in the comments if you have questions or ideas related to the subject of this post.