Monitoring students

You must be wondering, now that your course is online and students are beginning to enrol / browse through your course - how do you know if your students are online or offline? It's simple, all knowledge providers should know whether their students are offline or online, they should know how many students they have, they should also know details like student's profile, student's progress, student's level of activity when they are in your course.

View Students

• To start off with let's click on the "Student" button on the top panel of the block.
• You will then come to a page where you have to select your course.
  
• Click on your course to see the students that belong to that course.
• You will find personal details of your students here (as seen in the diagram below)
  

• Also notice there's advance options available to you when you click the submenu arrow button beside.

• Here you directly view your students in groups, view the entire student list or group your students.
  

Tips and Tricks - Preparing Assignments for Assessment

Assignments, assignments, assignments! That’s how students learn and trainers gauge their student’s performance. And yes, the learning system was designed to incorporate that as well. Here’s how to set assignments for your students:

Create Assignments

• Click on Assignment as seen on the diagram below:
  
  

• You will enter into the Assignment Manager page that will allow you to Add, Edit, Delete your assignments.
• Add Assignment and fill in the necessary details such as Course Code, Assignment Code, Title of the Assignment.

In the Description column as seen below, you can write the assignment objectives and instructions, give examples and illustrations in rich media form. This should be the question/instruction seen by your subscribers.

• Once completed, go onto the assignment setting.
• Choose between switching on the email alert function upon.
• Set the allowance for late submission
• And finally pick the type of assignment submission between Offline, Online or Upload a File - then Save it

Now to Add Quiz into Individual Block

• To add specific assignments to specific blocks, you will have to go back to “My Classroom”
• Open the specific block in which you want to add an assignment to
• There add activity by clicking on the orange running man button found on the left side panel of the block (as seen in the diagram below)
  
  
  

• Next choose the type of activity you want to add – Assignment or Quiz
• Fill in the necessary details in the columns
• Select the specific assignment that you want in your block and then save it
• You should be able to see the Assignment icon in your block now
  
  

Assignments can vary from individual online research, offline documents to images of finished projects. Use your imagination to incorporate a variety of assignment types.

Tips and Tricks - Creating a Wordlist

A book is not complete without the reference section at the end of the book, it's the same for our course. It's not complete without a Wordlist (Glossary). This feature is simple a virtual dictionary that you create for your users. Remember those that enroll for your course may be newbies or amateurs, that's why they enrolled in the first place. So equip them with the tools they need.

How to Create a WordList

• Click on the wordlist icon on the left panel of your screen. To locate the "Wordlist" button, see the diagram below;
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Then you will come to a page that has an alphabetical table lined horizontally on the screen. On top of the table you will see the "Wordlist Manager" button. Click on the button.
• Then click on the "Add" button to insert the words you want in your wordlist.
• You can add Description and even support your description with an Image.
• Repeat the steps to continue inserting words.
• The finished Wordlist will look something like this;
  
  
  
  
  

Tips and Tricks - Toggle Blocks

If you haven't heard what a "toggle" is, then it's best that you try it out for yourself. Since I've started my development of the scrapbook course, I've learnt to explore every facet of the learning system.

There's so many features that the developers have designed to make life easier. One of it is the "Toggle Blocks" button. It's found on the top right hand corner of the top block. With huge icons you can't miss it. Take a look at the picture below:

When you click on the "Toggle Block" button, all the blocks will automaticallly open. And quite naturally if you click on it again, all the blocks will close. You wipe out the hassle of opening and closing each block (one at a time) everytime you want to edit something.

The button is designed to give you a full page view of your entire course (with all the blocks opened). I found it very useful since I have more than 5 blocks in my course. Try it out!

Tips and Tricks - Organizing your blocks

You may have more than three blocks for your course, some may even reach fifteen as you would if you were writing a book. A great tip is to put a title to all of them without having to open all the blocks to see what within it. To do so, you’d need to click on “Editor On” and you will see something like that.

Fill in the titles for each block as I have done. Remember to click ‘Save Title’ after filling each column. Next to the title column you will find the 'Date' column, this allows you to designate a specific duration for each block (affects the timing on when the block will automatically open itself).

This is to help your clients gauge their progress in their learning journey. For example a simple block may take only three days to complete while a more challenging course will take a week to complete.

Tips and Tricks - Adding trimmings

I thought to myself, if I have been selling e-books for $40 – it means my customers are paying for knowledge delivered in plain words and an accasional picture or diagram. But if I'm going to use a learning system like what eLearning Community is offering me, then I'd better make the course worth the price tag I'm charging my clients. With that in mind, I added some videos to my course.

You can capture yourself on video cam and post it on YouTube or compile some pictures or graphics and create your own video using Windows Movie Maker, Video Wave Video Creator or any other video making software you may have. There are two ways to upload your video files.

UPLOADING VIDEOS FROM YOUTUBE

• Follow the steps as you would if you were inserting a ‘Label’
• Find one of the icons just above the type box that has the ‘YouTube’ icon on it.
• Click on it and a pop up box will appear requesting for the URL to your video
• If you have not uploaded your video on YouTube, this would be a good time to do so. If you have simply locate your video.
• Click on the video and the next page will have a smaller box containing the ‘URL’ and ‘EMBEDDED CODE’.
• Copy and paste the ‘URL’ in the space found in the pop up box on the ‘Label’ page
• Instantly you will see a yellow box on the type box (the video will be seen once you have saved your work)
• Added necessary text to support your video and save your work.

UPLOADING VIDEOS FROM YOUR COMPUTER

Note : These screenies are provided by lilbitthis, one of the pioneer gurus in ELC 2.0.

• Follow steps as you would if you were inserting a ‘File’
• Click the ‘Browse’ button to choose your video file
• Click ‘Upload’ just below the ‘Browse’ button to upload your video file
• Once it’s done, you will see it on the screen
• Then select the file you have just uploaded by clicking on the empty tick box
• Click ‘Save Resources’ and you are done!
  


• One more point to take note - ELC 2.0 allows streaming of only FLV (Flash Videos / e.g. like the ones you see in youtube), reason being because of the size and bandwidth. If you do not have the movie in flv you can use this tool called Riva FLV encoder for FREE, or you could always upload the files to youtube.com and use method 1, to link it up to your blocks.

Tips and Tricks - Simple Editing in the Initial Stages

I have been constantly checking my material to ensure that it’s top notch. So editing can’t be left to the final stages. Practice it consistently as you go along.

TO EDIT THE BLOCK

• Click on the third icon “Editor On” at the top of the block. This will enable you to edit that specific block.
• You will see the ‘edit’, ‘remove’ and up down button on the left corner of each sub-block.
• The ‘edit’ button allows you to edit the information directly.
• Quite obviously the ‘remove’ button will delete the chosen information
• While the up and down button allows you to arrange the order of the sub-blocks.

After sorting out the edit, let me give you a glimpse of what my first block looks like. There will be subsequent changes along the way.

Tips and Tricks - Creating a Course

Have you found yourself staring a lot of information and not knowing where to get started?! - let alone now you have to create a course. It was a good thing I had my skeletal outline for me to refer to. Even then, information was overflowing. First thing you should know in Step 4, to insert content you need enter your course environment you've just created by selecting the jumpTo course combobox like the picture below.



Note to knowledge providers: Be sure of what you want and what you don’t want in each chapter of your course. Things can get pretty messy when you start finding material on the internet.

The good thing is the eLearning system allows us to break our content into various blocks to ease learning flow. Yesterday I had inserted a label for my course and I did it again today.

This is the Label Editor

The process of inserting label is similar to blog posting. There is a html editor as your input interface. These are a few discoveries I stumbled upon:

• This is also where you insert flash files and video’s from YouTube.
  
• Click on the PREVIEW button before you save your document. It saves you the hassle of editing it later on.
  
• Make your label as interesting as possible, it’s the first thing your clients will see when they enter your course.

Adding on to my label, I prepared a power point slideshow as an accompanied block. This is how I did it:

INSERTING A FILE
File includes videos, audio files, pdf, word documents, flash files, images and even power point slides.

• Again click top most button on the right side of the block.
  
• Now instead of choosing “label” on the drop down table of the “Resource” tab, you choose “file”
  
• It will open to another page where you are required to fill in some blanks.
  
• To upload your file, scroll down to find the “browse” button on the left hand corner.
  
• Click on it and proceed with upload steps similar to any other uploading you’ve done
  
• Then select the file you have just uploaded by clicking on the empty tick box
  
• You’re done after you “save resource”

Adding a PowerPoint slideshow added more LIFE to my course. Instead of stagnant pdf files or word files that are commonly used, the slideshow provided a breeze of creativity. For new knowledge providers, try a hand at using PowerPoint, it’s as easy as typing a word document. I’m sure it’s not a problem for more advanced computer users to come up with flash animations or incredible graphics to lighten up your course. Whatever you do, make your course as interesting as you possibly can.

Tips and Tricks - My First Journey to ELC 2.0!

Just a few weeks ago, I registered myself as a Knowledge Provider on the eLearning Community and since then, I’ve been clicking away, exploring the environment. I am an official elearning knowledge provider! I’m excited because there’s a lot to explore.

This is ELC 2.0 Site

Let me share with you what I came up with today. I viewed the demo which was Step No.1 on the page after I log in.

It was very comprehensive and this got me motivated to get the ball rolling. No.2 on the list was to complete my profile. I spent quite a lot of time thinking how I wanted to position myself in the market.

You see even if you have a fantastic course worth big bucks but your profile spells a measly 2 lines, you won’t sell! So I took time to think about my skills, talents and what I wanted others to know about me. For new knowledge providers, your profile is as important as your CV or resume. It’s the first contact you have with your prospective clients.

Next up, Step 3 – Create my first course. I’ve been toiling over a few topics for my first course. There were a few options to choose from, but I decided on one that is close to heart – scrapbooking. It was a huge relief having decided on one to proceed. I spent twice as much time on this page than I did on my profile page. Some tips for new knowledge providers
Remember, this page is as significant as an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine.

• Take time to outline your course before you proceed. I drew a rough skeleton of my entire course from intro to the objectives of my course.


• Think about what you want to incorporate in your course – this can even be existing documents you have / have been selling (ie. Pdf documents, video files, audio files, ppt, word files etc.)


• Make this page fun and captivating! The worst advertisements are those that bore you – so don’t make that mistake!

Voila! After many minutes of thinking and scripting, my exterior is done. Now to put some meat into my skeleton.

About Beverly At ELC 2.0

I am a scrapbook addict (someone who love scrapbooking, and want to capture every memory visually). I grew from a hobby to a passion and now to a business! Hi, I'm Beverly Springston, a professional designer who’s been scrapbooking for over twelve years.

The eLearning for profit campaign in ProfitingIdeas.com enlightens me in using eLearningCommunity 2.0 or ELC2.0 for short as a platform to open more of my online business channel.

This blog is dedicated to post tips and guides for all future Knowledge Provider wannabes to host a contents in eLearning Community 2.0.

Quick intro on eLearningCommunity 2.0

eLearningCommunity.com is a FREE E-Learning Knowledge Marketplace for you to learn from/host contents online. You could also create an income oppurtunity by registering as a Knowledge Provider account. If you are interested in learning you can do so, by registering of Knowledge Seeker.