Managing online activities in Vista

In Vista tools, functions are available for facilitating and moderating student activities.

Discussions

Within the discussion tool, teachers and students can sort messages by subject author or date, then compile for printing or saving to file. Teachers have additional options in the discussion settings, where you may choose to lock a discussion, or grade participation. Teachers can also create topics, and move or delete messages if they are posted inappropriately. Discussions can alos be created as private for groups.

Selective release

Selective release is often used to stagger the release of course material and activities by date. However, student pathways and interaction can be moderated by selectively releasing elements, eg a discussion can be released once a quiz has been completed, or additional material can be released once a discussion has been graded.

The criteria that may be used are: Date, Student ID, Group membership, Grade book entry (completion of, or minimum score in, evaluation, assignment, discussion etc).

You can apply release criteria to both components (eg, discussions, content files, learning modules, assignments) and organiser pages. You can also combine criteria to create equations called expressions.

Group manager

Group management combined with selective release can be a powerful way of managing student interaction. For example, progression in the course can be subject to requirements such as: sign up to a group and complete a group submission to release additional course material/activities.

Group management allows for random or selective set-up of groups, which can then be used for assignment allocation, with provision for providing different instructions according to group.

Assignment tool

Teachers and students can use the Assignment tool to publish submissions. This can be done on an individual or group basis. Instructors can at any time choose to publish any or all assignment submissions. Submissions can be text-based, with attached documents, or in the form of a web page/website. This could be used to manage peer review processes, or to provide a basis for discussion – eg groups should discuss, then post online a critical analysis of the work of another group.
The instructor can also set up the assignment so that students are able to publish their own submissions.

When assignments are set up, students can be permitted to retrieve and resubmit work up to the due date. Used for group projects, this can support collaborative development of submissions.

For more information on how to use these tools, see Vista Help for more details.

ACTIVITY: Managing student activities

Can you think of ways you could manage your students’ activities in Vista? Write down two ideas of what you would like to do, and how you may be able to manage it using one or a combination of these techniques.
Enrol in a discussion group, and post your ideas to the discussion. Can you help the others refine and plan their techniques? You may find it useful to use the chat room to speed up discussion.