Tutorial for teachers
In this course you will acquaint with the platform from the perspective of a teacher. First of all if you want to upload a course you have to send an email to info@marplat.eu with the following information:
- your name and username used to register on MARPLAT platform
- the name of your course
- the short name of the course – this could be the acronyms of the course name
- the category of the course – on the first page you will see the categories created till now; if you will not find a category
- a short description of the course
After the administrator will create your course, you will be assign to that course as a teacher and you will be able to change the name and the short name of the course. The category can be changed only by administrator.
The elearning platform is available on the address https://marplat.eu/elearning. Some information can be visible for unregistered visitor and most of the courses and information can be accessed only by registered visitors.
On the first page are displayed all the available courses:
In order to modify your course you have to login by accessing the “Log in” buton from the upper right corner of the page:
If you forgotten your username or password just click on the button “Forgotten your username or password” and follow the instruction:
To access the resources of a course, an authenticated user has to have one the following role:
- Teacher: The role of the teacher can be assigned only be administrator and only for a specific course by sending a request on the email info@marplat.eu;
- Student: The role of the student can be obtained by authenticated users only if they register to a course (how a student can be enrolled to a course will be discussed later).
For my example I will use an username “first.user” with the role of “Teacher”.
After the first login, do not forget to update your profile settings, by accesing the left panel as it is shown in the image bellow:
In our example the user “first.user” sent an email and requested to administrator to create a new course with the following details:
- Name of the teacher: First User
- Name of the course: Description of the diesel engine
- Short name of the course: DofDE
- Short description: Some text about diesel engine
- Category of the course: Machine
Categories of the courses are used to organize them in order to be easier to manage. Under "Forum forteachers" you will find a link named "Course categories", where will be displayed all the existining categories. If none off them are suitable for you lesson you can propose another one and I will update the list. So , before sending a request for a new course, please consult that list.
The administrator will create the course but he will hide it and he can be visible only for the teacher. So, in order to see and access the course the teacher must login. After the login is successful, the teacher will see his course in on left panel under “My Courses” with the short name “DofDE” and in the middle of the home page like is shown in the second image bellow:
To edit your course, just click on one of the highlighted links of the upper image and select “Edit settings” from the “Administration” left panel:
Here you can edit the following settings:
1. GENERAL:
- Course full name: the name of the course which appears on the front page
- Course short name: the name which appears on the left panel, under “My courses”
- Visible: here you have to options: Hide/Visible; if the course is “Hide” no one will see it beside you. You can change this option in “Visible” after you finish upload the course resources
- Course start date: set up the date when the course will start
2. DESCRIPTION:
- Description: the short description which you sent it by email
- Course summary files: here you can upload some presentation of the course and some materials but it is not mandatory
3. COURSE FORMAT:
- Weekly format: choose this type if your course depends by time and you have to split all the activities in weeks
- Number: set the number of weeks
- Hidden sections: This setting determines whether hidden sections are displayed to students in collapsed form (perhaps for a course in weekly format to indicate holidays) or are completely hidden.
- Course layout: This setting determines whether the whole course is displayed on one page or split over several pages.
- Single activity format: here you can choose from a list of activities which will be describe later
- Social format: A forum is displayed on the course page:
- Topics format: it looks like “Weekly format” but instead of weeks we have topics:
4. APPEARANCE
- Force language: The default value is “Do not force” and it should not be change;
- News items to show: This setting determines how many recent items appear in the latest news block on the course page. If set to "0 news items" then the latest news block will not be displayed.
- Show gradebook to students: Many activities in the course allow grades to be set.This setting determines whether a student can view a list of all their grades for the course via a grades link in the course administration block.
- Show activity reports: Activity reports are available for each participant that show their activity in the course. As well as listings of their contributions, such as forum posts or assignment submissions, these reports also include access logs. This setting determines whether a student can view their own activity reports via their profile page.
5. FILES AND UPLOADS
- Maximum upload size: The maximum size of the files which can be uploaded by students for homework or other activities (this settings does not need to be set to more than 5 MB)
6.COMPLETION TRACKING
- Enable completion tracking: Once enabled, the completion tracking settings are displayed in the completion tracking page, and in the activity settings.
7. GUEST ACCESS:
- Allow guest access: You can enable guests (visitors who do not have an account)to access your course
- Password: If you set “Yes” on the previous option you can set a password and share it only to some guest who want to see your course but they do not have or do not want to register to the platform
8. GROUPS:
- Group mode: This setting has 3 options:
- No groups - There are no sub groups, everyone is part of one big community
- Separate groups - Each group member can only see their own group, others are invisible
- Visible groups - Each group member works in their own group, but can also see other groups
The group mode defined at course level is the default mode for all activities within the course. Each activity that supports groups can also define its own group mode, though if the group mode is forced at course level, the group mode setting for each activity is ignored.
- Force group mode: If group mode is forced, then the course group mode is applied to every activity in the course. Group mode settings in each activity are then ignored.
9. ROLE RENAMING - The options under these category are only for advanced users and should not be modified.
After you make all the modifications just click the “Save changes” button from the bottom of page.
After you click “Save changes” button the image will be displayed ass follow:
As you can see, I’ve created a course named “Description of the diesel engine” with the short name “DofDE” and I choosed a "Topic format". In the next chapter I will show you how you can configure activities and upload lessons for this type of course.