How do you share homework with your students?

Ulf.M.583

I would like some input from you guys on how you share homework with your students, i.e. "Read chapter 1-5 before the lecture on May 5th".

 

Right now, most of our teachers put it in the description for the lecture event in the calendar, but the default calendar view will hide the description, plus it is hard for the students to get an overview of past homework. Furthermore, the students would like an overview of all their homework for all courses for next week, so they do not have to click through each course.

Stefanie.B.518

Hi @Ulf Molich​ I think release conditions can be really helpful in this case, whether applied to Announcements as shown in the following video, or with a consistent HTML template page that appears in the same place for each module. https://youtu.be/-sRyXi2bNp4?t=48

 

I think there are a bunch of different ways that you could do this, and I bet folks in our Community will use a variety of different approaches too.

Let us know what you feel is right for your course

-Stef

Stefanie.B.518

Hi @Ulf Molich​ 

I love the idea of using the Calendar widget to note homework across all courses.

To do this

1) Create homework events in each course's calendar widget (the instructors of those courses can do this on their own)

2) At the org level homepage, select the title of the calendar widget (make sure this widget appears on the org level homepage)

3) Select the "All calendars" link and and then the plus icon (add calendar)

4) Then search for the courses you would like to add to this calendar (this will be all of the courses displaying the homework events)

 

5) To help learners navigate their master calendar, you can assign a colour to each course (example blue is math, green is science). A good practice for accessibility is to also name the course in the event names ex biology 101-homework task. This will ensure everyone can scan the master calendar for specific events more easily.

 

6) Now when learners see the calendar widget at org they will only see events associated with courses they are enrolled in. In the following example, Keiko is enrolled in two of my sandboxes (stef and stefanie) but she is not enrolled in a third course which appears in yellow. That is why as an administrator I can see the yellow event (as shown in the screen shot immediately following), but Keiko can't (the final screenshot).

 

 

Another benefit of this approach is that setting these expectations in each course allows learners to track important events (like homework) across multiple courses in the Pulse App. Here is a handy playlist that provides more information on making courses more pulse friendly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y16DpIjJxCI&list=PLxHabmZzFY6kp6TK3e2kwbG5WflSzGmVE

 

Hope this helps Friend!

-Stef

Ulf.M.583

Hi @Stefanie Baldwin​ ,

 

I think using release conditions will make the homework appear in the Calendar as well, but you would then write it in the title, so it can be easily seen for the students?

 

The main issue for me is that the students should be able to have an easy overview of the homework for multiple courses. Perhaps the "Tasks" tool is a way to do this, but I do not think it is possible to collect input from many courses "Tasks" into one place?

Ulf.M.583

Thanks for your very comprehensive reply.

 

We are already doing it a little bit like that at the moment:

I guess this way is okay to get an overview, but the students need to click each event to see if there is any homework. I guess one could alternatively both have a lecture module as well as an All-day homework event for each course. But then I fear that the calendar would get too crowded. I guess it is not possible to create two seperate calendars for each course, one with physical events and one with homework.

In the bottom right of my screenshot, you see what I wished it would look like. A nice list of all the homework, when it is due, and the possibility to put a tick mark once it is done. But as I understand the tasks tool, it is not possible to get a list of all tasks for all courses. Unless there is a clever way I haven't found?

Stefanie.B.518

HI @Ulf Molich​ Super sorry for the delay here. I don't think the functionality you're describing is currently supported by the Tasks Widget- but if you're looking for something a bit custom- the Learning and Creative Services Team here at D2L does create custom widgets including calendars. Your Customer Success Manager can help to connect you with that team.