Instructors Guide

Learn how to Create Online Courses, Create Quizzes & Assessment, Manage Course Students, Evaluate Results.
Our E-learning portal provide structure to the process of designing an online training course for instructors/lecturers. The main aim is to;
 
    1. encourage faculty-to-student interaction
    2. encourage student-to-student interaction
    3. promote active learning
    4. encourage distance learning
    5. communicate high expectations
    6. facilitate time on task
    7. provide rich, rapid feedback
    8. respect diverse learning
 
The goal is to make our courses informative, educative, engaging and available for our online and distant learning students.

1. Core Structure of an E-Learning Course

Regardless of instructor discipline and subject matter, our e-learning course portal follow a similar structure, which includes;

    • Introduction screen
    • Table of contents
    • Objectives and course goals
    • Directions and instructions
    • Short and Long description of course
    • Course content
    • Quizzes, assessments, and surveys
    • Assignments
    • Summary and final instructions
To begin building a basic e-learning online course, you will have to identify the major components of your course that fit into each of the above score structures.

2. Your Role as an Instructor

An Instructor is an online lecturer who:

    • Creates courses, questions, units and assignments for online students;
    • Manages and edits all courses questions, units and assignments created by him/her;
    • Manages and view students online assessment and statistics;
    • Create and views all courses questions, units and assignments through the instructors/Lecturers account Dashboard.

Instructor however can not;

    • Edit or delete the contents from Units and Questions created by other Instructors.
    • Manually assign badges and certificates to students who are not taking their course.

3. Group Admins

    • An instructor is also the Group Admin of the groups connected to Courses published by him/her.
    • An Instructor therefore can Add or Remove any student from the Group.
    • An Instructor can also assign some students as Group Moderators for efficient functioning of the group.

4. Forum Admin

    • Just like the groups, an Instructor is the Forum administrator for the Forum Connected to the Course.
    • An Instructor can delete any sub-forum, topic in the Course forum.
    • An Instructor can ban any user in his/her forum.

1. Request for an official Dorben Polytechnic Email

2.  Next Step: Register to become an Instructor in order to gain access into your instructors dashboard

    • Skip i & ii above if you already have a Dorben Polytechnic official email.
    • Visit  the Instructors Registration Page to register as an instructor with the valid Dorben Polytechnic email.
    • After successful registration, check the input email inbox or spam for verification mail and click to activate instructor account.

3. Next step is to:

    • Download a sample course template
    • Develop online course in a similar sample formats.
    • Instructor Course formats can be in Text, Images, PDF, PowerPoint, Video, Excel, Audio, etc. 

4. Begin creating Course Online from the Instructors Dashboard

After a successful login, instructors will be redirected to the Dashboard.

Instructor Dashboard

 

To create a new course ,

      1. Locate the Create Course button in the Course Directory or the Create/Edit tab on the instructor’s navigation menu and Click on It. An Edit course Page will load. 
      2. Next, You’ll see a Popup screen showing two course options i.e; Create your own course option and Upload Course Packages. Click on any option you will like to perform.
      3. Each section in create course has a description given on the right. Clicking an element automatically triggers its corresponding description on the right.

The course creation process is divided into 5 steps:

Step 1.  Create Course

In this step a new course is created. This new course is in draft state.

    • Course Title: Delete any existing text and enter a suitable title for the course.
    • Course Category: Select a Course Category, in case you want to add a new category, select new category and enter the new course category name.
    • Course Image: Select a Course thumbnail image. This image is used in course snapshot and single course page.
    • Course Description: Enter a short description of the course. This is a two line description shown below the course title. This description is also used in creating new groups and forums. The main description and content of the Course can be added later on by simply editing the course form the front end.
    • Change Course Status: Enter the status of the course offline or online .

      Note:A Offline Course is not visible to students in the course directory.

Step 2.  Course Settings

These are vital settings for the course, which needs to be configured.

    • Maximum Course Duration Maximum duration of course in days. Entering a value of 9999 or above shows “unlimited access” as time duration for course.
    • Course Evaluation mode Set evaluation mode for course.
    • Pre-Required course Set a pre-required course for the course.
      The course selected here, needs to submitted and evaluated in order to get started with this course.
    • Drip Feed Enable Drip feed for course.
      • Drip Duration: Set Drip duration for the course. The drip duration is time period between successive units.
    • Course Certificate: Enable Course certificate
      • Certificate Percentage Set percentage out of 100. If students cumulative percentage of all quizzes and assignments is more than the value set here, she will get the certificate.
      • Certificate Template Set a certificate template
    • Course Badge

Enable Badges for course

    • Badge Percentage Set percentage out of 100. If students cumulative percentage of all quizzes and assignments is more than the value set here, she will get the badge.
    • Badge Title Add a title for the Badge. This title appears when user hovers over the badge.
    • Badge Image Upload a Badge image. This is required to enable Badge for the course.
  • Number of Seats Enter Number of seats for the course. The Seats comprise of students currently taking the course. Once the seats are filled, a new student would not be able to join the Course.
  • Start Date Set a Start date of the course. If set to a future date, the Course begins when the Start date arrives, that is student will be able to join the course only after the start date.
  • Course Group Connect a group, if creating a new course it is recommended that you create a new group for the course. By default the group created is a private group only accessible to students taking the course.
  • Course Retakes Enter number of retakes a student can make of that particular course
  • Course Forum Connect a forum, if creating a new course it is recommended that you connect the group forum for the course.This will create a private group forum for the above group only accessible to students taking the course and in the group.
  • Course Completion message Enter a Completion message, which is shown to user when the user finishes the course or submits the course for evaluation.

Step 3. Set Curriculum

In this section Instructor creates or sets the curriculum for the course.

  • ADD SECTION Add a new section in the curriculum. Clicking this button would add a Text box in the curriculum section. Enter the section title in the box.
  • ADD UNIT Add a unit in the curriculum. Clicking this button would add a select box showing all the units. If instructor privacy is enabled then all the units created by instructor will be shown in the select box. To add a new unit select “Add New Unit” in the select box, which will show a input box. Enter the title of the unit in the input box and select Publish from the drop-down beside the unit. Once published the unit will be published and the drop-down controls will now show edit unit. Clicking on edit in the drop-down controls would take the user to the unit editing screen. Clicking on Delete would remove the unit from the database. Clicking on remove will remove the unit form the curriculum.
  • ADD QUIZ Add a Quiz in the curriculum. Clicking this button would add a select box showing all the quizzes. If instructor privacy is enabled then all the quizzes created by instructor will be shown in the select box. To add a new quiz select “Add New Quiz” in the select box, which will show a input box. Enter the title of the Quiz in the input box and select Publish from the drop-down beside the unit.Once published the quiz will be published and the drop-down controls will now show edit quiz. Clicking on edit in the drop-down controls would take the user to the quiz editing screen. Clicking on Delete would remove the quiz from the database. Clicking on “remove” will remove the quiz form the curriculum.
  • Save Curriculum Unless the Course curriculum is saved, the new units created and added are not a part of the course curriculum.

Step 4.  Add Faculty/Department/Level

This allows the instructor to set the department membership of the course.

  • Free Course
    • Setting the course as Free makes it available to all students accessing the course.
  • Set a Course Product
    • Skip this settings
  • Membership
    • Pick accurate Faculty, department and Level for student that the course belongs to.

5.  Publish Course

Publish the course. All courses will go into pending state, which the administrator needs to manually check for any error and then turn the status to Published. After this your course will be live and visible for your desired student

After creating courses Instructor manages the courses. There are various function available to manage courses.

Evaluating Quizzes

  • After the Student has submitted the quiz.
  • The Quiz submissions can be located in the Course Admin -> Submissions -> Quiz Submissions section.
  • If for any reason the Instructor needs to reset the quiz for the user then she can click the Reset Quiz for User option.
  • To Evaluate the quiz, Instructor clicks on Evaluate icon and the Evaluation screen opens
  • Evaluation screen shows, Question , marked answer, correct answer , maximum marks for the question and a text-box for marks and give marks button.
  • To give marks to each question Instructor enters marks in the text-box and clicks save marks.
  • Once Instructor has saved marks for all the questions, Instructor can click on Mark quiz as evaluated
  • As soon as this button is pressed the user gets a notification and message with the Quiz Results.

Managing Students

  • An Instructor can reset the full course for any student. The will have to start the course again from the very begining. This can be done form the Course -> Admin screen.
  • An Instructor can remove any student from the Course. The student will have to re-register the course again to take the course. This can be done form the Course -> Admin screen.

Course Messaging

An Instructor can send mass message to the students taking the course.This can be done form the Course -> Admin -> Members screen.

Statistics covers some of the important stats functions. We’re however open to suggestions here.

User Statistics

An Instructor can see any User’s stats for her course only.

  • To see user stats Instructor needs to go to Single Course -> Admin -> Students/Members
  • Click on the Graph Icons to see User Stats
  • After Clicking, if the user has finished the course, only the percentage obtained by the user is shown.
  • After Clicking, if the user is still taking the course then the course timeline is shown with the unit status and the marks obtained in the Quiz.

Course Statistics

An Instructor can see Course stats for her course only. Since calculating Statistics for the course is a complex process, statistics for the course needs to be manually activated by clicking the Calculate Stats icon at the bottom of the course stats screen.

  • To see Courses stats Instructor needs to go to Single Course -> Admin -> Stats
  • If Stats for the course are not calculated or to recalculate the stats the Instructor can simply click on the Calculate Stats icon
  • The Course stats then appear on the Course Stats screen.

The E-Learning portal provides a lot of functionality for interaction among students and instructors.

Groups

Every Course taker is added to the course group. There are many useful plugins which can be installed to increase the usability of Groups in LMS. The plugin Group documents enables the Instructor to upload documents, like assignments for the Course group. This is automatically sent to the full course group.

Forums

With the forum WPLMS get a lot of interaction features. A Private forum conencted to the Group can be made as the Course forum. This makes the Forum an exclusive club for the Course Members.

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