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One of the strengths of SmartSite is its expanding and diverse tool set. But when you are getting started, this can be a bit overwhelming. The tools you use will depend on tangibles things such as class size, course format and subject as well as intangibles like your teaching style and comfort with technology. We recommend picking one or two reasons for using a site and starting with the default tool set. You can always add or subtract tools as they are needed. Sites are scalable; so establishing how sophisticated or simple your site will be is a matter of assessing your course's particular needs.
Reasons for using Use SmartSite's default set of course tools to:
Improve and encourage communication
ChatYou can use the Chat Room tool for
- Hold real-time, unstructured conversations
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- Create an "Online Office Hours" chat room for student questions and answers.
Announcements
The Announcements tool is used to inform all site participants about current items of interest. Announcements can have multiple attachments, such as documents or URLs.
Mailtool
You can use the Mail tool to send a message to your site's particpants. It provides easy editing, file attachment, the ability to select recipients by group or class section.
Email Archive
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- Announce a change in time or location
- Post documents that have had errors corrected
Mailtool
- Send a student, group of students, class section, or your TAs, private or public messages.
- Collect all course related emails without searching your in box
Email Archive
- Contact all site participants with one email
- View and collect messages sent to your site's
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- unique address
- Send large files to your site and provide a link to
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- site members
Encourage collaboration among students
WikiA Wiki is a tool for people with no technical knowledge to
- Easily change and create web pages
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- Create Wikipedia-like entries for course terms and topics
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- Have students collaborate on writing assignments
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Promote independent and self-paced learning
ForumsForums is a communication tool that you can use to create
- Create an unlimited number of discussion forums for your course
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Collecting, grading and returning assignments
Assignments
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- Continue class discussions online
- Build an answer base; Keep useful discussions for future reference
Assignments
- Create, distribute, collect, and grade online assignments
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- Assignments are private; student submissions are not visible to other users of the site
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- Choose from multiple grading options, including letter grades, points, checkmarks, pass/fail, or ungraded.
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- Return assignments, with or without grades, for re-submission
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- Download all student submissions at once
- Release student grades with comments
Sharing resources with students, TAs and colleagues
ResourcesUsing the Resources tool, you can share many kinds of material
- Share materials securely with members of your site
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- Upload files word processing documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, and videos
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- Create and post HTML (web) pages and simple text documents
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- Share links to useful web sites.
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- Organize your Resources items into folders
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- Control which groups or types of users can access and add to different folders
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- Show or hide an item at any time
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- by setting a start and/or end time
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Web Content
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- Post weekly readings
- Archive important documents like exams showing them to students
Web Content
- Display an important website within your worksite's menubar.
- Provide a links to your department, personal homepage, research group and other frequently referenced websites
Automating processes and reducing paperwork
GradebookThe Gradebook is a tool for instructors to calculate
- Calculate and store grade information and distribute it to students online
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- Autocalculate course grades, with the ability to override any letter grade
- Define course letter grades based on a 100% scale
- Add, view, edit, and release point values of assignments and/or assessments to students
- Enter, view, edit, and release to students scores, grades, and comments
- Transmit scores to the Gradebook from other tools such as Assignments to create an entry and record student scores
- Export class rosters, scores and grades to Microsoft Excel (in .xls or .csv format)
- Import assignment scores from spreadsheet (.csv) files
- Let students view their own scores and grades once instructors have released them
- Submit final grades to the registrar
Organizing and Managing your course
SyllabusThe Syllabus tool is the
- Create an official outline for your course
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- Enter material directly into SmartSite
- Link to a syllabus you or your department has prepared an online
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- Share your course with the general public or just to members of your course
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Schedule
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Schedule
- Post items in a calendar format
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- by day, week, month, year,
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- or flat list
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- view
- Post readings for each class on the day they are due to be read
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- Set deadlines for research, group, and department projects
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- Get an overview of all your course schedules in MyWorkspace
- Any Schedule item can have multiple attachments
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- Print an Adobe PDF file of any view of a Schedule
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Section InfoThe Section Info tool provides a way for instructors to efficiently
- Efficiently manage sections of a class
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- that may consist of lectures, labs, discussions, studio work,
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- etc.
- Work with other tools
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- such as Announcements and Gradebook
Site Info
The Site Info tool provides information about the worksite that you are currently in. If you have a role that allows it, you can use this tool to :
- Change information about the View and change information about a site
- Select the tools available in to the site
- Display a participants list
- Decide who has access to the site
- Publish a course site after its been developed
- Alter your site's appearance and description
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