Courses are a new feature available on all paid Classroom Learning plans that comes as a replacement for Projects to bring a better teaching & learning experience.
Courses will become publicly available in September 2019.
The article contains a walkthrough on how to create courses and tasks within them, invite students & grade their work:
- What are Courses?
- How to create a new course
- How to create a new assignment and manage it
- Student - how to open an assignment and turn in your work
- How to provide feedback on student's work
- What's coming for Courses in the future
What are Courses
Courses aim to provide an LMS-like experience for teachers and students by allowing teachers to bundle multiple assignments or learning topics into a single Course. Each assignment may contain additional materials, due date, and a score. Students can turn in an interactive media (image, 360° image or video) to show the results of their studies. Once the assignment is turned in, teachers can evaluate it and provide feedback via a chat system - all within ThingLink.
Setting up a new Course
To set up a new course, click the 'Courses' text in the top navigation bar. This will bring up the page with all your current courses and the number of students in each course.
Next, click the 'Add course' button on the right side and put in the course title along with a brief description. This will create a blank course with 0 students and no assignments:
After a course is created, it will generate a special corresponding group named 'Participants of <course title>'. To add students to a course, simply add them to the course's group. You can read more about adding students to a group here.
Creating & managing assignments
Each course can contain multiple assignments for your students. These can include visual learning materials, tasks to create interactive content, introductory classroom tours and anything else you that you can create on ThingLink.
To create an assignment, go to the course's page and click the 'Add Assignment' button. Note that you can always edit the assignment, including the due date and the attachments, after it's been created.
Please explore the image below to see the next steps.
Once you save the assignment, it will appear on the course page and become available for all participants of said course. You can access the assignment by clicking on it on the course page. From here, you can edit the assignment, see who's already turned in their work and assess the results by clicking the 'Grade work' button.
[Student] Turning in an assignment
After you open the course page, you'll be able to see all assignments and their current status: 'Not turned in', 'Turned in' and 'Graded':
To turn in an assignment, simply click on it, then click the blue 'Turn in' button and select a ThingLink media you want to turn in. You can also chat with your teacher after the assignment has been turned in.
Assessing students' work
You can check and assess individual submission by opening the assignment's page and clicking either the blue 'Grade work' button or selecting specific submission at the bottom of the page. You can grade the student's work as well as provide feedback through the chat system.
What's coming for Courses in the future?
To be announced.