Menu

Using eCampus

Creating the course: Instructor

To request an eCampus Course, the instructor (Dave) needs to log into (using your NetID) eCampus Tools (other lecturers don’t have to; all students can go in one eCampus course). Then click on ‘Course Management’. Click on a ‘Cross-listed’ course and hit ‘continue’, then click on all four ASTR/PHYS section and hit ‘submit’. Copy them from the Compass Sections to the eCampus Section box. Change the eCampus course name to just be ASTR/PHYS 109, and remove the HNR from the second box. The “Course Structure” should probably be “Blank,” since this works best for importing content from previous courses. Then if the instructor hits ‘Create Course,’ the eCampus course will be created.

To add TAs as Alternate Instructors for the course, the instructor will need the TAs’ UINs. With those, the instructor needs to log into (using your NetID) eCampus Tools and click on “Member Management.” The intructor should see the course and click it. Then the instructor needs to enter the TAs’ UINs and click on “Alternate Instructor.” Then click ‘submit,’ and the TAs will be added as Altermate Instructors.
Once the TAs have been added to be Alternate Instructors, they will be able to upload and create course content.

To check that the course is ready at this point, the instructor and TAs can log in to eCampus here (using their NetID). There should be links to ASTR/PHYS 109 (the main course) and ASTR/PHYS 119 (the lab course). If they are not there, you can contact ITS by email or by phone (979)-458-3417.

****
AVAILABILITY: Note that the eCampus course should be unavailable to students until the course is ready (see instructions for setting up content below). Either the instructor or the TAs can set the availability. To make a created course available, click the “Customization” menu under the Control Panel (lower-left part of the screen) and go to “Properties.” There will be a checkbox there to make the course “available to users.”
This information can also be found in the ITS Docs here.
****

Importing content

Importing the course is straightforward. Log in to eCampus and navigate to the eCampus course website. Ensure you are in the previous semester’s course as an Alternate Instructor. If you are not, you will not be able to export the package for the old course to import into the new one. Request that the instructor adds you to these courses first following the same procedure outlined 3 paragraphs above (“To add TAs as Alternate Instructors…”). Go to Course Management Toolbar ➞ Packages and Utilities ➞ Import Package / View Logs. Then Click Import Package and follow the instructions, loading the saved file from the previous course. If you need to save the course (export), follow the Export/Archive Course. If you have trouble, also contact eCampus IT. Detailed instructions below:

  1. Generate the Package from the previous course
    1. Log in to eCampus, and go to the previous 109 Course
    2. On the left hand toolbar, click on Packages and Utilities -> Export/Archive Course
    3. Click on Export Package and select all the stuff that you want to include in the package (almost everything).
    4. You will have to wait for the package to be generated and compiled. An email is supposed to let you know when it’s ready.
  2. Download the zip file of the Generated Package
  3. Go to the New Course and Import the Generated Package
    1. Click on the same left-hand toolbar link but now go to Packages and Utilities -> Import Package / View Logs
    2. Click on Browse from my Computer, and select the previously downloaded zip file
    3. Click on Select All to select all the items to import.
    4. The process will be queued and will take some time, let it run and check that the content is ok.
  4. Make the final adjustments. The main toolbar usually duplicates with the new and old stuff, so remove the old stuff and check that the links work.
  5. The due dates, as well as the available/visible dates need to be adjusted to match the new term.
  6. The adaptive release rules may need to be put in for each assignment by hand (see below). Right click on the assignment, click adaptive release: advanced, and create a rule (usually “grade” -> student must get 100% on the preceding assignment). The rules to implement should be evident in the assignment descriptions.

The course is imported now. The one thing that should be kept in mind is that the due dates as well as the ‘available’ dates of the tests/surveys, quizzes, etc need to be re-adapted to this term. It’s good to review such things in time and hide the stuff that we don’t want to show. Some things don’t really need a date because just depend on the 100% score of the previous quiz (this is called an Adaptive Release rule—see the next section).

Creating and editing assignments

You can only edit eCampus if you are listed as an “Instructor” or a “Course Builder.” If you want to edit assignments, make sure that “Edit Mode” is ON. This can be done in the top right corner of the page.

To create something, first go the the folder that you wish to create it in. At the top of the page, there will be tabs for “Build Content” and “Assessments.” The former can be used for creating things such as web links (outside eCampus) and course links (to other places in eCampus) and organizational constructs. The latter can create items that will require grading (e.g. quizzes).

Editing eCampus is fairly straightforward, if somewhat tedious. Nearly anything in the course can be edited by hovering your mouse over the item’s title and clicking on the little arrow that appears. Usually the first two options in the resulting menu will lead you to what you need. Each type of content has its own options in the drop box that appears. “Edit” or “Edit ____ Options” can be used for altering the general properties of an item. “Adaptive Release” can be used to limit the access to an assignment, such as for the End of Chapter Quizzes (details below).

  • Quizzes, for example, will have “Edit the test” to set up questions (set up or fix the text, choose answers, set feedback, assign partial credit, etc.) and “Edit the test options” which includes due dates, descriptions, feedback visibility, etc.
  • Note in particular: when creating the test (or later from the editing page) be sure to select the “make link available” option to actually make the item show up on the students’ pages.

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to create assessments that automatically apply late penalties. Under ‘Edit the test options’ you can set a due date (about halfway down the page—not the ‘display until’ date) and there is a check-box to determine if students will be allowed to access the test after it is due. If you allow access after the due date, assignments submitted late will be flagged in your gradebook.

ADAPTIVE RELEASE: In the edit menu (from the little drop-down arrow next to the given content) there may be two options: Adaptive Release and Adaptive Release:Advanced. The first can set the assignment to only show up for certain people on certain dates or (most often for us) after other assignments have been taken. The Advanced option will also allow these, but in more of a logic web—i.e. using multiple criteria with AND and OR. (If multiple criteria already exist, this may be the only option that appears.)
When you first enter Adaptive Release: Advanced, you will basically be on the OR screen. You can create a rule using the menu in the top-left of the content area or edit an existing rule (i.e. its ‘criteria’) on the page by selecting the drop-down arrow next to the rule’s ‘name’. Either way will take you to what is basically the AND screen (after naming the rule if it is new). Here you can “create criteria” based on date, group membership, or grade (our most-often-used criteria). You can create or edit multiple criteria on this page (each criteria will have its own screen, but you’ll come back here once you are done editing) and they will ultimately be connected by AND. Once you are done with a given AND, click “←OK” at the bottom-right of the screen to go back to the OR screen. You can then create another rule if you want or again click “←OK” to finish the adaptive release setup.

In a nutshell, eCampus has made AND a subscreen of OR. If you forget which screen you are on, note that the OR screen lets you create rules while the AND screen lets you create criteria. The criteria from the AND screen are where you choose the actual assignments that need to be completed (for example) while the rules on the OR screen are collections of criteria connected by OR.

EXAMPLE: Say we want Quiz 4 to become available either when quizzes 1 and 2 are done or when quizzes 2 and 3 are done. The process would go like this:

Go to Quiz 4’s ‘adaptive release: advanced’ → ‘create rule’ on OR screen → name the rule (only for new rules)→ ‘create criteria’ on AND screen→ choose “Quiz 1” on the “Grade” criteria screen and hit ‘submit’ → ‘create criteria’ on AND screen→ choose “Quiz 2” on the “Grade” criteria screen and hit ‘submit’ → click ‘←OK’ on the AND screen→ ‘create rule’ on OR screen→ name the rule (only for new rules)→ ‘create criteria’ on AND screen→ choose “Quiz 2” on the “Grade” criteria screen and hit ‘submit’ → ‘create criteria’ on AND screen→ choose “Quiz 3” on the “Grade” criteria screen and hit ‘submit’ → click ‘←OK’ on the AND screen→ click ‘←OK’ on the OR screen→

(Note that just selecting the quiz names will default to just requiring ‘attempts’ for them. This means that if anything shows in the gradebook, the criteria has been met; this would include papers submitted to TurnItIn that have not been assigned a grade, for example. You can choose required grades by raw score or percent as well.).

There are (at least) two ways to check which assignments have become available to which students:

  • To check everyone’s visibility of a single assignment: on the page with the assignment links, the dropdown menu for each assignment (where you’d find the links to edit or delete the assignment) has an entry called “User Progress.” On that page, there will be a ‘visibility’ column, which will show either an eye or an crossed-out eye indicating that the item is available or not available to the given student, respectively.
  • To check a single student’s visibility of all assignments: in the Grade Center, select the arrow next to a student’s name and select ‘Browse Adaptive Release Status’ on the menu. This will open a new window showing all the items in the eCampus course and whether or not the student can see them—again using either the eye or crossed-out eye icons.

 

We’ve been told by ITS that if a new rule is created for an assignment that is already available to students, that rule can take away access as soon as it’s created; i.e. we can turn off students’ access this way if we want them to turn in a particular assignment on the spot.

Cleaning out old content

Removing old quizzes and the like is a bit of a chore (especially if they have accumulated for a while). To completely remove an old, unused assignment, it must be deleted:

  1. In the content area itself. Click the arrow that shows the dropdown menu (where you would go to edit the item) and there should be a ‘delete’ option at the bottom.
  2. In “Tests, Surveys, and Pools” under “Course Tools” in the course Management panel (there will be a column there showing if the given assignment is ‘deployed’ or not and where it is if so)
  3. In the gradebook. Note that ‘hiding’ columns in the ‘column organization’ menu only hides it from YOU in the gradebook. Students will still see the assignment listed in their grades (you can check how that will look in student preview mode [click the button that looks like an eye made of arrows up by the ‘edit mode’ button]). To fully remove the grade column, you must make it visible to yourself, then delete it from the dropdown menu over the column in the grade center. The ‘delete’ option will probably not show if the assignment still exists in a content area somewhere; it will also not show if students ever submitted something to the assignment, even if you then cleared them (you’ll have to contact ITS, who will have to contact the vendor to delete the column).

 

Creating blocks of randomized questions

To display certain number of mixed-up questions, you need to create a pool of questions first. In the Control Panel on the lower-left of your eCampus screen, you can go to “Course Tools”, select “Test, Surveys, and Pools”, and go to the “Pools” page, where you can create and edit. Note that you may have to set point values (probably just 10 for each question).

Then go to the quiz you’re setting up and click “Edit” in the drop box. At top of the page, there is a red menu bar, put you mouse over “Reuse Question”, and click “Create Question Set” in the dropdown box.

A “Create Question Set” window will pop up, you can go through the “Browse Criteria” on the left. For example, if you want to use questions from a existing test, you can choose “Test” and check the specfic test you want to import here; you could also choose a question pool you’ve made here. Then questions will show up on the right, check all questions you want to import and click submit. Now you have these questions in your quiz, and you can change the “Number of Questions to display” to the number you want. (Note that when selecting the questions you can use either copies or links; copies will be independent and furthier copiable in the future while links cannot be copied again but will change in every test they are in with a single edit.)

To make the quiz show random questions, go the “Edit the Test Options” and check the option of “Randomize Questions” at the bottom of this page.

Putting copy of book on reserve at Evans Library

The instructor will need to put a copy of the textbook on reserve at Evans Library. To do so, follow this link