Assignments tool in eLearn is a common place where students can submit their assignments digitally, eliminating the need to mail, fax or email assignments.
The submitted assignments are also checked for plagiarism, preventing students from misrepresenting other people’s works / ideas as their own.
How to:
Integrate assignments and Turnitin
Grade submissions and evaluate by activity using Quick Eval
Gradescope is a grading productivity tool that helps instructors manage paper-based assignments. Its intelligent grouping feature allows you to grade students’ submissions in a structured manner with standardised feedback.
Turnitin is a leading academic plagiarism detector, utilized by instructors and students to avoid plagiarism and ensure academic integrity. It provides a seamless integration with eLearn Dropbox.
How to:
Enable Turnitin for an assignment
Create, edit or assess Turnitin-enabled assignments
Peer evaluation tool provides rich evaluation types for instructors to assess TA Performance or individual members’ contribution in group assignments. This tool removes the pains of conducting manual and paper-based peer reviews. It helps instructors to save time and efforts in conducting peer assessments.
Quizzes tool in eLearn allows instructors to create quizzes from a wide variety of question types, ranging from a simple true or false quiz to a math quiz with complex calculation formulas.
It encourages student participation and course preparation, and helps prevent cheating using certain quiz settings.
How to:
Create a quiz with a random set of questions
Export quiz grades to grade book
Associate learning objectives with a quiz
Evaluate quiz activity manually
Recalculate a quiz after adding additional correct answers
Populate a quiz with questions from the question library
Import a learning object into a quiz or question library
Publish quizzes, quiz sections, questions into the Brightspace learning repository
Grades tool in eLearn allows instructors to set up gradebook with control on the grading formula used or define the weightage of the assessment components.
How to:
Create a grade item and associate an activity with grade item
Managing grades and grade items
Delete a grade item or categories
Exclude a grade item of category from the final grade calculation
Respondus LockDown Browser is a custom browser that locks down online quiz environment within eLearn. It's a way to prevent digital cheating during online tests. It enhances the proctoring system and minimizes the submission failure rate of online quizzes. This tool provides compatibility with Windows and Mac machines.
There is an option of enabling Respodus LockDown Monitor for the conduct of remote exams. Respondus Monitor is a fully-automated proctoring solution. Students use a webcam to record themselves during an online exam. Afterward, flagged events and proctoring results are available to the instructor for further review.
About Respondus Lockdown Browser
Respondus Monitor: One technology, lots of flexibility
Exam Extraction tool allows instructors to extract quiz answers from students. The questions can be extracted include Long Answer, Short Answer, Multi-short Answer, and Fill in the Blank.
Results Processing tool provides instructors a mean to effectively manage students’ grade distributions, view grade reports and timely release of students’ results. In addition, students can easily view their results and class statistics from their mobile devices.
Respondus is a powerful tool for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly in eLearn.
The Respondous Test Bank Network contains thousands of test banks for the leading textbooks in higher education.
User Guide (Full Version)
Standard Format for Importing Questions
Sample Questions Format
How to:
Import questions with Respondus
Import questions with Respondus
Import images with questions with Respondus
Create and format questions with Respondus
Rubrics tool in eLearn can be used as part of a Competency structure to determine if Learning Objectives are achieved, or used to evaluate an activity, an assessment or a grade item based on a predefined set of criteria. It provides instructor and student a more structured way to assess performance.
New best practices in Rubrics grading
Changes coming to Rubrics grading experience coming Fall 2018
How to:
Control the visibility of rubrics for individuals
Attach a rubric to an assignment
Attach a rubric to a discussion topic
Assess Learning Outcomes in Rubric Criteria
Align Learning Outcomes to Rubric Criteria
Associate rubrics with competencies and Brightspace ePortfolio items
Display graded rubric feedback in Gradebook
Competency tool in eLearn can be used to track students’ progress towards achieving the course goals. It helps Instructor to measure attainment of learning objectives through quizzes, assignments, discussions, and grades.
Understand competency structures and associations
Understanding parent-child relationship between competency structure elements
How to:
Remove an association between competency structure elements
View competency structure results and track competency achievement
Add and remove competency structure element associations
StudyMate helps ease students experience in understanding concepts in course materials through learning activities, self-assessments, and games. A dozen non-gradable learning activities – such as flash cards, crosswords and quizzes – engage students with course content in an individualized way. Instructor can directly publish the activities to eLearn.
The eLearn Quiz / Online Exam Settings Checker (a Chrome extension) allows you to carry out a sanity check on any Lockdown Browser enabled quiz that you have set up in eLearn.
It will provide you with a quiz readiness report and some of the recommended settings to be applied to the quiz.
The Exam Buddy widget aims to make it easier for you to monitor the status and progress of any online quiz session of your class.
It allows you to monitor the status and progress of all the students in the class during the quiz session. You will be able to know which student has not started the quiz, which student is still doing the quiz and which student has completed and submitted the quiz all in one simple glance.
The class management tool (CMT) is designed to simplify the administrative aspect of teaching in a classroom. It helps the instructor to recognize students easily by presenting their photographs with full name and other identification information.
The CMT can also be used to mark attendance. To optimise classroom time, instructors are given the option to allow the student to mark their own attendance or delegate this task to their TA. The attendance records will be compiled to give a summary of classroom attendance throughout the semester.
In addition, scores and remarks to register students' class participation can now be input into any attendance session.
News tool in eLearn serves as a bulletin board that allows instructors to post important notices, reminders, etc. to students.
How to:
Create or make a regular Announcements item
Delete or restore an Announcements item
Edit an Announcements item
Reorder an Announcements item
Restore a deleted Announcements item
Groups tool in eLearn provides a collaborative space for the group members to share files in a Group Locker and have Group Discussion.
The difference between sections and groups
Best practices for group enrollment
How to:
Create subgroups within sections and groups
Delete a group or group category
Set up self-enrollment in groups
Seating Chart offers instructors drag-and-drop interface to manage seating plan for lecture or exam purposes. Instructors can create, edit, and delete seating chart for their sections.
What is a seating chart session?
How to:
Create a session in seating chart
Track session attendance and participation
Classlist tool in eLearn is used to view class enrolment in a course, to check who is online, and to send email. It provides instructors with an overall view of students’ profile as well as their progress.
How to:
Find Free Time Slots tool allows instructors / students to identify common time slots to meet based on their class and exam schedules. It improves the efficiency of arranging one-on-one consulting, as well as group discussion, project meeting, assignment review, etc.
Our vendor Desire2learn follows web accessibility standards closely and works with interested clients to test the usability of the products for people with disabilities. Many features in eLearn can be adjusted to improve access for individuals with disabilities.
Accessibility features for low-vision users
Accessibility features for screen readers
How to:
Navigate the Brightspace Learning Environment
Navigate the HTML editor with a keyboard
Use magnifier and zoom functionality
Instructor can now enroll his/her TA into his/her course at term start on his/her own using the TA Enrollment widget.
Instructor can also re-enroll his/her TA into the course (with the appropriate role if necessary) when all the TAs’ role has been reduced to the most basic role during the UG final exams period.
Content allows instructors to organize course materials delivery in a meaningful way.
Instructors can make use of the Release Conditions in the Restriction Tab to design learning path for students and achieve personalized learning.
Types of files for course content
How to:
Create and remove a new module
Add an existing course object to Content
Manage course content using drag and drop
Set a content topic or module’s status
Enable, import and apply HTML templates in Content
Apply an HTML template to a new document in Content
Add third-party content from the Content tool
Add availability and due dates in Content
Insert group self-enrollment link
Check course content user statistics
Learning Object Repository (LOR) is a centralized storage that faculty or administrative offices publish and share learning objects for campus-wide viewing, such as SMU Grading Scheme, Guidelines, Course Materials for multiple sections or research documents, etc.
What can you do with Learning Object Repository?
What can you do with Learning Object Repository search results?
How to:
Perform basic search for learning objects
Perform advance search for learning objects
Browse the Learning Object Repository
Retrieve learning objects to Content
Retrieve learning objects from Course Management
Retrieve learning objects from Import/Export/Copy Course Components
Retrieve learning objects from Learning Object Repository search page
Add a learning object to a collection
Edit a learning object’s properties
View files contained in a learning object
Import questions into a question library from a learning object repository
Import a learning object into a quiz or question library
Manage a collection’s properties
Publish quizzes, quiz sections and questions
Subscribe to a repository or browse RSS feed
Subscribe to a collection’s RSS feed
Various leading publisher platforms have been integrated in eLearn, such as McGraw Hill Connect, Cengage MindTap, etc. The textbooks, eBooks and courseware provided by the publishers can be accessed via eLearn once the instructors have subscribed to the publishers' contents. This helps to remove the hassle of carrying heavy textbooks, to quicken search for information, and to enable collaboration among peers.
Kaltura - My Media is a platform that you can share the lesson video or presentations with your students.
You can create screencast videos and interactive video quizzes and it will list all the media available to you and you can record/upload new media from here.
Kaltura - My Media can be accessed via eLearn.
Quick Start Guide
Alternatively, you may access Kaltura - My Media by visiting https://mediacast.smu.edu.sg
Visit this link for tips on using Kaltura Mediacast.
How to:
Share/email link to external students
Annoto is an in-video collaboration and engagement solution that turns your video content consumption from passive individual watching to active, social, and collaborative experience. Annoto integrates with Kaltura as a plugin on top of the existing video player. It provides innovative UX for threaded discussions and call to action interactions during the video, increasing user engagement and collaboration.
How to:
Enable/disable Annoto in Kaltura
Add video comment/personal note
General Introduction Annoto Video
Annoto Widget Walkthrough
Annoto FAQ
Annoto User Guide (Full Version, PDF)
Annoto User Guide (Full Version, Web)
Links tool in eLearn is used to create and manage any shortcut hyperlinks so that users can quickly navigate to the desired sites. Also, copyrighted materials that are not replicable can be accessed conveniently from eLearn by linking to their sources.
How to:
Delete links and link categories
Discussions tool in eLearn is a course related collaboration area where you can post, read and reply to messages on different topics, share thoughts about course materials, ask questions, share files, or conduct group discussions for assignments/projects.
How to:
Create or manage discussion forums
Edit a discussion forum or topic
Delete discussion forums, topics, threads and posts
Evaluate discussion topic activities
Assess users in discussion threads
Lock a discussion forum or topic
Hide a discussion forum or topic
Attach a rubric to a discussion topic
Assign bonus marks to a discussion topic
Attach a discussion topic to a grade item
Add an assessment to a discussion topic with a learning objective
Assess discussion threads against learning outcomes
Align learning outcomes to discussion topics
Retract or re-publish assessments of discussions
Set up a quicklink to a discussion topic or forum in Content
Chat offers real-time, text-based chat room for Course (people enrolled in a course) or Private (only invited people) chats. It can be used for Q&A, brainstorming ideas, short discussion among members of a study group that are not physically located in one place.
How to:
Make an announcement to all participants
Send a message to all participants
Add or remove users from a chat
Block a participant from a chat
Unblock a participant from a chat
Gamelead is a gamification app, built on the Gametize platform.
Students take part in quests, which involve a series of simple challenges, such as photos, quizzes, and videos. These activities prompt students to reflect on and apply what they have learnt in class.
Zoom is another cloud-based video/web conferencing solution you can use to virtually meet with your students. It is used for teaching or external meetings/events that require unique features such as virtual background, the view of many participants' videos, breakout rooms, polling and etc.
How to:
Zoom: Testing Your Microphone or Speakers Settings Before an Actual Zoom meeting
Zoom: Comparison between Meeting and webinar
Zoom: Host and Co-host Controls in Zoom Meeting
Zoom: Scheduling and Starting Online Lessons in Zoom (.pdf)
Zoom: Setting Your Virtual Background
Zoom: Sharing Multiple Screens Simultaneously
Zoom: Pre-assigning Students to Breakout Rooms
MediaWiki can be used for exchange of ideas, knowledge distribution and knowledge creation. Students can contribute on the content together. It empowers them with content awareness, ownership and sense of achievement.
Note: Users will need to know or learn mark-up language to format the content in a wiki.
Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service offered by Google for users to collaborate and to do file sharing. It eases sharing among the users.
Journal is a convenient and effective tool for instructors to collect records of class or meeting events from students or participants. Some of the example could be periodical records of students’ progress in the class, meeting / discussion minutes, students’ reflection on a course taught, etc.
Google Calendar is a free time management web application provided by Google. Users can use it to plan and share their events/activities.
Surveys tool is an excellent way to solicit feedback from students regarding any aspect of a course, such as course evaluations, mid-term reviews, user satisfaction, etc.
How to:
Create special access to a survey
Control survey responses in a survey
Ensure anonymous survey participation
Notify participants of an available survey
Track survey progress and results
This web-based application allows instructors to:
ePortfolio in eLearn is a powerful user-centric application for storing, organizing, reflecting on and sharing items that represent the individual learner. Students can use ePortfolio to incorporate documents, graphics, audio files, presentations and more that reflect their personal learning journey, and easily share them with advisors, employers or peers.
Wooclap is a Classroom Response System (CRS) that can be used to have students actively participate in lectures. It allows students to give opinions and respond to questions (in the form of multiple choice, open ended, or scales) that the instructor can prepare in advance. This tools actively engages students and allows instructors to check on how students about a subject.
Padlet is a web-based app that enables users to create an online bulletin board to display information on any topic. It is designed to allow students and faculty to collaborate, reflect, share links and pictures, in a secure location.
Access the Content page of your specific course.
AI writing indicator has been added to Turnitin Similarity Report which will show an overall percentage of the student's submitted assignment that may have been AI-generated.
Start and End Date determine the availability of an assignment wherein a student can start or submit their paper.
"Due Date" is like a soft deadline for students and if they exceeded the "Due Date", they are still able to submit their works but their submissions will be marked as late. "Due Date" should always be set in between the "Start Date" and "End Date".
Visibility status or the strikeout eye icon in eLearn Assignments signify that students will not be able to see the assignment, i.e. the assignment is not visible and is hidden from the students.
Visibility status or the strikeout eye icon in eLearn Quizzes signify that students will not be able to see the quiz, i.e. the quiz is not visible and is hidden from the students.
"Special Access" can be used to grant "special condition(s)" to individual student who is taking the same quiz as the rest of the class. Example, to grant extra timing to the student's quiz duration, to allow the student to take the quiz at a different date/time as the rest of the class, etc.
To grant special access to a student
There is currently no good way to extract the quiz questions into a Word document.
However, you may follow the guide here to copy the questions in your quiz into a Word document.
An eLearn Chrome extension has been set up to assist instructors in the quiz settings check.
To access this Chrome extension feature, please follow the guide here to install the extension (do take note of the restriction in the installation and access of this Chrome extension).
With the Chrome extension installed in your browser, you can validate the settings in the quiz you have set up by
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Quiz with no issue detected in the settings | Quiz with issue detected in the settings |
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Readiness score of quiz with no detected settings issue | Readiness score of quiz with detected settings issue |
eLearn team has created the Exam Buddy widget which aims to make it easier for you to monitor the status and progress of any online eLearn quiz session being taken by your students in your class.
You will be able to know which student has not started the quiz, which student is still doing the quiz and which student has completed and submitted the quiz all in one simple glance.
To access Exam Buddy,
A new feature has been included in the exam extraction tool to detect the possibility of AI writing in the students’ submitted text answers in eLearn quiz.
This detection allows you to sieve out the submitted text content that may have a high chance of being generated by AI, such as ChatGPT.
Refer to this guide for the AI writing detection option in exam extraction.
You can reinstate the role of your TA with the TA Enrollment widget.
Course Materials (View Only) | Course Materials (Upload / Edit / Create / Delete) |
Discussions (Create / View) |
Assignments (Edit / Create / View / Delete) |
Quizzes (Edit / Create / View / Delete) |
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There are some restrictions to your TA's access in the course regardless of the access level he/she is holding.
Yes, all TAs and students should have a Zoom account.
No, you will need to set up the Zoom session using your subscribed Zoom account.
Your TA can help you with following tasks:
You can download your data by following the instructions in this link https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en.
Each Staff/Faculty will be allocated 10GB of storage space on the corporate Google Drive. If you go over your storage limit, you won't lose anything. However, you won’t be able to store new files in Google Drive or store new photos or videos in Google Photos.
We would recommend shifting to MS Teams or Zoom. However, if the switch is not possible due to regulatory or customer requirement, your department will need to purchase Webex licenses on its own to continue using Webex. You can contact the following CISCO representative to purchase the required number of Webex licenses before 6 Oct 2022.
You can refer to the link: https://help.webex.com/en-us/article/nuwqxdab/Find-your-Webex-recordings.
Depend on your needs. For internal communication within SMU, we would recommend MS Teams. For external communication, we would recommend Zoom.
You can find more information on MS Teams by clicking on the link below:
You can find more information on Zoom by clicking on the link below:
We will remove your existing SMU account and you will need to create a free account under SMU to join an external Webex meeting. You can sign up for a free Webex account at https://cart.webex.com/sign-up.
Webex only allows one account per email address, as such we will need to remove your SMU Webex Enterprise account first.
You can contact the following CISCO representative to purchase the required number of Webex licenses before 6 Oct 2022.