Professor documentation

From EFrontWiki

The Professor is responsible for managing the learning process. Through his interface he can create/edit/organise the educational material, publish tests and quizes, create access rules, activate certain lesson characteristics, communicate with lesson participants, view lesson reports and statistics and in general track the learning process in detail.

Contents 1 Main page 2 Lesson control panel 3 Lesson Ingredients (Modules) 4 Managing Content 5 Content Structure 5.1 Copying content from other lessons 5.2 Change units position 6 Adding Tests 7 Path rules and Completion Conditions 8 Reports 8.1 User reports 8.2 Lesson reports 8.3 Test Reports 8.4 Course Reports 9 Communication Tools 10 Glossary 11 SCORM content

[edit] Main page

The professor main page lists all the professor's lessons, organized in directions and courses (hierarchy view). The professor can quickly view a summary of each lesson by simply moving the mouse over the lesson's name. In addition, next to each course name, there is a list of icons for managing the corresponding course. The professor can select a lesson, by simply clicking on its name.

[edit] Lesson control panel

After selecting a lesson, the professor is transfered to the lesson's main page (control panel). In that page, the professor is offered with a list of tools and actions for managing the lesson's ingredients as well tracking the progress of each student.

[edit] Lesson Ingredients (Modules)

The main modules of a lesson are:

• Content
• Tests
• Projects

Those modules correspond to the modules of a real lesson, for example the content is equivalent to the lesson's book, the tests are equivalent to the lesson's final examinations while the projects correspond to the real lesson's projects. Using this modules, the professor can create a lesson that will be very similar to a real lesson.

[edit] Managing Content

The creation of new content for a lesson is very simple and easy. It is done through the Content icon in the lesson's control panel. Within that option, the professor can create new content units, using an advanced editor. A content unit can contain text, equations, images, sounds, videos, flash animations, hyperlinks to external pages or even java applets. The professor can combine all those in order to create a content that will be easy to read, easy to understand and attractive to the students.

[edit] Content Structure

The lesson's content is organized in an hierarchical tree structure. Each unit can contain a list of subunits, with each subunit containing a list of subunits etc. The content structure can also contains lesson tests, which are treated as units. On the contrary, the lesson projects are not considered as part of the content structure.

[edit] Copying content from other lessons

Expect for creating new content, the professor can very easily copy content from other lessons. In that way, he can save time by copying similar content units and the editing the copied content. The copying is done by dragging and dropping the required units inside the lesson's content structure.

[edit] Change units position

The professor can very easily change the content structure, by dragging the units to the appropriate place inside the tree structure. In addition, he can easily delete or edit a unit, using the appropriate icons next to each unit's name.

[edit] Adding Tests

A fundamental module of each lesson are its tests. The tests can be used in order to evaluate by the professor in order to evaluate the progress of his student. eFront provides an easy way for creating new questions and tests, thus the professor can create fully and complex tests for better progress tracking of his student.

In order for a new test to be created, the professor has to create an list of new questions and then assign those questions to the new tests. The created questions can be reused in other tests too. In addition, the professor can define different weights and difficulty to each question. eFront supports the following types of questions:

• Empty spaces
• Development
• Multi choices - Simple correct answer
• Multi choices - Multiple correct answers
• Match
• True/False

[edit] Path rules and Completion Conditions

The professor can define custom path rules for manging the order of viewing the lesson's content units. For example, he can define that the students cannot view Unit 5 before viewing Unit 3, or before viewing Unit 1 and Unit 2. In addition, he can define custom conditions for completing a lesson. For example, he can define that a user has completed the lesson only if he has seen all the lesson's content units and has scored at least 60% in the lesson's test. The conditions are fully customizable in an very easy way, using an simple and easy-to-use interface.

[edit] Reports

eFront provides a full set of high-quality reports in order for the professor to efficiently track the progress of his students as well as to quickly overview statistical information about his lessons and courses. The provided reports can be divided in the following categories:

• User reports
• Lesson reports
• Test reports
• Course reports

All of the above reports can be accessed through the Tool->Reports option in the professor's sidebar. Additionally, the professor can always export the provided information in EXCEL or PDF format for later use.

[edit] User reports

The user reports summarize personal information about the user along with his/her progress in his/her lessons, courses and tests.

[edit] Lesson reports

The lesson reports summarize statistical information about the lesson along with the progress of the lesson's students. In addition, the reports include valuable information about the traffic of the lesson (e.g number of accesses, most frequent users etc).

[edit] Test Reports

The test reports can be used in order to obtain detailed information about each test, each test's question and the answers that the users have given. So, the professor can easily identify which questions are the most difficult for the users, in order to focus his teaching in the corresponding section.

[edit] Course Reports

Similar to lesson reports, the course reports summarize stastical information about each course along with the progress of the course's students.

[edit] Communication Tools

The system provide a set of communication tools that enrich the end user environment. These are: Internal messaging, Calendar, Forum, Chat, Lesson Announcements, Extending lesson with user comments

[edit] Glossary

The professor can define custom explanation and information for specific words, using the lesson's glossary. After defining and explanation for a word, the student is offered with a pop-up information whenever encounters the corresponding word in a content of the lesson.

[edit] SCORM content

eFront is SCORM compatible. This means that the professor can export a lesson into SCORM format, or import a SCORM unit into eFront. Through a user-friendly interface, the professor can manage all the imported SCORM units and insert them into the lesson's content structure.