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Quick guide

From EFrontWiki

This is a quick guide to eFront based on a concrete example.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Create a new Category and Lesson 3 Enroll users 4 Describe the lesson 5 Create the lesson's structure 6 Create tests 7 Activate components 8 Create rules 9 Track user's progress 10 Register as a student 11 Complete chapters 12 Communicate

[edit] Overview

We assume that by now you have installed eFront and that you have at your disposal three user roles (Administrator, Professor, Student), together with their needed credentials/permissions/access rights.

In this tutorial, you will learn:

• How to create new categories and new lessons (Administrator role)
• How to enroll users to lessons (Administrator role)
• How to describe your lesson (Professor role)
• How to create the basic structure of your lesson (Professor role)
• How to create tests for your lesson (Professor role)
• How to decide what components to activate for your lesson (Professor role)
• How to create rules to restrict and guide the users (Professor role)
• How to track users' progress and give grades (Professor role)
• How to register to the system (Student role)
• How to follow the lesson's material and track your progress (Student role)
• How to communicate with your fellow lesson students or with the professor (Student role)

[edit] Create a new Category and Lesson

Assume that we want to build a lesson about ancient Maya civilizations. We will call it "Maya history".

We first need to log-in as an Administrator. If we want we can create a new Category that provides a logical organization of our lessons.

• From the Administrator panel, select "Categories" and then "Add Category"
• We use "Ancient Civilizations" as the name of the new category. The new category is a first-level/top-level category (it has no parent folder). By using parent categories, we could build an arbitrarily big list of nested categories (disciplines/subjects and courses within those disciplines), but it is not needed for our example.
• We return to the main Administration panel and select "Lessons"
• We use "Maya Civilization" as the name of our new lesson. We put it under the "Ancient Civilizations" category and save the new lesson.

[edit] Enroll users

The second thing we have to do is to assign users and professors to our new lesson. This is accomplished from the administrator panel as well. Additional users can be assigned to the lesson from the professor interface later.

When we create a new lesson we can assign new users to it immediately. For our example, immediately after saving the lesson we see the tab with the "Lesson users". We just need to select the users we want to enroll to the lesson and their status will be updated.

[edit] Describe the lesson

Each lesson may have a small description that presents the basic points it addresses. This description is shown to the students when they put their mouse over the lesson's title.

We login as a professor. We need to describe the lesson and create the content. From the catalog list we select the "Maya Civilization" and we enter the main professor screen. We select "Lesson information" and we add a Lesson description, Objectives etc.

[edit] Create the lesson's structure

We return to the main lesson page and select "Content". Adding new content or modyfing content is accomplished using the tools on the top of the page. When we select to create a unit an editor appears which allows us to manipulate text,images and other multimedia objects, as well as to define some basic options for the lesson.

Each unit can have a father unit allowing us to build a tree structure for the content.

[edit] Create tests

For this lesson we will create one generic test to ensure that users have understand the basic concepts of "Maya History".

• From the main control panel of professor we select "Tests"
• We move to "Questions" tab and create a number of questions. eFront supports the following types of questions: open answer, multiple choices-single correct answer, multiple choices-many correct answers, match, true/false, empty spaces.

• From "Tests" tab we create a new test and we set its characteristics.In the tab "Mastery score" we must define the score which is the minimum expected,in order for the test to be considered as passed by the student.

When we are done defining the test's characteristics, we have to save it and then continue by selecting the questions.

A new tab appears with the name "Test questions". This is the place where we choose the questions that will be included in the specific test.

At the top of this tab, there are two options, "Randomize questions" and "Random pool test".

The first one, allows you to randomize the questions from the selected ones that will be used in the test, while the second, allows you to create random test, by defining the number of questions that will be used.

[edit] Activate components

The professor has the ability to activate and deactivate the components that a lesson will have available. For example, he may do not want the students to be able to chat. Any changes made to the components of a lesson, do not affect the other lessons' options.

In order to manage the lesson's components, the professor has to follow this procedure:

• As a professor go to "Administration" option
• Decide what components should be included to the lesson
• Click on a component to activate/deactivate it
• As you activate/deactivate components the options on the left menu and on the mail lesson menu change accordingly

[edit] Create rules

Rules ensure that the user traverses the content of the lesson in a certain way. For example we can enforce a linear way of seeing content.

• Go to "Access rules" on the main menu
• There exist two categories of rules, the "Content traversing rules" that define the order the student should follow when studying the units,and the "Lesson completion conditions" that define when the lesson can be considered as completed.
• In order to add a rule or a lesson completion condition, define the properties needed.

[edit] Track user's progress

From the main lesson page we select "Reports". From there we can track the user progress, his info, his total time in system (user level), lessons details, users, tests and projects (lesson level).

• User reports:We select the user and his statistic information is revealed.

There are three tabs, the "Lessons" tab where we can find information about the student's progress, the "Courses" tab, where we can see the user's progress at the courses, and the "More info" tab where we can track general info concerning his communication through the sustem, the system usage etc.

• Lessons reports:We select the lesson.

Its report is consisted of six categories (tabs).
"Users":info on the users' statistics concerning this lesson

"Tests":we can track info on the lesson's tests results (which users have taken the tests, what is their score)

"Questions":we can track info on the results of every single question.

"Projects":we can track info on the students results at the lesson's project.

"More info":it provides some general info on the lesson

"Traffic":we can define a specific period of time to watch the lesson statistic information(traffic).

• Test reports:We select the test that interests us at the moment and we can find info about the number of the correct and false answers given in each question.

There are the following two tabs in the Test reports:

All reports can be exported in Excel and Pdf format by using the relevant buttons.

[edit] Register as a student

Registering can be accomplished either through the Administrator intervention or one can self-register (depending on the system parameters)

• Through the Administrator intervention:

Admin goes to "Users" tab on his main menu, and clicks on "New user" button. He sets the user's settings and activates him.

• Self registration:

From efront's main page, the student clicks on "I do not have an account" and he sets his personal settings.

[edit] Complete chapters

The main lesson page includes buttons to start or continue lesson as well as review its information. The first time the student access the lesson, the "Start lesson" button appears.

By clicking on it, the student is guided to the first unit of the lesson.Every time the student completes a unit he should click on the bottom button ("set the unit as completed") so that his progress can be measured.

The next time that he access the same lesson, the Start button will be replaced by the Resume button.By clicking on it, he is guided to the first unit he has not yet completed (Colonial period).

[edit] Communicate

There are several communication tools provided by the platform: Forum, chat, personal messages, calendar (Note: at a later step you can also install the Blog and Wiki module to extend the system's communication mediums)

• Forum:Each lesson has its own forum, in order to allow users to discuss topics concerning the lesson.Entering the forum page, users can either create a new topic or reply to an existing one.To create a new topic, the user clicks on "New topic" and then he sets its title and subject (message).

• Chat:Using this tool users are able to exchange instant messages, in real time, provided that they are connected to the system at the same time.

• Personal messages:With this tool, users can send personal messages one to another or to a group, something like an internal email.To send a message, go to "Messages", "New message", type % to select the user(s) who will be the recipient,then type the subject and the message(body).As we can see, there is a number of criteria that one can use, in order to send a message to a group of users, without having to select them one by one.

Every time the user receives a new incoming message, a notification appears in his page.By clicking on it, he enters automatically the messages page to read it and reply if he wants to.

• Calendar: We are able to add events on the calendar, on specific dates, and define if they concern a specific lesson. The events added to the calendar are shown with pop up message over the date.