Teacher Core Functions
The following are the key functions used to provide tailored practice for your students:
Classes and Student Lists: Set up your class with a class code. Give your students the class code, and they can either join your class on their own, or you can create Edcite accounts for them and enlist them in your class.
Assignments: Create online assignments with one or more questions - choose pre-built questions from the shared library, customize these questions as you wish, or even create your own questions with our flexible question editor tools. Set the assignment instructions and due dates, and Edcite administers these assignments for you. You can track submissions with question-wise and student-wise scoring reports.
Manage Student Lists
Each teacher's class has a student list - the teacher can either send assignments to all students in the class, or to some students selectively. Use the following actions to manage your student list.
Add Students:
When available, Edcite uses email to activate student accounts and send automatic notifications. If a student prefers not to use email (or email is not available), you can setup student accounts without email and you would need to separately hand them their username and password to access Edcite. Open the add student form to enter student information.
Student Reports: Get student reports of all your assignments taken by each student.
Edit Student: Edit a student entry and add notes for each student.
Delete Student: Remove a student from your list. Note: the student's Edcite account is not deleted, he/she is just removed from your list of students.
Create and Track Assignments
Edcite supports using assignments with your students to ensure they do regular interactive exercises that are tracked and assessed to ensure students are doing regular work and making progress.
You will create and send assignments to your students, and track the status of these assignments for each student. To get started, click the Create Assignment link on your home page. On the Assignment page, you will do the following.
- Assignment Information: Enter the name of the assignment, due date and any introductory information you want to provide your students.
- Add Exercise: Select one or more exercises as part of the assignment.
- Add Students: Select the students from your student list who will be invited to do this exercise.
- Send Invitations: For students with email, each student will be sent an email with a link to the assignment. If students have no email, the first time you will need to give them their username and password that you setup. Subsequently they will be notified in the Edcite system when they are invited to do a new assignment.
Once an assignment is sent to students, you can keep track of student work and progress on the assignment.
- Track Assignments: To track assignment, use the links on your home page to open a specific assignment. From the assignment page, you'll be able to access student status and reports.
Student actions on the assignment are tracked, i.e. when they opened an assignment or exercise, when they submitted the exercise or assignment, and results for each exercise.
Use and Create Exercises
You may use any of the existing shared exercises for your student assignments, or create your own exercises. Currently, the list of exercises is small and you are likely to want to create your own exercises.
To create an exercise use the Create Exercise link on your home page. This opens the exercise editor where you will do the following:
- Exercise information: Specify the name, topic and description for the exercise.
- Select items: Pick from shared (published) items or from items you have created.
- Save Exercise: You will need to save the exercise.
- Try the Exercise: You may want to try the exercise yourself to make sure it works for your students.
Once you create an exercise, you will be able to use them with your students, and share (publish) them so that other teachers and students can benefit from your work.
Finding and Creating Exercise Items
To create an exercise, you will need to add one or more exercise items. Exercise items are the equivalent of questions in a quiz. Exercise items can range from multiple choice questions to puzzles and games. A goal of the Edcite service is to enable a variety of visual interactive items that help students learn by doing.
You can use existing exercise items from the Edcite library, or create your own items from a variety of item type templates to suit your needs.
Using Existing Items
You can search the library of exercise items (shared items) to find items for your exercises. These items are categorized into Featured, Recommended, Verified, Unchecked and Deficient categories. Edcite editors categorize items into these categories to help teachers pick items for their exercises. Over time, item ratings, comments and other data will grow and be increasingly helpful in selecting items.
Creating New Questions
Edcite provides a growing library of questions to use with your assignments. The number of items is still small however, and you will often need to create your own items for exercises you create. Edcite provides templates to help you create a range of interactive items, so you can provide your students with tailored interactive content.
To create a new item, click on the Create Question link, which gives you a list of item types you can create. Select one of the types, and click Create. That takes you to the editor for the type. Enter the data required by the type to create an item of that type.
After you save the data, you will be prompted to view the new item or continue editing. View the item to see that it works the way you want it to.
To go back to an item you created, use the Manage Items link on your home page.