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Homework for Day
3 | Resources
The most noticeable trend of the last few years in web-enhanced
teaching is the rapid movement away from individual course
sites built and maintained by instructors themselves and towards
centralized and standardized course management platforms that
do not require html knowledge or other technical skills. Most
universities today use third-party course management software,
either proprietary or open-source, or develop their own. During
this workshop, participants will learn how to set up their
course sites using Telesis, the software which was designed
by Washington University programmers and which is now available
to all instructors.
Participants will need to bring their own syllabus for the
course that they will be teaching/TAing next semester or choose
one of the following samples:
In addition, participants are encouraged to bring other materials
that may be used in the course, including:
- Articles and handouts for distrubition to students (as
Word documents or PDFs).
- Useful links.
- Images.
Note: Please do not feel like you should spend extra time
developing these materials if you do not have them ready.
Bring some materials that might be useful simply to learn
the Telesis functions.
To access your courses through Telesis, go to the following
address:
https://telesis.wustl.edu
My Home
When you first log on to Telesis, you will see a list of all
courses in which you are a “member.” Besides the
Summer Graduate Workshops community, you may also see other
courses in which you are enrolled as a student or for which
you have teaching responsibility.
Telesis links directly to the WUCRSL system (the Washington
University course and registration system), which means it
automatically retrieves your official roster, class session
dates, meeting time and room, and other pertinent information
about your course.
From My Home, you can pull up either existing courses or
previous courses for which you used Telesis (under the tab
for “History”). Once you click on a course, you
will be able to access the following items for each.
Course Home
The Course Home page shows a description of your course as
it appears in WUCRSL. Because the description comes directly
from WUCRSL, no changes can be made to the content in Telesis.
Syllabus
In Telesis, the Syllabus is separate from the course calendar.
It is the official document that outlines basic course requirements
for students (course objectives, course policies, grade weights,
etc.) and that provides instructor contact information.
Calendar
The Telesis Calendar is very robust. The “session dates”
(i.e., dates you are required to have class) are derived from
the official calendar for your courses in WUCRSL. However,
you can also add session dates for any other occasion where
you require attendance (such as conferences). Adding dates
to the calendar will allow you to link assignments for those
events, as well as take attendance for them. The Calendar
also allows you to link Topics and Assignments (which are
described below) to specific dates. The Calendar in Telesis
can be viewed in a number of ways. Students can see the dates
in a list view or on a calendar by day, week, or month. The
most user-friendly view (and the default one) is the “List
View.”
Topics
Telesis Topics are like the units or segments of a course.
They describe an overarching theme or “topic”
that might cover several days on the Calendar and that might
encompass several Assignments. In Telesis, Topics can include
short descriptions of the unit/segment, its aims, and any
other information you want to include.
Assignments
Assignments in Telesis can include descriptions and details
for any kind of work you choose to assign your students. Assignments
can be linked to specific dates on the calendar and can be
associated with specific Topics. Like Topics, Assignments
can be composed directly within the internal text editor,
or can be linked to other documents/images. On the Calendar,
all Assignments will appear in the same color (which is different
from Topics).
Announcements
The Announcements tool in Telesis gives you a place to put
reminders and make announcements to your students. Announcements
typically provide as a default the date on which you compose
the announcement and are not linked to the Calendar.
Links
The Links option provides a central location where you can
post links to web sites that you might want your students
to access.
Library
The Library option links directly to the ERes (electronic
reservation) site for the Washington University Libraries.
Files
The Files function in Telesis can be used in two ways: 1)
as a way to distribute materials to your students and 2) as
a way to receive materials from your students. You can store
files in your own Personal Files folder, which travels with
you term after term, course after course.
On distributing files: you can post paper assignments and
grade sheets as Word (or text) files, readings as .pdf files,
etc. Students may be asked to print and bring readings/documents
to class for use in discussion.
On receiving files: you may choose to have students submit
materials to you via Telesis. Students can upload files to
your “inbox,” and the file uploads with a date
and time stamp. Uploaded files currently can have duplicate
names, so it is important that you give students a standard
for naming files they post to you. If they post in Word or
in Rich Text Format, you should be able to view the files
anywhere on campus.
Files can be linked to various Topics and/or Assignments.
Discussion
The Discussion function allows you to require and/or encourage
your students to engage in a dialogue with their peers about
particular topics outside of class. Discussion allows you
to divide students into groups and set them up as peer groups
and/or on-line collaborators. This feature will be discussed
in greater detail during Day 3.
Email/Rosters
Once your course has been linked through Telesis, your official
WUCRSL roster appears in Telesis under your Writing 1 section.
The Roster allows you to see lists of all the students enrolled
in your section, as well as those who are waitlisted. Here,
you can find out what school/division your students are in,
as well as see their phone numbers, email addresses, photos,
and other information you may need for contacting them. You
can email students directly from here; there is a “select
all” feature that allows you to email all of your students
at once.
(Note: there are privacy guidelines about the information
you can view in Email/Rosters. If a student has requested
that his/her contact information be kept private, there will
be a notice here.)
Chat
This function is similar to chat clients, for example, AOL
Instant Messenger. This feature will be discussed in greater
detail during Day 3.
Attendance
The Attendance function here allows you to record attendance
by class session date. For each class session date, you can
select from a list of options (Present, Absent-Excused, Absent-Unexcused,
Tardy-Excused, or Tardy-Unexcused) for each student. You can
also select an “Auto-Present” button to take attendance
more efficiently. Because you can add session dates to your
section’s Telesis calendar, you can also take attendance
for other dates/events where you require attendance (conferences,
lectures, etc.).
In the Manage Attendance section, you can generate attendance
reports that give you a summary of each student’s attendance,
and you can make attendance visible to students so they can
check their individual attendance record. There is also a
“memo” field where you can record any notes or
additional information you might wish to record; this field
can be used as a way of keeping track of individual students’
participation, notes on the reason for absences, and/or warnings
you have issued to students about their attendance record.
Gradebook
The Gradebook works from the WUCRSL roster, and requires you
to enter numerical grades. It allows you to create formulas
for weighting and calculating grades within the system itself,
and it also links to the E-Grades system to electronically
report midterm and semester grades. Grades can be made visible
to students.
Please read the following articles:
Feel free to post your comments to our Telesis discussion.
Detailed instructions on how to use each Telesis feature:
https://telesis.wustl.edu/Help/TelesisFacultyHelp/TelesisFacultyHelp.htm
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