Class, Group and Individual Spaces are a great way to promote open-ended discussion, collaboration, and documentation of learning.
If you're looking for a way to provide more specific directions for your students to upload assignments, track completion, and review their submissions, then Activities are for you!
Creating New Activities
To get started creating new activities:
Open the correct Class
Click the Create button at the bottom right
Select Activity
Click New Activity
This will open the Activity screen, where you can fill in activity details for your students.
Note: students will only be able to publish to spaces that are active. If the space selected is Hidden or Visible, the submit button will be greyed out, and students will not be able to submit.
Activity required fields:
Class - select the Class that your new activity will be linked with. You can add the same activity to other classes once it's created if you'd like.
Space - select whether you want the activity to be linked with the Class Space, or an Individual Space within the class.
Note that the Class or Individual Space that you choose for the activity must be set to Active for students to submit.
If the Space is Hidden or Visible, students will see the activity and can save a draft, but will not be able to submit.
Activities cannot be posted to Group Spaces.
Students - here you can select whether the activity will be visible to all students within the space, or specific students.
Title - enter a title that will make it easy for students to recognize the activity. Limit 100 characters
Instructions - here you can add detailed information for students, including reflection questions. Limit 5000 characters
Optional fields:
Media - you can add up to 3 media attachments (photos, videos or files). For example, you might want to include a video explanation of the activity, or a worksheet for students to save and fill out, then upload.
Start Date - you can create an activity in advance, and schedule the exact date and time that you'd like it to be visible to your students. If you don't set a start date, it will be visible as soon as you publish the activity.
Due Date - due date will be visible to students. After it has passed, students will still be able to submit, but submissions past the deadline will be flagged.
Curriculum Tags - you can add specific curriculum tags to organize your activities by learning objectives, and automatically tag posts published from activities.
You can add Curriculum Tags to your activities, but because you'll want to evaluate each student's proficiency level individually, there's no option to add a proficiency level to a tag on an activity
Once students have submitted the activity, you'll be able to set a proficiency level for each submission using the tags you select here
Assessment Method - here you can enable or disable the Activity "Quick Review" option.
The Quick Review feature is intended to simplify the process of submitting activities on behalf of a student, allowing teachers to include proficiency levels and upload content all in one step.
All activities have two built-in options for assessment:
Once students have begun submitting the activity, you can mark their submissions as reviewed, so you can easily track which students' submissions you've looked at.
If you've selected Curriculum Tags in the section above, then once your students have submitted the activity, you'll also have the option to assess the proficiency of each individual submission using the tags you've selected.
If you're a teacher submitting on behalf of a student with the 'Quick Review' option enabled, you can also include proficiency levels at the same time.
To learn more about Proficiency Scales, click here.
If you have applied tags to your activities, you can easily check to ensure all tags have been assessed! Simply click Proficiency to see a table view of tags and proficiencies.
Plus, you can now update proficiency or apply it directly from the table. Additional updates coming soon! Stay tuned.
Assigning an Activity
Once you've filled in all of the required fields, click Assign at the top right. You can select Save Draft if you're not quite finished - your work will periodically be auto-saved as well.
If the 'Assign' button isn't active, that means that one of the required fields is missing.
Can I copy an existing activity?
Yes, you can copy any of your existing activities, either into a different Class or Space, or into the same one again:
Open the Class that you'd like to copy the activity for
Click the Activities tab
Click Create
Instead of selecting New Activity, click the Use Activity option on any of your existing activities
Select the Class and Space where you'd like to copy the activity
Optionally, you can customize the title & instructions for the new copy, or leave them as-is - when you're ready, click Assign.
What's next?
Looking for some great ideas for your first Activities? Check out our blog post Five Activities to Start the School Year Off Right.
To learn about how you can review activity submissions, take a look at the next article in this collection.
Wondering if you can submit an activity on a student's behalf? You sure can!
To learn more about our planned updates to Activities and other features, check out our public Product Roadmap.