Using Student Presentations

Student Presentations allows you to create groups of students within a class and assign them a project that they assemble in their own area of your WebCT course. The groups create their presentation in HTML as linked web pages. You, and other students in the course can view the completed project. Projects could be collaborative writing assignments, research proposals, or multimedia Web presentations on particular course topics. If you want to assign students to individual student presentations, you can do that as well.

Student Presentations allows you to:

• create groups manually or generate groups at random, using the Group Generator
• edit groups after you have created them
• create a group discussion area. Students access this feature through the Discussions feature.
• send mail to each group of students using Mail.
• view students' completed work

Creating a Group Manually

• Click Student Presentations. The Student Presentations screen opens.
• Select Designer Options.
• Under Add Options, select Add and click Go. The Add Group screen appears.
• Type a group name in the text box. The group name must be one word (no spaces), consisting only of alphanumeric characters (letters, digits or underscore).
• Specify the students who belong to the group by selecting the check box beside their names in the Class List. By default, only students who have not yet been assigned to a group are shown. To display all students in the class, select Show all students under Class List.
• Type the instructions for the project in the Description text box. You can also use the Description text box to create a hyperlink to a page you have previously created (such as the project assignment) using HTML coding.
• To create a discussion area for this group, select Create a discussion area for this group. Type a name for the discussion group in the text box (or use the default Group Name). To include yourself as a member of the discussion, select Include Instructor.
• To create the group, click Update. A confirmation message appears, confirming that the group has been created.
• To return to the Student Presentations screen and display the newly created group, click Continue.

Notes:

• you can create a group that does not contain any students by naming the group but selecting no students from the listing. You can then add students to that empty group at a later date. You can also reorganize existing groups at a later date, using the Edit Group feature.
• the project description may be added after the groups have been created
• a student may belong to more than one group
• the Class List can be sorted on any one column by clicking the button label at the top of each column
• the Mail icon does not appear until you add students to the group
• students gain access to their discussion group through the Discussions tool

Creating a Group using the Group Generator

• Click Student Presentations. The Student Presentations screen opens.
• Select Designer Options.
• Select Group Generator and click Go. The Group Generator screen appears.
• Type the number of groups you would like to have in the text box. If you would like the students that do not fit evenly into the groups to be included, select Add the extra students to the groups. If you want your groups to have an even number of students, and manually enter the extra students after the groups are generated, select Exclude the extra students for later addition.
• To create the groups, click Continue. Note: the number of groups cannot exceed the number of students in the course.
• To create a discussion area for this group, select Create a discussion area for this group. Type a name for the group in the text box underneath (or use the default Group Name). To include yourself as a member of the discussion, select Include Instructor.
• To generate the groups, click Update. The groups are automatically generated, with names Group1, Group2, ..., GroupN. A confirmation message appears, confirming that the groups have been created.
• To return to the Student Presentations screen and display the newly created groups, click Continue.

Communicating with the Group

• If you have added the Mail icon to your course, a mail icon automatically appears to the left of each group's name under Group Listings on the Student Presentations screen, if there are students in the groups you create. If you have created a group with no
  students in it, the mail icon will not appear until you add students.
• Send mail by clicking on the mail icon. A new window opens, with the "To" field already filled in with the User IDs of the group members.

Resetting (delete) Groups

Use this feature to delete groups before creating new ones. Warning: all of the files relating to the groups you delete are also deleted, and are unrecoverable.

• Click Student Presentations. The Student Presentations screen opens.
• Select Designer Options.
• To delete a single group, select it by clicking the option button to the left of the Group Name. Under Edit Options, select Delete.
  To delete all groups, under Edit Options select Delete All.
• Click Go. A prompt appears asking you to confirm that you wish to delete the group(s). Click OK to continue.

Editing Groups

• Click Student Presentations. The Student Presentations screen opens.
• Select Designer Options.
• Select the group you wish to edit by clicking the option button to the left of the Group Name.
• Under Edit Options, select Edit and click Go. The Group Information screen appears.
• To add or remove students from the group, select/deselect the check box beside their name.
• To edit the group name, or to add or edit a description, type in the appropriate text box.
• To create a discussion area for the group and include yourself as a member, select Create a discussion area for this group and Include Instructor.
• Click Update. The Update Report screen appears, with a message confirming that the changes have been made.
• To save the changes and display the groups, click Continue.

Viewing the Students' Work

• Use the File Manager to view your students' submissions.
• All group presentation information is stored in the File Manager under the My-Files folder in a folder called "student_pres". This "student_pres" folder contains a separate subfolder for each group. The group subfolder names are identical to the group names. The group subfolders are automatically created when you add or generate groups in the Student Presentation tool.
• Alternatively, you can gain access to the student's submissions through the File Manager hyperlink on the Group Information screen.

Helping Students to Get Started

Your student's view of Student Presentations varies from the designer view in a number of ways. For example, to upload completed presentations, students must navigate through a series of screens that you, as a designer, do not see. The following set of instructions is written with the student in mind.

A presentation is done in two steps: first, you create the Web presentation as a set of linked HTML pages; then you upload it to WebCT.

• To upload a presentation, click Student Presentations. The Student Presentations screen appears, with a list of all the groups in the class. An Edit Files link appears beside the name of your group.
• To open the File Manager, click the Edit Files link. The File Options screen appears.
• Under File Options, select Upload File and click Go. The Upload File screen appears.
• To locate your presentation files, click Browse. Your local computer's browser opens.
• Locate the files, select, and click Open. You will have to upload your presentation one file at a time. Note: if you want to upload multiple files at once, zip them first using WinZip (PC), ZipIt (Mac), or another file compression application and then upload the .zip file.
• The Upload File screen appears, with the name of your file in the Filename text box.
• Click Upload. The File Options screen appears, and the uploaded file shows as a hyperlink under your group folder.
• To view the file, click on its hyperlink. A new browser window opens with the page displayed.

Notes:

• name the homepage for your presentation index.html. This page contains the links to the other group documents. These documents should be linked back to the index.html file. For help in creating a presentation in HTML, check out websites that have tutorials, such as Geocities or Yahoo, or books such as HTML for Dummies.
• when naming a file which you intend to upload, use single-word filenames or insert an underscore between words. WebCT will not recognize filenames with spaces or characters that are not numbers or letters.
• you can make changes to your presentation after you have uploaded it, but be aware that each member of your group can edit your presentation pages. Your group should establish a protocol for making changes to your presentation, so that you don't overwrite changes that someone else has made.
• save all files with an .html extension

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Instructional Tips for Student Presentations

• Support the Teams.
  • Give your students suggestions for working in teams.
    • Team Tips from Janine's WebQuests class.
  • Here's an example of instructions written for students on how to work with the student presentations. In this example, the student presentation folders were filled with templates already made for them. They used Netscape Composer to edit the files. (editing the template - written for WebCT 1.3)
  • Link to the web editor instructions to help students create web pages for their project.
• Define the task clearly.
  • Use Student Presentations to have students create portfolios.
  • Use the Quick Techniques 1 and Quick Techniques 2 [pdfs] by dividing students into groups.
  • Use the Jigsaw strategy [pdf]. Give each team a private forum/topic, then have them report/teach the other students in the class using student presentations.
  • Use the Dyadic Essay Confrontation strategy [pdf]. Divide the students into groups. You may want to make a template for them to edit. Discuss the issue in a whole class topic when everyone is finished.
  • Use the Group Investigation strategy [pdf]. Assign each group a private forum/topic. Have them present their report using the student presentations tool.
  • Use these 28 Roles (in Coop Learning) to assign to students as you design their tasks.
• Plan for Assessment
  • Have students peer evaluate. Sample Peer Evaluation from an exemplary course.