This is an introductory guide designed to help you become familiar with how to begin setting up your first course from scratch in the new Ultra version of eCampus. This guide walks through the steps to add and manage content, customize your layout, create tests or assessments, interact with the gradebook, and use various course tools including the Collaborate online meeting tool. Click through the content sections below to learn more about the topics that interest you, or join us for a live training session during scheduled events.
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Getting Started with eCampus Ultra Training Sessions: the ITS Training group holds virtual training sessions for eCampus at the beginning of each semester. Visit the WVU Events Calendar page to see when classes are available or keep an eye on your email for eCampus training sessions.
You may also contact ITS Training to request one-on-one training, customized group trainings, or in-person training. We will design our content to meet your needs.
ITS Help Center: You will find a list of all eCampus Ultra for Faculty articles in our help center.
Blackboard Help: View Blackboard Anthology’s video tutorials or review the Blackboard Help guides.
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Create a discussion, such as a HELP topic, Readings discussion, Organize in folders, add a link to a discussion in a learning module on the content page. Expand here
Gradebook
View and edit grades for assessments, create calculated columns, manage grade schemas, assignment categories, grading rubrics, and more.Expand here
Messages
The in-system mail tool for eCampus, the same you see on the navigation page. Inbox and Sent box show your messages.
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After you have added some files or edited content areas, you’ll see Ally accessibility icons next to files and on the editing page of eCampus items. <Insert accessibility benefits everyone statement.> Ally assesses the accessibility of files and content items at a granular level, so you will see the Instructor Feedback tool link usually on the edit view of that item. Ally options will appear for most kinds of uploaded documents.
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Assignments can take any format that you like. You can build a quiz using one of the many question types, or write up instructions for a writing assignment, audio or video submission or written solution. You can include a grading rubric or attach institutional goals & standards for grading to an assignment. A little more about assessments in Ultra.
Blackboard Anthology Help Center: Create and Edit Assignments
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Tests can contain many types of questions and content. Something more about assessing students' grasp of the content…more about tests…you can use many question types, use the text and equation editors to build exactly the question / examples you want…test item types will be scored and calculated in that category.
WVU Help Center: Creating a Test in eCampus Ultra
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Click the Calendar tab at the top of your course to open the Schedule view of the calendar.
Click the plus + in the upper right corner (next to the Day/Month buttons) to choose to add to the calendar.
Select Edit Course Schedule.
Click the plus + to enter the regular meeting time for your course.
The Nickname field allows you to give the calendar item a friendlier name. Enter a shorter course title or meeting name.
Use the date and time selectors to choose the Start date and time, and the End date and time of your regular class meetings (online or in-person).
Check the All Day box only if your meetings are in fact, all-day affairs.
Select the recurrence and frequency of your meetings:
Choose to track the recurrence by days, weeks, or months.
Choose to set the meeting frequency. You’ll see some different options depending on your choice.
Enter a Location for the scheduled course meetings. The location can be a physical place, your class Collaborate meeting room, or a URL to join a meeting.
Click Save to place the meeting schedule on everyone’s course calendar.
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Grade Schemas - click the Manage Grade Schemas link to edit the existing grading scales, or add a new personalized grade schema.
Student Performance - set up alerts that will appear in your eCampus activity stream to notify you when any student is not active in the course or when their grade falls below a designated percentage.
Automatic Zeros - check a box to select whether eCampus will automatically assign a zero when students fail to submit work by the due date.
Overall Grade - click the Manage overall grade settings link to setup how the final/total grade for the course will be calculated.
Grade Categories - default categories include basic types of graded assessments: assignments, tests, discussions, journals, exams, homework, presentations, and quizzes. You can create new categories, too.
Course Rubrics - rubrics can help students to know what criteria will be used for grading an assessment, and ensure that everyone’s paper is graded according to the same standard. Click Create New Rubric to design one.
Overall Grade Notations - create a mark (outside of the regular course grading scheme) that can be recorded as a student’s Overall Grade; for example, to note that a student has withdrawn from the course. Click the individual’s Overall Grade from the grid view to select a notation grade (like a 'W') instead.
Set Up the Overall Grade
eCampus Ultra lets you build a final grade formula in the Overall Grade column. With a brand-new course shell, you will see a Set it up link on the main content page inviting you to set up the overall grade. That link will take you to the Gradebook Settings, which is also easily accessed from the Gradebook page of the course.
Click the Gradebook tab at the top of the course page.
Click the gear icon to open the Settings panel.
Scroll down a bit to see the Overall Grade section, and click on Setup up overall grade.
Choose a type of grading setup (click to show examples):
a total Points grading setup,
a Weighted grade setup for items or categories,
or Advanced to use the formula builder to create a specific grade formula.
Click Next after selecting the grading format to see the Overall Grade editing page.
You can still switch the calculation type by clicking the buttons at the top.
For each Category, you can click Edit calculation rules to choose to drop the lowest or highest scores, or use only the highest or lowest score.
Expand (click drop-down) any category to see the assessments in that category, see how many points each is worth, exclude an item, or unlink it from its current category grouping.
Under Overall Grade Settings, click the drop-down to select how the overall grade is displayed: letter, points, or percentage.
The default display will also show this calculation to students in their view of the gradebook. Uncheck the show to students checkbox to hide this gradebook item.
Click Save to create the new calculation as a gradable item (column in the gradebook).
Close (X) the Overall Grade page to return to the main gradebook settings panel.
Close (X) the Gradebook Settings panel to see the new Overall Grade appear as a gradable item.
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More about the Overall Grade
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There are multiple ways you can access items that require manual grading in eCampus Ultra. You approach will depend on how you administer evaluations and what kind of content you will be grading.
WVU ITS Help: Grading Assignments & Tests in eCampus Ultra
Grade Items from the Gradebook
Click the Gradebook tab at the top of your course.
Click the List View button, and then the Gradable Items tab to make sure you are looking at the list of gradable assessments.
Click the Item Name in the Item column, or the # to grade link in the Grading Status column to view all grades and attempts to be graded on the Submissions page of this assessment.
If this is an assignment that has been submitted in-person or just not in eCampus, where you’d want to simply type in a grade for each student, click in the Grade column and enter a grade.
If this assessment was submitted via eCampus with essay questions, text responses, uploaded submissions, or uses a grading rubric, click the attempt to grade link to view the student’s submitted attempt.
On the grading page you can evaluate the student’s submission, select values from a rubric’s scales, and leave feedback.
Make sure you have either selected a score via rubric, or entered a Grade.
Save the grade and feedback you’ve entered, then close (X) the submitted item.
After a grade has been entered, you can still click the Grade to manually override and type in a new value.
Post the grade(s) when you’re ready, if the assessment is not set to automatically post.
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You can also see submitted gradable items by viewing the assessment from where it lives on the Content page, too. Click the Submissions tab inside the opened assignment. |
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Grading with Rubrics
Creating assignments with rubrics lets the students see what you will be looking for, and grading on, for the assignment. It also helps the instructor apply the same standard across so many student papers. Rubrics can be used with assessments that don’t have questions (meaning the Blackboard question types) – only a text box describing the assignment.
Blackboard Anthology Ultra Help: Create Rubrics
Blackboard Anthology Ultra Help: Grade with Rubrics
Meeting and Recording Lectures
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Class Collaborate Ultra
Class Collaborate is integrated with eCampus Ultra and is hosted in the cloud.
o Found in the Details & Actions menu (for students too)
§ Click the ellipsis (…) to view menus and scheduled meetings.
o Can use for :§ synchronous (live) class meetings§ , or asynchronous delivery of recorded meetings or lectures (link to the recording URL to make it easier to find)§ Office Hours – . Use Collaborate for office hours meetings with students.
some things from the o Collaborate Ultra Demo – ***refer to Collab Demo steps (need new steps)
Set Up a Meeting in Collaborate
o Found in the Details & Actions menu (for students too)
§ Click the ellipsis (…) to view menus and scheduled meetings.
MediaSite
· MediaSite Desktop Recorder and storage available to all faculty.
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o TLC has info and recorded webinars on their site: https://tlcommons.wvu.edu/course-curriculum-design/contingency-planning-and-preparedness/mediasite
Zoom Meetings
You can also use Zoom as a meeting space for your class, from inside of eCampus Ultra.
Zoom – host Zoom sessions from your eCampus course, and place a link in your content area to your course’s Zoom meetings.
Books and Course Tools
· You can access more tools from the Books & Tools link under Details & Actions
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· Some tools can be added to the Course Content page – click the PLUS next to a tool to add it to the page.o Zoom – host Zoom sessions from your eCampus course, and place a link in your content area to your course’s Zoom meetings.
o Ally Accessibility Report – view an interactive report for the accessibility of all items in your course, and get guided help on how to make items more accessible.
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