Working with the P2PU.org course page
How to:
- Review applications & close sign-up period
- Upload course materials
- Communicate with course participants
Applications
Once your course is open for applications, you will be designated an admin for your course. You'll see an admin link appear, and clicking it will reveal the applicants for your course.
Best Practices for Approving Applications
You do not need to wait until course sign-ups are closed to begin reviewing or even accepting applicants. However, it may be in your best interest to wait, especially if you have a limited number of slots and want to compare all applicants before choosing.You may change the number of seats in the course to allow more applicants in (see below).
Selecting applicants should rely on the the strength of their application. All fields should be completed and their sign-up task should be fulfilled to a satisfactory degree. Applicants who submit incomplete applications are unlikely to be good peer-to-peer learning candidates. If you think an applicant would be a good participant, but they have submitted an incomplete application, follow up with them before accepting them into the course.
Note on giving admin powers: Before you can "create admin" (4) you must accept that member into the course first (2). Otherwise, their application will remain pending.
Closing the course to applications
You can close your applications at any time. Course organizers can do this themselves, and at some point after the agreed upon deadline all remaining applications are usually closed by P2PU admin. This option is located that the bottom of the "admin" page.
Reopening applications
If, for some reason, you would like to reopen applications to your course, you can do this via the "admin" page. Just scroll to the bottom of the list of members, and click the big yellow button that says "Re-Open Applications"
Course Materials
- new course materials WILL generate a notification email
- editing existing materials will NOT generate a notification email
- course materials CAN be commented on and will also generate notification emails
Uploading Images and Embedding Video in Your Course
All course organisers and members (once they have been approved and accepted into a course) can upload images and embed video into the course, in various areas within that course. The process is pretty much the same throughout, whether you're working in the course material or forums.
Images:
When you create a new document in the course material or a new discussion in the forums, you just need to go to the Attachment option, below the field where you have created your text, and you can upload any document or file, as long as it is smaller than 2MB and is in the following file formats: pdf, txt, doc and odf (in the forums, the limit on the file size is 1MB).
If you're familiar with embedding images in the document text (like in a blog post) you can also embed the image directly in your text. This can be done by switching to the Rich Text Editor and using the Image embed button.
Video:
You can embed video from YouTube, Vimeo and other video sharing services in your course materials. The first thing to do is create a new document. In the window where you add the text, you'll see a blue link which says "switch to rich text editor". Click this. Then, you can copy the HTML code for the video from the source and paste it into the page content. It should save and display.
Ordering Course Materials
Some organisers prefer to arrange their course materials in a particular order in the menu. You can do this by giving each material an "order value". The order value is a number which specifies which order you would like them displayed in. Documents with a lower order will appear closer to the beginning of the list. You can do this in the "Order" field in the Course Material editor:
A document with an order of 10 will appear before a document with an order of 20. It's a good idea to use multiples of 10 or 100 so that you don't have to change every item every time you want to move one item. So make the first item 10, the second 20, and so on.
Communicating with participants
Broadcast is a one-way message that will be emailed to all course participants for strictly announcement/reminder purposes. It does not facilitate two-way discussions (participants cannot reply to broadcasts). The forum facilitates discussions and is the right place to hold discussions on your course page.
Broadcast
- Notification emails WILL be sent.
- Formatting in the emails is NOT preserved, but links are included as footnotes.
- There may be a delay as all the emails are deployed, depending on the size of your class.
- There is no way for participants to reply to these messages.
- They are not archived or available for reference on your course site.
Forum
- Notification emails WILL be sent for new forum topics.
- Participants CANNOT reply to the forum notification via email. They must respond within the forum directly on the course page.
- Participants CAN start a new forum.
Reducing Notification Volume for all participants
You can set the frequency that the p2pu site sends you notification of changes made to the courses you are a member of. You can also decide what events (for example, the submission of an assignment) should trigger an email notification This will help you control the amount of email coming to you. Make sure to share this information with your course members.
Please share this link with your participant in your course's communication guidelines: http://www.p2pu.org/node/809/document/3033
☜Return to Course Design Handbook Overview
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.