Activity Tools

When you click the "Turn Editing On" button, you will see the "Add an activity..." dropdown menu in each available topic. Click the menu, and you will see the following options:

Assignments: Assignments allow the teacher to specify a task that requires students to prepare digital content (in any format) and submit it by uploading it to the assignment in AsULearn. Typical assignments may include essays, reports, the creation of media of some type, etc. This Assignment activity in AsULearn integrates automatically with the Grade Book.

Chat: The Chat activity allows participants to have a real-time synchronous discussion via the web, and it includes a number of features for managing, reviewing, and archiving chat discussions. Asynchronous online forums are useful for class discussion, but the synchronous Chat activity is great for real-time conferencing with an individual student or small group. Many instructors use this activity for "Online Office Hours" or to make themselves available to students prior to high-stakes tests (e.g., "I'll be in the Chat Room tonight from 8-10PM in case any of you have questions before tomorrow's exam."). It is also useful if the instructor is physically away from campus (at a conference, etc.).

Choice: The Choice activity is very simple - the instructor creates a question and specifies multiple possible responses. It can be useful as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic, to allow the class to vote on a direction for the course, or to gather research consent.

Database: The Database module allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a database of entries about any conceivable topic. The format and structure of these entries are almost unlimited, including but not limited to images, files, URLs, integers and text. You may be familiar with similar technology from building Microsoft Access or Filemaker databases.

Forum: It is in forums that most class discussion takes place. Forums (unlike Chat) are asynchronous, meaning participants in the discussion do not have to be online at the same time. Forums can be structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting. The postings can be viewed in a variety for formats, and can include attachments. Forums in AsULearn are subscribable. By subscribing to a forum, copies of each new posting, or digests of each day's postings will be sent to that student daily at their official ASU email address. A teacher can impose subscription on all students to selected forums, allowing them the choice to opt out (or not). By default, all students are permanently "force-subscribed" to your course's News forum, which is why you need never email them to make course announcements. If you simply post the message in your course's News forum, AsULearn will forward the post to all students via email. There are four types of forums in AsULearn:

• A single simple discussion
• Each person posts one discussion
• Q and A forum
• Standard forum for general use

You may learn more about each type by using the online help available in your AsULearn course. Just click on the Help icon next to Forum type when you add a forum to your course to see a full description of each of the four types of forum listed above.

Glossary: This activity allows participants to create and maintain a list of course terms/definitions. The entries can be categorized, searched, and browsed in many different formats. The glossary also allows teachers to import/export entries from one glossary to another within the same course and among different course. Glossaries in xml format can easily be imported from outside sources. Glossary entries in your course may also be 'auto-linked,' allowing students to click on terms and get a definition wherever they appear in the context of the course (e.g., in a set of lecture notes, in a threaded discussion, etc.).

Lesson: A Lesson delivers content in an interesting and flexible way. It consists of a number of pages content through which students navigate. Each page normally ends with a question and a number of possible answers. Depending on the student's choice of answer they either progress to the next page, are taken back to a previous page, or are branched off to another set of pages based the accuracy of their response. Navigation through the lesson can be straight forward or complex, depending largely on the structure of the material being presented. All that being said, Lesson is a powerful way to present interactive content in a branchable manner that provides the student with an individual experience that is tuned to their responses. This tool is neither easy nor intuitive to set up, and you are encouraged to contact an LTS staff member at 266-HELP for assistance with it.

Questionnaire: The Questionnaire activity allows you to construct questionnaires (surveys) using a variety of question types, for the purpose of gathering data from your students. The responses are anonymous, so this activity would be appropriate for instructor and course evaluations if you wish to use it.

Quiz: Quizzes allow the teacher to design and administer online quizzes, consisting of several different question types. The questions, once composed or imported, are kept in a categorized database, and these questions databases/categories may be exported/imported to other courses . Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked (for multiple choice, true/false, matching, and short answer questions) and the teacher can choose to show various types of feedback or to show correct answers. Some question types (e.g., Essay) cannot be autograded, of course. Quizzes, like Assignments, integrates automatically with the Grade Book.

SCORM/AICC: These standards-based packages consist of a bundle of web content, marked up and packaged in a way that follows the SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) or the AICC (Aviation Industry Computer-Based Training Committee) standard for learning objects. These packages can include web pages, graphics, scripted programs, Flash presentations and anything else that works in current web browsers. The activity allows you to easily upload any standard SCORM or AICC package and make it part of your course. If you receive content from a textbook publisher or other content provider, you are encouraged to contact an LTS staff member at 266-HELP for assistance in importing it.

Wiki: A Wiki enables online content to be authored collaboratively in a simple markup language using a web browser (as with Wikipedia). "Wiki wiki" means "super fast" in the Hawaiian language, and it is the speed and ease of creating/updating pages that is one of the defining aspects of wiki technology. It also allows everyone to contribute to knowledge creation (hence the belief that "wiki" is an acronym for "What I Know Is..."). Generally, there is no prior review before modifications are accepted to collaborative resources. The AsULearn Wiki activity enables participants to work together on web creating simple web pages, as well as entire sites. Instructors can track the contributions, compare at different versions of pages as they evolved, and "fetchback" to earlier versions.