ARCHIVED: In Oncourse Lessons (beta), how do I allow student comments?

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Important:
Oncourse is retired. For details, see ARCHIVED: About the Oncourse retirement.
Note:
To complete these procedures, you must be assigned a role having the necessary permissions. If you're not sure what your role is, see the "Role" column in the Roster tool. For permissions, see ARCHIVED: What can I do in read-only Oncourse?

On a Lessons page, you can insert a tool that permits students to make comments. Once a student has added a comment, that person may change or delete it for 30 minutes. After that, only an instructor may change or delete it.

Adding the comments tool

To add the comments tool, click More Tools, and then Add Comments Tool.

Editing the comments tool

To change settings for the comments tool:

  1. Click Edit. You can then specify any of the following:
    • Keep Comments Anonymous: To students, the author will be shown as "Anonymous", followed by a number; instructors will still be able to see the real author. The number allows students to see which comments were added by the same person. If there are several comment blocks, the numbers are not consistent across the blocks.
    • Create gradebook entries: Select this option if you want to grade student comments. Next to "Maximum points:", enter a maximum number of points for points gradebooks, or a relative weight for percentage gradebooks.
    • Don't Release Item Until All Prerequisites are Completed: Select this option if you would like comments to be accessible only after previously required items have been completed or accessed.
    • Require This Item: Select this option to make this item a prerequisite for later items. The requirement will be satisfied once the student has added a comment.
    • Edit the groups for which this item should be shown: Allows you to make the comment block visible only to certain groups or sections, if they are defined for the site. See ARCHIVED: Managing groups.
  2. To save your changes, click Update Item.

Deleting the comments tool

To delete the comment block from the page, click Delete. The comments themselves remain in the database, although only an administrator will be able to retrieve them.

Grading comments

If you selected the option to create gradebook entries for comments (see above), you can grade comments in either of two ways:

  • Entering scores: Enter scores into the "Points" box that appears at the top right of every comment. Enter grades as points if you use a points gradebook, or as percentages if you use a percentage gradebook (even though the label will say "Points" for both). Press Return or Enter to submit the value. A green checkmark will appear to confirm that the score was recorded. A red X indicates that submission failed.

    The score you enter applies to all comments by that student in that comment section. If a given student has made multiple comments, any score you enter will show next to every comment by that student.

  • Summary grading view: Using the "Grading" pane, you can review or enter grades in a summary format. To enter the "Grading" pane, click Show Grading Pane for Comments above and to the right of the comment block.

    In the "Grading" pane, click Toggle Comments to the right of each student's name to show or hide a listing of all the comments entered by that student. Show Context will show you the whole page, with that student's comments highlighted.

    Save any changes you make to grades in this pane by clicking Update Points.

This is document bcya in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2018-01-18 17:16:17.