If your instructor has allowed you and other students to submit as a group, you can (and should) add group members to your submission.

To add group members to an assignment submission:

• On your submission page, either select Group Members in the action bar (along the bottom of the screen) or select ‘View or Edit Group’ in the outline area of the submission (in the right hand panel).

• In the Group Members modal, enter a name to add other students, and then select Add.

Note: If you cannot see your group member(s) listed in Gradescope, please contact the Course Secretary to ask them to re-sync the Gradescope roster with Learn.

About

• Edstem.org is a discussion board platform some Schools in the College of Science and Engineering are piloting – including Informatics.
• Edstem is being seen as a potential replacement for Piazza with a much more up-to-date interface – and is feature-comparable with Piazza.
• EdStem has been Learn-LTI enabled for the School – there is an EdStem MS Team space set up for interested parties – contact the ILTS team for info.
• The following Informatics courses are participating in the EdStem pilot for 2024/25:
  • Advanced Robotics
  • Algorithmic Game Theory and its Applications
  • Computing in the Classroom
  • Natural Language Understanding, Generation, and Machine Translation
  • Programming for Biomedical Informatics.
• Please note that our EdStem instance is in the EU zone (DP / InfoSec reasons) – so course URLs will be https://edstem.org/eu/… – you may at times see a drop-down for region – select ‘Europe’.

Setting Up

This is only for those courses above. No other courses in Informatics should be using this for 24/25 – continue to use Piazza.

Step 1

Go to + Content Market and hit + EdStem Discussion  to add a permanent link to your course. Link is hidden from students by default.

Step 2

Click on the + link. This will open up a modal above the content (not in a new tab) and after a sec will CREATE the EdStem discussion for this course – using Course Name and Id

• This will do an initial sync of Learn users to the EdStem roster
• Email addresses are of the form of <uun>@ed.ac.uk for both staff and students.
• Staff or students will not have a password to begin with – you can add this via your profile icon (top right). Also add 2FA
• At start of Semester 1 there is no SSO with EASE – students should be encouraged to come in via Learn – but also see Setting up a Password (optional) below.

Step3

• Continue Setup then SKIP the Announcement. We recommend skipping the Announcement – as that will post an email to all participants (there’s no way to post without emailing – you do get a warning Post/cancel about this).
• You probably don’t want to email students at the point of creation – you can add a Welcome announcement later.

Step 4: Using EdStem

• You now have an empty course – you will need to make it visible to students in Learn when ready.
• It is recommend you read https://edstem.org/help/ now – it is important that you and your TAs seed discussion. We recommend doing a show-and-tell with your TAs. You can be added to some test courses to try things out – contact the ILTS team if this is of interest.
• If you want to add a welcome – you can add the Welcome Announcement you skipped over
• The welcome recommends the Quick Start Guide which is good
• Also point your students to the Students tab of https://edstem.org/help/ – which has Using Ed Discussion, Latex – and push notifications.

Setting up a password (optional)

There are advantages in setting up a password – it allows you to login by clicking on edstem links in emails, for example. Choose a good, secure password.

The Informatics Open Courseware service currently (as of January 2024) has a file upload size limit of 6MB. This is to ensure the performance of the site is not compromised at it continues to grow. If you have some files which currently exceed this size –  and which could be reduced – then you may want to consider the following options.

Mac Users

PDF files

For Mac users, if you are looking to compress a small number of files, the Preview App is probably your best friend here. Open the PDF in Preview and choose File>Export. Select the Quartz Filter pop up menu and then select “Reduce File Size’.

Word documents

For Word documents, you can use Pages instead of Preview to reduce your document’s file size.

Linux Users

Linux users may be interested in https://imagemagick.org/ – free, open source software for editing and manipulating digital images. This is especially useful for tasks requiring bulk image file manipulation.

This blog post is intended to help course organisers decide which platform is most suitable for their needs with regards to coursework submission and marking. Learn Ultra – and its accompanying Gradebook – is quite a different beast to Learn Original, and so I thought it work highlighting the advantages and challenges of each approach. For simplicity sake, I have highlighted only those assignment types which are commonly used in the School of Informatics. If you have a requirement which sits outside of what is listed below (eg a graded blog) please get in touch with us and we can talk you through further options.

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra supports the following ways of assessing students online:

• Learn Assignment
• Learn Test
• Turnitin

Gradescope

• Homework assignment
• Online assignment
• Programming assignment
• Group assignment
• Exam (more about the history of using Gradescope for exam marking can be found here)

Scenario 1 – student submits one individual PDF for marking

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra can accept multiple files and file types. If one PDF is submitted, this should be displayed in the marking interface (although there have been multiple problems with how Learn handles PDFs in its own reader – particularly on a Mac – and so users are encouraged to download the PDF and open in their native application). A space is provided for the marker to enter grades and feedback. Delegated grading can be enabled for large courses where marking is distributed amongst a team of markers. In addition, parallel marking is now supported in Learn Ultra. This allows two markers to mark the same submission independently, with the course organiser acting as reconciler. Please note: parallel marking can only be enabled for individual submissions (ie *not* group assignments).

Gradescope

The Gradescope Homework assignment can only accept one PDF file upload. Marking can be distributed ‘horizontally’ – ie different markers marking different sections of the submission. Like all the Gradescope assignment types, anonymous marking is supported intuitively – and can be enabled and disabled as needs dictate. A marking scheme can be created in advance, encouraging consistency. Rubrics can be created in advance, or ‘on the fly’. One of the main advantages of Gradescope is the ability to change rubric values mid-way through marking, with marks previously assigned recalculated automatically.

Scenario 2 – group assignment

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra can support a group assignment. The workflow remains: the groups needs to be created, a group assignment is submitted, one member of the group submits on behalf of the group. This is marked and the marks / feedback are cascaded to each member of the group. Please note: parallel marking can *not* be enabled for a group assignment – nor can delegated grading. So this is best suited for courses with only one marker. Also, anonymity can not be enabled for group assignments.

Gradescope

Gradescope can now support group assignments. As with Learn Ultra, the marker(s) mark as normal, but the grades / feedback are cascaded to each member of the group. However, with Gradescope group assignments, the responsibility for creating the group falls to the student submitting the coursework. Unlike with Learn Ultra, anonymity can be enabled however double blind marking is also not supported.

Scenario 3 – programming assignment

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra can support a student uploading multiple files. These files can then be downloaded by the marker, with marking taking place offline. Marks and feedback can then be uploaded to the Gradebook via a CSV file upload.

Gradescope

Gradescope has a dedicated programming assignment type. Students can upload unlimited files, of any file type. Markers can build and use an autograder to automatically grade parts of the submission. Markers can also manually grade submissions. One of the main advantages of using Gradescope over Learn Ultra for programming assignments is you can perform a code similarity check within Gradescope.

* Please note: Gradescope Programming Assignments behave differently to Gradescope Homework assignments, in that the student can choose which submission they would like the marker to mark. Consider this when designing your assignment policy and communications.

Scenario 3 – multiple choice quiz

Learn Ultra

Learn Ultra has an inbuilt test functionality. Since the move from Learn Original, many of the question types are no longer supported. LaTex is, in theory, supported in Learn tests. However, in practice, this has proved problematic across the College and we currently do not recommend this approach.

Gradescope

Gradescope’s online assignment type can be used for MCQ type tests / quizzes. It has several advantages over Learn Ultra test:

• a more intuitive interface for both question setter and student
• you can use LaTeX and Markdown to format the question text
• an in-built student preview (not available in Ultra tests).

Scenario 4 – marking by tutorial group

In the past, you may have appreciated the ability to mark by tutorial group in Turnitin. It is worth noting that Gradescope can now support this workflow. Please speak with a member of the ITO to help you set this up.

Summary

Gradescope provides a good user experience for all users and has become the default assessment platform for many courses across the School. We hope the above is useful, but please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you’d like to discuss specific requirements for your course.

• Login to your Learn Ultra course page and select the ‘Groups’ tab in the top horizontal menu. Select the name of the group set to which your group belongs.

• Scroll to find the name of the group to which you want to send a message. Select the three dot menu icon to the right of the group name and select ‘Message group’ from the drop-down menu.

• Compose your message. Select the ‘send an email copy to recipients’ checkbox if you want the students to receive an email copy in addition to the message within Learn. Press send.

• Login to the Learn Ultra course for your class.
• Browse to the area in the course where you want the link to appear.
• Click the plus (+) sign to add content.

• Click Content Market

• Click the plus sign next to Zoom Virtual Classroom.

• Now back on the main content list in Learn, select the link to the Zoom Virtual Classroom that you’ve just added and then “Schedule New Meeting”.
• Give your session a sensible name. Enter the date / time of your session. Select “recurring session” for any regularly recurring classes (eg every Wednesday 10-11am).
• We recommend *not* either selecting the ‘Waiting Room’ or “Only authenticated users can join meetings” options.

• Ensure you are happy with the remaining options and select ‘Save’.
• Be sure to remember to make the tool visible to students!

• You will not be able to test this link with Student Preview in Blackboard. As long as the link works with your instructor account and is not hidden from student view, then your students will be able to see it.
• You now have your link set up in your course. Let your students know about it in advance and direct them there to access your online class.
• The passcode for Zoom meetings does not show to students. This should be shared separately.
• Note: don’t forget to record your session!*
  

*The recordings of Zoom sessions set up through a Learn page can be saved to your Media Hopper Replay (lecture recording) library and/or to the course lecture recording area. To find out more about how to enable, this please see IS’s Using Zoom with Media Hopper Replay.

Accessing your Course Materials in Drupal

The following guidance is designed to help you get up and running with your Course Materials content in Drupal. Please comment below with suggested amendments / additions.

• You will log in to Drupal using your UoE EASE account.
  1. Go to https://opencourse.inf.ed.ac.uk (or https://opencourse.inf.ed.ac.uk/<your course acronym>
  2. Select ‘Log in to edit’ in the top right of the screen. This will take you to an EASE login page. Enter your EASE credentials.

  Once you are logged in, you will only be able to access courses for which you are a member of teaching staff. Each course will be listed as a separate “group” in Drupal. See the details below about how to access the group for the course(s) you teach on.

• Contact ILTS if you do *not* have access to your course(s) in Drupal.

Edit existing content

• If your course has run before, you will likely start with course materials already migrated to your Drupal site. We have created a framework for you and hope you find this helpful. It is also designed to bring some consistency of experience for our students. To view existing content, select the Groups tab in the top left of the page (under Manage). Any courses for which you have edit permissions will be listed on this page. Select the group (course) name which you wish to edit.

• Select the ‘Nodes’ tab to see the list of nodes (pages) for this course.

• Select ‘Edit node’ to edit a node (page)

• You will now see a web form with some content already added. You can edit content in any of the fields which follow. Change the Text Format option to ‘Full HTML’ if required.
• If you wish to hide a page until a later date, you can do so by using the scheduling options panel towards the right of the page. Set a date in the future for the page to be published.

• When you have finished, select Save.

Adding new content

• Select the Groups tab in the top left of the page. Any courses for which you have edit permissions will be listed on this page. Select the group (course) name for which you wish to add content.

• Select the ‘Nodes’ tab to see the list of nodes (pages) for this course.

• Select ‘Add new content’ to add a page to your course materials site.

• You are now taken to the ‘Add Group nodes (Book pages)’ page. Adding content via the group ensures that your new page is assigned to the correct course. You need to give the page a title, e.g. Week 7, or perhaps a particular topic you are covering. For the time being, please ensure that the title for every new page you create starts with the course acronym, e.g. ‘ANLP: Week 7, Lecure 2’ etc. You can then add text to the Body field. Change the Text Format option to ‘Full HTML’ if required.

• A ‘Files’ field is made available to you. Adding files here will allow you to display the files towards the bottom of the page. You can also choose not to display the file(s) as a list, but rather copy the URL to use inline in existing text. For more detailed instructions on how to add files, see our blog post: Adding files in Drupal
• Finally, there is a license field at the bottom of the page. This defaults to ‘All rights reserved The University of Edinburgh’. However, you can choose to change this to a Creative Commons license as you wish (if you are unsure what Creative Commons licenses are, you can find out more here). This licenses the content on the page.

• To the right of the page are three further options you should consider:
  • Firstly, you should assign a URL alias to your new page. This should begin with your course acronym eg /anlp/course-materials/week-7.

• • When adding a new page you need to ensure you you assign it to the correct ‘book’ to keep the navigation of your site comprehensible. You can assign a ‘parent’ page if you wish to nest your content and can choose the order of the pages by using the weighting mechanism.

• • Finally, you can also schedule a suitable date and time for the publication of this new page. Enter a date and time for when you wish the page to be published. You can also enter a date to unpublish the page.

• When you have finished, select Save.

Files

We are pleased to say that we have now configured the site to allow the upload of zip files and code based files. If a file type is not currently supported, please get in touch with us to request. For instructions on how to add files, see our blog post: Adding files in Drupal

Student Preview

You can mimic the student view by simply accessing the site in an alternative browser *where you are not logged in*.

Support

The ILTS team are here to support you throughout this process. Please contact the team and we will be happy to help you. Contact details here.

Class technologies recently made some changes to how they host and serve up recordings created in Collaborate Ultra.

This involved changing the domain used by the content provider where the recordings are hosted.

This has been tested on the University of Edinburgh network and all mainstream ISPs, however there are some organisations, especially those with stringent firewall configurations where this domain might be unreachable.

There is a simple method to test if this change will be an issue for our external end users or not, simply attempt to visit the URL –https://test-sms.cloudfront.cdn.bbcollab.com/test.mp4 – if the video appears then no further action is needed.

Please pass this information on to any colleagues who may be working from an external site, especially colleagues who work from NHS sites as these areas tend to have the most stringent firewall configurations in place.

If any issues are identified, please let the Collaborate Service team know by emailing – IS.Helpline@ed.ac.uk – they will then be able to work with the external partner to have the necessary traffic whitelisted.

We have been using our current Resource List system, Leganto, since 2017. As a result, there may be up to six different versions of a Resource List available to students. Pre-current lists are not maintained by the Library and many may have broken links or may not provide access to the e-books we have purchased since the pre-current lists were set up.

In September, Library Committee approved the Library’s proposal to introduce a Resource Lists Retention Policy. It was agreed that the Library will provide access to Resource Lists for the current academic year plus the two previous academic years.

Therefore, Resource Lists from academic years 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2019/20 will be archived on Tuesday 10 January 2023. Course Organisers and students will continue to have access to Resource Lists published for courses in 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23.

Archived lists are not deleted and can be re-instated on request, if required, at any time.

Going forward, the Library team will archive the oldest Resource Lists immediately after rollover each year (each June). As an example, this means that in June 2023, lists from 2020/21 will be archived and lists from 21/22, 22/23 and 23/24 will be available to students and Course Organisers.

Reducing the number of versions of a course Resource List should also make it easier for Course Organisers to manage their lists.

Before lists are archived on 10 January, if students and staff would like to keep copies of  older lists, they can export earlier versions of lists to a variety of formats. Information on how to export a Resource List to a PDF or Word document is available on the Resource Lists FAQ pages for Course Organisers and Students

In general, student usage of pre-current lists is extremely low or non-existent. However, there is a small number of pre-current Resource Lists still in regular use. The Library team will contact the relevant Course Organisers before 10 January to discuss how best to manage these lists. If you already know that you are using a list that’s not associated with 2022/23 course code (check the code at the top of your list), please get in touch.

Background

In 2019 I was contacted by a colleague in the Student Disability Service (SDS) regarding how best to support a profoundly deaf Informatics student with live captions. They wished to employ the services of AI Media to provide the captions, but needed some help in how best to support this with the technology available. At the time, they had provided the student with a wireless mic. The student was required to hand the mic to the lecturer at the start of each lecture, and the receiver would be plugged in to the student’s laptop. From there, the student would initiate a Zoom call with AI Media and receive a caption track in response by accessing a given web link.

Results for this approach were patchy. Not only was it undesirable to make the student hand over the mic at the start of each lecture, and sit within a suitable range to receive the audio signal, but there were issues with the mic receiver having to be directed via various adaptors for the student’s laptop which had one USB-C port only.

An alternative option was to share access with AI Media (via a functional account) to the Media Hopper Replay live stream. However, the lag between the lecturer speaking and the audio being received by the captioner could be anywhere in the region of 10-30 seconds. When you add on the small lag in the captioner repeating the words to create the caption track (c. 5 seconds) this meant that the student was receiving captions at a significant enough delay to make affect their understanding of the material being discussed.

Online teaching

When the Covid 19 global pandemic closed campuses across the world, and the University of Edinburgh pivoted to online teaching overnight, all students began to access their lectures via a variety of online streaming services the University had previously procured.

Media Hopper Replay (Echo360) could still be used to record and deliver online lectures via the personal capture application lecturers could install on their local machine. Media Hopper Replay can provide an automated transcript for corresponding video / audio assets. However, without the affordances of the built-in timetable scheduler many lecturers opted for a service pushed by Central as the default video streaming service – Media Hopper Create.

Media Hopper Create (Kaltura) – often referred to as the University’s Youtube – can provide automated captions for corresponding video / audio assets. As with Media Hopper Replay, and MS Stream (see below) a user with appropriate privileges can manually correct the automated captions. However, this work is non-trivial and can take anything in the region of a ratio of 1:3 to 1:15 to perform.

The University of Edinburgh also widened access to MS Teams during lockdown. Lectures / meetings could be recorded and published to MS Stream. Anecdotal evidence from our students at this time reported that the automated transcripts produced by Stream were the most accurate.

Return to on-campus teaching

After the hybrid approach to teaching for 2021/22 academic session, we knew that all teaching would return to on-campus for the 2022/23 session. With this in mind, I was back in touch with the SDS to try and iterating and improve on our pre-pandemic practice. I approached ISG Learning and Teaching Spaces to leverage their technical expertise regarding how centrally supported teaching spaces are equipped, to trial a new approach.

Aim:

• One single mic for the lecturer to wear
• Excellent quality audio for the captioner – with minimal lag
• minimal additional work for the lecturer

After considering the standard AV set up in the teaching spaces, the optimal solution presented as follows:

• lecturer launches Zoom call (as co-host) from the teaching PC (this receives audio input from the same microphone lecturer uses for both in-room amplification and for the lecture recording service)
• AI Media receive audio by logging in, as participant, to Zoom call
• Student receives close to real-time captions by logging in to previously shared AI Media URL

What happened?

I asked the relevant student support officer to share with me the student’s timetable and list of course organisers for those classes for which the student was enrolled. I then scheduled one recurring Zoom session and added all course organisers as co-hosts. Course organisers were emailed outlining what was required of them – including notifying us of any additional lecturers who we may need to include.

The first two weeks resulted in a slightly patchy service (mostly down to incorrect course organisers being recorded) however,  when it worked, it worked well. Week 3 to week 6 saw much more consistency and the student reported excellent captions.

The main challenges (from my perspective) are not technical, but human and organisational:

• the lecturer has an additional piece of work to conduct (launch the Zoom session)  at the start of the lecture when they are already time pressured*
• the lecturer must remember (as always) to ensure the mic is switched on. Again – a visual indicator on the desk for this would be most welcome
• the lecture must remember to end the Zoom call at the end of the lecture. This could be avoided if – rather than creating a single recurring Zoom session – individual sessions were created for each course and and / or each class. However, this would create additional work and potential confusion for AI Media.

there is no one single point of contact for co-ordinating everything. The main stakeholders are:

• Student
• Student Disability Service
• Lecturers
• Learning Technologists
• Student Support Officers

The work to be co-ordinated involves:

• confirming the timetable
• communicating with course organisers and other members of the teaching team
• communicating with AI Media
• communicating with the student.

This often leads to duplication of effort and vital communications going missing.

* this can be somewhat shortened by creating a shortcut on the PC account desktop, which references the Zoom session. When selected it launches Zoom and connects to that meeting.

What next?

I have asked the Informatics student support team to contact the student to request feedback on their experience of live captioning this semester. We will use that feedback to inform our practices going forward. I also want to share our experience with the wider University community to see if and where we can improve.

Additional Resources

Accessibility and Lecture Recording