Best practices: Using the new features of Personalized Learning Designer
What is the Personalized Learning Designer?
Joule’s Personalized Learning Designer (PLD) gives you the ability to automate course tasks saving the instructor time while still providing participants with the immediate and timely feedback they need. With PLD you can tailor each learner’s classroom experience so that instruction is focused and relevant to them as an individual. In addition instructors can use PLD to quickly and easily identify participant behaviors allowing for immediate action to remediate or accelerate learning. Plus you can keep a finger on the pulse of the class with feedback reminders and recommendations based upon participants’ behaviors and assessments. In this blog post we’ll look at how to use PLD discuss Winter 2012 updates to PLD and share some of the ways you can use PLD.
How do I create rules with PLD?
Automation of course activities using PLD works by creating rules that involve three elements: Events Conditions and Actions. Watch the video below to see a demonstration of creating a PLD rule.
What changes have been made to PLD?
With the updates to PLD in the Winter 2012 release you can schedule when rules take effect when they stop processing and monitor students so that you can intervene if necessary. Changes made to PLD in the Winter 2012 release also include additions to all three elements of a PLD rule:
- New Event Triggers: Recurring Specific Time and Day Submit Quiz or Assignment Forum Reply and Forum Topic Post
- New Conditions: Course Login
- New Actions: The “Send Email” action now includes additional options for who will appear as the sender of the e-mail. These include specific user roles and well as a Custom e-mail address.
How might I use PLD in my courses?
Below we’ve offered a few use cases that you can implement in your course if they are applicable. Of course these scenarios highlight only a few of the numerous tasks that PLD can automate.
Manually graded assignments alert
Instructor A has high enrollment in each of the courses she teaches. Because of this she wants to set appropriate expectations for when students should expect work returned with a grade and feedback. To automate this task she creates a rule that displays an alert to each student upon submission of any assignment in the course using the following elements:
Events
- Event: Quiz or Assignment Submitted
- Activity Type: Assignment
- Activity: Any of Type
Conditions
Since you will want this rule to fire every time a student submits as assignment you should not choose any Conditions.
Actions
Display Alert
Potential remediation e-mail
Professor B is required to inform any student with a current grade average of 70% or lower he/she is in danger of failing the course. As assignments activities and quizzes are completed throughout the semester sending out an e-mail to individual students is a time-consuming task. In order to make sure this is completed in a timely fashion and that no student is missed he creates a rule with the following elements:
Events
- Event: Recurring event
- Occurs: Weekly
- On the following days: Mon
- At: 9:45
- Starting: September 9 2013
- Ending: December 14 2013
Conditions
- Condition Type: Course grade range
- Course grade range: Grade is greater than or equal to ‘1%’ and Grade is less than ‘70%’
Actions
Send Email
Attendance tracking e-mail
Part of the attendance requirements for students at LMS University includes logging into each course they’re enrolled in within the first 7 days of the semester. Facilitators need a way for the system to keep track of who has and has not logged into the class. This allows them to can keep an accurate record of who is in danger of being dropped from a course. To automate this task facilitators can create a rule with the following elements:
Events
- Event: Specific date and time
- Date: January 23 2013 at 10:30
Conditions
- Condition Type: Course login
- Course login: User ‘has NOT logged into course’ and within the last ‘7’ days
Actions
Send Email
One trick we like to use when using the Action “Send Email” is to send the e-mail not only to the Triggering User but we also like to Cc the teacher by using the “All users of role assigned in course” option and selecting the Teacher role. This allows a teacher to verify that an e-mail was indeed sent. We suggest archiving these e-mails so that they can be forwarded to students who may need another copy.
If you’re interested in learning more tips and tricks for using Joule’s Personalized Learning Designer enroll in our Advanced Course Building online course or our PLD webinar today!
Happy Moodling,
~April