Below are some questions with answers
Q: What’s the difference between the My School area, My Course area and module instances?
In studentcentral, those areas are branded differently but they are all Blackboard courses and have the same functionality. Some features may be hidden in different area types e.g the email option is not usually available to students on school areas.
The My School area is generally maintained by the staff in the school office. The My Course area is generally used by the Course Leader. The module instances are where the teaching and learning occur.
The module instances are based on SITS MAV records and are ‘triggered’ annually by the school office.
Q: Can students be manually enrolled to modules, courses and schools?
Yes, students can be manually enrolled to areas in studentcentral but we recommend using SITS to enrol students onto modules and courses.
**Checking the wording here in case I’ve missed something**
The following occurs automatically using feeds from SITS and Resource
- Add new staff and students to studentcentral (resource feed)
- Add staff and students to school areas based on their resource record (as their personal details or status changes)
- Add students to course areas based on their SITS record (daily) for the current academic year
- Add students to modules based on their (SITS) SMO records (daily) for the current academic year
- Disable (hide) student enrolments from modules when they are marked as Withdrawn (WD), Did Not Start (DNS) or Intermitting from modules in SMOs (SITS) (daily) for the current academic year
- Future: Disabling from courses and schools for completed, withdrawn and transferred where required
- Add staff as instructors to new module instances during triggering of modules, this can be edited during triggering. School offices use the triggering tool to make modules available based on (SITS) MAV records
It is preferred that students are added to modules via (SITS) SMOs as this becomes the source of truth. If a student is added manually to a module instance, in studentcentral, then SITS will take over once they are given the appropriate SMO record.
Once SITS is used to disable (SMO WD/DNS) a student SMO record then a student’s enrolment will be disabled from the following day. Each day the SITS feeds contain a complete set of all enrolments and disabled SMO records. This means that an record which is manually edited on studentcentral will be changed to the SITS version of the record, the following day.
The SITS feeds of student module and course data occurs daily (at around 5.30am) and enrols (or disables) students to modules. At present students are enrolled but not removed from courses and schools (coming soon)
Q: How can I add the my favourites widget to the studies tab?
This video demonstrates how to add the my favourites widget (module) to studentcentral.
Q: How to search for a person (staff or student) on an area
Use the Users and Groups area and the Search feature
Q: How to create groups in schools, course and modules
coming soon….
Q: How to add an instructor manually to an area (school, course or module)
A short video is given:
https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/quickschoolresources/2019/06/17/adding-instructor-to-area-manually/
Q: How to edit the title of a course
https://mediastream.brighton.ac.uk/Play/21979
Q: How to enable email for students on modules and courses
https://mediastream.brighton.ac.uk/Player/42086092
Q: How to use the search widget for courses and modules (see modules as a guest)
This video shows the course/module search widget and how students can then view the module specification.
https://mediastream.brighton.ac.uk/Play/24380
Announcement from February 2017
Students are added to studentcentral module areas overnight via a feed from SITS (based on the SMO records). Historically, students have never been automatically removed from studentcentral modules in case work is mistakenly lost. However it causes confusion to see students still registered on a module they are no longer taking and leads to unnecessary emails and notifications.
As of this morning, we have implemented a way to automatically mark students as ‘disabled’ on a module in studentcentral when they are removed from the module in SITS (ie the SMO record is marked with a DNS or WD RTS code). This means students will no longer see modules listed they are not taking and will not appear in the Grade Centre. The students will also no longer receive module emails or announcements from the module.
No content is deleted which means if the student is later added back to the module they will have access with their work restored the following morning.
For school staff this will mean that as long as SITS module information is up to date, the students will see a more accurate record of what they are taking which in turn should reduce the number of queries you receive from students.
