Currently viewing the tag: "NILE"
What’s happening?
As part of our regular programme of NILE maintenance and improvements, this summer there will be a short period when work will be completed.
When is it happening?
Between 10:30pm on Saturday 21st July and 10:30am Sunday 22nd July, the Blackboard software that underpins NILE will be upgraded to the latest service pack (SP9). NILE will be unavailable during this time.
Changes to NILE in v9.1 SP8
The Blackboard software that underpins NILE will be upgraded from version 9.1 service pack 5 to service pack 9.
The service pack will fix some minor problems in the current version, and add some functionality to existing features. There will be some improvements to the look and feel. The main changes are listed below:
Look & Feel
- New Theme for 2012 – user feedback and on-going development of NILE user interface means that there is a new look and slightly modified layout which should be more efficient and intuitive.
Assessment and monitoring
- Negative Marking – you can now give negative points for wrong answers, this stops guessing on multiple choice questions!
- Automatic Re-grading – if you have an invalid question in a test you can drop, give full credit, change point value or change the correct answer and the score is recalculated and updated in the grade centre.
- Timed Assessments Enhancement – you can now choose to make the test “auto submit” at the end of the allocated time or purely warn the student they are now over time. Also there is a prominent progress indicator bar and with only one minute remaining the line turns red to serve as a visual cue.
Grading and feedback (the Grade Centre)
- Needs Grading – gives you better visibility and access to items that need grading in your module. You can also set minimum student activity prior to needing grading such as the minimum number of posts in a discussion board.
- Interactive Rubrics – create grading rubrics and attach to assignments to help towards consistent grading. Choose to let the student see/not see the grading rubric prior to assignment submission via the grade centre.
Where can I find more information?
More details on the changes can be found on the full release notes for Service Pack 8, Service Pack 7 and Service Pack 6. If you have any questions about any of the changes, please contact the Learning Technology team.
Don’t forget, you can also use our new feedback form, available on the Help tab in NILE, to tell us what you think of the changes!
Since 2010, a group (QNIG) representing key parts of the University has been working to develop closer links between the student record system (QLS) and NILE.
There are 3 main phases of QLS NILE Integration Group (QNIG):
- Username, password and email address synchronisation
- Module synchronisation
- Grading synchronisation
Phase 1 was completed in July 2011 and now means that usernames, passwords and email addresses on NILE will be the same as used for all other central systems.
Phases 2 and 3 are linked in that we need to ensure that modules in NILE are named in the same way as they are in QLS. Once this is completed then we will be able to automatically enrol students onto modules. Phase 2 is focused on module coding and automatic enrolment of students and this will be completed for summer 2012. Phase 3 is linked to the SaGE project and will be working during 2012/2013 to begin the process of investigating grade transfer from NILE into the student record system.
Phase 2 represents a change for many staff in that NILE courses/modules will no longer be reused each year for a new cohort. Instead a new shell will be setup for new cohorts – meaning that the old cohort will still retain access to previous content. The shell will be based on either the Module or Course template depending on the site status in QLS. The full process is shown on the image below:
[Click on the image below to see full screen]
There are benefits of this approach:
- Allows for automatic enrolment of students onto the correct module and assessment areas
- The student only sees their own module site.
- Allows for assessment variations (e.g. submission dates) between different groups/sessions
- Keeps the assessment details for each session clearly separated
- Tutors able to communicate with clearly defined cohorts
- A new site will be created each year to allow for clear separation of each group and the retention of data.
- Reduced number of assignment submission points links within a single area
- Anticipated future ability to extract grades directly from the Grade Centre and transfer these to the student record system.
For further discussion on this process then please contact Rob.Howe@northampton.ac.uk
On 16th May, the Learntech team coordinated and hosted the 2012 Midlands Blackboard Usergroup. 26 members of staff representing 11 different institutions within the Midlands region converged in the T-pod at Park campus to share experiences on VLE reviews, hosting, mobile developments, assessment for learning and find out about the latest innovations and developments which are planned for Blackboard which underpins NILE.
Staff in the School of Science and technology have been looking at ways in which technology can help to widen participation and ‘increase support and retention on non-full-time programmes’. This began with a project to develop online introductory materials, for applicants to Waste Management courses to use before their taught course started.
The team used a range of tools, including NILE and Wimba Create, to build an informative, interactive site for incoming students to use. The resources were based on the team’s previous research into induction of distance learners. These materials can be seen in the guest access NILE site for the course.
The project was a success and led to the project team – Ruth Copeland-Phillips, Paul Cox and Louise Maxwell – gaining a Teaching Fellowship award. It has also led to the development of further online materials, aimed at helping distance learning overseas students ‘make a successful transtion to the University of Northampton academically, socially and culturally’.
Read the full project report for more information.
Did you know that you can now change the order of the modules you are enrolled on in NILE?
By default, the courses and modules you’re enrolled on are listed alphabetically in the My Modules box on the front page of NILE. If you are enrolled on lots of courses, this list can sometimes get unmanageable. Now you can re-order the list, to show your most used sites at the top.
To do this, first click on the cog icon at the top right of the My Modules box:
Then click and hold the arrows on the left of a course name to drag it up or down in the list, and click Submit to save your changes:
We have recently discovered that some assistive technologies do not work well with Turnitin. Screen readers like JAWS work when non-standard settings are selected, but are hard to follow and navigate.
So, if you anticipate asking a student with additional needs to submit their work online, please contact the team for advice, at least two weeks before the first submission is due.
During the start of the 2011 academic year, the Learning Technology team noticed an issue with staff and students receiving high numbers of old announcements from NILE. Whilst the problem was investigated, we took the decision to reduce the notification functionality.
We have been working with the supplier to investigate the problem in more detail and believe the problem is now solved and we have reactivated the full notification system.
Staff will now notice that when they post important announcements, they will see the ability to push these out to student’s email accounts again regardless of individual notification settings:
Tutors can use the announcements feature in modules on NILE to post important messages about a course or module (e.g. room changes, information on assignments etc.). Students will be able to see these announcements when logging into NILE. It is also possible to receive these via email, by making changes to personal notification settings.
Should staff or students wish to subscribe to these emails, they may need to modify their notification settings (by default most email notifications are set to ‘off’ to prevent unwanted emails being sent out to users). If you are not sure how to do this, please watch the video or follow the steps below:
To edit your preferences, go to the ‘My Places’ link at the top of any screen in NILE, and click on ‘Edit Notification Settings’. From here you have a few options:
- ‘Edit General Settings’ controls whether you receive individual emails, or a daily digest. There is also a shortcut to switch due date reminders on and off (please note these reminders depend on the tutor specifying a due date when an item is added in NILE)
- ‘Individual Module/Organisation Settings’ lets you choose what type of notifications you will receive for each module (e.g. new announcements, new content added, new message on blogs or discussion forums etc.)
- ‘Bulk Module Settings’ allows you to set your preferences for all of your modules at once.
For more details on the notification features in NILE, see the Notifications Dashboard guide.
If you notice large numbers of old announcements being sent to your email account then please email LTSupport@northampton.ac.uk with your username and details of the announcements which are being received.
Why have I suddenly got two blog tools appearing in my NILE site?
The blog tools that we have always had in NILE are actually plug-ins (that is, they are made by a different software company to the people who make NILE, and are literally ‘plugged in’ to the NILE platform). If you have used blogs in the past, you will be familiar with the ones that look like this:
These tools are still available for you to use – you will see this option referred to as ‘Campus Pack blog’ in the tools list in your NILE sites. Sadly though this tool does not yet work so well with the mobile version of NILE in the new iNorthampton app. So for those of you who would prefer your students to be able to blog on the move, we have also switched on the blogging tools that are built in to NILE. You will now see extra options for ‘Blogs’ (or Blog Link from the Collaborate button) and ‘Journals’ in your NILE site.
What’s the difference?
The built-in blog tools are better at some things, and worse at others, in comparison to the Campus Pack plug-in blogs. Here are the main things you need to know:
- Both tools will allow you to have a group blog, or a private blog that can only be seen by the individual and the tutor. In the Campus Pack blog this is a setting in the blog tool when you create it, whereas the built-in version has two separate tools for this – the ‘blog’ tool for open groups or shared individual blogs, and the ‘journal’ tool for private individual or group blogging.
- If you are dividing your students into groups within your NILE site, the built in tools will allow you to create a blog and/or journal for each group when you create the group. With the Campus Pack tools, you have to do this separately – create the groups first, then create the blogs and allocate them.
- Both tools will allow you to create a column in the grade centre and specify grades for students’ work. The built-in blog and journal tools will allow you to add grades within the blog itself, while you’re checking the posts. This feature is not available in the Campus pack tool.
The built in tools do not currently have an RSS or email subscription option, or an export option, and they do not have granular permission levels (for example, allowing non-members to view a group blog). If you need this kind of granularity, please ask the team for advice.- The built in blog and journal tools are easy to access on a smartphone, via the iNorthampton app. The Campus Pack blogs do not currently display well in mobile browsers.
Tell us what you think
If you are a regular user of blogs in NILE, we’d love to hear your thoughts on either or both of these tools. Please send us any questions or comments at: LTSupport@northampton.ac.uk.
Switching tools off in NILE
Don’t forget that if you only want to use one of these tools, you can switch the other one off to avoid confusion (or if you prefer, you can switch off both!). To do this, go to your Control Panel and click on Customisation, and then Tool Availability. Remove the ticks for any of the tools you don’t use in your site.
You can choose which notifications you receive from NILE, choose not to receive any or receive a Digest which collates all announcements and notifications and will send you a summary.
To choose any of these options you need to log into NILE, click onto ‘My Places’ at the top of the screen and select ‘Edit Notification Settings’.
- To simply change your settings to only receive a once a day Digest of activity click ‘Edit General Settings‘ and specify which options you prefer. Click Submit once you are happy with your choices.
- To change settings for each module you are on click on the module name from the list under ‘Edit Individual Module Settings‘. You will see the page below. To switch all notifications off untick the On/Off box at the top left (red circle). If you would like to change your settings for individual items/activity within the module tick the relevant box to receive notifications and untick it to stop them.
Click ‘Submit’.
Repeat this for each module you would like to change the settings for.
