New look-and-feel for the NILE homepage
June 2020 sees a new look-and-feel for the NILE homepage. While the new homepage is indeed radically different, NILE courses are entirely unaffected. You can read more about the new NILE homepage here:
What is the new NILE homepage for staff
https://askus.northampton.ac.uk/Learntech/faq/230369
What is the new NILE homepage for students
https://askus.northampton.ac.uk/Learntech/faq/230368
New NILE courses for the 20/21 academic year
New NILE courses for the 20/21 academic year will be available for use from the 2nd of June onwards. As usual, the new courses follow the standard template as set out in the NILE Design Standards, so you can create your courses afresh, or you can copy materials from your 19/20 courses into your 20/21 courses. To copy materials across, please follow very carefully our instructions about how to do this:
Bulk copying content between courses in NILE
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-guides/blackboard-learn#s-lg-box-15196768
Full information about finding and setting up your new NILE courses can be found in our FAQ – How do I set up my new NILE course for the upcoming academic year?
https://askus.northampton.ac.uk/Learntech/faq/180655
There are no significant changes to the way that module courses have been created, however, there are major changes to the way that programme courses have been created.
Changes to NILE programme courses
Earlier this year the Student Experience Committee approved changes to the way that programme courses are created in NILE. For many years each programme has had a number of different programme course variations in NILE, which meant that for most programmes there were often eight different variations, and no single course that collected together all students on a programme. From this year onwards there is now a single programme course per programme per academic year, and this course has all students on it who are taking the programme (all years of study, full- and part-time, single and joint honours). This means that a single honours student will be enrolled on one programme course, and a joint honours will be enrolled on both of their programmes courses, plus the joint honours programme course. Foundation students will also have a single programme course for all foundation students.
NILE updates for anonymous marking
As anonymous marking becomes the new normal for the 20/21 academic year, changes in the integration between NILE and the Student Records System mean that you will no longer see students on your NILE courses who have transferred or withdrawn from your modules. The main effect of this is that you can now safely use Turnitin’s ‘Email non-submitters’ tool.
Additionally, and to assist with the process of anonymous marking, the Learning Technology Team have put together the following guides for staff and students:
Anonymous marking guide for staff:
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/sage/turnitin_anonymous
Guidance for students submitting work anonymously
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/sage/turnitin-submission/anonymous
Help and support with NILE
As ever, for help and support with any of the NILE tools, or simply to find out more about what NILE is and how the Learning Technology Team can help you, please see our website:
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/
And do feel free to contact your learning technologist for advice and guidance about anything related to educational technology in general, or NILE in particular:
https://libguides.northampton.ac.uk/learntech/staff/nile-help/who-is-my-learning-technologist
Here are a few things we need to tell you about your NILE sites for the 15/16 year. Please take look as there will more than likely be something that is relevant to you.
Making your site live
Don’t forget that sites are not automatically made available to students. You need to make them available once you’re ready. To do this, you can use the Quick Actions box which is on the Sites & Organisations tab. Click Site Availability, then use the toggle switch to make sites available/unavailable (ie. turn them on/off) to students.
Contacts
To make things easier to copy contact details from site to site you can change your contacts section from using the Contacts Tool to a standard content area. This will enable you to copy individual items/contacts between sites instead of all contacts at the same time. However, if you have spent some time on your contacts area already (using the Tool) and just want to ensure the Student Desk details are correct, you can create a new contact and use this URL as the link: https://nile.northampton.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/xid-2138093_1?target=blank
For more information on using a Content Area for your Contacts have a look at this guide
Reading lists
Unfortunately we have discovered that there are some 15/16 sites that have not automatically got a link to the Reading List (Talis Aspire) site. If you find that there is not a link in the Reading List section of your site then follow this guidance to add it. It is only a few clicks.
Turnitin update
Updates to the Turnitin integration with NILE over the summer has resulted in the frustrating issue where the Primary Display in the Grade Centre reverts to displaying the number has now been resolved. If you make changes to a Turnitin assignment (eg. changing the post date) the Primary Display settings are retained.
Kaltura update
If you are using videos for assessment then the product (Kaltura) behind this has been updated. This new guide provides details of the slight change in the way that students should submit video for assessment. Look out for more details soon.
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