Collaboration and Privacy
Yes. When you have the interesting course / exercise selected in the browser, click on the name of the owner on the frame to the right and click on the View profile link. This takes you to the profile of that teacher, which includes all public courses and exercises made by that teacher. However, this is only possible when that teacher has set his or her profile public.
It is up to you to decide whether the courses you make are visible to other teachers. This setting can be done on a course to course basis from the course edit mode: navigate toProfile --> Own courses and click on the name of a course to enter edit mode. The setting to toggle the visibility of the course can be found on the Course settings tab.
Everyone. Unlike courses, exercises in ViLLE are always public. Whenever you create an exercise, it is available to all other teachers who have registered to ViLLE. Conversely, you are able to use any of the 10 000 public exercises in ViLLE.
The statistics on courses are only visible to the owner and assistant teachers of that specific course. The students are able to see their own statistics on courses they are registered on.
Any material that is set private is visible to only you. Any non-public materials on public courses are also hidden from other teachers. Do remember that according to the EULA for ViLLE, you are responsible for adding materials you are allowed to use.
About ViLLE
ViLLE is a learning environment developed in the Department of Information technology of the University of Turku to promote collaboration between students and teachers. ViLLE contains several different exercise types to learn programming, mathematics, languages and other subjects. In the learning environment teachers may either create these exercises themselves or use exercises made by other teachers. The system collects multifaceted statistics on the answers of students, including the score and time spent on exercises. All collected data is available to the teachers of the course at all times. Because the tools used in ViLLE to comment and evaluate teaching resources (exercises, courses, materials, tutorials, etc.) are all familiar from the social media, teachers are able to easily brose, search and employ the perfect resource for the course.
ViLLE is used by various Finnish higher education institutions. In addition, it is being used to complement teaching in 15 other countries. Over 800 teachers and over 12 000 students have registered to the system. For more information about ViLLE, visit the home page.
Teachers are given credentials to the system mainly through live ViLLE-training sessions. For more information about the training sessions, send an email to Markus Kitola
Teachers in higher education may also fill this application to get credentials created for them. The same application may also be used to ask for further information.
Basics
Locally registered students and teachers log on to ViLLE using the form on the front page. After registering it is possible to log on using HAKA-logins, if your institution uses them. The HAKA-login is used by clicking on theHAKA Login button on the front page.
To access the language change menu, First open the Profiili menu, then click on Asetukset. The language is changed though the Kieli drop-down menu. To save the language, press the Tallenna button.
Navigating the teacher's view is easiest using the menu on the left side of the screen. The following items can be found there:
- Profile: The Profile-view gives you an overview of all courses you either own or have an assistant teacher-status. This menu also allows you to browse your bookmarks and contacts, or modify your settings.
- Messages: From this item you can send and receive messages from your ViLLE-contacts.
- Courses: From this item you can browse your courses. You can also browse public courses made by other teachers and utilize the best ones.
- Exercises: From this item you can create new exercises, or browse exercises that you have already made. Additionally it is possible to browse and utilize public exercises made by others.
- Materials: From this item you can browse all the study materials you have uploaded to ViLLE. As with exercises and courses, you can browse public materials uploaded by others, and utilize them in your own courses.
- Tutorials: From this item you get to create and browse public tutorials. Tutorials are a pedagogic combination of study materials and exercises.
- Students: From this item you get an overview of all the students registered to your courses.
- Statistics: From this item you get to view the statistics and performance of your students over all your courses.
Switching between the student and teacher views is done through the 'name menu' which is opened by clicking on your name in the top-right corner of the screen. From this menu click on either Log in as a student or Log in as a teacher.
ViLLE is not a web site per se, but more of an application which is used through a browser. Thus, not all browser features work in ViLLE as you may expect. Navigating in ViLLE is possible using the browser's Back and Forward-buttons, but it is recommended to use the menu and navigation buttons found in ViLLE.
Further, the bookmarks made by the browser does not work reliably with ViLLE. When you find an interesting exercise or course, add it to ViLLE's bookmarks using the Add Bookmark button. This allows you to return to it later.
Courses
The easiest way to create a new course is to navigate to the page Profile --> Own courses and clicking on New Course.
You can utilize any existing, public course in ViLLE with a few clicks: Navigate to Courses --> Browse, and search for the course you want using the browse or search functionality. After finding your course, select it click on theCopy button above. The selected course will be added to your courses.
Rounds are added in the course edit-mode. Navigate to Profile --> Own courses, and click on the course you want to edit to open it in edit mode. In this view, open the tab Rounds in course. To create a new round, click on the linkCreate new round below the existing rounds.
The basic setting for a course (such as name, description, course key, etc.) can be found in the course edit-mode. Navigate to Profile --> Own courses and click on the course whose settings you want to modify. The settings can be found by clicking on the Course settings tab. After the changes are done, click on the Save button at the bottom of the tab.
Students and Teacher's Assistants
There are two ways to add students to your courses:
- Via a register-link: If the students of your course have e-mail addresses, you may invite them to the course by sending them the register-link. The link can be found in the course settings (see the question: "How can I access the settings for the course?"). If your institution uses the HAKA-login system, check the Show HAKA registration link: before copying the link. Do note, that the students will also need the Course key (found just below the course name) in order to register to your course.
- By registering the students manually: It is possible to add students to your course by navigating to the Students page and clicking on Register. From this menu you can choose whether to add students who have a working e-mail address or students who do not have one (for example elementary school students). Note, that if you add students from other schools, they must confirm the registration when they next log on to ViLLE.
You get to see students' performance on all your courses (where you are the owner or an assistant teacher) by navigating to Statistics. The statistics menu further divides into four submenus:
- Student performance: Here you will see the scores of single students either per course or per round. You may also view the number of submissions and the time spent on exercises.
- Manually graded: Here you can examine and grade the students' answers to manually graded assignments. (these include essays, demonstrations and practical work).
- Course statistics: Here you can examine statistics for courses or individual rounds.
- Surveys: Here you can examine all the answers to the surveys you have performed.
The easiest way to inform your students in ViLLE is to use the course news-feature. The news are shown to all students on the course in their profile page; it is also possible to send the news as an email in addition to showing it on the profile page. New news items are created from the course edit mode. Navigate to Profile --> Own courses and click on the course you want to add news to. The news are added from the News tab.
Certainly. Every ViLLE-course has an owner, who is the head teacher of the course. It is also possible to add assistant teachers. These assistant teachers have access to the statistics for the course and are able to grade assignments. In addition to these rights, the owner may give selected assistant teachers rights to edit the course.
Assistant teachers are added in course edit mode. Navigate to Profile --> Own courses and click on the course you want to edit. Assistant teachers are then added from theAssistant teachers tab.
Exercise Management
After registering to ViLLE as a teacher, you are allowed to utilize every public exercise made by other teachers. You get to peruse the public exercises by navigating to Exercises --> Browse. After finding an exercise you like, you can use it on your own courses right away by pressing on the Utilize button. In case you do not want to immediately put the exercise on any of your courses, you can instead add it to your bookmarks by pressing the Add bookmark button.
ViLLE has over 10 000 public exercises at the time of writing. In order to find the exercises you want, ViLLE offers several useful tools:
- Filtering: You can browse or search for exercises according to the given parameters by opening the Filter tab. From this tab you can filter exercises by their type, language or difficulty.
- Search: You can search for exercises by writing keywords to the input field located in the top right corner and pressing the enter key.
The exercise editors in ViLLE make it easy to create your own exercises. You can create a new exercise by navigating to Exercises --> New exercise. The nuts and bolts of the exercise editors are described in the Book of ViLLE.
The essays questions in ViLLE are actually a manually graded survey with a text area. To create an essay, a new Survey exercise needs to be created. Navigate to the exercises-menu as explained in the above answer, and select a Survey from the General exercises tab. To add the actual essay, click on the Add new component to survey -link and selectTextbox. A new dialog pops up. Enter the essay question into the text area. From this dialog, you may also change the number of rows visible to the student as the essay is being written, do note that the actual length of the essay is not limited by the number of rows visible, but in general it is nice to have a large text area for an essay, around 20 to 30 visible rows. Options for disabling spell-checking, showing a word-counter and forcing an answer (i.e. at least one letter) can also be found here. Any text entered into the Survey feedbacktext area will be shown to the students as they press the submit button. Before saving, a name for this exercise needs to be entered. You may also add a description and notes for other teachers at your discretion.
To add the essay to round, exit both the survey editor and the exercise selection screens. If the newly created survey is not selected, select it from the list of your own exercises and press the Utilize button. Select the course and round to which the essay should be added. Because this is an essay, selecting manual grading as the assessment type is recommended. It is also possible to change the maximum points for the essay. Finally, press Save to apply the essay to the designated round.
Navigate to Statistics --> Manually graded. From this view, select the course and the round that contains the essay you need to grade. To evaluate the essay, press the Evaluate -link. A dialog will appear wherein you can give the grade and feedback on the student's essay
Exams in ViLLE
You can create a new exam-type exercise round in course edit mode. Navigate to sivulle Profile --> Own courses and click on the course you wish to edit. Open the Rounds in course tab and click on the Create new round link below the existing rounds. Next select Exam round from the newly opened menu.
The opening and closing times for exams can be set from the round settings. Open an exam round by clikcing on its heading on the Rounds in course tab. Enter the edit mode by clicking the Edit button near the bottom right of the view. Now it is possible to set the times for the exam from the Opens and Closes. Finally click on the Save button to apply the changes.
Immediate feedback and scores are hidden to students on exam rounds by default. This setting can be changed by clicking the Exam settings button at the bottom of the screen. These settings are global, and affect all exercises. It is possible to set some per-exercise settings. It is also possible to set the password for this exam from this menu.
Definately. By using a password, you can allow only those who know the password to enter the exam round. See the previous question for how to set a password.
If leaving the exam is allowed immediately after finishing the exam, if is often appropriate to close the exam for the students who leave. The easiest way to close an exam is from theExam Monitor button. To enter the exam monitor view, open the exam round and click on the Exam Monitor button. The exam monitor view allows you to alter the exam status for the student by clicking a link found on the first column. The same link allows you to both open and close an exam for a student.
See the previous question.
This can be done by setting an individual deadline from the exam monitor. See the questions above.
Miscellaneous Questions
The tutorials of ViLLE combine study materials, such as text, images or videos, with the exercises of ViLLE into a pedagogic package. You can browse and use tutorials from the Tutorials menu-item on the left.
The Book of ViLLE, tutorial videos and further material on ViLLE can be found on the ViLLE homepage.
Questions, comments and suggestions are welcomed at villeteam@utu.fi