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XPLANA CW Student Projects
Student Web Publishing. A major goal of XPLANA CW is to promote student web publishing. One component of student web publishing is the Journal. Journals are untethered from courses; every student in the system has a Journal, and they have one Journal no matter how many courses they are enrolled in. The other component of student web publishing consists of Student Projects.
Student Course Projects. Student Projects are tethered to courses. At the Instructor’s discretion, each course can contain a Student Project space. This Student Project space uses the same “posting logic” as the Journal, but the posts in the Project can be arranged in a sequence determined by the student author (Journal entries are arranged chronologically).
Group-Owned Projects. If an Instructor creates student Groups in a course, it is possible for a Project to be owned by a Group, rather than by an individual Student.
Online WYSIWYG editor. Students can use the XPLANA Web Editor to create their online content without having to learn how to use special software (Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Composer, etc.). Students can focus on creating high-quality texts and images, sharing the results of their writing and research with other students in the course.
Workflow. By default, initial posts to the Project folder are private, visible only to the student owner(s) and the Instructor of the course. At the students’ discretion, they can also release their Project for viewing by all visitors to the XPLANA CW website (including guest visitors).
Management View. The student owner(s) manage the Project from a Management View which allows them to reorder the posts, add new posts, and view any ratings. They can also signal the Instructor that a specific post is a ready for evaluation or re-evaluation by the Instructor. The Instructor’s grade evaluation (points) for each post are recorded here. The Management View also gives students the opportunity to export their Project in HTML, PDF, or text-only format for downloading.
Comments and Ratings. By default, published posts in a Student Project are open to comment and ratings by other students in the course. At the students’ discretion, their Project can be open to comment and ratings by all visitors to the XPLANA CW website (including guest visitors).
Project Gallery. When a course iteration is completed, the instructor can designate specific student Projects to remain in the Project Gallery for the course. This allows students in future iterations of the course to see examples of the work produced by the students in previous semesters.
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