FedLife CTF Student Manual

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FedLife

CTF Student Manual

Guidelines for Student use of FedLife

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Cambridge Theological Federation FedLife on CAVLE

What are FedLife and CAVLE?

CAVLE is a Virtual Learning Environment specifically designed to support the Durham Common Awards. FedLife is the Federation sub-section of CAVLE. They contain:

• sections of information

• resources for study (e.g. articles, chapters of books, websites, people) • things to interact with (e.g. quizzes and self-assessment)

• places to ‘chat’ and share news both academically and socially: • procedures to submit your work electronically for assessment. • access to email and, in the future hopefully, Office 365.

There are 3 levels to recognise and keep distinct:

• CAVLE – the national level: this contains information from Durham and the Common Awards plus national news. It is visible to staff and students of all the TEIs (training institutions).

• FedLife – this is the growing Federation hub, visible to all Federation members. This will eventually replace FedNet, but for the moment you may need to access both.

• House/ Institution Level. Space for each House to create an Intranet. See ERMC for an example.

Both FedLife and CAVLE are very much works in progress and both should be fully functional by Sept 2015.

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How to get on to FedLife.

1. Open a web browser such as Firefox/ Safari/ Google Chrome/ Internet Explorer.

If you are using Internet Explorer v10 or above then you may find that the login page never loads (the eternal spinning circle). To prevent this take the following steps: 1. On the menu bar in Internet Explorer click on Tools.

2. Choose Compatibility view settings.

3. Add www.cavle.org and click save.

2. Enter the FedLife URL

Type the following link into the top line. We recommend you bookmark it!

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Login to FedLife

All Federation usernames start "CTF." indicating a Cambridge Theological Federation member.

You will receive a starting password from the Federation Office. Please note that it is case sensitive! If you lose it or have difficulty logging on then contact, the IT Officer Mat Ridley on:

[email protected]

You will be asked to change the password immediately. You must choose a password of at least 5 letters that also has at least 1 number in it. You may wish to write down here your new password for future use:

My Username: CTF. My Password:

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The CTF FedLife Site

At present the CTF site is also under construction and the screenshot may soon be out of date. There is a phased plan of action between now and summer 2015 to develop FedLife.

You will find the following sections available as at October 2014 from the Menu and the Home Page

Home Courses Learning Resources Institutions

Home - the public entry home page with links to the various parts of FedLife.

Courses – for all the information about the various Awards we offer.

For those used to FedNet this is the equivalent of Academic Resources on FedNet It has the following Subsections:

Common Awards - for all the academic details about Common Awards This in turn has the following subsections:

Levels 4/5/6 - for all the Module Guides, Resources and teaching space

Pages for all the CA Modules running in Michaelmas term should be complete. Pages for future modules may still be in design

Programmes - (coming soon but not yet available) for all the general Programme details - Programme Specifications, Durham Regulations, Church Pathway requirements etc. We hope to get this section created by Christmas.

Forms - for all those vital forms!

Intensives - There will be a specific section for Intensives created later in the year.

Timetables - For the current lecture timetable.

Learning Resources – for the Library

Institutions – House intranet provision. At the moment only ERMC and the Region have developed their Institution sub-site.

Future Development will include:

Student Services – for student information of all sorts including Disabilities and International Student Info. This will be a work in progress over the year.

Federation – for details about the Federation, Federationworship, policies, committees etc,; This section should be ready for 2015/2016 Academic Year.

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Module Information

The Main Module Pages

Any module can be accessed from the Level 4/5/6 page under Common Awards on the menu e.g. Courses > Common Awards > Level No > Module name

Every Module has 3 key types of page:

The Module Overview Page – this is an electronic version of the standard CTF module guide which gives the aims and learning outcomes, core texts, tutors, credits etc. for the module. The pdf of the module can be downloaded here.

The Delivery Page – this gives the official details of how the module will be delivered to you - class content, class preparation, formative and summative assessment. There is one page for each Delivery Centre e.g. Cambridge/ Region/ Individual Houses (for Stream D modules).

The Module Resources Page – this is accessible only to those registered for the module. It contains any copyright restricted articles uploaded by the Librarian at the request of your tutor and the

recommended reading lists. If you try to access the page and find you cannot get here or cannot see the details then there is some problem with your registration for the module. Talk to your class tutor in the first place and then contact Mat Ridley for help.

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A Sample Module Overview Page.

NB: The "More Details" section is a menu to the relevant pages! Alongside the menu at the top of the page.

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A Sample Delivery Page (in this case for the Region).

A Sample Module Resources Page.

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Participants (Staff created) Pages.

FedLife provides the facility for staff to have dedicated pages for the modules they teach. Some staff make use of this, others do not. If there is no link available in the More Details box (i.e. it is black not green) then staff have not made this available.

A simple Participants Page might look like this and contain one link to all the hand-outs and notices:

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Using FedLife

How to Navigate in FedLife

FedLife is large and getting larger. It may take you some time to find where things are kept. The following are the chief ways of navigating in FedLife:

1. The menu bar

This will be found just under the corporate banner in the top left of the page. Menus are hand-created for each page. They list the main sections of the web-site and most contain a dropdown sub menu.

2. Your LifeCloud.

Your LifeCloud gives you a navigation tool to any of the pages that you personally are able to see in FedLife. Click on the + sign to expand a navigation branch and see the deeper contents. However, it is due to disappear in the next upgrade in November.

Cambridge Theological Federation contains the CTF pages

The Cloud - Life Learning Cloud is the national level that you started at.

3. The Breadcrumb Trail

All websites are hierarchical in underlying structure,

although they may appear to be a network of connections. The breadcrumb trail indicates how far from the top (the CTF homepage) you are. Using them can be a quick way of getting somewhere higher up. If you have delved deeply into the tree, some of the branches will be shown as […], hover over them to see what level they are:

The breadcrumbs are shown to the right of your name.

4. Back Button

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Understanding a FedLife page

A FedLife page consists of the following sections

At the top is a banner, which is a quick way of telling whether you are in CAVLE/ FedLife/ Your House

In the banner area will appear the menu for the site.

To the right of the banner is the My Life cell. Containing 4 options: • My Latest – notices for you

• My Profile – your Common Awards details • My Stuff – your own cloud storage

• My Site – your own website for others to see Then there is the pink Life Cloud for navigation and the breadcrumbs trail, mentioned above.

At the bottom is the blue Life tool bar which can be diminished by clicking on the green Life icon at the left. It gives access to your mail, your notifications, and the CTF Home Page

The body of a page is made of cells of varying sizes and contents, with or without a border or heading. They may have information, pictures, links, fora, posties, videos, downloadable pdfs etc.

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My Life

The My Life box provides you with a section of CAVLE that is just your own. You may need to use it for the following:

My Latest

This section contains personal data just for you. It is customable so you can drag things around the screen for a layout you like. You can also delete and add cells for more information.

Student data – This has links to My Site and My Latest and acts in place of a menu. Learning Status Updates – a bit like a facebook post or a Twitter tweet!

Resource Quick Links – these link you to the quizzes and surveys undertaken, but more importantly to My Learning Activities which is a euphemism for my assignment submissions. We expect that this is where marks and comments will appear for students. When online marking begins (possibly Spring 2015) you will be given more details.

My Alerts – this is where you will find out about all the latest notifications from fora and posties. If a conversation sounds interesting click on the white arrow to uncover a green link to the message.

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My Stuff

My Stuff is a cloud storage folder, in which you can store any documents you wish and access them from any laptop, tablet or computer. Students will need to upload their assignments to the My Stuff folder prior to submission. More details of submission will come later.

When you click on My Stuff you will see the following resource folder:

The Resource menu is key here:

1. Creates a folder just as in any computer filing system so you can keep your files in order

2. Adds a new resource (such as your own fora, blogs etc. I suggest ignoring this for the moment!)

3. This is the file uploader which is the key menu item

4. and 5. allow you to export all you files as a zip folder or import a zip folder.

My Profile

My Profile gives access to all the personal data about you for FedLife. Students will be able to see the data held on them for Durham University.

This is also the place to change your password.

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The Advanced Tab cannot be altered but allows you to view your database details. If you think any of the details here are wrong please notify your Director of Study

immediately, who will notify the BA Office.. In particular you should check that you are registered for the correct module numbers. If you are studying for credit the numbers will appear in the Durham Accredited Modules box, otherwise they will appear in the Auditing Modules box as in the picture. Use the arrows to scroll down and see everything you are registered for.

The Contact Tab contains your address and email.

Under Account you can connect to dropbox if you use it.

Member of tells you what groups you are a

member of and is a more user friendly way of seeing what modules you are enrolled for. If you are a member of a group then you are entitled to see resources for it. This is

particularly important for copyright restricted files, which you can only see of you are a member of that module.

Tagging can be ignored. Audit Report keeps a log of your FedLife activities. I'm afraid Big Brother is

watching you!

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Choose select and find a photo from your folder for uploading – square photos work better than rectangular ones and note that the size must be no more than 150kb. This will mean you will need to edit a photo that has come from your digital camera – reducing its size. You can do this via www.imageoptimizer.net but you are better to use your own software if you have it,

My Site

My Site is your own personal website that you can fill with anything or everything. At the moment however only you can view things here, although we hope in the future that it might become visible to everyone.

On the next page you will find some instructions for designing your own site, if you are so adventurous. If you do want to create anything I recommend you at least create yourself a menu to get back to CTF quickly.

To add a menu:

Click on the red Admin button on My Site and choose Site Admin > Menu

Administration. Right click on Mylife Menu and click on Add new top level menu. Enter an Item Name (e.g. CTF) and the url which you can cut and paste from the browser (e.g. http://www.cavle.org/schools/CambridgeTheologicalFederation) )

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Designing a Website in My Life

1. How to add a cell

In order to add a cell to your blank page in My Site or My Latests click on the Add Stuff button on the page tool bar:

This will open the Add Stuff Learning Cells from which you can choose a cell: Content Cell is the most common and most useful cell into which you can

put text, images and hyperlinks. You may need several of these on your page

Resource List, iFrame, Embedded object and SlideShow viewer are more for training purposes but would let you for instance connect to a YouTube video.

Clock places an oversized clock on the screen, RSS requires a URL for an RSS feed.

You might like appears to generate random links to other materials the viewer might (or might not) like.

Life Calendar places a calendar on the page

Site Navigation Cell provides a clickable Site Navigation box (a portion of the Life Cloud, which sadly does not include either CTF or ERMC so is not very useful)

Dropbox folder links to a drop box folder

Life Login allows people to log on (which is no use here)

So concentrate on the content cell! You may add as many cells as you wish at this point and arrange or delete them later.

When you have added sufficient cells, return to the page via the link: "The Learning Cell has been added to the following page: xxxxx.page". It is tempting to return to the page by closing the window with the top right hand "x", in which case the cells will not be visible until you click refresh. If you find that you can't see the cells you added, try refreshing the page!

2. Content Cells

Content Cells are the most versatile of cells. They are dropped at the top left hand side of the page and can be dragged, enlarged, and colour changed (see below).

To enter text or links into a cell, click on the green edit button discovered by hovering over the right hand side of the title bar. This produces a mini word processor into which you can type text, create hyperlinks and incorporate images.

The title bar "Content" can be changed by clicking on it and then typing in a new name:

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3. Hyperlinks

At some point you will want to insert hyperlinks in your cell. There are two main ways to do this:

First you can use the hyperlink button when you know the URL. Type or insert the picture you want to trigger the Link, select it and click on the hyperlink button. Then paste in the hyperlink.

Second if you want to use a link to a page in CAVLE or a resource you have uploaded then you can use the Insert Special Link button

Choose This Resource or This Site to find your link. NB it is possible to use My Computer tab to upload documents but that is better done through the Resources tab in My Stuff.

4. Resources

In addition to content cells you will also want to add resources to your page and these are done through the Resources tab of Add Stuff. Again there are a variety of choices:

Learning Activity: this is for assignment submission. DO NOT use! File: allows you to upload files

Life Page creates further pages in your sub-site Posties: creates a posties forum

Life Calendar produces an online calendar Survey: provides a survey or questionnaire Forum creates a forum

Blog creates a blog space for your page

Slideshow allows you turn a series of pictures into a slide show Link is yet another way to insert a hyperlink

Wikis provide a means for other colleagues to jointly edit and create a document on your page Quiz provides a set of questions which are graded.

5. Publishing a Page

Finally all your work is, so far, invisible to everyone. You can thus work on your site aware that no one can see the changes until you are ready to publish. Which you are ready to publish you will need the red Admin tab at the end of the breadcrumbs toolbar. Use Quick Publish.

DON'T FORGET to use Quick Publish off the Admin tab when you finish so that it will be visible in due course to others.

6. Site Theme

At the moment your page is the default green of CAVLE. But you can change the colour, and layout of the page also from the Admin tab. You need only do this once and it will alter all of your My Life pages.

Choose Site Admin > Site Theme. You may need to select custom design.

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Experiment and see what you like.

7. Cell Layout

Finally you can control the layout of the cells and their width via Admin> Cell Layout. There is a selection of layouts to choose from - although perhaps not quite as flexible as one would like. Then drag cells and they will enlarge or shrink (It's a bit of an art that gets easier). NB: if you have removed the title bar the cell cannot be moved until you put the title back!

8. Copyright Issues

Material placed on My SIte may infringe copyright even when behind password protection. Placing something that is copyright protected on My Site is therefore a serious offence.

Therefore you should refrain from including copyright material be that documents, videos, sound recordings or images.

It is possible to link to YouTube and other internet resources - that does not infringe copyright.

There are several sources for copyright free images that can be safely used in your documents and on your site. Often these do require an acknowledgement of the source. To play safe I include a hyperlink in font size 10 that links to the original of the copyright free picture. Look at the ERMC pictures for an example.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/

http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search

Google image search can be restricted to find images that the authors have specifically made free to all. Use the advanced image search above. The final Item is entitled usage rights. Free to use and share will indicate copyright free. The other filters will restrict your

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Fora (Forums)

Some modules may have a Forum on their Participants page and ask you to put up comments, formative assessments or engage on online discussion. There are also help fora available for sending any problems or questions to IT. Fora provide a way for us to talk to each other when we are not physically present. If you use facebook or other social media the principle of fora will be familiar to you. If not, hopefully it will soon become second nature.

The forum will usually appear as a link in a cell or possibly have its own cell on the page.

Within the forum you will see all the messages that other people have left. You may well have to scroll down or click on other pages if the forum gets very busy. The latest "conversation" also known as messages or posts will appear at the top. I suggest you keep your initial messages on the shorter side so that it doesn't get too long!

a) To read or reply to a conversation click on the title, in this case "View: Elizabeth Harper" and choose reply.

b) To add a conversation, click on Add Conversation

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If this is a new conversation you will need to give it a title - try and choose something short that sums up the content. As everyone will get many notifications, you will want to make sure your title is short but

informative:

The central section is a basic word processor where you can type, and do the elementary things you can do in any word processor .

REMEMBER to save content before you leave or all your writing will be lost This will return you to the Forum where you will see your message added to the list.

If this is a reply then it is worth noting that the replies are in chronological order so that you need to scroll down and read up from the bottom to understand the thread of the conversation! (Unlike Moodle) You can also only reply to 2 levels. This can be a bit frustrating and we have asked for a design change!

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Email on FedLife

With FedLife comes an email address which will be used by the Federation to contact you and at times you may be required to send emails from that email address.

Your email is: Yourfirstname.Your [email protected] e.g. [email protected]

You can see your email through Office 365 MS Outlook Web App accessible from the yellow envelope on the blue Life bar at the bottom of the screen.

Your email inbox is in the centre.

Redirect Email

Most people will not want to continually enter FedLife and then Office 365 to see their (usually infrequent) email. Therefore you will want to redirect your email to the email address you use. Redirected messages will appear as coming from the original sender and require setting up a redirect message rule.

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6. On the Inbox rules tab, select New , then Create a new rule for arriving messages.

7. Enter a name for your rule e.g. "redirect to home" 8. Under When the message arrives, select Apply to all

messages.

9. Under Do the following, select Redirect the message to. 10. Choose Select People and Enter the email address in the

To field at the top of the window. Be patient it takes awhile

for this window to come up and you will need to accept the cookie!

11. Select OK to save your selections and return to the new

rule window.

12. Select Save to save your rule and return to the Inbox Rules tab. Click on the Outlook Tab to return

to your inbox.

13. Wait a few hours (it takes a while for the redirection to kick in) then send an email to your commonawards address and check that it is redirected where you want it to go.

NB: Several people have had problems with redirection to gmail accounts. Uniservity are working on this.