Changes to Cecil Explorer since Dec 2003 Release
This document will outline the changes in this new release. For full details of the instructions please refer to the online manual (http://cecil.auckland.ac.nz/help/ce7).
The new version of Cecil Explorer is versioned as Cecil Explorer 7 (or CE 7).
1. Person Level – Menu changes
The Current user tab has been removed and combined more preferences settings.
Entry Point: Tools => Options => Environmental Options Tab.
1.1. Environmental Options
1.2. Personal Options
Entry Point: Tools => Options => Personal Profile Tab.
This tab allows the user to change their personal profile such as their email, preferred name and other email and discussion subscription preferences.
2. General changes in the Course Level
2.1. Taskpad tab
Click on the course number on the tree and the Taskpad is the first tab on the right hand side.
An additional link has been added, ie. Manage People.
There is a change to the Student View function on the taskpad. As the new version of the Cecil Web Interface is almost the same as the student view, thus we encourage everyone to logon to the new web interface using their own logon details to see what the students are seeing. At the same time there are more editing functions available through the web interface compare to the previous version.
2.2. Course Details tab
The number of enrolment has been added to the tab.
2.3. Course Properties tab
The Preferences tab is now called Course Properties.
The Start Page function is removed from CE 7. It can be set from the web interface.
An additional item has been added for the display options: Journal. Activities and Marks have been combined into one option.
Note: Course Start Date is something we have put into CE 7 but the work on the web and student interface still needs to be done.
2.4. Course Tree
Entry Point: Click on the next to the course number on the tree to expand the tree.
• Changes:
o Student node has been renamed to People to include a list of staff members in the course. If you are a course coordinator in the course, the Add and Revoke staff function is also available through there.
2.5. Tree Options – Ordering nodes under the course
You will be able to re-order the items under the course nodes in the tree. This will be saved in Cecil as your personal preference of how you like your course tree to be listed. This is applied to the entire tree for all courses but will not affect how your colleagues like to list their trees.
Entry Point: Toolbar => Move up and down buttons
Before After
3. Changes in Topics
3.1. Topics in CE = Knowledge Map in Cecil Web Interface
“Knowledge Map” can be edited and change to a different name / label as appropriate on the web interface. It will remain as “Topics” in CE.
There are two system created Topics in each course: Resources and Image Gallery.
Resources topic by default is hidden in both CE and the Web. The resource area is where you find a list of all the file resources that have been uploaded into the course.
Image Gallery topic is default to be hidden in CE. It is visible on the web and it is where you can upload all the images you want to use on any description editing space on the web.
3.2. Course Descriptions
Course Descriptions are no longer available under Course Details tab. Instead, Topics and Topics descriptions have replaced course descriptions. It provides more flexibilities and more features than course descriptions did. You can simply create as many items (Topics) as you need and not having to choose from a very long list of what has been used already.
If you create them in CE, you’d need to go to the web interface to make them visible to the students. From the web interface, you can also consider setting up your course structure under course information or under Knowledge Map.
3.3. Previewing Files in Topics
There has been an improvement to the preview of resources in Topics.
Entry Point: Click on the next to the course number => click on Topics on the tree =>
select the appropriate topic on the tree => select the file resource for preview => click on Preview button.
Click on Preview:
Preview of the document will appear at the bottom of the pane:
4. Changes in Activities
4.1. Overall Changes
Entry Point: Click on the next to the course number => click on next to the Activities
=> select the appropriate activity session.
Old:
New:
o Changes:
o Dates and Assessment tab have been combined and renamed Activity Properties.
The tab has also been moved to the front before Documents tab.
o Marks tab has been renamed to Students tab.
o Non-assessed activity sessions (ie. Activities that do not have any marks associated) will not have Test Options and Comments tab.
4.2. Changes in Description tab
A new HTML editor has replaced the old description editor. Please see Section 8 for details.
4.3. Changes in Activity Properties tab
The main changes are the addition of collapsible sections. Only activated parts are shown, otherwise they are collapsed.
To make the activity session assessed, tick the checkbox next to Is Assessed. Once the option is checked, the property settings for an assessed activity will appear.
You can set a dropbox (Allowing students to submit their assignments into Cecil electronically) for the activity.
Tick Turn on Dropbox for setting up a dropbox for the activity.
Attachment size, number of submissions allowed (new submission will replace the old one) and an auto-response message can be set for the dropbox.
NB: There are no changes to Documents, Topics and Sessions tabs.
4.4. Changes in Test Options tab
The main change to this tab is under Advanced tab. Enable Criteria Based Marking option has been added to the list for those who use criteria based marking.
4.5. Changes in Students tab
The main changes are related to dropbox features. Where appropriate, the Submissions column will appear, indicating the number of times the student had submitted to the dropbox of this activity.
To view the selected student’s submission, click on View Submissions button.
4.6. Changes in Streams => Members tab
On the list for adding students into streams, now there is a column indicating the numbers.
This allows a quicker selection of 10 students into a stream, for example.
5. Changes in Communication
5.1. Announcement
Entry Point: Click on the next to the course number => Communication =>
Announcement tab.
5.1.1. New Announcement (Non-Wizard) The announcement editor has changed slightly.
You can choose to send email or not, and the format of email announcement by selecting between No Email or Text Email or HTML Email from the drop-down.
5.1.2. Announcement Wizard
The key change in creating a new announcement is the ability to set the format of the email announcement to be in the Wizard.
In both cases, if Text is selected, then the editor on screen for composing the announcement message will be a text editor and vice versa for HTML.
5.2. Discussions
Entry Point: Click on the next to the course number => Communication => Discussions
=> Properties tab.
The discussion properties tab has been modified slightly but the functionalities remain the same as the old version. Except:
o Dropbox settings have been moved under Activities.
o Forced Subscription feature has been added. This allows a staff member to create a discussion forum and make everyone involved in the course (staff and students) to be subscribed to the forum email list automatically.
o A search function has been added.
There are four sections in this tab, each can be collapsed by clicking on the next to the section heading. The changes are saved automatically.
Entry Point: Click on the next to the course number => Communication => Discussions
=> Search button.
In this you can search for a particular discussion message by the title of the message.
• Advanced Options:
o Search Hidden Messages o Search in Hidden Discussions o Search Deleted Messages o Search in Deleted Discussions
These advanced options can be reached by clicking on the “Advanced” button. An extra section will be shown just below the search text box.
Any messages found will be displayed below the advanced options, and the bottom panel will display either the content of the message, its attachment(s) and the discussion that it came from.
6. Changes in People
Overall, one additional tab has been added under the People node, Staff. Hence the name change of the node from Students to People to reflect the changes.
Entry Point: Click on the next to the course number => People => one of the following tab.
6.1. Students
Now you can filter the class list by enrolment status. This allows you to export the old Enrolment details onto Excel.
Add and Create students are the same as the previous version, except that it is now located under Student tab.
6.2. Person Details View…
Entry Point: Click on the next to the course number => People => Student tab or Student Marks tab or Final Grades tab => right click on the appropriate student => select Open in Person Details View….
The Person Details View has been changed to allow:
o Assignment submissions to be downloaded. (under Marks tab)
o Easily switching between students by clicking on the name of a different student on the left hand side.
o Assessment Attempts tab will not show for any activities that do not apply, or if the student has not yet made any attempts.
o Official Grade has been added under Enrolment Details tab.
Accessing discussion messages.
Dropbox Submissions will appear if dropbox is turned on for this activity session
6.3. Reports on Selected Students
There has been some modification to an existing report, Assessment Marks by Person, which provides a list of all assessments in the course with raw marks and weighted marks for all students in the course one by one.
There was no option for running the report for only one student. Now, you can simply right click on the student of interest and select Reports on Selected Students. Multiple select is supported.
6.4. Student Marks
No other changes apart from the right click menus outlined in the last two sections.
6.5. Staff
A Staff tab has been added to surface the existing information and feature so that it is easily located. A list of staff members who are involved in this course, with their roles will be displayed here. If they are associated in any streams (normally for marking purposes), that will be listed as well.
6.5.1. Adding another staff member
If you are a course coordinator of a course, you can add or revoke staff members for this course. Click on the Add button to add another staff member to the course.
Enter the AUID or NetID of the staff member and select a role from the drop-down list.
Alternatively, you can click on button to search via name or email address.
Enter a reason for adding the staff member then click on Add to finish.
6.5.2. Revoking a staff member
Select the staff member that you want to revoke from the course. Then click on Revoke button. Enter a reason for revoking the person and click OK to finish.
6.6. Final Grades
The key change to this tab is the addition of the official final grade under the Official Grade column. After final grades have been submitted to nDeva, nDeva will release the official grades back to Cecil. So this will be available for staff members to access then. But it will not be editable.
7. Custom Export menu
There are several grids that can be exported to Excel. For example: the class list, the staff
member list and the list of student marks under an individual assessment or under Student Marks tab.
• Default – this will export all the columns in the grid
• Custom – this will bring up a dialog box as shown below allowing you to choose which columns to export. The list of columns will be different for each grid. Some examples as follow:
Once you have selected the columns you want to export to Excel, then click OK to finish.
8. Functionalities available on the new Cecil Web Interface 7 but not in CE 7
• Knowledge Map (KM or Topics in CE)
o Renaming the Knowledge Map (Topics) node
o Ability to add activities and journals into a knowledge map or topics o Ability to mark any items under the KM visible
o Ability to create course details and add course content (such as activities, discussions etc) under each headings.
• Journals – all aspects of journal are only available on the web interface.
• Inserting images into descriptions from the Image Gallery folder.
• Resources
o Upload files directly for a course (not through Topics or Activities).
o as an aggregation of all file resources uploaded for the course from all sources (Topics, Activities or uploaded through Resources directly)
For further assistance please contact Cecil Service Desk, extension 85100 or