Topic Manager
While for the most part, Manhattan looks the same whether you are a student or a teacher, teachers are given additional control over the classroom (see Differences between the teachers' and students' views for a list of these differences.) One important set of control you are given as the teacher is the Topic Manager. Here's the teacher's view of the Handouts/Notices module:
Clicking on the "Manage Topics" link yields this page:
The topics are listed in the order they currently appear within the module. Next to each topic, there's a set of icons, which are briefly described below and more completely described later.
and 
are used to move the topic up
or down in the list
and 
get you to a page that
allows you to completely hide the topic from students or to
schedule the topic for release at a certain time.
and
are used to lock/unlock
the topic's attachments. One of these icons will only appear
if the message has one or more files attached. As for within
the module itself, messages with attachments are flagged with
a 
icon.
Note that under each topic there will be at least two additional lines of information. The Status: line generally tells you whether or not students can view see this topic. In the above screen-shot all of the topics are "Viewable by students (Not hidden or scheduled.)" The second line of information tells you that for each message listed, "Students are NOT warned before opening attachments."
What's a "topic"?
Manhattan's thirteen modules can be roughly divided into three categories:
- 1. Modules where each message is considered a "topic".
-
These modules include Handouts/Notices, Lectures, Self-tests and Internet Resources. Only a teacher can post messages to these modules. The messages, which appear as a simple list, are each considered a "topic".
- 2. Modules where additional messages can be posted to a topic.
-
These include the discussion modules: Class Discussion, Student Lounge, Anonymous Discussion, Team Discussion, Team/Teacher Discussion and the Assignments module. Both students and teachers can post messages to these modules, and once a topic has been started there can be dozens of additional messages posted that become part of that topic.
- 3. Modules where the word "topic" doesn't apply.
-
The Chat, Grades and Post Office modules are unique in that the messages are not organized into topics in any sense.
Keep this in mind when you're using the Topic Manager described below, and the ability for anyone to Hide/Unhide topics discussed above in Hiding and Unhiding Topics. The Topic Manager is not available for modules in category 3 above. For the modules in category 1, when we say "topic", we really mean any message posted by the teacher, since for these modules all messages are at the topic level. For modules in category 2, moving a topic or marking it as teacher-hidden affects not only the topic, but also all messages that were posted to that topic.
Changing the order of topics
Using and
should be
self-explanatory! Click the up arrow to move a topic up,
and click the down arrow to move a topic down. This feature
is useful when you, for example, accidentally post the
lecture for Week 3 before Week 2. You can change the order
of topics whenever you wish, just keep in mind that you're
changing it for everyone in the class, not just for
you!
Teacher hidden and scheduled topics
When you click on either or
, you'll come to a
page that looks like this:
A topic can be in one of three states, with respect to whether or not students can see it:
-
It can be normal. Students can view the topic, and if it's in a module like Assignments or Class Discussion, they can add messages to the topic.
-
It can be marked as hidden. Only the teacher can see the topic. It just doesn't exist as far as students are concerned.
-
It can be scheduled. As the teacher, you can schedule the topic for release at say, June 14 2003 at 2:30 PM. Before that time (based on the server's clock, not on the student's computer), it doesn't exist as far as students are concerned. After that release time, it will automatically appear. You can also specify an unrelease time, if you wish. For example, you can schedule a topic to be available only for a two days, or two hours.
An important note about unrelease times
When a topic becomes hidden, either because the teacher manually marked it as hidden or because a scheduled "unrelease" time has arrived, the topic disappears from the list of topics in that module for all students. Suppose a student is working in the Class Discussion module and sees 5 topics. While he is reading the first topic on the list, the teacher hides the second topic. When the student returns to the list of topics, he'll find that the second topic has disappeared from the list. That makes sense.
Now suppose the teacher hides a topic that a student happens to be reading at that moment. What happens? The answer is that the student can continue working with the topic, including posting replies to the topic (if the module allows students to post messages). When he finally returns to the module's list of topics, the topic will disappear from the list.
The above details of how teacher hidden messages work can be important if you are relying on the scheduling of topics for online testing. Say you've posted an essay exam to the Assignments module (the Assignments module is described in The Assignments Module). You schedule the topic to appear at 1 PM and to be unreleased at 5 PM the same day. This does not necessarily mean your students only have 4 hours to take the test! Suppose a student opens the assignment at 4:59 PM - one minute before the assignment will be removed from the topic list. If that student remains online, and if he does not navigate away from that message, he will have up to four hours (see Four hour timeout) to post a reply to the assignment.
Posting a topic as teacher-hidden
Teachers can post a new topic that's hidden from students to begin with:
If you know in advance that you want to schedule a topic for release at a certain time, it's best to check the box shown above when the topic is posted. You can then use the Topic Manager to specify a release time for the topic, without taking the risk a student will see the message.
Teachers can always see teacher-hidden topics
A topic hidden from students is still available to teachers in the classroom. The screen shot below shows the Handouts/Notices module with two topics that have been hidden by the teacher. Note that they appear italicized in the list and are flagged by the word "hidden":
As shown in the illustration, you can click on the link "List only topics visible by students" to hide teacher-hidden topics from your view of the topic list. Starting with the above page, when the link is clicked, your view of the list becomes:
The two teacher-hidden topics are gone from the list. To show them again, click on the "List all topics" link.
Manhattan gives you a reminder when you are reading a teacher-hidden topic. For example, if you read the teacher-hidden topic "Can you view a PowerPoint file?", you would see:
Locking Attachments
Within the topic manager, you can click on the symbol to
"lock" the attachments to a message. When a topic's
attachments are locked, the symbol becomes indicating the attachments are
locked. Clicking on that icon will
"unlock" the attachments.
While this capability is available in most modules, it really only makes sense within the Assignments module. The purpose of the feature is to support one form of online testing - see Online testing: using locked attachments.
Say you've prepared an exam in Word. (Actually the exam can consist of any number of files of any type, e.g. a Word file with the instructions and an Excel spreadsheet containing data they'll use to complete the exam.) You want to give your students a limited amount of time to complete the exam, say, three hours.
You post the exam as 'hidden' as a new assignment so the students can't see it, then come to the Topic Manager and click on the 'Lock attachments' button, and unhide the message. (You can also schedule it to appear at a certain date/time and optionally be removed at a later date/time.)
When a student opens the message they'll see:
Students can read the message, but can't get to the attachment(s) without first "Unlocking" them. Clicking the "Unlocked Attachments Now" button yields:
When the student elects to proceed (after still one more "Are You Sure?" prompt), they are returned to the message with the attachments unlocked:
From this point onward, they can access the file(s) as usual. When you get the student's response in the Assignments module, additional information now helps you establish how long it took for the student to complete the exam:
The ability to lock the attachments to a message, can be thought of as giving the teacher a "signed receipt" from the student along with a time stamp indicating exactly when the student opened the attachment. This time stamp is clearly shown on the teacher's "Info" page (see Did you get my message?). Again, while you can lock the attachments to topics in most modules, it really only makes sense in the Assignments module.
From a student's point of view, a message will continue to be marked as unread (using a red star) until they have unlocked the attachments to the message.
It's the teacher's responsibility to make sure students can't open the assignment until the attachments have been locked:
-
When posting the assignment, check the "Mark this message as teacher-hidden" box.
-
Next, enter the "Topic Manager" and click on the
icon next to the assignment.
The icon will change to
and a line under the topic will read: "Students are warned before opening
attachments." -
Finally, click on the
icon and either "unhide" the
assignment, or schedule its release.
If you don't follow the above steps, it's possible for a student to open the assignment BEFORE the attachments were locked. In this case, the student's view of the assignment includes the warning:
To make effective use of this feature, you must lock the attachments BEFORE students can possibly see the assignment, by following the three steps listed above.