Monitor Lessons

LAMS Monitor

Lesson tab

The Lessons tab is the first of the three tab's for Monitoring an Individual sequence.

At the top of the screen, the Title Area displays the Name and Sequence Description. These are either read from the LAMS sequence itself, or can be entered by Monitors when the sequence is created.

Beneath the Title area, the Status Area displays the:

• Status: Whether the lesson is Started, Suspended, or Archived.

  • Started sequences are available for learners to participate in.

  • Suspendedsequences are sequences that have been disabled by a monitor. New Learner's cannot access disabled sequences, but Learners aklready participating in the sequence can progress.

  • Archived sequence do not appear on Learner's 'Groups' screens, but are available for Monitors to view.

• Learners: This area shows the number of Learner's who have started the sequence so far, and the total number of learners who are able to access the sequence.

  • Note that Learners does NOT indicate the number of Learners online at this moment, but rather how many Learners have joined the sequence since it was started.

• Learner URL: Displays the Direct Lesson Launch URL for Learners.

  • This will only be displayed if your LAMS Administrator has enabled the Direct Lesson Launch feature.

• Class: This displays the Class selected as the Learners for this sequence.

The Manage Lesson Area allows you to modify several sequence functions:

• View Learners displays a pop-up menu with the Names and Logins of all Learners who can access the sequence.

• Edit Class allows the addition of Learners to the sequence. (Note that you cannot Remove a Learner's access to a sequence if they were specified when the sequence was started.)

• Select Status allows the Monitor to Disable, Archive, Enable or Delete a sequence.

• Start displays the exact date and time at which the sequence was started. (Based on the System time of the LAMS Server.)

• There is also a toggle to allow or disallow Learners to Export their Portfolios.

The Required Tasks Area displays Monitor tasks for a particular sequence, such as assigning Groups, choosing Scribes or opening Gates.

• LAMS Administrators can choose to use a feature called Direct Lesson Launch. This enables Instructors to give their students a direct URL to a specific sequence without having to go through the 'My Groups' page. Click here for details on how to use this feature.

Sequence Tab

The Sequence tab is the second of the three Monitoring tabs. It provides a "sequence-based" view of Learner Progression through a Live Session - the Sequence display is identical to the sequence layout in the Authoring environment.

Learner Icons

Learners are represented by small white icons on the individual activity Icons. Learner positions can be updated by clicking the "Refresh" button in the top Right-hand corner of the screen. The icons are displayed at the current Learner position regardless of whether or not the Learner is Online or Offline.

You can Force Move a Learner to a specific activity in the sequence by Clicking-and-Dragging their icon to a specific activity. You can also move a Learner to the end of the sequence by Dragging them to the small grey door in the bottom-left of the Sequence tab.

Live Edit

The Sequence tab also contains the Link for "Live-Edit". This is a feature introduced since version 2.0.3 which allows Monitors to make changes to a lesson while it is running. Clicking the Live Edit button will first place a stop point in front of the learner who has progressed furthest in the lesson, and then open a new environment similar to the Authoring Environment. The Monitor can then make changes to the lesson, changing content, and adding or removing particular activities.

To better explain this in details, let's imagine the following example:

So you are a teacher and have started a lesson with a sequence that have four activities (say Noticeboard, Q&A, Shared Resources and a Chat -in that order).

As your students get into the lesson as learners, you can monitor their progress in Monitor. In the Monitor interface, at the Sequence Tab, you will see there's a new button called "Live Edit".

If you press this button, LAMS would load the Authoring environment and allow you to change the sequence by adding, removing or changing any activity that the learners haven't yet reached.

That means that if one of your learner has reached the second activity (Q&A) then you will be able to modify the sequence from that activity on wards.

Once the students finished the Q&A, then they will get a page that asks them to wait until the Teacher/Monitor finishes modifying the design.

While you are editing this live lesson, you can add, change or remove any activities as you please. Once you are done with your changes, by clicking on the "Apply Changes" button, LAMS removes the stop point that is stopping the students and they can go thru the sequence as you just redesigned it. And you are back in Monitor monitoring your new redesigned lesson. Note that you can press the "Live Edit" button at any time to redesign your lesson as many times as you like.

As you can see, this is quite powerful for teachers, as it is not uncommon for them to have to modify their lessons on the fly.

In the past, you were allow to modify the content of the activities from Monitor, however, you couldn't modify the actual design.

Check out Using Live Edit for a tutorial.

Monitor Contributions

Any "Contributions" to be made by a monitor, such as editing text for "Define in Monitor" tasks, marking essay/reports, releasing stop points, etc. To access the activity, the Monitor double-clicks on the paticular activity icon. Specific monitoring features for each activity are listed on their respective pages.

Learners' tab

The Learners tab provides a "learner-based" view of learner progression through a live sequence session. Learners are presented in a layered horizontal view of their progress through activities. The status of each activity is shown as follows:

• Blue Circles indicate activities which have been completed by the learner.

• Red Squares indicate the current position of the learner in the sequence (ie: the activity they are currently viewing)

• and Green Triangles represent activities not yet reached. These colors and symbols are the same as used for the learner progress bar.

The key property of the Learner tab is that for any learner activity, the monitor can click on the relevant symbol, which will then show the learner's last view of this activity in a new window - this allows monitors to observe the progress of individual learners and groups within each activity.