Create
To add a doKu activity to your design, just drag and drop the activity in the authoring canvas and double click on it to set it up.
doKu Content
The doKu authoring interface allows you to configure the collaborative document experience for your students. You can provide instructions, define how collaboration works, enable peer review workflows, and control how students interact with the shared document environment.
Below is an explanation of the configuration options available when creating a doKu activity.
Title Make sure you use a meaningful title that summarises what the students are meant to do.
Description/case Here’s the description of the case you want the students to discuss and respond to.
This large content area is where you provide:
The activity instructions
Clinical cases
Scenarios
Questions
Prompts
Background information
Supporting resources
This section acts as the learning context for the collaborative document activity.
Document Base / Starter Template
The editable document section acts as the collaborative workspace where students create their shared response.
You can optionally provide students with:
A blank document
A partially completed template
Structured headings
Guided prompts
Tables for completion
Scaffolding questions
This is extremely useful when you want to:
Structure student thinking
Standardise submissions
Support novice learners
Guide clinical reasoning
Encourage organised collaborative writing
Students then collaboratively complete the document together.
Examples
For example, you may provide headings such as:
Patient Education
Differential Diagnosis
Treatment Plan
Reflection
Ethical Considerations
Features
Now, this is where doKu opens a ton of possibilities. Some of these settings make doKu very very powerful. So let’s start looking at them.
Leader Selection
This option is only available if in your learning design you are using a Leader Selection activity
By default doKu allows all team members to write in the document collaboratively. However, you might want to students to first reach consensus before writing their team's reponse.
The Leader Selection settings allow you to control who can contribute to the doKu document and how team representatives participate in collaborative activities.
These settings integrate with the Leader Selection activity in LAMS and are particularly useful when you want a designated student to act as the team’s scribe, spokesperson, or representative.
Only the selected team leader can edit and submit the doKu document on behalf of the team.
When enabled, doKu automatically uses the team leaders chosen in the Leader Selection activity.
How it works
Only the designated team leader can edit the document.
Other team members contribute through discussion and collaboration but only the leader is allow to type/edit the document.
The leader acts as the team’s official scribe.
Why use this option?
This setting is ideal when you want students to:
Reach consensus before answering
Focus on discussion rather than writing
Develop leadership and communication skills
Submit a single agreed team response
Reduce conflicts caused by multiple students editing simultaneously
Advanced Options
The Maximum mark setting defines the total score available for the doKu activity. After the students complete their document, you will be able to assign a mark accordingly. The default mark is 100, but of course, you can choose any range that you prefer.
Shared Document/Pad ID
Shared pad ID that allows using the same document between several doKu activities
This option allows multiple doKu activities to share the same collaborative document (pad) across different parts of a lesson.
When enabled:
Students continue editing the same document across several doKu activities
The collaborative document persists throughout the lesson
Teams can progressively build a single evolving document over time
This is especially useful for:
Long-running projects
Multi-stage collaborative tasks
Iterative case development
Portfolio-style activities
Scaffolded inquiry learning
Lessons where teams progressively refine their work
Example
For example:
In doKu activity 1, students brainstorm initial ideas
In doKu activity 2, they analyse evidence
In doKu activity 3, they refine their final recommendations
Using a shared pad allows all work to remain inside a single evolving collaborative document.
This creates a highly authentic collaborative workflow that mirrors real-world team document collaboration.
Time restrictions and limitations
The Time Limits settings allow you to control how long students have to complete a doKu activity.
Note: While you can set this timer when you create your activity, you can always change them during the lesson.
Choosing the Right Time Limit
Projects, assignments, open-ended collaboration
Synchronous teaching, workshops, Team-Based Learning, classroom activities
Online courses, asynchronous learning, self-paced activities
No time limite (None)
When None is selected, no time restrictions are applied.
Meaning that students can:
Enter the activity at any time
Work at their own pace
Continue editing until they reach the end of the lesson or the activity is manually closed
Activity timer
The Activity timer applies a single shared countdown timer to the entire doKu activity.
All students, regardless of when they entered the activity, must complete their work before the timer expires.
The countdown:
Starts when the first student enters the activity
Applies to all students in the lesson
Ends for everyone when the timer reaches zero
This creates a common deadline for all participants.
Best suited for
Face-to-face classes
Live online teaching
Team-Based Learning sessions
Workshops
Timed collaborative exercises
Classroom case discussions
Example
You set the timer to 20 minutes.
The first student enters the doKu activity at 10:00 AM.
The countdown immediately begins and ends at 10:20 AM.
The deadline is the same for everyone: complete all tasks before the timer expires.
You can change this later in the lesson
In the lesson you are able to set up a whole range of time limits (hard deadlines, extensions for the particular teams or individual students
Individual Student Timer
The Individual Students timer provides each student with their own personal countdown timer. Every student is allotted the same amount of clock time, no matter their start time.
The timer:
Starts when an individual student enters the activity
Runs independently for each learner
Gives every student the full allocated duration
Best suited for
Asynchronous courses
Online learning
Self-paced study
Distance education
Flexible learning schedules
Example
You set the duration to 30 minutes.
Student A enters at 9:00 AM and has until 9:30 AM.
Student B enters at 2:00 PM and has until 2:30 PM.
Student C enters the following day and still receives the full 30 minutes.
Each student receives exactly the same amount of working time regardless of when they begin.
AI Feedback Coach
The AI Feedback Coach helps students improve the quality of their work by providing personalised AI-generated feedback based on a model answer defined by you.
The AI compares the student’s or team’s doKu submission against the expected answer, identifies strengths, highlights gaps in understanding, and suggests areas for improvement.
This feature can be used to provide students with:
Immediate formative feedback
Guidance on how to improve their response
Insights into missing concepts or ideas
Support for self-reflection and revision
Additional feedback before lecturer review
You can choose whether the AI-generated feedback is:
Released automatically when students submit
Reviewed and approved by you before students see it
This provides an appropriate balance between scalability and academic oversight, allowing you to decide how much control you wish to retain over the feedback process.
Review against model answer
Enable this option to provide a model answer that the AI will use when analysing student submissions.
When enabled, a text box appears where you can enter the expected answer, marking guide, exemplar response, or key concepts that students should address.
The AI then compares the submitted response against this model answer and evaluates:
Coverage of important concepts
Alignment with expected content
Strengths in the response
Missing ideas or gaps
Areas that could be improved
Display AI-generated feedback immediately on submission
Controls when students receive AI-generated feedback without your intervention/approval.
When enabled:
Students receive AI feedback immediately after submitting their response.
No lecturer approval is required.
Feedback is generated and displayed automatically.
When disabled:
AI feedback is generated but held for lecturer review.
You can review, approve, edit, or reject the feedback before students see it.
Students only receive feedback after lecturer approval.
Why use immediate feedback?
Immediate feedback is particularly valuable when you want students to:
Reflect on their work straight away
Identify misconceptions quickly
Learn from mistakes while the activity is still fresh
Iteratively improve their responses
Receive rapid formative guidance
This is especially effective in:
Practice activities
Self-directed learning
Formative assessments
Revision exercises
Skills development activities
Why require lecturer approval?
Reviewing feedback before release may be preferable when:
The activity contributes to assessment
Responses are complex or subjective
Academic judgement is particularly important
You want to moderate the AI feedback
The activity involves sensitive or nuanced topics
This approach ensures an additional layer of quality assurance and academic oversight.
AI Personas
AI Personas allow you to create simulated AI-driven characters that students can interact with as part of a learning activity.
Rather than simply providing information or instructions, AI Personas create opportunities for students to engage with a realistic character, stakeholder, expert, or participant that has been carefully configured by you to support specific learning outcomes.
You define the persona’s:
Identity and role
Background knowledge
Personality and communication style
Expertise and experience
Behaviour and response patterns
Activity-specific instructions
Students can then interact with the persona throughout the activity, using the conversation to gather information, test ideas, explore perspectives, and support their learning.
AI Personas can be used to simulate virtually any role, including:
Patients
Doctors and healthcare professionals
Historical figures
Business clients and stakeholders
Legal experts
Scientists and researchers
Policy makers
Community representatives
Fictional characters
Industry professionals
Because the persona’s behaviour, knowledge, and responses are controlled by the configuration you provide, the learning experience can be tailored to match the educational objectives of the activity
For example, a medical student might interview a simulated patient, a history student might question a historical figure, or a business student might consult with a simulated CEO when developing a strategic recommendation.
AI Personas transform traditional learning activities into interactive and immersive experiences, encouraging students to actively engage with content rather than simply consume it. By creating authentic conversations and realistic scenarios, they help develop critical thinking, communication, questioning, analysis, and decision-making skills in a safe and scalable learning environment.
Gallery Walks
Gallery Walks are a classroom-based active learning strategy where students are encouraged to build on their knowledge about a topic by interacting with other students.
In a classroom setup, students are able to explore different “works” that are placed around the classroom (stations). At each station, the students interact with the work and learn by asking questions to other peers.
In the context of doKu, when students or their teams finish their document, the teacher starts the Gallery Walks which then allows all of the students to see other teams' documents.
Students then are able to review, provide comments and rate each other’s work.
When you start the Gallery Walk in the lesson, the instructions on how to conduct the review are displayed to the students. These are the instructions that you can include in the “Instructions for Gallery Walk” shown above.
If you just want the student to see each other’s work but do not want them to do comments and/or ratings (read-only), then make sure you set the “Disable commentary and rating”.
Learning Outcomes
Mapping learning outcomes to activities is very useful for curriculum mapping.
As with all activities in LAMS, you can map your learning outcomes to this activity. If you want to add a learning outcome, just search for the particular outcome or type a new one it will be added to your list of learning outcomes for the future.
You can search Learning Outcomes by code or name.
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