Choice Activity: Planning attendance using the TeachCenter

From the winter semester 2020 onwards, students will again be allowed in lecture halls during lecture recordings. However, the contact details of those who are in the lecture hall must be recorded in advance for the purposes of contact tracing and due to the restrictions on the maximum number of students allowed. One way to plan these attendances is the Choice activity.

In order to create a Choice activity, you need a TeachCenter course (TC course) for your course. If no such course exists yet, please send a request to the support and let us know the course number.

Open/Close

Is the Choice activity the best option for me?

How do I create a Choice activity and add time slots?

Creating a Choice activity

To create a Choice activity , activate the edit mode of your TC course (top right: Turn editing on).
Click Add an activity or resource in the desired section and select All > Choice from the pop-up menu. Click Add.

Screenshot of the different activities in the TeachCenter — Fig. 1: Choosing the activity

Enter a name for the activity.
Optionally, enter a description, e.g. to inform students that they will be contacted in the event of a positive Covid test result of another participant. Tick the box Display description on course page.

Settings including the name and a text editor for description — Fig. 2: General settings for the choice activity

Under Availability, you can set when the choice opens or closes, e.g. if you want to prevent students from canceling shortly before the deadline. However, you need to make your students aware of this. Also, do not forget to reopen the activity in time before the next time slot!
To close or reopen the choice, check the box Allow responses until and enter the date and time when you want the choice to close. Later, you can reopen the choice by replacing this date with a future date or unchecking Enable.

Settings include: allowing responses from and until a certain date — Fig. 3: Availability of the choice activity

Adding time slots

In the Options section, you can now customize the most important settings.
Allow choice to be updated > Yes means that students can withdraw or change their choice and thus their registration.
Allow more than one choice to be selected > Yes determines that students may vote more than once, e.g. if you want to use the choice for the whole semester.
Limit the number of responses allowed > Yes determines that there is a maximum number of votes per time slot.
Now enter the time slots as options. It makes sense to create an option for each lecture date.
Also enter the upper limit, i.e. the maximum number of students allowed per time slot (maximum occupancy according to the Corona safety protocols).

Screenshot of the settings for options — Fig. 4: Adding options

Click Save and display.
Students can now choose one or more time slots.

Using the Choice activity with groups

Please note: Choosing a time slot as a group is not possible in this activity. Students always choose a slot individually.

However, there is the possibility to restrict a Choice activity to members of a certain group only, e.g. in the following scenario: "Students of group A may choose to come in week 1, 3, ... "Students in group B may come to the lecture in week 2, 4, ...”. However, you would also have to create two different choice activities with the respective time slots and then restrict them to the desired group.

To restrict the activity to one group (i.e. only students of one group can choose a time slot , but still book the dates individually), go to the edit mode of the activity (red gear next to the activity on the main course page).
In the Restrict Access section, click on Add Restriction > Group.

Fig. 5: Add restrictions for groups

Select the group that should be able to access the activity.

Access restriction: "student must match the following group" with a dropdown menu of the groups to choose from — Fig. 6: Selecting a group

Click on the eye to hide the activity from students from other groups on the main course page. Click on Add restriction.
Click Save and return to course.

Students

How to use the Choice activity as a student?

When students open the activity, they see all the dates they can select.
By ticking one or more options, students can book one (or more, depending on the settings) time slot(s). Students must click on Save my choice to confirm.

The time slots are listed and can be ticked — Fig. 7: Booking time slots

To change the choice later (before the activity closes, if this has been set), students simply need to go to the same page and select one or more new time slots or click Remove my choice to clear all the selected options.
Students must then confirm their selection again by clicking on Save my choice.

How to assign time slots manually?

How to export the results?

On the main page of your TC course, click on the Choice activity. The overview of the time slots appears. In the upper righthand corner there is the button View responses.
Choosing With selected further limits the export to students who have chosen a specific date.
Please do not click on Delete here, otherwise all votes already made will be deleted.

"Choose an action" dropdown menu where you can delete results or choose a certain option to download — Fig. 8: Exporting results

Then click on the desired format - ODS, Excel or text - to start the download. In the downloaded document, you will see an overview of the students and the selected time slot, but also which group students belong to if you are using groups in your course.

Help & Contact

For questions on TeachCenter / TeachCenter Exam: tc@tugraz.at

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