Frequently asked questions

b. you’ve mixed up letters and numbers in your MailID – eg putting the letter ‘O’ instead of a zero. (the second and third last digits in your Mail ID are numbers, not letters)

c. you’ve forgotten to put “uninet\” in front of your MailID

d. you’ve put a forward slash (/) in stead of a backslash (\) between “uninet” and your MailID

e. you’ve constructed your password incorrectly. It should be the first four letters of your family name followed by the day and the month of your date of birth. Jo Smith who was born on 14^th February would have a password: smit1402. If you have fewer than four letters in your family name make it up with x’s. Jon Yo who was born on the 21^st of December would have a password yoxx2112

2. Your date of birth has been entered wrongly into our computer system. If you’ve double checked all of number 1a-e; email Linda Blackstone to double check the correct date of birth has been entered.

3. You don’t have a recent enough version of Internet Explorer loaded on your computer. You should have at least version 5.5 (service pack 2). If in doubt, upgrade to the latest version of Explorer or Netscape.

4. Our server is down or the network is overloaded – try again in a few hours.

Questions about handling discussion sites

How can I see the original message while I’m writing a reply to it?

You can have two or more copies of the same page open at once? I find this really useful, especially if I'm reading and responding to others' posts. I have their posts open in their own windows while I compose a response in another.

To open multiple copies of a window - go to the page you want, then go to file and select 'new' then 'window' on the drop down menu. You'll find a copy of the page you are in opens - you can then navigate to a different post in that window.

Alternatively, instead of clicking on someone's post to read it, you can right click (PC) or Control + Click (Mac) on the post and select the option of 'Open in a new window'. This leaves the page you are looking at untouched and opens the link in a new window - you can now jump back and forth between the two as you write.

How do I post an attachment to the Pool & Share page

Some activities asks you to post material to the ‘Pool&Share’ site accessed via the blue navigation bar. We recommend you write and post your draft as a word processing file. Here’s how you post your file.

1. Write your worksheet in your favourite word processing program.

2. When you are ready to post it, save it as a Rich Text Format file (rtf) – usually available as an option in the save dialogue box. By doing this you will ensure that anyone will be able to open it, even if they don’t use the same program as you.

3. Go to the blue navigation bar for your course and click on the Pool& Share button in the navigation bar – basically it works just like the discussion site, so it should look familiar to you.

4. Click on ‘New Message’ to open the familiar frame for posting a message.

5. In the usual way put in a heading – eg “Ngyen’s Worksheet” – and put in a brief message to the others in the class if you want to explain or introduce any aspect of your worksheet. Don’t click on the ‘post item’ button yet though.

6. Now it’s time to attach the file you’ve saved. Below the blue line you’ll see a button called ‘browse’ – click on that and navigate to the file you saved and click on ‘open’. You should now see that a path to your file is in the box to the left of the ‘browse’ button and the ‘type’ box should say what kind of file it is -eg Microsoft Word. If this doesn’t appear you may be able to use the drop down box to select an appropriate type or ask the computer to ‘guess’. Finally type in a title for your file – eg Ngyen Worksheet.

7. To complete the posting, click on the ‘post item’ button

You should now see your post listed in the left hand frame and when you click on it be able to read your message in the right hand frame and see your file listed as an attachment underneath.

What happens when attachments to posts won’t open properly?

Sometimes people have trouble with some of the Worksheet files attached by some people on the Pool&Share or Discussion sites. If this happens it's usually because it's a post by a Mac user. Macs don't use those three letter file designations like .doc and .wpd that helps PCs work out what file belongs to what program. Mac users can help out by giving their files the appropriate designation - eg .doc is a Word file and .wpd is a WordPerfect file.

If you run across a file like this on the site this is how you handle such files - after clicking on the attachment, instead of selecting 'open' when you get the dialogue box, click on 'save' and put the file in a place you can find it. Then go to the file in the folder where you saved it and double click on the file. Windows should present you with a dialogue box asking you to nominate a program to open the file with - choose Word for Windows as this will open most program files such as WordPerfect. Once open, you can save the file into your own word processing program format and work with it from there.

How do I respond to other people’s posts?

To help each other and your course lecturer to know which post you are responding to, it's best to post a reply rather than put up a new post each time.

To do this go to the person's post to which you want to respond, then click on 'reply' which appears at the top of their post. Your reply will then be positioned just below the post you are responding to and slightly indented - makes it easy to keep track. You can even reply to someone else's reply if you want and so on - so chains of discussion arising from the original post are linked together.

How should I use the discussion pages?

Here are some guides to our thinking about online discussions:

1. We want you to think about posting like turns in a conversation so don't think that everything you say on the discussion site has to be perfect or brilliant.

2. The activities are a chance for you to think about ideas, try things out, and get help from each other.

3. Use each other's posts for ideas and to spark your own posts - we can teach each other and use good ideas in our own contexts (this isn't cheating, it's collaborative learning)

4. Use the reply button to let other class members know what you think of their ideas - acknowledge points that you hadn't thought about; note things you want to pick up and try yourself; ask questions of clarification; point out where your experience is different etc.

4. Use the posts as a rehearsal for your assignments - the online discussion is a context for experimentation and learning together

How can I keep track of the conversation on the discussion page as it gets longer and longer?

As the discussion page grows it can be tricky to keep track of conversations and where you are up to. Here are some tricks I’ve found useful.

1. Notice that links to posts in the left hand frame turn a different colour once you’ve viewed them. On most browsers a post you haven’t viewed is dark blue and one already read is a light grey (also, the one you are currently viewing is yellow). Your computer browser should remember these each time you visit (if you have cookies enabled).

2. The column headings at the top can be clicked to re-organise the posts. For example, if you click Date the posts will be displayed by date (this applies only to the first level posts—those that start on the extreme left) and replies to them remain under these, no matter what date they were written. If you click Date again, the posts are put in reverse order – handy if you want to look at the most recent at the top of the page. You can also click on the From column heading. This groups all the first level posts by the person who wrote them—handy if you want to see grouped together all the posts you initiated for example.

3. Use the indenting to spot replies. Note that a reply to a post is placed under the post being replied to (not at the bottom of the page) and is indented slightly to the right. Similarly a reply to a reply is indented further to the right and so on. This gives a guide to how a conversation is going and who is responding to others. The indenting becomes really clear if you make the left hand frame bigger than it appears by default. Put your cursor just to the right of the scroll bar for the left hand frame - note it turns into a left-right arrow. Click and drag that bar to the right so that all the Topics take up just one line each - then the indenting becomes really clear. Of course you've now squished up the right hand frame but hopefully can still use it.

Questions about assessment

How does the grading and assessment system work at UniSA?

There are always differences between the assessment system used in different universities, especially in different countries, so it’s important to understand how the system works at UniSA.

Basically our system is based around trying to recognise achievement of the assessment criteria while showing how your work and thinking can be stretched and challenged. For this reason we assess around an assumption that P1 (Pass 1) is good achievement of the criteria, while a credit recognises very good work. In our system High Distinctions are extremely rare, and Distinctions not very common. If you look at the criteria for grading on our Masters home page you will see that we use the criteria for higher grades as a set of markers for stretching your work. To see the criteria, go to the Course Information for your course and look under the heading, ‘General information about assessment’.

We encourage you to use these criteria plus the specific feedback you get from your course lecturer as a guide to your work in future assignments.

For MSVU students we have negotiated with Professor Manning and the Registrar that your grade from our course would have no impact on your grade point average as you will be recorded as a non-graded pass as long as you get a P2 or above from our course. One of the pleasures of international work and study is the discovery of the different ways people do education in different places – we certainly don’t want to homogenise the experience of international study which is why we’ve decided to recognise and work with our differences. I hope you are finding those differences (and our many similarities) stimulating and useful in reflecting on your own educational practices in your work contexts. We certainly welcome any comments and feedback you’d like to give on an aspect of the course, not just the assessment. We’ll be sending you an evaluation form at the end of the course but you are welcome to send me comments at any time.

What are the rules for assignment extensions?

Contact your lecturer in plenty of time if you feel you cannot meet an assignment deadline. In all cases you must contact us before an assignment is due. Working with busy professionals we understand that your own schedules don’t always match with our own, so we can be flexible about deadlines. However, we do need you to keep up with your fellow students so that you can discuss the same work as you follow the study guide, so we try to negotiate extensions so that they are not too disruptive of your ongoing study. In exceptional circumstances such as serious illness, we will negotiate extended timelines, but will usually require documentation, such as a doctor’s certificate.

Are we expected to change our drafts based on responses?

We hope that, in working from the draft to the final text, you will take into account the feedback provided by your peers and lecturer. How you do this is up to you and will be influenced by the nature of the responses to your draft. Here are some examples of comments on drafts and possible responses.

Example 1

You describe a planned classroom project where you will be establishing an after school club for literacy activities. A peer writes: Have you considered involving parents and/or other family members?

You could respond to this by taking up the suggestion and modifying your plan or by acknowledging that this would be a good thing to do and you may try it in the future, or by explaining why this would not be appropriate in your context.

Example 2

You’re planning an intervention for a group of children who you describe as ‘lacking motivation and confidence’. Your lecturer writes: You’ve identified problems these students have. Can you think of any resources (personal cultural or social) that you could draw on for their learning?

You could respond to this by reconsidering this group of children in terms of their resources for learning and explaining how you could draw on these or you could ask for further clarification from the lecturer or you could provide further explanation of what you mean by ‘lacking motivation and confidence’ and why you believe that this is the most appropriate way to think about the children as learners.

Some feedback will relate to the ‘draftiness’ of your draft eg there may be typos, missing references or clunky sentences. We assume you will want to clear up these issues in any case.

What if no-one replies to my posting?

You could first check that you have posted on time; we always suggest key dates for topics and postings so that discussions can be productive and shared, but this only works if you keep the dates in mind.

Post a request for comments from others – there are no penalties for asking for replies, and it may be that in a rush of postings yours was overlooked.

If these suggestion have not helped to resolve the situation, please alert your lecturer to the problem and ask for advice, via email.

Is it OK to email the course lecturer?

As a rule, contact with your lecturer is via the course discussion site. We do this because, just like in a face to face classroom, it’s useful for all students to ‘hear’ questions and the responses that are given. However, we do realise that at times you may have confidential issues to raise, such as assignment extensions, and in such cases it’s ok to email your course lecturer.

What kind of writing style should I adopt? (eg is it OK to just express an opinion, can it be informal, etc)

The answer depends on whether you are asking about posts to the discussion sites or assignments.

The discussion sites are an informal environment for interaction. This means we won’t be checking your spelling and pronunciation. The idea is to dialogue around the issues and questions raised in the reading and activities outlined in the study guide. When you post to the sites don’t forget requirements about gender inclusivity and harassment apply here as they would in any UniSA classroom. Also, remember to reference ideas you take from readings and other sources (author, year, page number) so that other students can check out the source for themselves.

In relation to assignments you should consider that you are writing to a professional and educated audience who will be interested in your considered opinion and who will be looking to see that you can establish the trustworthiness of what you say. This means that you are making arguments and points that can be backed up by observation, reading and/or research. Such writing is considerate of the audience who will expect clarity, coherence and use of conventions appropriate to the genre (layout, headings, spelling etc.).

You should read the detailed requirements for each assignment so that you know what type of text is required. For example, an essay requires different style and organisation than a report. We always list the major criteria to be used in assessing your work and you should note these carefully.

Finally, if in doubt, post a question to your own course lecturer. We’re happy to clarify issues and help you prepare the best possible work for your assignment.

Do I have to include references and how should I do this?

While the writing you do is expected to be professional and scholarly we are looking for your voice, your engagement with the ideas that you have been reading about. It is important to acknowledge readings that have informed your thinking as you develop your writing and your argument. We recommend you use the Harvard or APA (author-date-page) system for in text referencing, for example:

Some writers like Cushman (1995, p.1) suggest …

Durrant and Green (2000, p.19) claim that …

Long quotes should be indented and referenced; this example is from an online source:

… The potential for information and communication technologies to promote the attainment of these skills is related to their use as a tool for raising educational quality, including promoting the shift to a learner-centred environment.

More so than any other type of information and communication technology, networked computers with Internet connectivity can increase learner motivation as it combines the media richness and interactivity of other information and communication technologies with the opportunity to connect with real people and to participate in real world events.

(Tinio, accessed 21.5.2004)

For more detailed examples click below for access to the University’s Learning Connection webpage on referencing:
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/learningconnection/students/Lguides/Harvard%202002.doc

Will I get a grade at the end of each assignment or just at the end of the course?

You will receive a mark and grade for each assignment. The marks are totalled (adjusted for the weighting of each assignment) to determine your final grade for the course. More information about assessment can be found in the course information.

I’m not in a classroom (eg on child rearing leave, a substitute teacher, a consultant, a principal), how can I do a practical assignment?

Some fascinating and worthwhile projects and inquiries have been conducted by educators who did not have a class of their own at the time. Literacy learning takes place in many sites other than classrooms such as homes, community centres and workplaces. A literacy learner can be anyone from a teacher’s own preschool child to the senior citizen’s computing class. Literacy teaching also involves out-of-classroom work such as curriculum development, professional reading and leadership. Here are some examples:

Example 1

At home on parenting leave, one teacher interested in early writing set up a post-office for her 3 year old daughter. She observed and took photos of her child writing postcards and notes and visiting the real post office. She made notes of things she said and did while she was playing in the post office. She analysed the child’s writing and behaviour and came to some conclusions about how ‘real-world’ social contexts create positive conditions for literacy acquisition.

Example 2

A school principal decided to focus on the question: What literacy practices are fostered in homework assignments? After consultation with staff, she formed a group of four interested teachers who collected all the homework assignments they set over a two week period. The pool of assignments was analysed in terms of the types of literacy practices required. As a result, the group developed some discussion points for the staff.

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