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NoodleTools for Faculty

Learn to use NoodleTools as a teaching and assessment tool. You can also use NoodleTools for your own research projects

Your Project Screen

Teacher project screen

The Projects screen in the teacher account has two tabs:

1. My Projects displays projects that you as a teacher create for yourself, perhaps as demonstration projects to show students. Your students will create their own projects or group projects in their own NoodleTools accounts.

2. Inboxes is a classroom management system in teacher accounts only. In this area, you can do two things: 1) Look at work that's been submitted to you for a particular assignment, and 2) create a new assignment for a group of students or class.

How to Set Up a Project Inbox to Receive Student Work & Provide Feedback

An inbox is where students submit a specific project for your review so that you can monitor progress and provide feedback on their work.

You'll need to create an Inbox for each project you assign. For example, you would create an inbox titled “Smith 2010 ENG101 P3: Hamlet”. Your ENG101 period 3 students would share their “Hamlet” projects with you through this inbox.

1. Click the Inboxes tab and +New project inbox.

New Project Inbox
 

2. Once you click New Project Inbox you'll see this screen:
 

New Project Inbox additional reciepents

3. Name Your Inbox: On the New project inbox screen, in the Inbox name field enter the name of the inbox. The name should  be simple enough for students to remember. Including the year and semester are good ideas, to avoid getting it confused with an inbox name for the same project in a different year.

4. Share with Co-Teachers: If there are other teachers or librarians who need to review and comment on the projects shared with you through this inbox, enter their personal IDs under Additional recipients. They will see the shared projects on their Inboxes screen, just as you do.

5. Share Google Docs Papers: The Google Account ID displays the address in your profile. If you do not have one listed here, enter your Google Doc address. This enables students who share projects with you to share their Google Docs papers with you, too.

6. Modify notecard instructions: You can personalize the notecard instruction headings by clicking the link "Show." You can customize the text in the fields for "Direct Quotation," "Paraphrase or summary," and "My Ideas."

7. Links to display for students: If there are any assignment-related links that you want students who share projects with this inbox to see, enter their description and URL. Some suggestions:

  • A research guide created for your class by librarians.
  • An assignment calendar. For example, in Google Calendar, you can create a new calendar for a specific assignment by selecting Settings > Calendar Settings > Calendars and clicking Create new calendar. After you create the calendar, go to the Calendar details screen and click HTML under Calendar Address. Copy and paste the link it gives you into the NoodleTools URL field.
  • The online assignment sheet for the project.
  • A “suggested resources” Web page.
  • A blog or wiki set up for the assignment.

8. Click Submit to add the new inbox to your Inboxes screen.

It would also be useful for you to read "How to share your project with a teacher" to understand how sharing works from the student point of view.

How to Share Your Inbox Information with Your Students

In order for students to share projects with you, tell the students what assignment inbox name to use. For example, your assignment sheet might say: “Share your work with me using the inbox name “Andersen ENG101 2015 - Hamlet.”

Students share a project from their Dashboard screen. To see how it works from the student perspective, see “How to share your project with a teacher.” Before you provide instructions to students, you may want to register your own student account, create, and share a "mock" project, so that you will understand how the process works. 

NOTE: If you are testing your inbox with a project you created, the project must be created in a separate account - not in your own account - in order to be able to share it with your inbox. Tip: You can create a teacher and a student account for yourself for testing purposes.

How to Use the Inbox Screen

Projects that are shared with you are grouped under Inboxes and sorted by the date of last revision (i.e., projects that have been edited most recently will appear at the top).

Inboxes
 

To improve readability when you have many classes sharing work with you, the individual projects under each inbox are hidden until you click the inbox’s name link that you wish to view. Each project inbox opens under a new tab with the name of the inbox.
 

To identify the author of each project, the student’s username followed by his or her real name (as they entered it) appears in parentheses in the Shared By column. In the Project title column, you’ll see the names the students gave to their project.

The Status column can have one of three values. Click the link to view a summary of its current status.

  • “New” – You have not viewed or added comments to the project yet.
  • “Viewed” – You have viewed the project, and the student/author has not made any revisions since that time.
  • “Revised” – The student/author has made revisions since you last viewed or added comments to the project.

NOTE: NoodleTools does not track whether the student has revised their Google Doc paper since you last looked at it, so the status will say “Revised” if the student has only changed their notecards, outline, or source list.

When the status link is clicked, a pop window shows a summary of this project: The status summary provides a link “View a 30-day history of work done this project,” which includes specific times that the author logged in, added/edited/removed citations, added/edited/removed notecards, and more.

Delete:You can remove a project that has been shared with you by clicking Delete at the right. If you do so, you will not be able to view it unless the student shares the project with you a second time.

How to View Students' Projects Via the Inbox

Projects shared with you are opened in read-only mode – you can view but not modify the student’s citations, notecards, and outline. There is one exception to this – if a student has shared a Google Docs paper as part of the project, you have full edit privilege on that document, allowing you to write comments and/or corrections directly on the document. (When a student shares a paper with you, you will get an invitation email from Google Docs to edit the document.)

Opening a Student's Project: On your Inboxes screen, click a student’s project’s title to open it. The first screen you will see is the student’s project’s Dashboard.

To identify that you’re viewing the project as a teacher, a "Teacher's view" label appears to the right of the name of the student who is sharing the project with you.


Viewing Sources & Notecards: To view the project’s sources or notecards, switch to the Sources or Notecards screen.

On the Source screen, the "Show" link in the Notecards column allows you to view notecards associated with a particular entry. To view all notecards that the student has created, click "Show/hide."


Viewing a Shared Paper: If the student has shared a paper with you, on the Dashboard screen, under Sharing and Collaboration > Sharing, it will display Shared on (date)

To open the paper, on the Dashboard, under Project details > Paper click “Open in Google Docs.” You will be prompted to log into your Google account. 

How to Archive and Unarchive Old Assignment Inboxes

You can archive assignment inboxes from previous semesters (as opposed to deleting them completely). An archived inbox will not show up in your Project inboxes screen, nor can students share work with it. This eliminates clutter from your screen and students will not be confused seeing inboxes from previous semesters.

To archive an assignment inbox, under its Options menu, select Archive.

You can always unarchive an Inbox to review student work from past classes, to find examples to show current students, or to add to their own portfolio. To view an archived Inbox, check the box next to Show archived inboxes in the upper right, and on its Option menu, select Unarchive.

How to View the Next Project in Your Inbox Without Returning to the Inboxes Screen

There are two ways to view the next project: 

1. When viewing a student project and you want to go to the next project in your inbox, click the Inbox navigator in the upper right corner. 

A popup window opens, displaying all projects that are in your inbox. Click any one of the projects to switch to it. 

2. Or, to move to the next modified project that you have not reviewed yet, click the green button.