Adam Bilsky
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Overview
Welcome to your Advisor role! This article will introduce you to the basics of working as an Advisor in Foundry, orient you with the general layout of the site, and direct you to the first steps of learning each aspect of the software.
General Note: If you see a feature here that is not on your Foundry site, don't worry! Because Foundry is a highly configurable platform, your school or organization may not be using all the features and pages described here.
Contents
Learning the Advisor Role in Foundry
Background
First things (perhaps) first: why does Foundry use the term 'Advisor'? You may refer to yourself as a teacher, while other learning organizations may use mentor, guide, educator, or counselor. In fact, Foundry is so adaptable that it can work in any organization that depends on a relationship between teacher/student, trainer/trainee, mentor/mentee, etc., not only a school.
As an Advisor (whichever term applies to your employment), your work is diverse, complex, and challenging, and it sometimes feels never-ending. So much of your responsibility has nothing to do with computers, data, or applications. Foundry is designed to adapt to your workflow and simplify the job of creating and assigning meaningful student learning experiences through simple-to-use forms, managing workflow, and evaluating work both on the fly - as it enters your inbox - or in bulk.
The Advisor role in Foundry is designed not only to assign, evaluate, and report on work, but also to keep you in touch with your students/mentees/advisees while they progress through that work. Messaging and threaded chat features enable formative discussions between and among users, highlighting your essential role in helping them navigate the learning journey, not simply serving as gatekeeper at the end.
That said, understand that where Foundry (and this Knowledge Base) most predominantly use the terms 'Advisor' and 'Student,' they represent whatever dichotomy of terms used in your orgnization.
Learning the Advisor Role in Foundry
This article may or may not be your first exposure to the Knowledge Base. We have designed and organized it to serve as not only a reference but also a roadmap to your growth as a Foundry user. While there is, of course, no right way to learn to use new software, the following progression suggests, with increasing specificity and relevance to your role as an advisor, a way to add skill and expertise with efficiency in mind. Think of it as a Foundry 101 syllabus. After you take the site tour that follows, click the links in the below list to start your Foundry journey!
A video will be posted here soon to provide a warmer introduction. Stay tuned!
The Basics of Foundry
This index will help you understand broadly where articles are located based on function and role. You can always use the 'search' function, but understanding how this Knowledge Base is organized will help you learn faster!
Write Effective Support Requests
When you can't find the answers you want, or when things aren't going right, sending a well-crafted support ticket can go along way to resolving the issue quickly.
'Advisor' isn't the only term that may be a Foundry idiosyncrasy. Review the glossary so you know what the Knowledge Base article references mean.
Learning Plans: An Introduction
As an Advisor, you may or may not be directly involved in creating or assigning Learning Plans - this is an Admin role feature - but understanding how they work and how your students' experiences should be designed to help complete them is essential to the advisor's role.
Visibility: Groups, Roles, Experiences
Group relationships in Foundry are how advisors 'see' students and their work. Visibility explains why you might see students to whom you don't provide direct instruction.
This is your Foundry 'nerve center' - where you look to see who's done what and when. Designed to allow you to stay in one place while reviewing many assignments.
Create Your First Learning Experience
Learning Experiences are the heart of the Foundry workflow. This article will teach you the very basics, and accompanying articles help you progress to more nuanced and complex tools and approaches.
Performance data depends on consistent and timely work evaluation. Tips and tools for evaluating as you go to avoid grading 'bottlenecks' as well as guidelines for reporting accuracy.
Performance Page: Introduction
The Performance page graphically displays student evaluation data, with graphs for both completion and quality. Multiple filters allow you to see everything all at once or narrow down to a few data points.
Experiences: Manage Student Work on the Experiences Page
The Work To Do page keeps you moving, but the Experiences page holds each experience and lets you get your work done from a slightly different perspective, depending on your work style.
This is a repository of all your students' work, not only the most current. It also links to each student's individual Personal Learning Plan page.
A powerful way to communicate with students with direct connections to their work.
A broad communication tool you can use with all Foundry users.
There are many types of transcripts and progress reports built into Foundry, each with a different focus, depending on your needs.
You'll find that each Knowledge Base section containing the articles above contains more in-depth articles about additional features and tools available to you. However, if you work through each of the above and practice using the tools described, you should have a good sense of how Foundry works. You can move forward in any order you see fit after that, depending on your school setup, your primary responsibilities, and your students' needs.
Site Tour
Info Bar
At the very top of every page is the black “Info” bar, where (from left to right) you'll see your school/site name, the Foundry messages button (the Foundry icon), notifications (bell), messages (envelope), Quick Actions Menu, Knowledge Base (Help), and profile manager (your name).
- Foundry Messages are used by the Foundry staff to inform you of updates, maintenance, and (though they are seldom), site issues like outages or slowdowns.
- Notifications are automated messages of work actions taken by students or colleagues, such as when students request a new learning experience or submit one for evaluation; students also receive notifications when their advisors approve, return, edit, or complete experiences.
- Messages are direct communications from students or fellow advisors.
- The Quick Actions menu is accessible from any page within Foundry and allows you to take very common actions, like creating a new experience, adding tasks to an experience, generating reports and transcripts, and other options.
- The Help button allows you to search this Knowledge Base for assistance with Foundry features and FAQ's.
- The Profile Manager allows you to switch profiles (if you have other roles, such as Admin or Parent). You can also change your password and default student sort order. To edit your other user settings, however, a user with Admin privileges (if you don't also have them) can make necessary changes. [Note: The 'Connect with Google' feature is currently being re-developed by our engineering team, so if it returns an error when you click it, that is normal. We will post an update when appropriate.]
Back to Contents
Nav Bar
The Nav bar (Green for Advisors) is below the Info Bar, and comprises five primary sections, or pages (from left): Work To Do, Students, Experiences, Performance, and Portfolio. Additional pages contain a Calendar and a Resources link, and a 'How To' button that will open a quick help video for the page you are currently viewing. The current page (or tab) will be highlighted, as with the Work To Do page above.
As you grow to higher levels of Foundry use, you will also be able to generate reports and transcripts, assign students self-assessments, and explore the Warehouse - where you can search other learning experiences created by other advisors at your school, or save a copy of your own there.
Advisor Pages
Work To Do
The Work To Do page (sometimes abbreviated as WTD) is like your central working inbox - the interactive table on this page will update as students complete segments of learning experiences (logs, journals, tasks, evidence), and request new experiences or submit them for evaluation. When you first view your Foundry page, the WTD page will be empty - students only appear listed on this page when they have submitted work.
This article details how to use the Work to Do page.
Students
The Students page, by contrast, is more like an interactive repository of all your students’ work - including work in progress. You will see all your students here, regardless of whether they have started any work. The filters provide clarity by allowing you to switch between groups of students and time ranges. It also allows you to sort work by type, interact directly with students and their learning experiences, and view their most recent login date.
This article details how to use the Advisor's Student Page.
The Students page also links to each student’s Portal, where you can view Foundry as your students view it, while remaining logged in as an Advisor. You can navigate any page they can see, perhaps most critically their Personal Learning Plan (PLP) page.
The PLP in Foundry is like a student Profile page. Schools can customize it for various purposes, but it will hold each student’s photo, personal statement, individual academic, personal, and social goals, list and link to active in-progress learning, and display other academic progress and custom information. Its main purpose is to allow students to personalize their learning journey.
While connected to a student's Portal, you are also able to ‘contribute’ work on their behalf - like completing a journal or even submitting an experience. This can be helpful if a student is experiencing technical or other difficulties preventing them from doing work in Foundry, but it is also a very helpful way for you to experiment with the workflow between students and advisors without constantly switching between accounts and logging in and out.
This article details how to use the Personal Learning Plan page.
Experiences
The Experiences page holds all the learning experiences with which you are associated - whether you created them, a student proposed them, or another advisor added you to them. All experiences in every stage of development are shown here, with filters for date range and completion status, as well as table sorters for work type and due date, and a text search box as well.
This article details how to use the Experiences Page.
Performance
The Performance page displays in multiple graphic formats both how much work your students have completed and how well they have completed it. The page shows both quantity of work completion and quality of work on content and skills targets, as well as credits, along with assessments (if your school uses that Foundry feature) and comments. You can use the page to view student work completion as individuals or to compare among group members working toward similar objectives. You can also use it to identify trends in individual or group performance.
This article (and related articles) details how to use the Performance page.
Portfolio
The Portfolio is a repository of individual student work. At the time of this publication, it is undergoing significant redevelopment, but it works essentially like the Students page but for one student at a time.
This article details how to use the Portfolio.
Calendar
This article details how to use and edit the Calendar.
Resources
The Resources page allows you and Admin users to add persistent resources you expect your students to use frequently - not just for a single experience or content area. Examples might include login links to external learning software platforms, such as No Red Ink or Khan Academy, writing style manuals, your school or district homepage, etc.
This article details how to use and edit the Resources page (link pending).
Next Steps
To see Foundry in action, you will need data, and data is produced as students complete Learning Experiences and you evaluate them. We recommend you return to the top of this article to review the Foundry 101 "syllabus."
If you prefer to just start, this introductory article and video will help you get started on how learning experiences are created, assigned, and evaluated. Especially you are brand new to using Foundry, we recommend you start with this then move on to creating a more complex experience and experimenting with workflow.
Labels: advisor, introduction, beginner, novice,
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