Visibility: Roles, Groups, Experiences

Overview

This article describes how learning experiences and student work become visible and actionable for Advisors on the Work To Do Tab, Students Tab, and Experiences Tab. It is a guide for how to configure Foundry to fit your school’s desired workflow.

Contents

• Definitions: Roles, Groups, Group Members, Student Work: Visible/Actionable
• Data Table Tabs
• Group Configuration for Visibility and Actionability
• Visibility Through Experience Membership

Definitions

 

Roles

In Foundry, roles define the status and permissions that allow users to do their particular work: Admin, Advisor, Student, Parent, Coach. Some users may have multiple roles, e.g., Admin/Advisor, Parent/Coach.

Groups

Groups bring users into relationship with one another. If users are not in a group together, they will not have access to each other or have the ability to share work. 

Group Members

Group Members can be classified in one of three ways: Students, Guides, or Managers.

Group Students

Group Students are the students selected as members of the particular group. Selecting them brings them into relationship with the other Students, Guides, and Managers of the group.

Group Guides

Group Guides are users in the Advisor, Parent, and/or Coach roles. Guides act as teachers, facilitators, mentors who support and guide the work of the student. This gives them visibility into student work, but they will not see student work on their Work to Do page unless they are part of experiences by virtue of creating or being attached to them.

Group Managers

Users with the dual roles of Advisor and Admin can be configured as Group Managers. This gives them actionable access to all student work in that Group. Manager status is set on a group-by-group basis.

Student Work

Student Work always exists within the context of an Experience. That is, logs, journals, evidence, and tasks*  are always connected to and visible within an experience – like a project, course, seminar – any experience form found under 'Create an Experience.'

Note: On the student PLP page, goals that students create and complete are technically considered tasks. These goals appear in the Tasks List on the Work To Do page when students mark them as “complete;” however, unlike other tasks, they are not associated with experiences. On the Tasks List these two types of tasks are each distinguished by an icon:

Experiences tasks   

PLP Goals tasks 

Visible Work

Student Work is visible to an Advisor whenever the student is in a group together with that Advisor.  

Actionable Work

Student Work is actionable for an Advisor whenever the Student and Advisor are assigned to the same group or learning experience: exchanging work items, comments, resources, editing, evaluating. As described above, student work is also actionable to an Advisor/Admin designated as a Group Manager, for every student in that group. 

Caution: Even if an advisor is not attached to a specific learning experience belonging to a student in one of their groups, the Advisor will be able to see that experience, edit the experience, and evaluate targets, grades, and credits for that student. 

Using a traditional "class-subject" model as an example, a "Science" class teacher would be able to edit and/or evaluate "English" classes for one of her students, because they have a group relationship in which the Advisor is a group "Guide," even though no particular "English" learning experience previously had that Advisor attached. Once the Advisor modifies that experience - by editing or evaluating data - she is now attached to it and will see work related to that experience in her Work To Do table. 

Foundry Admins should counsel Advisors of this property in Foundry, and should establish internal guidelines for Advisors accessing student work that they are not generally intended to modify.

Back to Contents

Data Table Tabs

Understanding the purposes of each of the Advisor data table tabs in Foundry helps to clarify visible and actionable work. The data tables are the first leftmost three tabs in the Advisor view.

Work To Do Tab

This data table represents to the Advisor any work a Student has sent to that Advisor for review; it also shows any status changes in Experiences and Tasks. All of this work is actionable by the Advisor. The data can be filtered by student name, by group, or by type of work. The Work To Do tab displays submitted student work that the Advisor has not yet set as "completed" (for experiences), "verified" (for tasks) or "seen" (for journals, logs, and evidence). When the Advisor checks in the work, the data representing that work leaves the Work to Do page but persists on the Students page.

Note: Regardless of student/advisor group affiliation, the Work to Do page will show work from only those students who are members of experiences the advisor has assigned or approved. 

Read more in detail about the Work to Do page here.

Students Tab

This data table represents an archive of work of each Student with whom an Advisor has a group relationship. All of the Experiences (of any status), as well as all the work (tasks, logs, journals, and evidence) are both viewable and actionable. Student Work continues to be added to this archive as it is completed and Set as Seen by the Advisor. The data can be filtered by time, student name, and group.

Read more in detail about the Students page here.

Experiences Tab

This data table represents an archive of all of a student’s Experiences of any status as well as all of the work related to those experiences: tasks, logs, journals, evidence. Work also continues to be added to this archive as it is changed or completed. The data can be filtered by time, student name, experience name, experience status, group.

Read more in detail about the Experiences page here.

Back to Contents

Group Configuration for Visibility and Actionability

To be properly related in Groups, users must have their appropriate Roles assigned to them. Navigate to Admin > Users > Create User (or Edit User) to assign or change user roles. For further details on Creating Users, see Add a New User. For further details on editing existing users, see Manage User Profiles.

Users are added to Groups to create relationships for visibility and actionability. Navigate to Admin > Groups > Create Group to select group members and classifications. For more detail on creating groups, see Create Groups; for more on editing groups, see Edit a Group.

The result of creating the group is that it brings the members into relationship with one another. 

Visibility Through Experience Membership 

When advisors or students create a learning experience, they automatically become associated with the experience and have visibility on the experience. Advisors on the experience also have actionability on the experience, whether they created it, were added to it by a student or another advisor, and regardless of whether they are designated as Group Manager (see above). 

We recommend that advisors add themselves and other advisors to the experience when creating it or approving it for a student. This makes the names of the advisors visible for clarity of responsibility.  

Members can be added to the experience individually or as part of an entire group.

Suggested Reading:

Note: Articles linked here under "Suggested Reading" are chosen by Foundry Support team members for their relevance and are updated as needed. The articles listed here may differ from those on the right side of the page, where the Knowledge Base AI lists "Related Articles." 

Work to Do Page

Create a New Group

Labels: groups, visibility, work-to-do_page, roles,