Adam Bilsky
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Overview
This article describes how the Tasks feature works in Foundry, and how Tasks are connected to Learning Experiences.
Contents
Completing and Verifying Tasks
Purpose of Tasks
Tasks are an important and versatile tool to help both teachers and students plan and divide their work, for students to set personal, academic, and even social goals, and for teachers to set expectations for completing work in an experience. They offer a good deal of flexibility and the capacity to differentiate work.
Task Types and Assignment
Essentially, tasks are assigned three ways: in the original design of an experience, after the experience has been assigned, or through the Personal Learning Plan (PLP) page. Both advisors and students can assign tasks each of these ways.
Experience Plan Tasks
Both teachers and students can add tasks to an experience plan before it is assigned or requested (respectively). Not all experience plan forms contain built-in tasks, however. The way your experience forms are designed determines how tasks are added to experiences and what form they take, but all experience tasks have some features in common:
- Required start and end date (the "task timeline" part of the task type).
| Note: To appropriately assign a task, there must be an end date, or the task will not be assigned. A start date is optional, and the start date selector appears if you select "Add more details..." |
- Tasks can be assigned to one or more students.
- Tasks be marked as "deliverable." This adds a visible star to the Work tab of the Experience plan to which it is attached, indicating its importance. Note: This acts like a 'guidepost,' not a 'guardrail.' Foundry will not prevent the student from submitting the experience if the deliverable task is not marked complete or verified.
To mark a task as deliverable, click 'Add More Details' when creating the task, and check the 'Is this deliverable' box:
- Tasks can be selected to be completed collaboratively. This means if one student marks the task as complete, the advisor on the experience will see that all students have completed the task. To mark a task as collaborative, check the 'Collaboratively complete task' in the same box as pictured above.
The above options and requirements apply to all tasks assigned to an experience, whether they are attached to a form or added later.
The other three task types available only in an experience planning form are as follows:
- Task with time estimate: This gives students an expectation of how long the task should take to complete.
- Task with specified documentation: This tells the students how they are to indicate task completion - e.g., "Write a journal," "Upload a document," etc. Note: The documentation specified does not appear on the experience plan once assigned, but the documentation will appear on the task itself, both on the Work-to-Do page and on the Experiences page. Mouse-over the task name to see the documentation needed:
- Task with content targets: This attaches the target chooser to a specific task, if you want to evaluate specifically. On the experience planning form, they work the same way as the content or skills targets choosers, and they look like this:
It is critical that after you finish adding targets you click "add task," or the targets will not display in the experience form and will not be evaluable.
When submitted, the target attached to the task will appear on the evaluation screen like other targets and skills assigned to the experience. When evaluated, they will appear on the Performance page like other evaluated targets.
"Free-floating" Tasks
These are not truly free-floating - as all tasks have to be attached to an experience or to the PLP page as a goal. They are simple tasks that can be assigned after the experience plan is created and assigned. Note: only the basic task type can be added this way - for example, the target chooser cannot be added to a task in this way.
Watch the brief video below to show how tasks can be attached to an experience, as well as how they are completed and verified. Each step is also detailed below the video.
You can assign such a task from the Quick Actions menu:
and then choose the experience to which it should be associated. Foundry requires an experience to be selected before proceeding.
You can also select the experience first, then choose 'Add Task' from the Experience Actions menu.
In either case, refer to the requirements and options described above for each task you want to add.
PLP Page Tasks (Goals)
When students or advisors set personal, academic, or social goals for students - from the Personal Learning Plan page - they are technically designated as tasks. The PLP displays the user who created the task in the main view and on mouseover of the task itself:
When a student marks one of those tasks as "complete," those advisors who have a group relationship with the student will see the task as complete and can verify it.
Tasks added as goals on the PLP page appear like this:
Completing and Verifying Tasks
Both students and advisors can mark a student task as 'complete.' Advisors can verify a task is complete from the Work to Do, Students, Experiences or Portfolio pages - essentially anywhere a completed task can be displayed.
The video below shows a student completing a task, and an advisor verifying a task. Advisors can also complete tasks on behalf of students, but - unlike with journals, logs, or evidence - Foundry does not show that the task was completed by the Advisor.
Suggested Reading
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Labels: tasks, experiences,
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