Carolina Science Online – Instructor Resources
This course contains Carolina Science Online lab manuals which are linked in Canvas via LTI. This represents a slight change to our prior workflow with Carolina labs.
In the past, students would download PDF files of the lab manuals and fill out word documents manually to generate their lab reports for submission. Now, students will proceed through an interactive lab manual through Carolina’s Gateway platform, which is linked from Canvas for each lab.
Once they’ve completed a lab they will download their Lab Notebook from within Gateway and upload that Lab Notebook PDF to Canvas for grading.
Note that grading must still be performed manually by the instructor as before. The difference is in how students generate their Lab Notebook documents (formerly filling out word docs) and how instructors access the Answer Keys for reference during grading.
Links to answer keys are provided in the Faculty Resources module in Canvas.
Instructor Portal and Grading Process
With the update to “LTI 1.3”, instructors now have access to an Instructor Portal or “back end” view, which grants instructors the ability to track student progress directly within Carolina’s platform.
Important Note:
While the Portal also contains its own gradebook and grading interface, all of our grading will continue to take place in Canvas.
Any grading done within Carolina’s Portal will not be recorded in Canvas and will not count toward the student’s final grade. We will continue to have students download and submit PDF Lab Notebook files to Canvas and grade these files against the rubrics in Canvas, using the Canvas Gradebook.
Here is the process as outlined in Carolina’s existing support resources:
…students should be instructed to download their lab notebooks from the lab manual upon completion of the activities. Create an assignment where students can then upload their lab notebook file to you for grading.
To download their lab notebook, the student will:
- Open the Lab Notebook tool in the lab manual.
- Use the arrow buttons in the notebook window to navigate to the last page of the notebook. This last page has a Notes field and a Print button at the bottom of the page.
- Click “Print”.
- Print the notebook to a PDF. The file name should be changed to something descriptive or using directions given by their instructor. The location in which the file is saved should be noted.
Then, direct students to upload the PDF to the assignment you created in your LMS.
Please also note that the Portal is a new feature, and Carolina’s team is working on creating numerous resources to support instructors. We will share those documents and resources with you as soon as they become available. Until that time, Carolina has provided this brief overview video introducing some of the improvements with the move to LTI 1.3.
The assignment configuration steps have been completed for you, and there should be no initial setup required in your course. Everything should be ready for both instructors and students to access.
