Using Workspace day to day Follow

In this article:

Setting Workspace up for success

Starting the day with Workspace

Managing students’ assignments

Archiving the Workspace

 

What does using Hāpara Workspace look like from day to day? What tips do you need to know to support the learning experience and your students’ success? Use the following best practices and strategies to guide you through using Workspace. 

Setting Workspace up for success

Publishing the Workspace

Making your Workspace available to students is called “publishing.” After you finish creating your Workspace, setting up class or student groups and adding Workspace Cards, you are ready to publish. 

To publish a Workspace:

• On the Workspace’s main page, click the blue Publish button on the top right.

• Or on the Workspace homepage, find the Workspace. > Click the Draft button on the Workspace panel. > Select Published.

How students access the Workspace

To help students access Workspace:

1. Have them log in to their school Google account.

2. Then have them visit mystudentdashboard.com.

This will take them to their Student Dashboard page. This page will show them their individual active Workspaces. They can click on any of those Workspaces to open them and start exploring.

Preview Workspace as a student

If Workspace is new for your students, it is a great idea to walk them through what they will see and do when working on the Workspace. When you open the Workspace in your teacher account, you can preview the Workspace as a student. This will show you exactly what the student sees, and you can walk students through the Workspace Cards, Workspace Columns and sections (if applicable). 

If you created Workspace Cards for different groups, be sure to explain to the class that different students may see different content.

To preview a Workspace as a student:

1. In your teacher account, open the Workspace.

2. On the left-side menu, go to the Groups section.

3. Click the arrow to the left of the group name. This will expand the list of students.

4. Click the eye icon. In a new tab, this will open a preview of the Workspace as the student sees it.

Set expectations and establish procedures for digital learning

Making sure students understand how to be safe, responsible and respectful online is so important in today’s digital world. Digital learning presents new management challenges for teachers to consider, so plan to spend some time introducing your Workspace and any new tools students will be using while they work on it. 

As teachers, we need to ensure students have the skills they need to be successful digital citizens.

• Communicate when students should be on devices.
• Clarify when it is OK to use earbuds.
• Give instructions about which apps or sites can be used.
• Explain expectations for collaboration between students and groups.
• Help students understand how to manage their time online.
• Teach students how to be safe, respectful and responsible online.
• Support students in setting goals for themselves.
• Explain what happens when students submit work late.
• Communicate what the consequences are for not following expectations and procedures.

Starting the day with Workspace

Anticipatory set

Whether you refer to it as a bell ringer, warm up, hook, do now or set induction, this part of a lesson or unit serves the same purpose. It cues students up for what they will be learning in the Workspace and activates prior knowledge or interest. 

In Workspace, you can add an Evidence Card with your bell ringer or warm-up activity and include a Google file, link or file from your computer.

There are also some great tools and apps that you can include to make your anticipatory set interactive and fun.

Tools and apps	Description and examples
Edpuzzle	Edpuzzle allows you to create interactive video lessons that students can watch and engage with through embedded question types.  It is an easy way to take a short creative video and add in interactive questions to captivate your students’ attention or assess their prior knowledge at the beginning of class.
Padlet	Padlet is a digital bulletin board where all students can respond and comment on each others’ posts. With Padlet, you can create a prompt for ideas and collaboration.  Students can also add rich multimedia notes with images, videos, audio and more. Kick off class for the day by creating a collaborative “What do you know about …” Padlet to activate prior knowledge. Encourage students to add personal experiences, facts, images and videos.
AnswerGarden	AnswerGarden provides students with a quick way of responding to a prompt. They can then see how their short answers and brainstorming compare to others in the class.  This tool gives you immediate information about what students are thinking represented as a growing word cloud.
Flipgrid	With Flipgrid, you can engage students from the start by giving them the opportunity to create a short video response, interact with others and share their thinking.  Show a picture and have students share what they see, think or wonder. You can also ask students how they feel about a topic, what they know and what they want to know.  Or show pictures and ask students which one doesn’t belong and have them justify their reasoning.

 

Communicate goals and objectives

Sharing goals and objectives explicitly with students helps them understand where the Workspace is going and enables them to take charge of their own learning. 

In Workspace, you can create Goal Cards that state your objectives. Then you can ask students to discuss them when they start the Workspace or the Workspace section. 

          

Agenda for the day

It is important that students understand exactly what they will be doing in a Workspace in order to be successful and know how they will achieve the goals. If Workspace is new for your students, it is helpful to walk them through what Workspace Cards they need to explore and engage with.

Agenda ideas:

• Provide a checklist on the board of what students must complete for the day and may complete if time allows.
• Create a road map that displays the start of class to the end of the class, stops along the way and the final destination for the day.
• Take a screenshot of the Workspace Cards students must explore and complete for the day. Display them on the board for everyone to see.

Managing students’ assignments

Keeping track of progress and providing feedback

When students are deeply engaged in the Workspace content and making progress on assessments, how can you manage all of their digital activities? 

To monitor students’ digital work on a day-to-day basis, you can use the following Workspace tools.

Activity Summary tab

This shows you information such as overdue assessments and submitted assessments and allows you to manage feedback and grading.

• You can view overdue assessments, recent student activity on assessments, submitted assessments and grades. 
• In the Submitted evidence window, you can click on an assessment name. > Then click the Open button at the top to view the assessment and leave feedback.

Individual Activity tab

This shows you individual Student Tiles that help you manage progress, feedback and grading. 

• You can see which assessments a student has started or submitted. 
• Hover over any assessment to see a preview.
• Click on an assessment name. > Then click the Open button at the top to view the assessment and leave feedback.

Activity status on Evidence Cards

• You can see live information about the specific assignment students are working on. 

• The card will show you how many students have Started, Submitted and been Assessed (how many grades you have returned). 
• Click on the status of the assessment you want to view. 
• You will see a list of students for the status you selected. 

• Filter the assessment by group using the drop-down menu. 
• Preview the assessment by hovering over it.
• Click on the assessment to open the file and give feedback. 

Chunking tasks to support time management skills

Executive functioning skills are the basis for planning, organizing, initiating and following through with tasks and assignments. Students are not born with executive functioning skills, but they start to learn them early on as they navigate their world.

We can support students developing executive functioning skills through our instruction. One way to do this is by chunking larger tasks into smaller pieces on multiple Evidence Cards. This helps students with a crucial executive functioning skill, time management.

Helping students track their own progress

You can also create a tracker to help students take ownership of completing larger assignments. The tracker can be a simple spreadsheet on an Evidence Card with space for students to create to-do lists, prioritize tasks and come up with due dates.

Ongoing teacher check-ins

To become a facilitator of learning (instead of the traditional, instructor role), you and your students will need to know exactly where they are in the learning process on a daily basis. 

You can create a daily check-in assignment on an Evidence Card using Google Sheets or Forms. The check-in sheet can be a collaborative document that includes all of your students. 

At the end of each class, students complete the sheet indicating their current status (I need help, working on it, or completed) for each Workspace assignment from the day.

Returning work and grades

Your Workspace most likely includes formative and summative assessments. To help students with their progress along the way, you’ll want to add grades in a timely manner and return the work as assessed. You can also return an assessment for editing if you want a student to try working on it again.

Workspace allows you to add grades and return work with the following tools:

• Activity Summary tab
• In the Submitted evidence window, click on the Grade Sheet button to see a full list of grades and enter a grade.
• Add the student’s grade directly in the text box under the Assessment column on the right.
• Click Return for edit to have the student continue working on the assessment.
• Click Return final once the assessment has been graded. This will alert the student that their assessment has been graded.

• Activity Status in an Evidence Card 
• Click the Grade Sheet button to see a full list of grades and enter a grade.
• Select a student name > Then click Submit for student(s) if a student forgot to submit their assessment to you.

Archiving the Workspace

When your class or classes have finished a Workspace, you can archive the Workspace. This keeps your Workspace homepage organized with only current Workspaces.

To archive a Workspace:

• In your published Workspace, click the white Archive button on the top right.   

• From the Workspace homepage, click the drop-down menu on a Workspace panel. > Select Archive.

Note: Once you archive a Workspace, the Workspace Cards become “view only.” Students can no longer add or submit work.