Feedback

[alex_guillen]

Hello everyone,

Has anyone taken any of the ActivLearning courses? If so, what do you think about them, were they very useful, did you learn new things that you can now apply to your teaching?


I would really appreciate if you could send us some comments.

Regards

Alex

[SevenOfNine2008]

Hi,
I took the free Level 1 course, the Level 1 Advanced Course, and the Level 2 course. All of them dealt with the Activstudio program. I liked the courses. I learned about the features of the program, and had a chance to meet other teachers taking the courses. The pace was good. I did not feel stressed to finish the work. I was able to complete the work and have time to do things for my class and be with my family. In the level 2 course, there was a challenge activity section, which I really enjoyed.It allowed me push myself. I would have liked to have seen other people do it too so that we could talk about it and share ideas, but it was an optional thing. I hope this is helpful.

[alex_guillen]

Hello SevenOfNine,

Thanks very much for your comments. This feedback is very much appreciated it will allow us to improve our courses.

Just another question, have you been to any of the Activinspire courses?



Thanks


Regards

Alex

[SevenOfNine2008]

Hi Alex,
I took the 2 hour webinar for ActivInspire. It was very informative, and helped me to make sure I understood the basics of the program. It isn't a bad place to start.

[newsomj2]

I think the assessment is ridiculous with petty questions. WHO CARES WHAT THE EXACT NAME of the voter tool is??????

[tcusker]

Newsomj2,
Thank you for your comment. We have found that it is helpful to our users to name each tool by a single term, and encourage the use of the specific terms to better direct users. Many people refer to the pop-up (hover) labels when navigating the software and if there is any variance in terminology, it can be confusing. However, we appreciate you taking the time to help us remember that there may be some better questions we can include in the assessment. If you have any specific suggestions, we'd be happy to consider them.

[cjoshi8]

The question ---

about changing the look and feel to primary.....

I have answered -- from the dashboard,click the configure option and there is a checkbox to change the look and feel...... and which has been marked as wrong several times ....

Now what is the correct answer?

I have been a power user of studio and Inspire and think there is no other way to change the look and feel other than that mentioned above by me....

Help..!

Chaitanya Joshi

[anita jordan]

This is the worst training I have ever taken. for the following reasons.:

1. There is no sound.
Clicking to a silent screen does nothing for me, a computer illiterate person.

The answers are tricky. In # 1
I actually copied word for word the procedure for calibrating from your tutorial and it still was not the answer.

This was a throughally frustrating experiece in which I did numerous quizzes and guessed till I got the correct answer. Did I learn anything ? ABSOLUTLEY NOT.!!!!!!

Put sound on your tutorial and avoid written answers. If the exact wording is not used, even though the information is correct, the answer is marked incorrect.

[cjoshi8]

I agree with Anita...

I would have cleared this one in the first attempt itself but it required the "exact wording" and in one case only a SINGLE WORD............ and this is the same story with many of my collegues here....this quiz is really an eyewash...

Please note ,as advanced users of Activstudio and Inspire ,we expect better and more professional ways of finding out the skillset from users

I hope my comments are not too harsh but its better to call a spade a spade...

[Grahammon]

Sorry not impressed especially as this is a replacement for the documentation you once provided,
it's not clear what is to be done with the files at the beginning and I'm afraid I agree with the harsher comments. The flash animation for the pen and the expression are embarrassingly clunky and are superfluous.
I've gone through this to see what our staff will go through, I know Moodles Q&A is restrictive eg you want a one word answer for accessing Primary or Studio. but as you see from the comments it can be really frustrating for Staff.
I hope the paid for ones are better.

[Grahammon]

Completed the Level 1 Core skills course, comments above was for the introductory free course.
Felt it was better than the intro course, graphics were better.
One I don't like Snakes and was difficult doing parts of the tutorials. Felt like it was aversion therapy!!
Didn't happen often but one of the questions was what type of Arc is this I answered "closed arc" was marked as wrong when I redid answered "closed" and was marked as correct. Test engine should have more sophistication than that.
I do think the Questions should be random rather than retaking the same questions becomes too easy.

Just feel the tutorials are a little too amateurish and disapointing because of this.
That said there were some things I didn't know and picked up.

[Grahammon]

Advanced Skills section: I enjoyed this much more particularly the containers and restrictors from tutorial 15 or so onwards

[kpionessa]

The Introduction to ActivInspire course is inferior to its Activstudio counterpart. The lack of sound is a definite flaw. Also, in the Inserting resources section there is an error:

We are told to:


Open the 'Resource Browser'.
With 'Shared Resources' selected open the 'General' folder by clicking on the '+' button. Then open the 'People' folder.
Select the folder 'Boys'.
Select the 'Boy06.as2' image.

However, the 'Boy06.as2' image is not part of the Shared Resources which came from ActivStudio. It is in the Subjects folder that is a separate download for Inspire.

[Emina]

Yes I totally agree that the assessment quiz for the "An introduction to ActivInspire" course is confusing and frustrating.
In particular I refer to question 3 where it asks:
Where can you change the look and feel of the software from Studio to Primary?
They are after a one word answer which is "Configure".
Good Luck.

[halong]

Hi
I have enjoyed the Level 1 course and I liked the logical structure of it. I certainly learned a great deal about the features of ActivInspire. However I have just completed Advanced assessment and I ran into some trouble. On my first attempt I scored 92% so I took the assessment again. I have now completed this assessment 3 times with a score of 100% each time, but my assessment list still shows a red cross through the Advanced skills assessment. Is there an issue or have I missed something please?
Thanks, Heather

[rgrondin]

I had that problem on one course a while back. I was using Firefox. When I switched to Internet Explorer, it updated fine. Worth a shot!

[bluematrix83]

These assessments were terrible. The questions were often very unclear. Having gone through the tutorials, I was often sure that I knew the information but couldn't always understand what the questions were asking. Thus, the whole process took waaaaay too long. =(

[rosieroo]

:confused:Hi Anita

In regard to the calibration question, I am also having lots of problems with the wording for this questions. After many attempts I have given up guessing - any suggestions eg the answer

[simpal]

This is the worst training I have ever taken. for the following reasons.:

1. There is no sound.
Clicking to a silent screen does nothing for me.

This was a really frustrating experience in which I did numerous quizzes and guesses and still I don't know what is the correct answer.

Put sound on your tutorial and and to the learning process. If the exact wording is not used, even though the information is correct, the answer is marked incorrect. Why?
Can any one tell me the correct answer to what is used on the computer to calibrate the board . I used word for word what I was given and know and still the answer is wrong.

[awplant]

Hi

Sorry you didn’t enjoy the course. There are a number of reasons why our courses are presented in the way they are. We have been providing tutorials of this type for a number of years and in general we have had very positive feedback. We hope that asking teachers to proactively click through tutorials helps to reinforce the point being made rather than passively watching a recording. It actually takes us longer to make tutorials in this way than it would if we just recorded the whole process. We use text rather than sound simply because we have to produce these courses in 22 languages and it wouldn’t be feasible to commission the amount of voice over required for the courses to be used globally. We also felt it was useful to be able to print out the course content so teachers can use the training material with the actual software rather than the simulations we provide on the courses.

On the point about the quizzes. We do try to make the quiz questions as unambiguous as possible. The answer should always be found in the relevant tutorial. I know some teachers who are experienced with the software will attempt the quiz without doing the tutorials. This is fine but there may be terminology or techniques used in the tutorials that are different to the ones that they have experience using. As with any online quiz we are able to put in a limited number of alternative answers for each quiz question and if we haven’t got this right it’s good to know and we can work to improve this.

Sorry again that you haven’t enjoyed this course but please be assured we are aware of your concerns. Our purpose is to provide useful content that can help teachers get started with our hardware and software. We always looking at ways to improve this content so we will certainly take onboard any feedback from this forum.

Thanks.

[Christrt]

I must admit I enjoyed the old tutorials to the new ones. I would have liked to have the tutorial show you once then make you click through the steps on the remaining examples instead of having you click through the example the first time and then just watch the tutorial complete itself without the participant trying to remember the steps.

As an advanced user of the software, I don't have a problem with the questions being tricky but new users might stumble over the minute details such as the grouping box being yellowed out to show objects are grouped.

In the free course I didn't like that if you didn't pass the first time it held the answers so you only had to keep changing the wrong answer(s). I would have like to see something like a form A and form B so you would get a random set of questions each time from a database of questions. I think it would be more effective in the overall learning.

[awplant]

Thanks for that feedback Chris.

With the Introductory courses our main focus was to have them available as soon as ActivInspire was launched and in multiple languages. Previously it was months after the software was released before the tutorials were available and then only English. The new tutorials are designed with this in mind. There is a significant amount of content to produce as you can imagine as the software has to be recorded each time in the appropriate language. We do think though that the tutorials cover the key areas although I appreciate for power users they are of limited value.

The quizzes in the introductory course work in the following way. We have a question bank of around 40 questions. When you attempt the quiz you are presented with 10 randomly selected questions. If you do the quiz and get a couple of questions wrong you need to reattempt. However, on your next attempt you only need to get 2 right to pass the quiz. It’s not exactly what you’re asking for but better that than old quizzes we used.

As I mentioned previously we are constantly looking at ways to improve the courses so your feedback is appreciated.

[tjacobs@bryant]

Oh, my gosh!!!! The tutorial took my whole Sunday afternoon! The tutorial was very informative, but the test questions were just TOO MUCH! Many of the answers did not "fit" because they were not "worded" correctly. I am totally frustrated, but did finally make the 100%.
I can not wait to use my new board, but did NOT enjoy the tutorial!

[awplant]

HI
Sorry you struggled with the questions but at least the tutorials were informative :-) It would be helpful to know which course you were following e.g. Introduction or Level 1. If you could highlight some of the questions you had a problem we will certainly look look into this. Thanks for your feedback.

[DavidFhu]

I must admit I enjoyed the new tutorials. I hope that we have a area that we can discuss about some doubts we have for the lesson on the same website.

I notice that if I click on Profile, Blog follow by Add a new entry, I wonder is it an area that we can talk about the lesson and doubts.

If yes, I will recommend to place a link that people able to access it easiler. Thanks.

[awplant]

Hi David

Thanks for the feedback.

The blog facility is currently not used on the courses but maybe this is something that we could look at using in the future. For now, if you want to discuss anything about the courses then this forum is the best place to post this.

Thank you for the suggestion and comments.

[LisaD]

Or maybe in the new Community! There are forums under Products for both ActivInspire and Learner Response. You can join these two groups!

Lisa

[bennetty]

In response to the feedback we've had about the introductory course assessments, I am pleased to say these have now been updated.

The questions where you have to type in an answer have now been amended to allow a much broader choice of words with only one key word being the requirement.

Hope this solves the frustration so many of you have been experiencing.

Nicola Bennett
E-Learning Developer

[DavidFhu]

Hi, Adrian.

Thank you for your advice. I will do that.

Hi David

Thanks for the feedback.

The blog facility is currently not used on the courses but maybe this is something that we could look at using in the future. For now, if you want to discuss anything about the courses then this forum is the best place to post this.

Thank you for the suggestion and comments.

[jennyjennyjenny]

I am having a terrible time with this course. I took the first assessment and for number three all of the answers were wrong. Please assist me.


Jennifer Hayes

[awplant]

Hi Jennifer

Sorry to hear you are struggling, could you let me know which course you are doing e.g. Introduction or level 1 (Studio or Primary).

Thanks.

[DavidFhu]

Hi, Jennifer.

I am sorry to hear that you struggle with the lesson. It is unlikely to have any faulty with the question as I have complete both ActivInspire (Primary) and (Studio) Level 1 questions. Unless you are talking about other level.

Please share with us what is wrong.

I am having a terrible time with this course. I took the first assessment and for number three all of the answers were wrong. Please assist me.


Jennifer Hayes

[dannabeck]

I was very frustrated by the entire experience. You need to start with the big picture - which course a person needs (primary or studio??), a description of each button, etc. It does me no good to click a mouse and watch a pen move. I need sound, and I need to be able to search for myself and to know what I am looking for. When I finally realized there were flipcharts on which to practice, my toolbars did not look the same as the ones on the tutorial. It was not explained to me 1) that I needed to download software, and 2) that I needed an ActiveHub to complete the tutorial. In addition, some of the instructions were incorrect. It took 4 of us, including 2 technology people, to get this figured out. Not a good first impression!

[awplant]

Thanks for getting in touch. I’m assuming you are referring to the Introductory Course which includes information about our learner response systems (ActivHub). The aim of the Introductory course is to help get you started with the ActivInspire and you can follow the course without downloading the software. There is an option to print out this course material. You can install the software, print out the tutorials and then work through them with the software; we provided the flipcharts to help with this. We do use the default toolbars in these recording but it is possible for the software to be configured differently. If you have found problems with the instructions I’m very keen to know about this. I’d appreciate it if you get let me know either in this forum or via email activlearningonline@Prometheanworld.com. Just one final thought you might find the 'Migrating to ActivInspire' courses helpful and there is also ‘Activtips’ which you can search through and does include sound.

[prhartfiel]

The training was ok- I would like a simple screen of the various icons and their purpose - I did have a problem getting the assessment to take the correct answer on one -- I decided to try a different answer -- then I simply chose it again as I knew that it was the roll up/down icon -- it did accept it on the 3rd try. Thanks.