Every facilitator has their own style and approach. Not to mention learners have different needs and courses have specific setups. So you'll likely find (or have already found) your own rhythm to keep on top of facilitating your courses. But below we've got some suggestions to hopefully help save you some time so you can focus on helping learners.
Note: This article makes use of features only available using our new tasks such as the Marking tab. If you're facilitating a course using legacy activities, you'll still be able to make use of all the other options. If you're not sure, check out How can I tell if my course is a legacy or tasks course?
You'll also be able to find "how-tos" and more information for each area by following the relevant links.
Daily activities
Below are some of the places you might want to visit or check on a daily basis so you can respond to learners quickly. These are reactive actions. That is, you're reacting to a learners' action. For instance, they posted a question in a talk channel or submitted a task for feedback.
Depending on how large and active your class is, this could take anywhere from 5 minutes to a few hours. If you're finding you're at the longer end of this time frame, we're guessing it's most of that time is spent on feedback. If so, check out our article Faster, smarter feedback for other ideas that might save you time.
Notifications
Log in and take a look at your notifications.
Scan first to see if there are any posts directly to you (via the private facilitation channel). Use the link in the notification to take you directly to the post and answer those first.
Each time you've done one, just open the notifications again, scan for the next and click that one.
When you've gone through the post notifications, check for submissions on manually marked tasks. As with posts, use the link, read through each, give feedback if useful, and mark.
Talk
Whether new items in talk channels show up in notifications depends on if you've subscribed to that channel and whether it was a new post or just a reply. For this reason, I find it easier to just look for that green dot on Talk, then just scan through to find the new things and see whether facilitation intervention is required.
Activity Feed
Activity feed shows any new social notes. As with talk channels, you're generally just wanting to scan to see if intervention is required.
Select discussion pages
Discussions at the bottom of content pages are most easily managed if you're only checking a couple daily. If your learners are in a cohort, this should just be the one(s) they come across in this week (ish). Open Contents and navigate straight to those pages. Scan for required intervention.
Weekly activities
Below are some of the things to check on to look for patterns. These require less immediate actions and aren't in response to a specific action from learners. Instead, you're looking at how or if you might need to change your facilitation approach. These are the sorts of things to do when you're wondering:
How's the class going? Are they generally on track?
Is there a particular page/task that's being a barrier to learners?
What patterns or trends can I see?
Marking tab
To limit notification overload, we don't notify you of completion of automarked tasks. So it's a good idea to, scroll through Marking, in general, to look for patterns.
When I scroll down the list are the numbers of learners that have completed roughly the same?
Are there any tasks with really low completion? Do you need to send a prompt or give some guidance in a talk channel?
Can I see where the numbers quickly drop off to see, in general, where the class is up to? Are they on track?
Now focussing on roughly where your learners are working for the week, spend some time opening up each of those tasks.
Are there any learners often not completing? Do you need to reach out to those learners personally and offer support?
Are all (or a handful of) learners having to have multiple attempts at a task? Are these misconceptions to address with current learners? Or does the task need redesign? e.g. clearer instructions, more scaffolding before the task.
Are there any patterns in what learners are getting wrong in automarked tasks? As with above, address with learners, or address with course design?
Class insights
Head to the Class console to look at progress and class insights available for facilitators. You can check here to see which learners might need your support or guidance using a variety of filters covering content, social and assessment interaction. Use these to help you find out:
Are there any learners who might be struggling? Is this due to content difficulty, engagement or a bit of both?
Are there any learners who might be just rushing through the course, but not completing tasks? Is this an issue for the learning outcomes and assessment?
Are there any learners that look like they're excelling? Do they want more of a challenge?
Summary
We hope that by dividing up the activities into daily and weekly you might save time in switching between the items that require specific attention and when you're looking to identify patterns more broadly.