Online journals are a private forum between you and your students. They are a fantastic tool that allows you to assess student learning on a frequent basis as well as gain insight into a student's interests, concerns, and values. Students often use an online journal to analyze and respond to the course readings. This tutorial explains how to create a private online journal in Bb Vista. Various features are covered, but not all. For more detailed information, download part of our Bb Vista training manual. This section can be found in the Communicating with Students section.There is also the online Bb Vista Help feature. When in the discussion tool, select the Help link at the top of the screen. You will find valuable information to help you set up your grade book.
How Do I Create a Private Online Journal Using Bb Vista?
- Log into Bb Vista by typing http://vista.nau.edu in the address bar, and select Go.
- Select the course where you would like to create the online private journal.
- Once you are in your course, select the Discussion tool under the Build tab.
- Note: If the Discussions tool is not available, you will need to add the Discussion tool to your menu.
- Once you have opened the Discussions tool, select Create Topic.
- For this tutorial, you will select the Journal topic option, and click Next.
- In the Create Journal Topic property dialogue box, type in the Title of your online journal.
- Next, type in the journal Description, be sure to include any directions or student expectations.
- If you want the students to see the journal item, select Show Item. Otherwise, you can select Hide Item.
- You can also organize your journal topics by category. To do so, select Create New Category, and type in the Category Name (i.e., Class Journals).
- There are several options for grading the journal topic.
Select the appropriate option. In this example, I selected Numeric grade: Out of 10 points.
How Do I View and Grade the Online Journal?
- If you want to see what the students see, select the Teach tab.
- Then, select the journal title (i.e., Student Journal) to access the journal postings..
- In the Teach tab view, you can select a student name to access their journal postings.
- To grade your students' journals, select the journal title (i.e., Student Journals), and scroll down to select Grade Topic.
- To review the posts for one student, click on the student's name , and select View Student Posts.
- In the left column frame, you will see an empty box next to the student’s name. Enter the grade points for this particular student (i.e., 10 points).
- After you enter the grade, select Save Grades.
