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This video will give you an overview of the use of Carmen in the 1159 course. When you
first login to the course home, you'll find the "News" section. This is a useful point of
reference because it will have updates a couple times per week telling you about things that are due and
other pieces of information that are important in the course. If you're using a browser like
Internet Explorer, sometimes you'll get a message, such as the one below, saying that
only secured content is displayed. It really is beneficial to click "Show All Content" when
you see to ensure that you have all the options that are available to you. Even though the
"News" section is updated a couple times per week--and it would benefit you go in at least that many times
per week to see what's going on in the course-- another thing you can do to help yourself
out is to click on your name and go to "Notifications." This will allow you to have either email
or text message--or both--notifications telling you about different things that are happening
in the course, and you can selectively choose which one of these to sign up for. For instance,
having information added to the "News" section, perhaps due dates that are close to being
due. If you want to get back to that main page, you can either click on this header
here, click the one up here, or something that is useful to know is if you click on
this downward-facing triangle, you have a list of all of your courses. You can search
for them up in here, or you can go ahead and pin ones that you are going to be frequently
using and they'll always show up at top. In any case. let's go back to our course, and
you can use this to browse through "News" section and so forth. Another useful component is
the "Content" section. This is a great way from which you can navigate to different places
in the course, and usually this will leave off on wherever you were last, and so I happen
to be in Module Three. But let me go ahead and click on "Table of Contents" to show you
everything that's in here. The "Start Here!" section of "Content" houses all the information
related to the course, but you want to also make sure to pay particular attention to the
"Course Calendar" and the "Syllabus." These are great reference points that you always
want to be aware of, and you just click on the name of a given item, and it will open
in the content browser, or you can click that downward arrow, and you can download it. Scrolling
down, we see that we have the different modules for the course, and there are seven modules
in 1159. Each module has a learning guide, a lesson, and various assessments. So, if
I go ahead and click on "Assessments," this will expand it, and it will show me the different
components in here. I want to go back to the beginning of Module One, so I'm going to go
ahead and click here in the left navigation pane. Because every time you start a module,
you want to begin with the "Learning Guide." Click on the name of it, and it will show
up in your browser window, and this will tell you the goals of that module, the learning
objectives--so, specifically what you're going to learn that week--as well as the resources
that you want to make sure you have, including readings in our textbook. This one particular
module, one of the chapters is optional, but pretty much every other time, you have to
do the readings. In addition to that you have a list of "Things to Do" for that given module,
and then it concludes with the assessments, or the things that are graded for that module,
along with the due dates and the number of points. The next thing I recommend doing,
after reading your learning guide, is to scroll back up and click on "Go to next topic." In
every module, the component following the learning guide will be the lesson, and this
is just a brief overview of some of the things that I found to be most important in this
module. So, you can click through that and find a text-based overview, typically, but there
are helpful links that are useful to click onto, as well as different videos that will
show up from time to time, and you can just play those within your browser window. So,
for instance, here is one right here. After you've gone through the entire lesson, you
can then go to next topic. And, currently, we are looking at a summer version of the
course, so this is closed, but, typically, you would see a button here that says "Start Quiz."
Now don't be confused by that term. There is one quiz in 1159; it's actually
open book and notes. Everything else that you're doing, typically, is an activity or
an assignment that is graded, but t is meant for you to have an opportunity to apply and
reflect on the things that you're learning. So even though it's called, in Carmen, a quiz,
we refer to them as "Skill Builders or "Discussions" because they give you an opportunity to really
use the material, and so you can continue to use the buttons to proceed through the
various activities, or you can go back to "Content" and resume your work at any time
before the due date. A third option you would have is if you go to "Activities" directly,
and you can navigate into the different sections to see what is due. So, for instance, "Skill
Builders" will show you different things that are due in a given module in that category.
You click on the blue name of the assignment to go there, and you would also have a reminder
of the due date there. One thing to keep in mind, though, is not everything for the module
is in "Skill Builders." It might be in "Discussions." So, for instance, here we see an open forum.
If you ever have questions about the course, as well as a given module, and the assignment
that might be due for that one. Anytime you see a blue underlined name, that is the discussion
forum where you would be posting, and we scroll down and we see different ones that we have
during the different modules. And then finally, we also sometimes use the "Dropbox" section,
and that's only for Module Five. So the activities and assessments you have might be in multiple
places, so, again, my piece of advice is to go to "Content" because then you will always
have a full listing of what these activities are and direct links to the different areas.
If you go to "Grades," and go to "Gradebook," this will also show you, in terms of all the
modules for the course, which assessments are due and how many points they're worth.
So, if you're ever in doubt, you can use this as a cross reference. And so those are the
major components of navigating Carmen. My biggest piece of advice is "Just Ask!" Preview
the things that are due, become familiar with what they might be asking you to do, and then
ask your instructor if anything is unclear, or if you have technical issues, or you can't
find things because your instructor will help you out, and it's better to be proactive in
that area. All right, best of luck, and I hope you enjoy the course!