With the autumn 2013 semester coming to a close and planning beginning for the spring 2014 semester, preparation for Carmen integration is also taking place. Carmen makes it easy to move materials from one semester to the next through the Carmen Import Components function.

By importing Carmen Components you can import an exact copy of an older Carmen course into your new Carmen course shell for the new semester or you can choose to copy only specific materials that are relevant to your new course. We have a guide available outlining the steps needed to complete the import.

Import Carmen Course Components

Once you have your Carmen course designed and ready for the new semester, remember that Carmen courses must be activated before they are available to students for viewing. Activating a Carmen course requires checking the “Enable student access” box, however this box can be hard to find. We have a guide available that walks through the steps.

Activate a Carmen Course

If you have any questions about importing Carmen components, activating a Carmen course or any questions in general, please contact the Fisher ITS Helpdesk.

Carmen allows for the distribution of content and information to students, but also allows students to submit assignments. Carmen Content is used to distribute content to students and Carmen Dropbox is used to receive content from students.

Without any modification a basic Carmen Dropbox will allow students to submit assignments for review. This is a great way to eliminate paper in your course and to allow for organization of student assignments. A basic Carmen Dropbox is easy to setup and a brief guide is available on the process:

Create a Dropbox

A Carmen Dropbox with TurnItIn enabled will check student work for plagiarism. Enabling this feature in a Carmen Dropbox is as simple as checking the OriginalityCheck box. We have a guide available detailing the steps needed to create a TurnItIn Dropbox and a complete overview of the tool and best practices can be found on the OSU Resource Center.

Create a TurnItIn Dropbox

OSU Resource Center: TurnItIn

Carmen Dropbox also allows for submission of feedback on student assignments. This feedback will only be seen by the student to whom the feedback was submitted. Feedback can include text, an attached file (Perhaps the original submission file with edits), or an actual grade that links to the Carmen Gradebook. If a grade will be submitted, a Grade Item must first be created in the Carmen Gradebook and linked to the Carmen Dropbox during the Dropbox creation process. We have guides available outlining the steps needed to create a Carmen Grade Item and outlining the steps needed to add feedback and assign a grade to a Carmen Dropbox.

Create a Carmen Grade Item

Submit Feedback in a Carmen Dropbox

If you have any questions about Carmen Dropbox or any questions in general, please contact the Fisher ITS Helpdesk.

Communication is constant and often this means a full email inbox. What if you could post an announcement in one spot and every student in your course would receive the message? This is possible through Carmen News.

Carmen News is available on the homepage of every Carmen course. Through this tool an Instructor can post announcements that will be presented front and center every time a student logs into the Carmen course. Through frequent use of this tool students will begin to check Carmen for announcements and updates instead of expecting an email. Using Carmen News will lead to reduced email in your inbox.

A guide is available describing the process to create a Carmen News Item:

Create a Carmen News Item

If you have any questions about using Carmen News or any questions in general, please contact the Fisher ITS Helpdesk.

Carmen is a tremendous teaching tool. Through Carmen tools such as Content, Discussions, Dropbox, Quizzing, Surveys, and Grades, students and educators can interact with content and each other.  All of this interaction creates data and Carmen allows educators to catch a glimpse of how their students are using Carmen through Carmen Statistics.

Carmen Statistics allows an educator to see how an entire class is interacting with Carmen Content and allows for an in-depth look at individual students. Through Carmen Statistics an educator can see what topics students are referring to the most in their studies and perhaps where more attention is needed in class for review of important concepts. Carmen Statistics can allow education to be tailored to a particular class or student.

A guide is available on how to find and export statistics from Carmen:

Carmen Statistics Guide

If you have any questions about using Carmen Statistics to help in your instruction or any questions in general, please contact the Fisher ITS Helpdesk.

Whether adding a Teaching Assistant or a second Instructor, adding participants to a Carmen course can be very beneficial. The process to add a participant can be found here:

Add Participants to a Carmen Course Guide

This process is perfect for adding many of the Carmen roles listed below, but will not work for student enrollment. Students are enrolled in a Carmen course through the Student Information System (SIS) and cannot be manually added to a course. If a participant is added to a Carmen course as a student and that participant is not enrolled in the course through SIS as a student, the manual enrollment to the Carmen course will not hold and the manually added participant will be automatically removed from the Carmen course within 24 hours.

Manually adding a participant to a Carmen course for all other roles besides student is a perfect route for TAs, second Instructors, or student assistants. One key concept to keep in mind when adding participants to a course in Carmen and choosing a role for them, is that if a Carmen course contains multiple sections, some Carmen roles must be added to individual sections (Assistant, Graders, etc.) while others such as Instructor will “cascade” to all sections in that particular Carmen course. Roles that are not able to “cascade” are denoted in the image below with a “2.”  A breakdown of the different roles in Carmen and what they can do can be seen below:

For an in-depth explanation of each role, please view the Central OSU Carmen Team’s page on Carmen Roles.

If you have any questions or concerns about the roles in Carmen or how to manually add a participant, please contact the Fisher ITS Helpdesk.

Communication is key to a successful course. One of the easiest ways to communicate with students is through email. Carmen makes it easy to communicate with students through email.

Carmen does not contain a standalone email system, yet instead an email sent from Carmen is sent to a student’s “name.#@osu.edu” email address. This ensures that there is no separate email inbox to check and allows for ease of use for faculty as well as students.

Through Carmen, emails can be sent out to selected members of a course or to an entire Classlist. Step-by-step guides are available to help with each process.

Email Selected Members of the Classlist

Email the Entire Classlist

Often in Carmen multiple sections of the same course are combined in the same Carmen course shell. These sections are taught by the same instructor and are identical in their implementation.  This is very convenient so that materials uploaded into one Carmen course shell are seen by every section. In these situations, the Carmen Classlist allows Instructors to sort by section. This allows for easier location of students for tasks such as email and allows for section organization. A step-by-step is available to help with sorting the Carmen Classlist by section.

View Individual Course Sections in the Carmen Classlist

For any questions or concerns about the resources above or in general, please contact the Fisher ITS Help Desk.

There is a wealth of educational resources that are developed and ready for course implementation. Carmen is the perfect outlet to distribute these learning objects to students. Even if a course is taught completely face-to-face, Carmen can be used to enhance the classroom instruction by providing supplementary material. Three of the most commonly used sources for educational resources are listed below.

OSU Libraries E-Reserves

E-Reserves is a service provided by OSU Libraries that allows web access to course reserves readings via Carmen. The Libraries E-Reserves staff will negotiate copyright royalties on your behalf, establish links to online journal articles and other digital resources that students can access both on and off-campus, and create and link PDFs for supplemental print materials, such as book chapters and journal articles. Faculty and teaching staff who wish to create their own links to library resources in Carmen are encouraged to follow the Making Links to Library Resources from Within Carmen Course Sites Instructions, so that students may access the materials off-campus. For more information about requesting E-Reserves Service, please visit the E-Reserves Information for Faculty and Staff page.

XanEdu

XanEdu provides supplementary course material in the form of CoursePacks, Custom Textbooks, Workbooks, as well as numerous custom solutions. These materials are publisher-neutral and customized for an individual course. When using XanEdu materials, a direct link will be placed in Carmen that links students directly to the relevant course materials for a course and students can access the XanEdu materials by registering for a personalized MyXanEdu account. For more information about XanEdu and to request materials and services, please visit the XanEdu Get Started page.

Harvard Business Publishing

Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) provides business specific course materials in the form of Articles, Cases, Simulations, Books & Chapters, and entire Online Courses. The material provided is based upon real world corporate experience. When using HBP material a link will be placed in Carmen and is valid for six months. The link will provide direct access to the HBP materials. For more information about HBP and to request materials and services, please visit the HBP Contact Us page.

For any questions or concerns about the resources above or about placing any type of content in Carmen, please contact the Fisher ITS Help Desk.