1. What is Writer’s Help?
Writer’s Help is an online textbook, or eBook, that all students in ESL 111, 112, 115 are required to purchase. It offers relevant reading materials and exercises and can be used to help students prepare for discussions, practice new concepts, and provide extra help for struggling students. It is much more convenient and user-friendly than the traditional paper textbook with its many online features. You can link pages and exercises to your website, or link them in your student feedback for extra help. And best of all… students can never forget to bring it, able to access it from any computer with their username and password. It also has a great search feature, making it easy to find lecture or reading material.
2. Getting Started
- Create and Activate a Course: Log into Writers Help 2.0 with your illinois.edu email and follow Creating a Course Steps. A unique URL for your course will be generated upon activation, which you can give to your students for registration.
- Get Students Enrolled (for 111 and 115): In order for you to access all your students' activities, your students must purchase access through the unique URL from #1 above following Student Enrollment Steps (students have the option of purchasing 2-year or 4-year access). Assign your students to purchase access by the 2nd day of class.
- Get Students Enrolled (for 112): If you are teaching 112, your students should already have access to Writer's Help 2.0 from ESL 111. However, they need to "Switch Course Enrollment" because the URL they have used with their previous instructor does NOT work with another instructor. Have your students follow Switch Course Enrollment Steps. One limitation to changing instructors is that any exercises that they completed for their previous course will not be carried over once they register with a new instructor, unfortunately. However, you can individually contact a Bedford/St. Martin technical support agent who can, in fact, transfer these exercise grades for you.
- Check Students' Enrollment (Roster): You can check your class roster (the list of students registered) either in "Gradebook" or "Instructor Console". Follow Roster Check Steps.
- Group Students (for instructors with multiple sections): If you are teaching more than 1 section of the same course, I recommend that you try grouping students according to sections.
- Teach Introducing Writer's Help eBook Lesson in class (during Week 1).
3. Creating & Managing Assignments
- Create Assignment Unit: All activities should be assigned within an assignment unit (you may or may not give these units the same names as the 4 units of your course) following Creating Assignment Steps. As soon as you create an assignment unit, you will see "Add to this Unit" button. DO NOT use this button to assign any exercise or LearningCurve unless you want to create your own assignment from scratch (e.g., quizzes or content pages). Instead, follow the directions in Step 2 below.
- Create an Assignment (Click option below for step-by-step screenshots):
- Option 1: As
soon as you create an assignment unit, you will see "Add to this Unit"
button from within the assignment area. Click to "Add from Resources". From the Resources menu, select "Content by Type". Select either Exercises or LearningCurve. Select the activity you want to
add to the Assignment. Ignore the “In use” label next to each. When you select
the activity, it will load in the full-screen view. Click on the “Add to course” button in the upper
right (this is really just adding the activity to the assignment). A green
confirmation overlay will appear, briefly, confirming that you’ve added the
activity. Then the Manage Assignment overlay will load. Select a due date, gradebook points, etc. Save
the assignment settings and the Assignment area will reload, now with the
assigned activity included in your assigned unit.
- Option 2: Find the category (or the chapter) of the exercise you want to assign from WH 2.0 Exercise and LearningCurve Menu. This document will help you see under which category a certain exercise is located. For example, if you want to assign "Thesis Statement" exercises, you can Ctrl+F this word and see that it is under "Composing and Revising". Once you have identified the category/chapter of the exercise you want to assign, find the chapter by using the arrows to drill down through the Table of Content in the Left Panel. For example, if you want to find "Composing and Revising" exercises, go to "Exercises: Writing, Research, and Grammar"-> "Exercises: Composing and Revising". Once you click the drop-down menu, you will find "Exercise: Thesis Statement 1 (autoscored)" and "Exercise: Thesis Statement 2 (autoscored)". If you hover over these exercises, you will see "Option" button and find "Assign". Type in the details of this assignment (assignment unit, due date, visibility to students) and click "Assign" at the bottom of the pop-up window.
- To Unassign an Assignment: Follow "How do I unassign an assignment" steps.
4. Using Gradebook
- Tracking Students' Work on Assigned Activities: You can see how your students did on all the exercises and learning curve activities from Gradebook (one of the tab menus at the top of the Homepage). You can check their overall completion of all the assigned activities under "score" and their scores on individual activities under "All Assignments" tab or under each assignment tab. You can see a more detailed report by clicking on each student's name.
- Tracking Students' Work on ALL Activities: If you want to see
ALL activities your students did (both assigned activities and
self-selected activities), by clicking on the "Activity Log" icon (click
the image below).
- Exporting Gradebook: You may also export this Gradebook in an excel file by clicking "Export Scores" button located at the top of the Gradebook main page.
- Contribution to Final Grade: As a way of encouraging our students to explore and use the eBook and to make it worthwhile for them to purchase the book, Writer's Help eBook assignments are required to be 5% of the final grade for ALL undergraduate courses. It is indicated in the course first day handout that students will be completing a minimum of 15 Writer's Help eBook exercises and 3 LearningCurve activities for this 5%.
- Checkpoint System: It is up to each instructor to determine which exercises to assign. The instructor can, for example, require 10 specific exercises with any 5 additional decided by each student. In terms of timeline, however, each instructor should implement a "checkpoint system" with a minimum of 3 checkpoints to distribute the "collection" of the 15 exercises throughout the semester rather than all at once or weekly. This encourages students to use Writer's Help throughout the semester rather than just at the beginning or just at the end. You can find some sample checkpoint instructions here:
- Sample checkpoint instructions (Created by Cassandra Rosado, Fall 2014) -> where is this located?
- Sample checkpoint instructions (Adapted by Jon Bair, Fall 2014) -> remove this?
Note: Even if the Writer's Help eBook
exercises are assigned as "Homework," they should still be graded in the
5% Writer's Help eBook category, not the Homework/Participation
category.
5. Dealing with students' resistance to purchasing Writer’s Help eBook
It is possible that you will have some students express displeasure with the Writer’s Help eBook for any number of reasons. It is your responsibility as the instructor to convince them and show them the value of the eBook so that they can take advantage of this wonderful resource.
One complaint has been in regard to the cost of the Writer’s Help eBook because the book license expires after 2 or 4 years, depending on which one they purchase. The reason for the expiration date is that the eBook is updated automatically for all users at scheduled intervals. This means that while your students have access, they have the most up-to-date information. In contrast, the traditional paper book would be outdated within 2-4 years anyway, AND it could not guarantee the most up-to-date information within 2-4 years of its purchase as the eBook can.
Another reason students have expressed unhappiness with the eBook is because they CANNOT share the eBook with other students. Your response: Tough luck. It’s really not that expensive compared to textbooks in other fields. Students cannot share accounts because they will be submitting practice quizzes associated with their instructor.
For all other inquiries, please refer to Writer's Help 2.0 Instructor's Manual or call Tech Support (800-936-6899)
