Skip to content

ATLAS

ATLAS stands for Active Teaching, Learning and Assessment Space. It is the Institutional Space designed to support teaching and learning activities. It is the space to which learners, organised into groups or Sets on Workspaces, submit work from Pebble+ for feedback, peer review, or validation.

Work submitted to ATLAS is viewed via a live link to the work in the user’s Pebble+ account, enabling on-going feedback and dialogue between the tutor and student during the learning process. ‘Live’ work can be paused and archived to support rigorous assessment and quality assurance processes.

Teaching with ATLAS

As a teacher you will have access to some of the Manager tools as described in ‘ATLAS for Managers’, depending upon the permissions you have been given. These tools will enable you to set up the structure of your workspaces, add members, create sets, and so on.

However, you also need to know how to ‘teach’ using the functions in ATLAS. This section is more about how to set up your teaching activities, facilitate communication, manage feedback and assessment, and the various other functions you might want to use to get the most out of ATLAS for your teaching team and your students.

Workspace Set-up

The first thing you have to do is configure your workspace to match the requirements of your teaching and learning activities. You can do all of this while the workspace is in ‘Setup’ mode so that members cannot see it before you are ready. The following is a list of key steps involved in the setup process:

Key StepDescription
Teaching and Learning Activitiesit is very important that you FIRST decide exactly what you want to do in the workspace and then set it up to match, rather than the other way around. As with any good teaching and learning activity it should be based on your desired learning outcomes and not on the technology you would like to employ. Be clear about what you want students to do, what you want tutors to do, and how you want them to be able to interact.
Workspace pagesyou need to decide which of the five workspace pages you will be using (About, Submissions, Resources, Community and Conversations) and which you want as the landing page for users. You can make these selections under Settings.
Aboutthe About page is configured under ‘Management – About’ where you will find a simple text editor to enter your content. You can use this page to provide information about the workspace and the activities that will occur in it. This might include an introduction to the unit of study, instructions for members, links to resources, or other relevant information such as contact times and details for the teaching team. For more information go to Workspace pages > About.
Submissionsthe Submissions page is the place where submitted work from members will appear. You can run one or more activities in a single workspace, each with different submission deadlines. You need to go to ‘Management – Assignments’ to configure the assignments for your workspace. Managing assessment on workspaces is covered in the following section. For more information about the Submissions page go to Workspace pages > Submissions.
Resourcesthe Resources page is the place where you make material available to the workspace members. The resources are displayed in ‘Panels’ and you can have multiple panels on the Resources page. Each panel might relate to a particular Assignment or topic, or different type of resource. You can add assets, templates, workbooks, uploaded files and weblinks as resources. For more information go to Workspace pages > Resources.
CommunityThe community page enables any member or manager to add selected other members to their Contact Manager or send them a message. You do not need to configure anything on this page – it is either active for the workspace or not, depending upon your workspace page selections in Settings. For more information go to Workspace pages > Community.
Conversationsthe Conversations page enables you to set up discussions for members of the workspace. Conversations can be created for all members, selected sets, and/or just the managers. Members can also be given permission to create conversations. For more information go to Workspace pages > Conversations.
Managementclicking on ‘Management’ to the right of the 5 workspace pages opens a series of tabs below the five main page tabs. These provide a range of tools to enable you to set up your workspace.
Membersyou need to add Members to your workspace (typically students) by going to the ‘Management – Members’ page. Click on Modify permissions to set the permissions you need the members to have, based on the design and learning objectives of your activities. The default permissions will suit most standard activities and allow members to submit to the workspace, see only their own work, access resources and the community page, and create conversations. You also need to decide if you want Members to be arranged into smaller sets or just one big group. Members can be allocated to tutor groups (or sets) via the ‘Management – Sets’ page.
Managersyou need to decide who else needs access to the workspace to view and assess the submissions and what permissions you want them to have. Go to ‘Management – Managers’ to add managers and set permissions. Managers are typically organised into three roles: lead tutors, tutors, and moderators. Think carefully about the assessment process you want to conduct and choose permissions accordingly. The default permissions will apply for most standard assessment processes. You can also give people external to your organisation permission to access a workspace via ‘Management – Externals’.
Feedbackif you have multiple tutors providing Feedback or if you have to provide feedback on large numbers of submissions, you can create ‘Feedback statements’ (organised into collections) to aid consistency and efficiency. These are set up in the ‘Management – Feedback’ section. You can also add feedback templates to be used to scaffold the feedback process or set up a three tiered approval process with defined approval statements.
Activating the workspaceonce you are satisfied that the workspace is set up and ready to be made available to members, click on the Activate button that appears in the top right corner when you are in workspace Management. The workspace will then appear in the dashboard of all members and managers.

A standard assessment process

The steps of a typical assessment process are described below. The nature of the assessment activity will determine which of these steps are used and the order in which they are used.

  1. Set up one or more assignments on the workspace.
  2. Members submit work to the assignment.
  3. The assignment is paused.
  4. Feedback and grades are added, then released.
  5. Steps 3 and 4 may be repeated for staged assessment of an activity.
  6. The assignment/workspace is archived.
  1. Set up one or more assignments on the workspace.
  2. Go toManagement and Assignments. This is where you can set up the details of one or more assignments for the workspace, including deadlines.
  3. If you have more than one assignment, you need to provide a title and description for each so that members can choose the correct assignment to submit to.
  4. There are four deadlines that you can set for each assignment:
    Date TypeDescription
    Work can be submitted any time afterIs automatically set to the date of creation of the workspace (or assignment). This can be modified. Assets cannot be submitted to the workspace before this date. 00:00 indicates the start of the day in question.
    Work cannot be submitted afterIs the date by which work has to be submitted to the workspace. Unless a late submission date is set, users will not be able make any additional submissions after this deadline. Users can, however, continue to modify already submitted work until the 'Work already submitted can be modified until' date is reached.
    Unless this late submission deadline is setSetting this date allows managers to manage late submissions. They will be accepted onto the workspace until this date but will be marked as late. A Manage late submissions button will appear on the Submissions page where the manager can view the late submissions and choose to accept them or not.
    Work already submitted can be modified untilThis deadline allows managers to set the latest date when work which has already been submitted to the workspace can be updated and those updates be accepted for assessment. 23:55 is the latest time that can be set for a given date. Once this deadline has passed, students can still update work in their asset store but the changes will no longer be reflected on the workspace.
  5. Members submit work to the workspace.
    • As work is submitted it is immediately available for tutors to view by clicking on the asset title.
    • Members cannot see each other's work unless the View submissions permission is ticked for members. To change member permissions go to Management Members and click on Modify Permissions.

      Workspace - View Permissions
  6. The assignment is paused.
    • Pause assignment buttonWorkspace - Pause Assignment
      An assignment can be set to Pause automatically by setting a 'Work already submitted can be modified until' deadline as described in 1 above, or it can be Paused manually at any time. When Paused, the Pause assignment button is replaced by a Play assignment button.
    • When the assignment is Paused, a version of the work is recorded and stored on the workspace. Members can continue to edit their work in Pebble+ but these changes are not reflected on the workspace as long as the assignment is Paused.
    • While Paused, assessment processes can be undertaken on a fixed version of the work. In the feedback panel there is a release feedback now option. Whether this is ticked by default or whether you have permission to tick/untick this option depends upon the Feedback Settings for the workspace. While this option is not ticked, any feedback and grades added to the work will not be visible to members until released.
  7. Adding comments.
    • Comments iconComments Icon
      'Comments' can be added to submitted work by clicking on the asset title and selecting the Comment tab on the right side of the opened asset.
    • It is important to understand that Comments will always be immediately visible to the asset owner, even if the assignment is Paused and the release feedback now option is unticked.
  8. Adding feedback, approvals and grades.
    • Feedback iconFeedback and Grades Icon
      Feedback, 'Approvals' and/or Grades can be added to submitted work by selecting the Feedback tab on the right side of an opened asset.
    • This opens the Feedback panel where you can choose to Add feedbackAdd approval, or Add grade by clicking the relevant button at the top.
      Feedback panel optionsFeedback Panel Controls
    • For Feedback, Approvals and Grades you can use pre-prepared feedback statements, use feedback templates or add attachments. (See Feedback )
    • Icons appear next to the asset name on the Submissions page to indicate that feedback or grades have been added.
      Submission Screen Excerpt
    • Feedback and Grades are part of the formal assessment process and cannot be deleted by the asset owner. They are also not visible to the asset owner until released,either by choosing the release feedback now option in the feedback panel or by using the Manage feedback button on the submissions page.
    • Manage feedbackManage Feedback Button
      To release feedback and grades from the submissions page, select the relevant assets and then click the Manage feedback button towards the top of the workspace. You will have the option to selectively release grades, feedback, and approvals.
    • Feedback is NOT automatically released when the assignment is Played. If it wasn't released when added you will need to release it manually using the Manage feedback button.
    • When feedback and grades are released the member receives an email to let them know that feedback has been added to their asset. The asset and associated feedback can be viewed in their Pebble+ store.
  9. The assignment is played.
    • Play assignmentPlay Assignment
      When the assessment process is complete, the assignment can be taken off Pause by clicking the Play assignment button.
    • All the submissions will update to reflect any changes made since the assignment was paused. A drop-down menu will appear towards the top of the workspace from which you can select which version of the work you want to view. Each time the assignment is paused, the date and time of the pause will be added to the list.
      Submissions - List of 'Assignment Paused'
  10. Archiving the assignment and workspace
    • When all the assignment activities have been completed the assignment can be Stopped to maintain a permanent record of all submissions, and assessment.
    • A Stopped assignment CANNOT be Played again so it is essential that it is only Stopped once all activity and assessment is complete.
    • Each assignment can be Stopped independently. When all the assignments on the workspace have been Stopped and no further activity will occur on the workspace, the Workspace can be Archived.
    • To archive the workspace go into Management and then click on the Archive button that appears in the top right corner. You will be asked to confirm that you want to archive the workspace and warned that this action cannot be undone.
    • Once archived, a workspace can no longer be edited but submissions, resources, conversations, etc, can still be viewed by both the members and the managers.
    • Archived workspaces can be accessed from your ATLAS dashboard in the Workspaces I am managing panel, under the Archive tab.