How To - Best Practice

How do I pull all this information together?


All of the How To pages in this site should now give you enough information and guidance to create some resources, assess students work, create and administer exams and generally track the progress of your learners.  The following sections will show you some best practice for additional guidance purposes.


What is the best way for learners to create and manage a project on the site?


Project characteristics that support assessment

  • Make a plan - communicate the plan in a web page
  • Execute the project and document the process eg in a Blog
  • Evaluate the tools and the outcome - communicate through web page(s)

Work collaboratively with peers (friends and colleagues) using collaborative tools. Do research and reference sources. Take into account safety, copyright and local rules. Make clear your individual contribution to processing the information and presenting it.

Tools and context

  • Choose a project where data can be collected and analysed
  • Use of a collaborative spreadsheet such as Google Docs is not mandatory but it will provide assessment opportunities across several units.
  • Use other subjects eg History, Science or Music as contexts as it will improve efficiency.
  • Choose areas of interest to learners to sustain motivation. The subject of your work is up to you and your interests.
  • Try to find the most efficient ways of providing evidence to support the assessment criteria.

What is the best way to receive and manage evidence?


It is up to the Centre to decide how it gathers and provides learner evidence. This description assumes that this will be using the TLM Learning Site. This has the advantage of being highly integrated with the online Markbook.

Learner submits evidence through their account. There is a video explaining this here.


How do I write pure HTML in the pages I create?


W3Schools provides a good tutorial. What follows is an overview of a few of the tags that are used most often. You can learn these tags as part of your e-Portfolio:

Pargraphs

 

The Ingot site creates paragraphs automatically, but usually when you write HTML you have to say where paragraphs start and end using the <p> tags. Like this:
		<p>This is a paragraph. A paragraph is made of many sentences.</p>
Headings

 In HTML headings are marked with the tags <h1>, <h2>, ... down to <h6>. The top-level heading is <h1>. For example:

 

 

How it will look in a web page HTML tags that the web browser uses to change the style

Section  1

Hello

Section 1.1

Section 1.1.1

<h1>Section 1</h1>

 

Hello

<h2>Section 1.1</h2>

<h3>Section 1.1.1</h3>

 
 

Images

 

You insert images with the <img> tag, like this:
<img src="https://theingots.org/community/sites/default/files/uploads/u12/myPicture.png" alt="descriptive-text" />
The "src" attribute ("source") contains the Internet address where the image is located. Usually, that will be a file you have uploaded. Please see How do I insert an image on a page?


The "alt" attribute is what will be displayed if the address specified in src cannot be found. It is also used by screen readers for people who have poor eyesight.

 

Links

You make links using the href tag like this:

		Please visit <a href=”https://theingots.org”>The INGOT</a> website.
The "href" attribute ("hypertext-reference") contains the Internet address you want to link to. You can link to another web page or to a file you uploaded. See How do I let people download a file?.

 

Lists

There are two kinds of lists in HTML, "ordered" lists (numbered) and unordered lists (bullet points) 

 

Ordered lists are for listing a sequence of items with a specific order. For example, the steps in a recipe for boiled eggs.

 

How it will look in a web page  HTML tags that the web browser uses to change the style
  1. Put eggs in a pot with water.
  2. Boil for 5-10min.
  3. Remove from heat.
  4. Remove the egg shell.
  5. Enjoy.

<ol>

<li>Put eggs in a pot with water.</li>

<li>Boil for 5-10min.</li>

<li>Remove from heat.<li>

<li>Remove the egg shell.</li>

<li>Enjoy.</li>

</ol>

 

Unordered lists are for listing items that have no particular order. For example, the primary colours:

 

How it will look in a web page HTML tags that the web browser uses to change the style
  • Red
  • Green
  • Blue

<ul>

<li>Red</li>

<li>Green</li>

<li>Blue</li>

</ul>

 


How do I get good marks at Gold (Level 2) when creating projects?


Coursework is not grades so you have to simply meet the criteria. However, this gives you scope to really show what you can do without worrying that you might do something wrong and fail to get the best grades. Your assessor should guide you to make sure you can produce the evidence required in the coursework but then take some risks and see how far you can get beyond that.


Where can I see some sample pages of excellent, good, average and poor work for guidance?


The following links will show you work that covers this range of quality for Level 2.

They should act as guidance to give you some sort of market, but should not be viewed as definitive.


Where can I see examples of blogs being used effectively?


The following link is to blogs that have been used in part for evidence for coursework. 


Where can I see some examples of effective ePortfolios that have been created?


The following links will show you a range of ePortfolios for different purposes.


Where can I discuss with colleagues some best practices?


We are currently running a CDP site to allow colleagues to discuss and share ideas about resources and best practice.  If you would like a login to the site, please contact paul dot taylor at theingots dot org for a login.