Course Home - Dashboard Tab

The Essential Elements are a set of requirements that all courses in eConestoga must meet. The Essential Elements Scanner on your dashboard tells you how close your course is to meeting the Essential Elements. If your score is less than 100%, you call click the Review button to find out which elements may be absent.

You will see a checklist of all ten Essential Elements; the scanner will check off anything it has detected within your course. If any items aren't checked, click the ( i ) icon beside it for details about the problem(s) it has detected.

When you do, the system will explain in detail what criteria it was scanning for, and which objects in your course aren't compliant. Follow the directions provided to fix any problems the scanner detected.

The Students At Risk tool tries to identify students who may be struggling in your course, based on several criteria:

• Not accessing the course for several consecutive days.
• The student's current average grade falling below a certain threshold.
• The student's "maximum achievable grade" (i.e., the score they would get if they received 100% on all remaining work) falling below a certain threshold.
• Viewing less content than the rest of the class.
• Failing to submit assessments by the due date.

You can set the thresholds for each of these criteria by going to the Settings tab on the homepage, then clicking the At-Risk Students sub-tab at the top.

Important Note: The Students At Risk tool does its best to try to identify patterns associated with poor course performance, but it is not infallible. A student it identifies may be doing fine-- e.g., a student with high grades may be flagged if they don't open the course for a week. You will need to use your judgment to determine whether a student flagged by the tool is actually at risk and actually needs intervention.

The Flagged Assessments tool tries to help instructors find several different issues with their assessments:

• The assessment is too hard, based on average grades being below a certain threshold, or too many students failing.
• The assessment is too easy, based on average grades being above a certain threshold.
• Marks haven't been published within a certain time after the Due Date or End Date.

You can set the thresholds for each of these criteria by going to the Settings tab on the homepage, then clicking the Assessment Analysis sub-tab at the top.

The Enrollment Changes tool shows you a list of students who have newly joined the course, or been dropped from it, in the last two weeks.

The Student Activity tool lets you know if there are student submissions to Assignments, Quizzes, or Discussions that have not yet been graded.

The What-If Calculator displays a student's current grades, and then provides an interactive interface to let you or the student see how earning various scores on future assessments would impact their final grade.

Note that both students and instructors have access to the What-If Calculator. When students open it, they can experiment with their own grade values; when instructors open it, they can pull up the grade values for any student enrolled in their course.