Notes for the Instructor

The steps for creating a class assignment are

1. Login to the system and use the Create New Assignment action under the course for which the assignment is being created.
2. You will then be prompted for the assignment name and the label for the main concept node.
3. Then you will be given a page containing the concept map applet. The applet will contain only the main concept node. Use the applet to draw a complete concept map.
4. Be sure to right-click the canvas and select Save to save your work.
5. When the concept map is complete, click the Publish button to make the assignment available to your students. You will be shown all the labels used in your concept map (the last saved version) and given a form to enter distractor nodes and relations. The distractors will be available to the student for labeling nodes and relations; however, points will deduced for each of these labels the student uses. Therefore, the distractors should be labels that are not salient in describing the main concept node. You will also be given the opportunity of entering extra relations that are equivalent, inverses, or similar to the relations you used.
6. You will be given a form to build metarelations between relations and the extra relations entered in the last step. For example, you might want the relations "for example" and "e.g." to be equivilent. Or, you might want to include an inverse relation, such as "superclass" for "subclass". If a student uses the inverse relation of a relation you used and reverses the direction of the relation arrow, he is given full credit.
7. When you click the Continue button, the concept map is evaluated to determine the maximum score the student can achieve. The concept map assignment will be available for students in your course at this point.

Before a concept map assignment is published, you can change the label on the main concept node using the Change Main Concept button that appears above the applet. Once an assignment has been published, you may no longer change the main concept node label.

You can use the Hide button above the applet of a published assignment to remove it from the students' view. Use this feature when students must complete an assignment by a certain date. If you publish a concept map that has been hidden, any work performed by a student for the assignment while it was first published will be lost. We will provide better tools in the future for dealing with publishing concept maps.