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Using eBooks with Runestone Academy: The PreTeXt Interactive Edition

Brad Miller, PhD. Professor Emeritus Luther College

Chapter 4 Managing Your Course

Section 4.1 Managing Students in your Course

Subsection 4.1.1 Student Self Registration

When you created the course, you chose a project name. Give that text string to students. They will register on the site and enter that string as their course name. If you’ve forgotten what the string is, you can see it displayed on the Course selection page https://runestone.academy/runestone/default/courses
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https://runestone.academy/runestone/default/courses
. You can access that page by clicking on the person icon at the top right of the window and then selecting Change Course.
Note 4.1.1.
Students will register for a course following the same procedures that were described Chapter 2. You just need to provide them with the text string for the course name.

Subsection 4.1.2 Pre-register your students

You can also pre-register your students by creating a CSV file and uploading that file through the instructor interface. Pull down the 👤 menu and Choose Instructor Page then click on the button for Manage Students. You will see a page like this:
Figure 4.1.2. Register your Students
You can create a csv file in your favorite spreadsheet program and then export it to a csv or you can simply edit a textfile, whatever works for you. But note that some versions of Excel add a lot of empty columns and rows that really confuse our importer! Please check the csv file in a text editor before you upload it to runestone. Also note that if the csv file has any problems, like a duplicate username, nothing will be changed on the runestone server. The format of the file MUST be as shown in the figure.
username,email,first_name,last_name,password,course
user1,user@school.com,Jane,Smith,xxxx,foocourse
Notice – There are no spaces after the commas. Excel is horrible at exporting it will add extra blank fields and lines that look like ,,,,,,,, Once you export from excel its best to clean things up in your favorite text editor. Also if you are using Excel make sure to export it as a UTF-8 encoded file, otherwise excel adds unreadable characters at the beginning.
When the file is created you can choose it and upload it to Runestone. It will verify the fields and if there are no errors it will register the students. The most common error is that the username is a duplicate. Usernames are the primary way we identify students and they must be unique. With over 120,000 students in the database there are bound to be duplicates. This is not a bug, it is a sign of growth.
If you add students to your class later you need to create a new CSV file just for them (or have them register themselves). Adding students to the end of your previous spreadsheet will result in lots of error messages about duplicate usernames.

Subsection 4.1.3 Removing Students

You may also have noticed the "Remove Student(s)" button in Figure 4.1.2 This allows you to remove a student from your course. Although it seems self explanatory the reason to bring this up is to explain what happens to the student account when you remove them. The account is not deleted but rather the student and their work is moved to the base course. This allows a student to have access to their work and to continue working independently if they wish. As an instructor you do not have the capability to delete a student account. But anyone can delete their account and all of the information saved for that account by using the 👤 menu choosing edit profile.

Subsection 4.1.4 Resetting Passwords

There is no doubt about it, password management is a headache for everyone. Runestone handles hundreds of password reset requests each week. But that does not always work. Some schools (inexplicably) block email from Runestone. Other schools run software that simply mangles the URL’s found in emails that look like they are password reset emails. This is understandable to some degree as Phishing scams are so common, and its important to protect the students. I’ve done everything I can do from my side to validate the runestone.academy email domain. But, other times students simply type in their email incorrectly.
You may be get around some of these problems by asking your school to allow mail from runestoneinteractive@gmail.com to go through. If your IT department is not cooperative then your students will have to come to you to have their password changed. You can reset the password for any of the students in your course. Just select the student from the list and click the reset password button. I cannot respond to emails asking me to reset passwords, I don’t have the time to do that, and I do not have a reliable way to verify that those requests are legitimate. Yes many high schoolers think it is funny to try to trick me into resetting the password on one of their friends.
Instructors cannot change their own passwords through this mechanism. who among us hasn’t walked away from the computer and left ourselves logged into Runestone? As an instructor, you will still have to use the normal email password reset mechanism. If your school blocks emails then I suggest you just get a free gmail address to use for this purpose.

Section 4.2 Privacy and Runestone

In this week’s update I want to tell you about some new account management features I added to Runestone, and give you some idea about how you could set up your class if you don’t want Runestone to capture any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) about your students.
Runestone collects a lot of data. I think it is all justified, and if you are an instructor you can gain some real insight into how your students are doing based on the data we collect and the reports we create for you. None of that requires any PII about your students. Yet we do collect some… what do we collect? and why?
Here is what we we ask for when a student registers:
  1. username - this can be anything and it is easy for this to NOT contain PII
  2. email - This is the only reliable way to do password recovery.
  3. First Name and Last Name - this has always been just for the instructors so that when they are grading assignments or looking at analytic reports, they know who they are looking at.
  4. Password - encrypted and stored securely.
  5. Name of the course. The instructor has full control over this call it whatever you want.

Subsection 4.2.1 Setting up a class with no PII

We will walk through two strategies for managing a Runestone Course that doesn’t store any PII about a student. The first strategy has the students register themselves following the instructions I’ll tell you about. The second strategy puts you in complete control and allows you to create all of the usernames for your students!
The way to use Runestone without PII is to ensure that your students choose a username that they remember but has nothing to do with their real identity. They can also put in fake first names and last names.
The real trick is how to manage password recovery Thats where this cool email alias trick comes in. Most email systems (including gmail) support the username+alias convention. That is you can add a + and an additional alias to your email address. For example runestone+support@gmail.com or runestone+info@gmail.com both of those emails will end up in the runestone mailbox, but I can also see the alias. We can use this feature so that students don’t have to enter their real email address, they enter yours plus their username as the alias. This means that you will end up fielding the password reset emails. If you are an email whiz you can set up some rules to forward these to the right student.
Experience has shown that having students register themselves and get all of those pieces correct is a losing battle. So why not put you in charge of registering them? Get out your favorite spreadsheet app and prepare a file with your students information.
You can upload a CSV file with the following format: One row for each student
username,email,first_name,last_name,password,course
In order to protect your students privacy you can create a spreadsheet like the following:
hogwarts-1,dumbledore+hogwarts1@gmail.com,F1,L1,owls4all,potions_fall19
hogwarts-2,dumbledore+hogwarts1@gmail.com,F2,L2,owls4all,potions_fall19
hogwarts-3,dumbledore+hogwarts1@gmail.com,F2,L2,owls4all,potions_fall19
Note 4.2.1. Note.
It is important that you check your CSV file and make sure there are NO SPACES before or after the commas!
From the Manage Students tab on the Instructor’s Page, you can now upload this CSV file using the interface.
Figure 4.2.2.
Once you have uploaded the CSV, you can add some columns to the spreadsheet that contain the real student information to help you remember. You will probably learn quickly who your made up names correspond to, and can probably think of something anonymous that will help you remember who F1 L1 really is. On the first day of class you may want to hand out paper for the students with their username, and walk them through changing the password, or maybe you want to assign each student a unique password when you are making up the spreadsheet. I just would not recommend a scenario where all the students have the same password.
Of course all of this is optional. You can also create a csv file with usernames of your choice and include the real email addresses and real first / last names of your students, or you can have them register themselves as students have been doing on Runestone since 2012.

Subsection 4.2.2 What other Data Does Runestone Collect

Here is a graph of all of the events that runestone has collected in the last 4 weeks.
Figure 4.2.3.
As you can see that is a lot of activecode and a lot of pages loaded. Also over 1 million multiple choice questions answered! I would love to see more clickable area questions and more fill in the blanks. Some of our preliminary research shows that those kinds of questions are much more effective at getting students to review the content in order to get a correct answer, rather than simply clicking on different answers until they guess correctly for multiple choice. All of these events are captured and tied to a username. So the more anonymous your username the better as far as I’m concerned.
What I’m really interested in is figuring out how to apply machine learning algorithms to help identify students that may struggle, to help weed out bad questions, to help us write better questions, to help us order the textbook in different ways, to adapt to each student to help them achieve their maximum potential.
Runestone also collects the source code each time your student changes and runs the code in an activecode activity. This is to provide a timeline for the student as well as for yourself.
  • Make sure you explain the timeline to your students. Sometimes there is great fear in them about changing code that is working. Having this timeline present encourages them to experiment, knowing that they can always get back to a good working version.
  • For you the timeline can be an invaluable tool for talking through an assignment with a student. You can see their progress and if they make a wrong turn you can usually see that in the timeline and talk to them about why they decided to a particular direction.
  • The timeline is also available in the scratch activecode which some students like to use as a notebook for the course.

Section 4.3 Integrating with your LMS Using LTI 1.1

Subsection 4.3.1 Introduction

Note 4.3.1.
Runestone provides two methods of LTI integration. LTI 1.1 and LTI 1.3. LTI 1.3 is the newer standard and is more secure and more flexible. However, it requires setup by an administrator of your Learning Management System (LMS). LTI 1.1 can be set up by an individual instructor without LMS admin support.
We recommend that you use LTI 1.3 if possible If you are using LTI 1.3 you should follow the instructions in Section 4.4. If you are using LTI 1.1 then follow the instructions in this section.
Runestone provides a rudimentary LTI integration using LTI 1.1. So far we have made this work very successfully with Canvas, Moodle, and Brightspace D2L. Others may or may not work. I call this a community supported feature of Runestone because LTI is a huge pain to work with, and it is very difficult to get access to and test against whatever LMS your school has chosen. Community support is available on the #lti_community_support channel of the Runestone Discord Server
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Runestone Discord Server
.
When you use LTI your students do NOT and should not register on Runestone Academy, the LTI interface registers your student with Runestone the first time they access it from your LMS. In addition, Instructors need to use one of the LTI links to your book in order for grades to transfer.

Subsection 4.3.2 Phase 1 (All LMS platforms)

Generate a shared/secret key pair for use with Canvas:
  1. Browse to the Runestone Academy and log in, then select your course (you must be the Instructor).
  2. Browse to the Instructor's Page , then click on “LTI Integration” in the Admin tab.
  3. Click on the Create LTI Key and Secret button. Click the Show Secret button. You will use these in the next phase. Note that there is also a Remove LTI Key and Secret if you can’t get LTI working with your LMS or just decide you don’t want to use it you should remove the keys. This will allow your students to access assignments from the regular assignments page.
  4. Once the LTI Key and Secret have been set up, your course is in LTI mode, and the assignments will only be accessible from your LTI, so you must do Phase 2, below, or your students won’t have access to any assignments.

Subsection 4.3.3 Phase 2 (LMS-specific Steps)

Follow instructions for your LMS:
Subsubsection Canvas
  1. Follow the Canvas instructions to add an external app:
    :Name: Runestone
:Consumer key: Enter this from Phase 1.
:Shared Secret: Enter this from Phase 1.
:Launch URL: ``https://runestone.academy/runestone/lti``
:Domain: Leave blank.
:Privacy: Select Public; otherwise, Runestone won’t work.
:Custom Fields: Depends on the installation type:

    -   For a site-wide installation, or for installing the Runestone external app for use across multiple courses, leave this blank.
    -   If installing for a single course, add ``custom_course_id=xxx``, where ``xxx`` is the Runestone ID of the course (visible in the upper lefthand corner of each page in your Runestone course).
:Description: Interactive textbooks from Runestone Academy
  2. Add an assignment in Canvas that uses the Runestone external tool:
    1. At `Runestone Academy`_, create an assignment; be sure you’ve checked the “Visible to Students” box and saved that change.
    2. Still on the assignments page, copy the LTI link.
    3. In Canvas, add an assignment. For the submission type, select “External Tool.” For the External Tool URL, use the LTI link you just copied. You’ll have to manually enter the same due date/time and a similar assignment name; these aren’t copied automatically. You must be sure the Load This Tool In A New Tab checkbox is checked.
    Students can now click on this assignment and work it. **If they don’t click on the assignment, they won’t receive a grade.** When the assignment is due, go to Runestone directly from your Canvas course by using an assignment link. Otherwise, grade reporting won’t work. In the grading tab of the instructor interface, grade the assignment, then click the “Release Grades” button. Doing this will push all grades to Canvas. (If you need to regrade later, you can always click the “Hide Grades” button, and then do “Release Grades” again.)
Subsubsection Moodle
  1. The following instructions are for Moodle, but should work for any LMS with LTI Support. Please note that certain items may have naming variations (ie. Moodle External Tool / Canvas External App).
  2. In Moodle, create a new external tool called "LTI Login Link".
    :Name: Login to Runestone
:Tool URL: https://yourHost.blahblah.edu/runestone/lti
:Consumer key: Enter the key you copied for `consumer` from Phase 1
:Shared secret: Enter the key you copied for `secret` from Phase 1
:Icon URL: https://yourHost.blahblah.edu/runestone/static/images/logo_small.png
:Share Email: True
:Share Name: True
:Custom params: custom_course_id=xxx, where xxx is the Runestone ID of the course (visible in the upper lefthand corner of each page in your Runestone course).
  3. Login to your Runestone instance with the tool just created, and create your class as well as your assignments.
  4. In Moodle, create a new enrollment external app directly to your course and assignment. You will need to repeat this for each assignment. You will also need the database values for your course ID, and assignment ID. Get these from step 2.2. Please note that in order to receive roles and grades, "Accept Grades" must be checked in Moodle. In other LMS’s this may be referenced by a "Share IMS Names and Roles" or similar.
    Note: in order for students to have access to the assignment from moodle, the visible checkbox for the assignment on runestone must be checked.
    :Name: Assignment 1
:Tool URL: https://runestone.colorado.edu/runestone/lti?assignment_id=&custom_course_id
:Consumer key: Enter the key you copied for `consumer` from Phase 1
:Shared secret: Enter the key you copied for `secret` from Phase 1
:Icon URL: https://yourHost.blahblah.edu/runestone/static/images/logo_small.png
:Share Email: True
:Share Name: True
:Custom params:
:Accept Grades: True
  5. Copy the tool as many times as you need within your Moodle Course, updating the Name and Tool URL each time.
  6. Students can now click on these external tool assignments to be enrolled/logged directly into your Runestone course and assignment. The grades should appear in Moodle once they are released in Runestone through the Instructor interface using the “Release Grades” button. (If you need to regrade later, you can always click the “Hide Grades” button, and then do “Release Grades” again.)
  7. The course instructor must also be an LTI sourced user, so use the "LTI Login Link" URL. This can be hidden for users.
Subsubsection Brightspace D2L
Depending on how D2L is set up, you may need to be an administrator in order to set up your links for class. However, in some setups, instructors have permission to make their own LTI links.
  1. To check, while in your class on D2L, you can go to Course Admin - External Learning Tools, then click the Manage Tool Links (Legacy). From there, click the New Link button.
  2. If that is successful, then here are the settings. (Otherwise, talk to your LMS Admin to configure this for you)
    Title
    Enter either the Textbook Name or the assignment name on Runestone
    URL
    copy this from the LTI configuration panel for the textbook login https://runestone.academy/runestone/lti or from the individual assignment in the Assignments tab of the Instructor’s Page.
    Description
    Leave blank or add a description.
    Visibility
    Allow users to view the link should be checked.
    Key/Secret
    Signature
    check Sign messages with key/secret with
    select Link key/secret
    then fill in
    Key
    Enter this from Phase 1.
    Secret
    Enter this from Phase 1.
  3. Click the Save button before adding custom parameters.
    Custom Parameters
    click the Add custom parameters link.
    Name
    custom_course_id
    Value
    the Runestone ID of the course (visible in the upper lefthand corner of each page in your Runestone course).
    Security Settings
    Select use link security settings
    Make sure at least the following settings are checked:
    • Send tool consumer information to tool provider
    • Send context information to tool provider
    • Send LTI user ID and LTI role list to tool provider
    • Send user name to tool provider
    • Send user email to tool provider
    • Send link title to tool provider
    • Send link description to tool provider
  4. Once everything is selected, click Save and Close
  5. Now, from anywhere in your course, you can select Existing Activities - External Learning Tools and then the link you created. After adding this link, make sure that you make sure the link is configured to Open as External Resource. That way the right information will be passed to the textbook.
  6. Students will be able to click on this link when you make it available to them as long a the Visible to Students checkbox is checked on the assignment in runestone.
  7. When the assignment is due, go to Runestone directly from your D2L course by using an assignment link. Otherwise, grade reporting won’t work.
  8. In the grading tab of the instructor interface click the Release Grades button. Doing this will push all grades to D2L. (If you need to regrade later, you can always click the “Hide Grades” button, and then do “Release Grades” again.)

Section 4.4 Integrating with your LMS Using LTI 1.3

Subsection 4.4.1 Introduction

Warning 4.4.1.
LTI 1.3 Integration is in limited testing and is only available on a special development server not intended for production use. If you are interested in testing it against your LMS, please reach out to ascholerChemeketa on the Runestone Discord Server
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Runestone Discord Server
Note 4.4.2.
Runestone provides two methods of LTI integration. LTI 1.1 and LTI 1.3. LTI 1.3 is the newer standard and is more secure and more flexible. However, it requires setup by an administrator of your Learning Management System (LMS). LTI 1.1 can be set up by an individual instructor without LMS admin support.
We recommend that you use LTI 1.3 if possible If you are using LTI 1.3 you should follow the instructions in this section. If you are using LTI 1.1 then follow the instructions in Section 4.3.
Runestone’s LTI 1.3 integration has been tested against Canvas and Moodle. Others LMS systems that support LTI 1.3 may or may not work. We welcome reports of successful use with other LMS systems and code pull requests to add any necessary support for other LMS systems. Community driven support is available on the #lti_community_support channel of the Runestone Discord Server
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Runestone Discord Server
.

Subsection 4.4.2 LTI1.3 Integration Basic Information

LTI1.3 integration can include syncing user’s names and emails from the LMS platform or be done anonymously. The Runestone Privacy Policy
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runestone.academy/runestone/default/privacy.html
specifies how any synchronized data is used and protected.
Integration must be setup one time by someone with administrator authority on your LMS. Once setup, Runestone can be added to a course by any instructor. (Depending on the LMS, instructors may need a piece of information from the LMS admin to do so.)
When using LTI integration between Runestone and an LMS, students should NOT sign up for an account on Runestone. They should only access the Runestone book through the LMS, which will automatically create an account for them. Instructors will need to create an account with Runestone to set up their course and to link to the LMS.

Subsection 4.4.3 LTI1.3 Setup - LMS Administrator

Runestone supports the LTI Dynamic Registration protocol. This means you will just need to enter one URL into your LMS and the two systems will negotiate the rest of the details. This registration URL is: https://runestone.academy/admin/lti1p3/register
For Runestone to properly function, you will likely need to ensure specific settings in your LMS system. See the subsections below for details on particular platforms. Please note that user interfaces on LMS platforms change over time and the shown screenshots and described options may not perfectly match what you see.
Subsubsection LTI 1.3 Admin Setup - Canvas
Global settings for LTI features are available in Site Admin > Settings > Feature Options. Runestone relies on being able to create Deep Linking Line Items. To ensure proper functioning, please ensure that the following settings are enabled:
  • Deep Linking for Module Index Menu
  • Deep Linking Line Items
To register Runestone as an available app, go to Site Admin > Apps > Manage and select Install a New App. Select 1.3 as the LTI version, Dynamic Registration as the method, and use the the URL listed above. After pressing OK, you should get a confirmation message with a close button. Press that to continue to configure the App.
All the settings on the Permissions screen should be left on. (If you wish to configure Runestone to not share Personally Identifying Information about users, you will get a chance to do so in the next step.)
On the Data Sharing screen, leave the User Data Shared With This App setting as the default (All user data) to share user emails and names with Runestone. If you wish to disable doing so, you can change this to None.
From this point on, you should leave all settings as default - they just control what Runestone is titled within the LMS and what links are available to make use of it.
For an instructor to add Runestone to their course, they will need to know the ClientID that was assigned to Runestone. This can be found at Site Admin > Apps > Manage. Click the three dots next to the Runestone app and select Copy Client ID.
Subsubsection LTI 1.3 Admin Setup - Moodle
To register Runestone as an available app, go to Site administration > Plugins > External tool > Manage tools. Use the URL listed above as the Tool URL and press Add LTI Advantage. After pressing OK, you should get a confirmation message with a close button.
Next, activate the app by Clicking Activate on its card in the Tools list.
Finally, click on the gear icon on the Runestone card in the tools list to configure the app. Under Tool Settings sure to confirm these two settings:
  • Tool configuration usage is set to Show as preconfigured tool...
  • Default launch container is set to New Window (Runestone will display in embedded iframes but is much harder to read and navigate in that format.)
Then, under Privacy, you can choose to share user data with Runestone or not. If you wish to disable sharing user data, you can change Share launcher’s name with tool and Share launcher’s email with tool Never. Make sure to leave Accept grades from the tool set to the default or to Always.

Subsection 4.4.4 LTI1.3 Setup - Instructor

First make sure that you have a Runestone account. If you don’t have one, you can create one at Runestone Academy
 4 
runestone.academy
. Create a Runestone course to link to your LMS course. You may also wish to set up assignments in Runestone at this point, although you can always link new ones later. Before you try to link your LMS to a course and/or assignments, you should make sure you are logged into Runestone and currently viewing the course you want to link to.
Depending on how your LMS reports your identity to Runestone, when you access Runestone from the LMS by clicking a link to your RS course or book, you may or may not be logged into Runestone as the same user as the account you created. (If your LMS reports your email, and you set up your RS account with the same email, then you should be logged in as the same user.) If you end up with a different identity in Runestone, you will likely want to add that user as an instructor. You can do this by adding the user as a “TA”. See Section 4.5 for more information.
Each RS course can be linked to only one LMS course. This means that if you have multiple “courses” in your LMS for multiple sections or some other reason, you will need to create different RS courses for each LMS course. You can link multiple RS courses to the same LMS course (if you are using multiple books in one course.) If you need to unlink Runestone from an LMS, you can use the Remote LTI 1.3 Association button from the Admin > LTI Integration screen. Doing so will NOT remove any assignments or grades from the LMS, but it will prevent new grades from being sent to the LMS. You can then relink the course with the same LMS course or a new one.
There are some settings available in each Runestone course that affect LTI integration:
  • Under Admin > Course Settings, Show Points in Gradebook will affect how scores are reported to the LMS. If you want assignments reported to the LMS as points (3 / 4) instead of percent (75%), make sure this is checked. Note that settings in your LMS grade book may allow you to weight scores or change their display in other ways that override the way Runestone reports them to the LMS.
  • Under Admin > LTI Integration, checking Ignore LTI1.3 Date Changes will prevent Runestone from updating due dates on assignments.
  • Under Admin > LTI Integration, checking Do not auto update LTI grades will prevent Runestone from trying to automatically send grade updates as a user completes activities. This may be desirable if your assignments contain lots of items that need to be hand graded and you do not want users to see misleading low grades for assignments that have not been fully scored yet.
Find the subsection below for details on how to add Runestone to your course:
Subsubsection LTI 1.3 Instructor Setup - Canvas
You will need the Client ID of the Runestone installation on your LMS. Ask your LMS administrator for this piece of information. Refer them to Subsubsection  for information on how to find this.
In your Canvas course, go to Settings > Apps and then click the + App button. For the Configuration Type, choose Client ID and then type the Client ID given to you by the LMS admin.
You should now see Runestone listed under the External apps
Subsubsection LTI 1.3 Instructor Setup - Moodle
If your LMS administrator has set up Runestone, you should see it displayed under More > LTI External Tools in your course settings. If you do not see it, ask your LMS admin to confirm that Runestone was set up to display as a preconfigured tool. You just need to toggle the Show in activity chooser to the on state.

Subsection 4.4.5 LTI1.3 Instructional Use

Subsubsection Content Linking
There are two kinds of links that can be generated from Runestone:
  • Book Page Links These are links to a particular page in the book. When a user uses one of these links, they will automatically be logged into Runestone. If you wish to provide a generic “Log in to book” link, you can use one of these that points at the book entry page (index.html). Or you can generate links to any page in the book.
  • Assignment Links These are links to a particular assignment in the RS course. When you want a LMS assignment that is linked to a RS assignment, you must use this kind of link.
User activity is tracked and scores updated regardless of which form of link is used to access the Runestone content. The only difference other than where they link to is that Book Page Links do not create an entry in the LMS grade book.
Begin by setting up assignments you wish to link to in Runestone. Do not make LMS assignments—they will be created for you when you link to the Runestone assignments. (See Section 6.2 for coverage of making Runestone assignments.) For students to access a Runestone assignment (after clicking a link in the LMS), the RS assignment must be marked Visible to Students. This property is not linked to the LMS. If you want assignments to be rolled out gradually in the course, you will have to manage the process separately in your LMS and in RS by changing the visibility of assignments in both places.
To add content to your course, look for the Runestone option in whatever allows you to add content items to a module/course etc... in your LMS (see subsections below for LMS specific notes).
When you open the Runestone Content Linking panel, you will see two sections. First you will see a section to generate New Book Page Links. Click Add book link as many times as you like to generate dropdowns that can be used to select book pages. Use the dropdown to select the page(s) you want to make links to. Each will be generated as a separate content item in your LMS.
Below that is the Assignment Links area. Here a table is displayed with each Runestone assignment. For each one, the current LMS assignment (if any) that it is linked to is displayed. If the RS assignment is linked to an assignment in the current LMS course, that will be displayed and you will not be able to perform any action. To delete the assignment, do some from your LMS. For unlinked assignment, you will be given three options:
  • No action: do not link this assignment.
  • Create new LMS Activity: creates a new LMS assignment linked to this RS assignment.
  • Link to existing assignment: this should only be used after copying a course to relink orphaned items. See Copying an LTI1.3 Course for details.
Finally, the Submit Form button will update Runestone to link the RS course to this LMS course (so it knows where to send grades) and will send a message to your LMS to generate the desired content links. Your LMS may or may not give you a chance to confirm the changes after this point.
If you ever need to, it is safe to delete an assignment in the LMS. No RS data will be deleted. If desired, you can then readd the assignment in the LMS and re-push any available grades.
Subsubsection LTI1.3 Grade Reporting
Grades are normally sent to Runestone at the following times:
  • A learner interacts with any graded element of the course that is part of an active assignment with released grades. (Grade updates should happen whether the user is viewing the problem “in context” or in the assignment view).
  • The instructor goes to the Grading tab of the admin interface, selects an assignment and presses the Push Grades to LTI button. This will send score updates for that assignment for all users in the course regardless of whether or not scores are released in Runestone.
  • The instructor goes to the Grading tab of the admin interface, selects an assignment and a particular Student, then enters a manual override grade and presses Push Grade to LMS. This will send the grade for that one user, regardless of whether or not scores are released in Runestone.
This means that if you want users to see score updates as they complete work, you should “release” the assignment scores in Runestone as soon as assignments are created.
Subsubsection Copying an LTI1.3 Course
To reuse course content that you linked in one course for a new course, you will generally want to do the following:
  1. Use your LMS to copy the assignments from your old course to your new course. They will not be linked to Runestone. If you want to synchronize the due dates automatically, use your LMS to set up due dates.
  2. In Runestone, make a new course. Copy all of the assignments from your old course to your new course. If you want to make sure the due dates are synced, do not check the Ignore LTI1.3 Date Changes box in the Admin > LTI Integration settings for your new course before finishing the linking process.
  3. In your LMS, use the add content feature and select the Runestone tool. Assuming your assignments in the two platforms have matching names, the default actions suggested for each RS assignment will be to link to the existing LMS assignment with the same name. If there is a mismatch, change the LMS assignment name to match the RS assignment name before linking. When you submit the form, the assignments will be linked and the due dates from the LMS will be synced to Runestone.
Subsubsection LTI 1.3 Canvas Notes
The best way to create new content items (especially multiple at one time) is in the Modules area. Use the three dot menu and select Runestone.
Subsubsection LTI 1.3 Moodle Notes
To add content items, use one of the Add an activity or resource links in your course. Select Runestone from the available tools. You will be taken to a form adding one activity, but you can still add as many Runestone links as you like. Click the Select content button. When you finish selecting content, if you selected just one new RS item, you will return to the form to finish editing that activity and save it in your LMS. If you selected multiple items, you will return to a page that lists the items being added. If your actions do not add any new content (you are remapping copied assignments), you will be returned to a blank form but Runestone will have updated your selected items.

Section 4.5 Add and Instructor or TA

Runestone supports multiple instructors or TAs for a course. We do not make any real distinction between a TA and an instructor so keep in mind they they both have all of the same privileges that you do. Adding a another instructor is quite easy. The process is as follows.
  1. Make sure that your co-instructor has registered for your course as a student.
  2. Go to the instructor page and select the Add TA tab as shown below
  3. Select the co-instructor or TA from the list of students on the right then click the + button below the list. You should see the name appear in the list of instructors on the left.
To "demote" a co-instructor or TA back to a student just select them in the list of instructors on the left and click the - button below the box.

Section 4.6 Course Settings

There are some settings that you can control for your course that effect how the interactive components work. You can modify these on the course settings tab of the instructor interface.
Term Start Date
You can change your course start date. This is important if you copy assignments from a past term. Runestone will try to make the assignment due the same number of days from the start of the term. We also do analysis of student performance based on the week of the course, so it helps our analysis if this date is accurate.
Enable ActiveCode Downloads
If this box is checked then each activecode will have a download button that will allow your students to download a text file with the appropriate extension containing the code in the editor.
Allow Pairs
This enables a simple pair programming feature that allows a student to type in the username of a partner. When the student clicks the Save and Run button the code will be saved for both students with a comment added that indicates they were working with a partner and who that partner was.
Enable Compare Me Button
Questions such as multiple choice may let students see how they did compared to other students in the class. This button pops up a dialog that shows the percent of students that answered a question for each option. For a fill in the blank question it shows the top 10 answers.
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