This documentation provides teachers with guidelines for managing virtual classrooms, including real-time dashboards, student grouping, task monitoring, device management, and marking on the Una Platform.

Create a new virtual classroom

Before you create a new virtual classroom, you need to prepare a learning activity (Ref: Setup Learning Activities (Upload Learning Materials)) and a grouping template (Ref: Setup Grouping Templates).

If they are ready, you can proceed with the following steps:

1. Click “Create Session”
2. Input Title, e.g. “2023-2024 4A STEM Lesson 1”
3. Select a Learning Activity
4. Input Keywords (optional)
5. Select Exam Sessions
   • Yes: When a student is in this exam-enabled virtual classroom, they cannot enter another virtual classroom or view history.
   • No (Default): There is no limitation to enter/view other virtual classroom or history.
6. Select option of “Show Score, Comment and Answers?”
   • Yes (Default): Once students submit answers or teachers complete marking, students can view scores, comments and answers.
   • No: Even if students submit answers or teachers complete marking, students cannot view scores, comments and answers.
7. Select a Grouping Template
8. Click “Create”

Remarks: You can edit “Title”, “Show Score, Comment and Answers?”, add/remove students after creating virtual classroom. But, no change is allowed for “Learning Activity” and “Exam Session”.

View students’ progress in a real-time dashboard

Through the real-time dashboard inside the virtual classroom, you can view students’ progress in real-time. You can also manage the settings of the virtual classroom.

First, you can go to Teaching Session from the LHS menu, and click on the virtual classroom you want to enter. The following will introduce you to some basic features of the real-time dashboard. 

1. The name of a Virtual Classroom 
2. Change the name of a Virtual Classroom 
3. Delete a Virtual Classroom (Remarks: Only virtual classrooms that have not yet started can be deleted) 
4. The four function interfaces(tabs) of Real-time dashboard are “Manage Students”, “Manage Devices”, “Manage Quotes” and “Dashboard”.

Different types of virtual classrooms provide different functional interfaces, as below.  

	Manage Students	Manage Devices	Manage Quotas	Dashboard
Micro:bit	✓			✓
AI App for Raspberry Pi	✓	✓	✓	✓
AI App on Web	✓		✓	✓

Details of interfaces “Manage Students” and “Dashboard” are shown below.

Details of interfaces “Manage Devices” and “Manage Quotas” can be found in Develop AI apps with Una’s MakeCode.

Manage Students Overview

In this interface, teachers can view the online status of students, adjust student groups, add students, chatrooms, blackboards, and Lock-step. You can view the progress of students in real–time through the Una platform, check whether they can keep up with the progress, and adjust the pace of teaching as soon as possible. 

View Student’s Online Status

A. View the online status: If a student has entered the classroom, the student’s label will turn green. If the label is in gray, the student is offline. 

B. View the task number: The number shown in the circle next to the student’s name represents which task the student is doing. For example, the number is displayed as 1, which means that the student is in task 1. 

C. View the student’s work detail: You can click the button next to the student’s name to check the student’s history in real time, including the auto-saved and submitted records. 

1. Click the “task” menu to choose the task you want to check 
2. Click the “Mode” menu 

Adjust Student Grouping

Teachers can still change the grouping on this page. You can drag students to assign student to other group.  

Remarks: Students must be assigned to one of the groups before they can participate in the class. 

Add New Students

If there are some students who have not been added to the “Group Template” before, you can add students on this page. 

1. Click the “+ Add Students” button  
2. Click on the menu to select the user list or directly select students 
3. Click “Add” after selecting all the students you need 
4. Click “Confirm” upon completion 

When complete, you will see the newly added students appear in “Ungrouped”. 

Enable/Disable a Chatroom

Teachers can use the switch button at the top right to choose whether to enable or disable the chat room for students in the same group to communicate.

Demo through Blackboard

Teachers can use blackboards with task instructions to conduct demos and explain to students, which is best for the classroom scenario.  

1. Click the “Blackboard” button. A “Virtual Blackboard” pop-up window will show up.

2. Click the menu on the upper left-hand side to choose a task 

3. Choose the Task Content or Instructions from the menu on the upper right-hand side  

Show Task Content

Select “Task Content” from the menu on the right-hand side, you can use it to conduct demonstration. 

For Q&A task, if you want to display the answer, press the “Show Answer” button next to the question. Then press the “Hide Answer” button to hide the answer.

For Coding Task, you can demonstrate the code to students on the blackboard. If the task has a sample code, press the “Sample Code” tab on the right side of the blackboard label to display the sample code of the task. 

Show Task Instructions

In the menu on the right, select “Instructions”, you can use the Instructions to explain the task. 

Add Lock-step

If you want to add a Lock-step (waiting point) in the class, you can press the “+ New Lock-step” button and drag it to the appropriate position.

In the example below, if a lockstep is placed between tasks 4 and 5, students cannot navigate to task 5 or any subsequent tasks until teachers remove the lockstep.

To delete a lock-step, you can click the cross button.

Dashboard Overview

After entering this interface, you can view which tasks and answers the students have submitted. 

Check Task Submission

You can click “Task Submission” to view. If the box is in green, it means that the student has submitted the task. Otherwise, the box will have no color. 

Check the answers submitted by students in QnA tasks

You can follow the steps below to compare the student’s submission with the correct answers. If the box is green, it means the answer is correct. If the box is red, it means the answer is wrong. You can also check the number of answers submitted by students on the left side of this page. 

1. Click “Question Response” 
2. Click the menu to select the task 
3. Click “Show correctness” to let the system check the answer 

Check the answers submitted by students in Coding tasks

You can also follow the steps below to check the students’ Coding tasks instantly.

1. Click “Question Response” 
2. Click the menu to select the task 
3. Click the button next to the student’s name and you will see a pop-up window 

Assemble, Start, Pause or Complete a Virtual Classroom

The buttons in the lower right corner will change the states of the virtual classroom. 

1. Assemble – After creating the virtual classroom, if teachers are ready to teach, teacher can assemble the students to join the virtual classroom, press “Assemble” at the bottom right 
2. Start – After students enter a new virtual classroom in assemble stage or the virual classroom is paused, teacher can press “Start” to start the class.
3. Pause – If necessary, e.g. current lesson ends and will continue next time, teachers can press “Pause” to suspend the progress of the class. Students cannot work in this virtual classroom temporarily.
4. Complete – If teachers press the “Complete” button, the virtual classroom will end. NO students can work in this virtual classroom any more, including any changes of their answers/codes. It facilitates teachers to mark the student’s work. 

Grade/Mark tasks

When a virtual classroom is in the status of “Completion”, teachers can grade/mark students’ tasks and download reports accordingly. Mark the task by following the steps below. 

1. Choose a virtual classroom that is in the “Complete” state, click the “Mark” button on the right-hand side

2. Pick the lesson details from the drop-down menu: 

• Member: Select a student 
• Task: Select a task 
• Mode: Select to show “Submission only” or “All”
• Save: Select the saving version 

3. Check the Marking Mode from the right-hand side (If that task has a marking setting) 

4. After choosing all the details, click “Mark” 

5. Click the button beside the mark number to adjust Marks. (Only for questions that set with marks beforehand) 

6. Click “Save” upon finishing all the steps 

7. If you finished marking all the tasks, click “Back” to mark the next student 

When teachers successfully mark a task, teachers can see the title of the task become green in colour and stated as “(marked)”. Those tasks that are not marked will be shown in red. 

Download Report

After finishing marking, go back to the virtual classroom. Click the “Download Report” button. You will get an excel file with all the scores of tasks to review students’ performance.