OMtetra : System guide

1. OMtetra: System guide November 2011

2. OpenMentor how-to: Contents • Welcome page and navigation • Before uploading an assignment • Uploading an assignment • Viewing reports • How to construct feedback for analysis in OpenMentor based on Bale’s rules

3. Welcome page and navigation Sign into OpenMentor • Choose the course associated with the assignments • Read about OpenMentor • Sign into the system Working area

4. Before uploading an assignment • Sign into OpenMentor • Select a course

5. Before uploading an assignment • Click on the link • On the screen that follows, click on the button • Click on and type a title for the assignment to be uploaded. Alternatively, you may choose a title from the drop down list. • Save the title of your assignment • You should see the saved title on the list displayed

6. Before uploading an assignment • Review and mark the assignment. Add the marks in capital letters at the beginning of the file, save the file and use this version to upload into OpenMentor. The file must be saved as .doc

7. Uploading an assignment • Click on the Upload assignment link on the navigation menu • Fill in the list of fields displayed Use the drop down list to select one of the assignment titles saved Upload the file Choose the overall grade of the assignment Select the name of the student who submitted the assignment and the reviewer

8. Viewing reports • Click on the View reports link to access the graphs generated by OpenMentor where the feedback included in the assignment is analysed.

9. Reports: tutors Follow this link to read a summary of all the comments given by one lecturer on all the assignments uploaded, and classified into one of the four categories

10. Reports: students Follow this link to read a summary of the comments given by one lecturer on the assignments uploaded for the student, and classified into one of the four categories

11. Reports: per tutor per group Follow this link to expand the comments views and access those referred to in brackets

12. Writing the feedback • Open Mentor works by stripping out tutors’ comments on an electronic assignment and based on Bale’s Interaction Process framework, applying a set of rules to these comments in order to put them into four major categories, namely Positive reactions, Teaching points, Questions and Negative reactions. It then provides feedback to the tutor about how their comments provide support to the students.

13. Bales' Interaction Process used for the analysis in OpenMentor

14. How to construct feedback for analysis in OpenMentor based on Bale’s rules • After an analysis of hundreds of marked assignments, the following rules were created to analyse tutors’ feedbacks. The words that OpenMentor expects to find in order to classify the feedback comments under one of the four categories described earlier are indicated in the table.

15. Keywords per categories • Positive comments • Teaching points • Questions • Negative comments

16. Positive: "A1">Shows tension release/"A2">Shows solidarity/"A3">Shows agreement

17. Teaching point: B1">Gives suggestion B2">Gives opinion B3">Gives information

18. Teaching point: B1">Gives suggestion B2">Gives opinion B3">Gives information

19. C1">Asks for information C2">Asks for opinion C3">Asks for suggestion

20. D1">Shows disagreement D2">Shows tension D3">Shows antagonism

21. Questions? Please send us your comments or questions by email to: Alejandra Recio ars@ecs.soton.ac.uk