November 2, 2018

How to Navigate the Classroom

We will cover some of the important points to guarantee that you have an enjoyable, thoughtful, and enriching experience in our online classroom. If this is your first time navigating an online learning environment, we are confident that you will quickly and easily learn how to navigate our online classroom. While you may login and navigate our online classroom with a cell phone, we strongly discourage doing so. The reading, writing, and research should be done on a laptop or desktop computer.

Login

You will login to the classroom with your username and password. Usernames for students who are automatically registered are typically in the following format (JohnSmith). However, students may register directly through our website and issue their own username and password. Once a username has been issued, it cannot be changed. However, you may change or reset your password at any time. Instructions for resetting your password will be sent to the email address that you used to enroll in the class. Like your password, you may change your email address at any time. You should record our website: www.accessandequity.org; your username; and your password; for easy reference. Whenever you are logged into our site, the ‘Blog’ menu will provide a dropdown menu for the ‘Mychal Wynn Blog.’ The Mychal Wynn Blog is where we post newsletters and other important information that is only accessible to students enrolled in our programs.

Selecting Your Class

After logging in, you may select ‘Course Outline’ from the side menu or from the ‘Account’ dropdown menu. Selecting ‘Course Outline’ will show the class in which you are enrolled. 

Classroom Screen

After clicking onto your classroom, you will see the classroom screen, which displays the following information:

  • Your Progress (the percentage of the course that has been completed)
  • Your Overall Grade (based on your quiz scores)
  • Modules that are currently available to you
  • Completed Units (indicated with a green check)
  • Grades from each quiz that you have submitted

Modules

The entire classroom is built around Modules and Units. Each module contains the name of the month in which it is available to be completed. Modules for the Antelope Valley College Planning Cohort open on the day that monthly sessions are scheduled. Since each monthly module addresses a different component of the college planning process, it is important that you plan to attend all scheduled meetings.  

Units

Units are the lessons in each module, which are delivered in a variety of formats. Some lessons involve completing surveys while others require watching videos. Most lessons are accompanied by a quiz, like the quiz associated with this lesson. After a unit (lesson) has been completed, a green check will show up on your progress bar. Some units only require taking a quiz, others require writing a narrative, and others require completing forms.

Overview

All Modules contain an Overview. Each Overview is broken into 3 parts:

  1. An overview of the lesson
  2. The objective of the lesson
  3. Guiding questions about the lesson

Since the information provided in the overview is important to successfully engaging in the lesson, most overviews are accompanied by a quiz, whose purpose is to ensure that you read the overview! Quizzes associated with each overview are straightforward. They are not designed to trick you, so you should not experience any anxiety. Our goal is for you to score a perfect 100% on each overview quiz. To assist you in reaching this 100% goal, each question is taken from the overview and the correct answer is ‘exactly’ what has been stated in the overview. So you may ask, if the quizzes are so easy and if I am suppose to score a ‘100’ on each quiz, why do I need to take a quiz? Because we need to ensure that you read and understand the overview so that you can successfully complete the lesson.

Videos

Many units have videos. Most videos are accessed via our Google Drive and should not present a problem. However, you may experience problems viewing supplemental videos, typically accessed via YouTube, depending on the WiFi Network being used to access the Internet. Many schools have restrictions for viewing videos on YouTube.

Lessons

Lessons typically require you to do something, such as view a video, read an article, engage in a discussion, or engage in research.

Narratives

Throughout our program, you will have many opportunities to provide narrative responses. These narratives will typically reflect your point of view in response to specific questions. Narrative writing is a critically important skill for you to develop as you will eventually be required to write college admission and scholarship essays. Narrative writing is more than the recounting of facts, but involves telling a story from your point of view.

Conversations and Collaboration

Our program is designed with conversation and collaboration in mind. The lessons and quizzes are designed to engage students in conversations about what they are learning and collaboration around how they will process or apply what they have learned. Why are conversations and collaboration so important? The answer is simply, “This is a college planning program.” Preparing for college requires that students develop the type of skills expected by colleges. Our program is designed to assist students in developing 5 important skills expected by colleges:

  1. Verbal communication
  2. Written communication
  3. The ability to collaborate with others
  4. The ability to follow instructions
  5. The ability to be self-directed

Students who participate in our program will gain experiences in each of these areas, and ideally, with greatly strengthen their skills in each area.

Preparation

Proper preparation is one of the keys to success in our program.

  1. You should always have a notebook and pen to take notes.
  2. You should know how to access your Google Account, including email and Google Docs.
  3. You should have your username and password available for easy reference (typically in your cell phone).
  4. You should have headphones or earplugs to listen to videos.
  5. Questions regarding course content should be directed to cpc@collegeplanningcohort.com.
  6. Technical support should be directed to techsupport@collegeplanningcohort.com.

You Must ‘Own the Process’

Our program and the accompanying modules, units, lessons, and quizzes provide opportunities to learn. How you apply yourself and engage in your small group conversations will determine how much and how deeply you learn. How much you learn will be a function of how deeply you engage in the lessons and the activities.  In essence, you must ‘Own the Process.’

After viewing the video, take the quiz associated with this unit.