Exercise series management

The learning path of a course consists of various exercise series, each containing different exercises. Course administrators can create, edit, delete, and reorder these series, and group them into sections.

Create an exercise series

A course administrator can create an unlimited number of exercise series within your course. To do this, first navigate to the course page and then click Manage series.

On this page, you will find the Copy existing series and Create series buttons in the top right corner.

When copying an existing series, you can pick the series you want to copy. This is filtered to the current course by default, but you can pick series from any course you are an admin of.

You will then be directed to a form where you can set the properties of the series. This is also the form you land on when you create a new series.

The first choice to make is what kind of series you want to create: a regular series, an assessment series, or an optional series. The regular series has clear progress tracking. An optional series is collapsed by default for your students, and will make it clear that the exercises in it are optional. An assessment series restricts access and keeps a student-action log; it exists for tests and exams and is covered in detail in the assessments and exams guide.

After that, give the series a name and optionally configure a deadline, description, visibility, and some advanced settings. All properties on this form are described in the series settings reference.

To create the series, click the Create series button at the bottom of the page. The new exercise series will be added to your course.

After creating the series, you will be directed to the page for managing the exercises in a series.

Add exercises to a series

You can access this page in two ways: automatically after creating a new series or by choosing Manage learning activities in the series action menu.

Here you will find the activities that already belong to this series and possible activities to add. Click the add button (+) on the right side of an exercise to add it to the exercise series.

Using the search bar and filters, you can filter existing exercises by name, available translations, programming language, labels, repository, or type.

Under the heading Exercises and reading activities in this series, you can click the delete button on the right side of an exercise to remove it from the exercise series.

Drag the move button on the left side of the exercises to change the order of the exercises. The order in which the exercises are listed under the heading Exercises and reading activities in this series is also the order in which the exercises are displayed in the exercise series.

Important

We assume here that the exercises to be linked to the exercise series are already available in Dodona. The creation, publication, and sharing of exercises are discussed here.

Manage an exercise series

Of course, it is possible to delete a series from a course. You can find this action in the series management menu or in the series action menu, similar to editing.

It can be useful to give series in a course a specific order, for example, to sort them by difficulty. By default, they will be sorted in reverse chronological order based on when you add them. This way, students will always find the most recent series at the top, and thus have to scroll less to find the latest exercises. In the series management panel, you can reorder the series by dragging the hamburger icon on the left side.

Group series into sections

The learning path of a large course can become quite long. To give it more structure, you can group series into sections: named groups of series, for example one section per chapter or per part of the course. On the course page, each section is displayed as a header above its series, showing how many series and learning activities it contains, and students can collapse a section they are done with. The sidebar on the right of the course page groups the series per section as well, so students can jump straight to the part they are working on. The courses guide for students describes what this looks like on their side.

To create a section, go to the Manage series page and click the Add section button below the table. A new section named New section appears at the bottom of the list, with its name selected so you can immediately type the name you want. To rename a section later, click its name in the table and type the new name; it is saved as soon as you press Enter or leave the field.

Sections and series form a single list on the Manage series page, and the hint above the table explains how they relate: Drag the handles to reorder. Series belong to the section above them. So to move a series into a section, drag it below that section's header; to take it out of any section, drag it above the first section header. Series above the first section header simply appear at the top of the course page, outside any section, so you can freely combine grouped and ungrouped series. The series and activity counts next to each section name update while you drag.

Each section row also has an Add series button, which creates a new series directly in that section. And on the course page of a course that has no series yet, you will find an Add a section card to create your first section from there.

A section without series is only visible to course administrators: on the course page, they see it with the message This section has no series yet. and a New series button, while students do not see it at all. Students also never see a section whose series are all hidden from them.

To delete a section, click Delete section on its row on the Manage series page. As the confirmation dialog says, the series in it will not be deleted: they only lose their grouping and stay in the course.

The series menu

At the bottom of the series, you will find some useful actions that course administrators can perform on the series. The main actions are Evaluate series and Series scoresheet; other actions can be found by clicking on the three dots.

• Evaluate series: This action allows you to browse through the submitted solutions of this series in a structured way, for example, to evaluate or improve them.

• Series scoresheet: Shows a handy overview of the submission status of all course users for all exercises in the exercise series. The submission status is displayed in the overview with the usual icons.

  

  Click on the name of a course user to navigate to the user's overview page.

  Click on the icon of a submission status to navigate to the solution used to determine the submission status (if the course user has indeed submitted a solution based on which the submission status could be determined). You can also filter by students who have started at least one activity, hide reading activities, and search by name or student labels in this overview.

• Export student submissions: This action allows you to export the submitted solutions of students for the exercises in the series as a zip file.

• Retest submissions: This action retests all solutions that course users have submitted for exercises in the exercise series. This can be useful if, for example, you have added or modified a number of tests and want to retest the already submitted solutions.

The export and retest actions are covered in detail in series export and retest.