Monitor a student project Minimum version: FirstClass 8.3 Audience: Teachers       Experience:   FirstClass applications used:         Conferencing           Workspaces Summary Want to stay on top of student projects? Consider using FirstClass to create project environments. You can monitor each stage of the project, from approving the outline to organizing the final presentation. You can eliminate paper copies and numerous meetings, as everything is at your fingertips when you want it. You would give each student (or group of students) their own personal workspace. This replaces the traditional binder or folder students might otherwise use to store their work. When you assign a project, students store different stages of their project, such as outlines, bibliographies, and rough drafts, in the Our Documents container of the workspace. They can even manage their own timelines in Our Calendar. At your leisure, you can browse each student's workspace and add your own feedback in the Discussion Conference. Also, by looking at the history of the documents you can check how often students have made changes. When you feel a student is ready to go to the next stage of the project, you can give approval online. Here is a comparison of the conventional way of monitoring a student project and how you could use FirstClass to do it.  Example John Smith teaches Grade 12 English at Avalon Academy. He requires students to submit a bibliography and an outline before they begin writing their term essays. This requires that John create a personal workspace for each student, monitor the workspaces for submitted work, and add his comments. When the work is ready to move to the next stage, John gives his approval online. STEP 1: Create project structure John adds each student to their personal workspace by doing the following: 1         He opens the student's workspace from his Workspaces area. 2         He clicks the Workspace Members button. 3  He enters the name of the student he wishes to add to the workspace. This is what John sees when he adds Barry Blake to his personal workspace. The workspace is now aliased on Barry Blake's Desktop. Now John can manage the students' workspaces from his Workspaces area. Also, there is no need to set formal permissions for the workspaces since this is done automatically when he adds members to the workspace. STEP 2: Monitor student workspaces           As work is posted, John checks the work and adds his comments in the workspace's Our Discussions area, with the documents attached to the message if necessary.         This is a document he commented on. STEP 3: Approve work          When he is satisfied that a student is on the right track, he approves the work by commenting online. This is John's approval message.