1. Adding Assignments and Learning Units to Your TSS Course
Welcome to Adding Assignments and Learning Units to Your TSS Course.

2. TSS Assignments
While many teachers use the TSS as a place to store content for students, it is important to note that it can also be a tool with which students interact with content. Creating assignments allows students to do this. Additionally, assignments are linked to the grade book and documents can be submitted to the teacher via the TSS.
Using the Assignment feature, a teacher can create and post an activity that is automatically linked to the TSS Grade Center. The students log into the course and click links to files. The work can be completed online or printed. Once the student has completed the work, he or she can upload it back to the assignment tool and automatically submit it to the teacher. It will appear as an item in the Grade Center.

3. Adding Assignments
To begin adding an assignment to a course, log into the TSS and access the course in which the assignment will be added. Then click the link to go to the control panel.

4. In the control panel, click the menu item you have configured into which you want to place the assignment. If you need more information about configuring the menu, please go to the TSS Online Library for that tutorial before proceeding. In this case, the assignment will go into the course documents area, so I will click course documents.

5. To add my assignment in the course documents area, I will mouse over to the far right of my TSS window until I see a box with the words learning unit it it. This is actually a pull down menu. Click on the small arrow that is pointing down and mouse down to the word assignment. Click this. The word assignment should now appear in the box. Click the go button to the right.

6. Use what you have learned about perimeter to complete the activities.
Perimeter Activity 25
Use what you have learned about perimeter to complete the activities.
Your next step will be to configure the assignment information and to add the files. To do so, begin my providing a name for the assignment. As with so many TSS titles and text areas, you can configure the color as well in case you want to color code your assigments. Next you will key in the number of points possible for the assignment. In this case, the assignment is worth 25 points. You can also select a due date. If you want to do this, be sure to check the box and change the date fields to the appropriate date. Then it is time to give the students instructions. Key those into the WYSIWIG editor. Remember that however you configure it here will be the way it appears to students. Next you will attach the file. There are 2 ways to do this. The first is to attach a file from your local computer. This can mean the computer’s hard drive or some other external media such as a USB drive, a CD or a floppy drive. To do this, click the browse button next to the Attach Local File text box. Click the file you want to add and then click open. You can also link to a file that is already in the content collection of the TSS. To do this, click the browse button next to the Copy file from Content Collection text box. Click until you find the file you want to add and then click submit. Once you do this, you can add the name of the link to the file so that students know exactly what you have added. You can also give a direction here. For example, you can key in the words, right click here to open, so that students know that they should right click on the link to open the file in a new menu. You will set the assignment options in the third section. Click yes to make the assignment visible. If you have decided work ahead and don’t want students to see this assignment until a later date, you can click no to make the assignment not available. If you do this, be sure to use the date restrictions to set when you want to make it available. You’ll also need to decide if you want to select track number of views. Doing so will enable you to track which students have accessed the assignment. When you have configured the assignment and are finished, click submit to save your changes.
Right click to open

7. You will link back to the course documents page, where you will see the assignment. One of the features of the TSS is that teachers can change the order of the links in their courses very easily. For example, I might want students to complete the perimeter activity prior to starting the project that is listed. To make the perimeter activity first in the list, simply pull down the arrow next to the numbers to the left of the item name and select the correct order number. The items will automatically re-order themselves and the perimeter activity will show up first. When you’ve finished, click ok.

8. Mrs. Davis,
I’m having some trouble with number 3. Can you please look at my work and give me some advice about what to do next.
Thanks,
Deandre
If your choices included making the assignment visible right away, students will immediately be able to see and interact with it. To view it, students should click on the title of the activity. This will open the assignment and provide a link to any attached documents. To open a document, click the link to the document and select open on the small window that will open.
If you choose to have them complete the assignmenton the computer, they will save their finished document to the local computer or external media. They can then turn it in by re-uploading it to the assignment area by clicking the browse button and navigating to the file. Since students have content collection storage space, it is possible for them to save the file there as well. To link it from the content collection, click that browse button and navigate to the file. Students can add more than one file and the list of what has been added will show up here.
Students will have the ability to provide comments to you when they turn in the file. To do so, they will type the text into the text book and format it using the WYSIWYG editor.
When they have finished, they should click the submit button to upload the file or files and the comments.

9. Student View of the Grade Center
Teacher View of the Grade Center
Once an assignment has been submitted, students and the teacher should be able to see it in the grade center. In the teacher’s view, an exclamation point will alert the teacher that some action must be taken to grade this assignment. For more information about the grade center, visit the TSS Online Learning Library.

10. TSS Learning Units
Learning Units are sets of sequential activities that students can either download or print. Multiple activities can be grouped together under one topic. An example might be a culminating project with multiple files.
Learning Units are a group of documents, videos, photos or assignments that are clustered together into a unit. Teachers can force the order of viewing or completion of the items or students can work through them in any order, depending on the settings.

11. Adding A Learning Unit
To add a Learning Unit, log into the TSS and navigate to the control panel of the course to which the learning unit will be added. On the right hand side of the TSS screen is a text box that says Learning Unit. Click go.

12. Math Practice
This week’s math project involves area and perimeter. Download the documents and complete the math project. When finished, please submit it.
From there, the unit can be added in 3 easy steps. First, key a name for the unit. Again, you can change the color of the text so that you can color coordinate titles on the screen. Then, type in a description or directions. Once again, this is a WYSIWIG editor, so all text can be formatted to fit your course and personality style. After that, you have to make some choices. First, do you want to make the content availabe? If so, click yes. Then, click whether or not you want to enforce sequential view of the items in the learning unit. This means that you can force students to go through the items in a certain order. For example, you might want them to view a video or powerpoint as a refresher and then have them complete an activity. By enforcing sequential viewing, students will have no choice but to view the items in the order you decide. You will also need to decide if the unit will open in the current window or in a new one as well as whether or not to enable tracking of the number of views by students. This is recommended as you will always know who has interacted with the unit. Lastly, if you are planning ahead, you can set the date and time that the unit will become available to students or when it will become inactive. When you’ve finished, click submit.

13. You will then be taken back to the content area and will see the newly configured learning unit. If you have finished you can simply click ok. You’ll also have some other choices. The first is modify. If once the unit has been added you decide to change some of the verbiage or you notice a typo, you can click modify to change what is seen on the screen. If you click manage, you can change the adaptive release settings, add meta data for searching, or review the statistics of who has accessed the unit. The copy button will allow the teacher to copy this unit to any other course in which they are the teacher or have control panel access. The remove button will delete the learning unit.

14. Area and Perimeter Project
Open the document and follow the directions to complete the project. You will also have to open and print a piece of graph paper.
The final choice is to actually click on the name of the learning unit. This will allow the teacher to add files or documents to the unit. To do so, you will follow some familiar steps. First, type a title and text that gives directions or a description. Then, browse to find the file on the local computer or to link to a file in the content collection. Complete section 3 by making it available and choosing to track views. Again date and time restrictions can be applied to these files as well. Finally, click submit to finish.

15. You can also reorder the items that you upload into the Learning unit
You can also reorder the items that you upload into the Learning unit. To do so, simply pull down the small arrow next to the number located to the left of the title of the item. Once you select the new order number, the items will re-order themselves. You can see here that the graph paper that students need for the project was number four. By changing the number, I’ve now made that the first item that students will see.

16. This is what the student will see when they log in and access the learning unit. In this example, the sequential viewing has not been enforced, so the student can open any of the files.

17. Explore the TSS on-line learning library located on the TSS.
Want to Know More?
Explore the TSS on-line learning library located on the TSS.
Contact the TSS Group
Would you like to know more? Visit the TSS online learning library on the TSS at Or, contact the TSS group by calling or by ing