www.curatr3.com

User guide

INTRODUCTIONCuratr is a social eLearning platform, used by companies all over the world to create effective and engaging eLearning experiences that promote change and deliver value back to the organisation.

Curatr allows you to use any sort of digital content as a learning resource; videos, documents, web pages and more are all easy to integrate. Users are encouraged to explore objects, contribute to discussions and complete assignments.

SOCIAL Curatr allows for object-orientated discussion, user-generated content, peer marking, discussion questions, group discussion, blogging and much more, all in a single, intuitive interface. Unlike other platforms, social is not an option – Curatr’s social features are deeply ingrained into its concept and approach.

GAMIFICATION Curatr sets up courses using a combination of experience points and levels to encourage exploration and contribution. You have full control over game settings, allowing you to shape behaviour and encourage completion. Our new Quest Editor allows you to create custom quests for learners to achieve, rewarding quality with badges of achievement.

CURATION Curatr promotes all aspects of digital curation. From allowing course administrators to create new learning experiences by curating content from around the web, to encouraging learners to curate content from each other to promote the best insights, curation is at the heart of what we do.

Learn more To learn more about Curatr’s concept and design, visit www.curatr3.com. Here you can not only read articles and watch videos about Curatr, but you can also try a demo or sign up for one of our free MOOCs to really get to grips with Curatr.

KEY FEATURESResponsive HTML5 layout Curatr’s highly visual interface makes use of the latest in web technology to deliver a richly visual experience across all devices – desktop, tablet and smartphone.

TinCan API compliant Curatr is fully TinCan (xAPI) compliant. Embedded into the platform at every step, it offers unique reporting features for both organisations and individuals, tracking quality and quantity of contributions as well as views, achievements and completions.

Massively scalable Curatr works with any size group, from 20 to 20,000. Run multiple instances and create hundreds of courses with a wide choice of enrolment options.

Safe and secure Our hosting partners are the world-class Rackspace hosting, with whom we are able to guarantee 99.9% uptime and availability. Every instance comes with SSL for secure data transfer. And we’re ISO27001 certified, assuring you of our absolute commitment to your data security.

Vast reporting options Curatr leads the field in reporting options. With leaderboards, level checks, playercards and custom reporting options built in, Curatr offers a level of detail not found in any other reporting system.

In-built assessment Curatr allows for a wide-range of assessments to be built in the platform, including multiple choice questions, discussions, peer marking, and assignment uploads.

Fully customisable Curatr is fully customisable; you can choose colours and images to make an interface that truly reflects your organisation. What’s more, it is ready to slot into your organisation’s existing system.

Course OverviewTo access a course, users first need to log into Curatr. If users are taking part in a course by a particular organisation, the administrator of this course will be able to enrol the user and supply user login details. Once logged in, the user will have access to their home screen (Figure 1). Here they can view their profile, a list of courses they are enrolled in and a list of any groups that they are members of.

Home This home logo is displayed throughout Curatr and takes the user back to the home screen.

Profile The profile contains details about the user – name, biography, contact details and information about progress on quests.

Admin This spanner logo will only appear for users who have administrative privileges. This takes the user into the back-end of the course.

Logout This allows the user to logout of the course.

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Figure 1

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Participating in a courseCourses are accessible from the home screen. The user needs to select the course that they are enrolled in from the list of courses in the centre. If they are participating in a public course, these can be viewed by selecting ‘View public courses’.

Outline of course A short description of the course.

Quick links These links will take the user directly to the course.

Badges Users can participate in quests to gain badges. Any recent badges are displayed here.

Current level Basic information is displayed, showing the level the user has reached and any experience points gained.

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Figure 2

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Last viewed The last object viewed is displayed so that users can start where they left off.

Leaderboard Here there is a list of the top five users on the course. Their scores are displayed, allowing users to compare their progress against their peers.

Recent comments Any comments made in the last 24 hours are listed in the Recent Comments section.

Learning in CuratrThis screen is typical of the screen layout of the Curatr platform; this is the screen that users must access in order to score points and progress on their learning journey. Each course is divided into levels and each level is made up of a number of objects. Users must view and comment on objects to be able to move up to the next level.

Figure 3

Progress bar and XPs The bar across the top of the canvas shows how the user is progressing on this level. To move up to the next level, the user needs to gain a certain number of experience points (XP) and these are tracked on the progress bar.

Nodes Nodes are arranged in concentric circles, growing out from the centre of the screen. Those nodes closest to the centre are at the user’s current level; those further out are at levels previously completed by the user. The colour of the node changes dependent on whether or not the user has viewed the object related to it. In this case, red nodes have been viewed by the user and nodes that have not been viewed are yellow. Any objects which have been bookmarked by the user are marked with a star.

Central avatar An avatar exists at the centre of the screen to signify the organisation hosting the learning experience. In this case the avatar is the default ‘Curatr’ avatar.

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Viewing an objectViewing an object is one of the core functions within Curatr. Users need to view objects and participate in discussions to gain points. Figure 4 shows the user viewing an object within Curatr, in this case the object being piece of text.

Embedded object At the top half of screen the learning object itself is embedded. A learning object can be any digital file – a video, a website, a piece of text etc.

Menu bar Below the object itself is a menu bar showing the object title and its points status. In order to earn an XP for viewing an object, this window must be kept open for a specified period of time. As soon as the view object window is opened, the view timer starts. When the timer hits the ‘view time’ required for a point to register, this point’s status area changes.

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Figure 4

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Discussion Point The Discussion Point on the left allows an administrator to pose a question or otherwise to direct the comments they are seeking from users using this field.

Comments The comments area is where any comments made by students appear in date order. Other users may post a reply to another user’s comment or begin their own thread by creating a new comment. Either of these actions will gain the user the necessary point to achieve full points on viewing this object.

Level upWhen users have sufficient XP, they can move up to the next level. They will normally be presented with a level gate that they must pass to access the higher levels.

Gate Once a user has an adequate number of points, the ‘Gate available’ bar will appear on the course screen. The user can click on this to be taken to the challenge.

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More about gatesEnd of level gates can be one of three types of question; a multiple choice quiz (MCQ), a social response question or a contribution question. MCQs consist of a series of questions with multiple answer options. The user must correctly answer the questions to a pass rate in order to mark the gate as complete and move to the next level. For contribution questions, the user must submit an object in the form of a link to a website, an uploaded file or a text file of their own creation. Having submitted their object, users are then shown other users answers and are allowed to ‘vote up’ the responses they feel are the best. Social response questions, pose the user a question which must be answered with a free-text response. Having saved their answer, the user is then forwarded to see all other users’ answers and is again allowed to vote up the best responses.

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PortfolioThe portfolio section is a detailed report showing the contributions the user has made throughout the course. Any participation is documented here so the user has quick access to their comments, objects, responses and bookmarks.

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Bookmark As a user goes through the course, they can bookmark any objects that they find interesting and might wish to refer back to. These are displayed in the Bookmarks section of the Portfolio.

Added Objects Users are encouraged to add their own objects; these can be viewed in the Added Objects section of the Portfolio.

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Comments Any comments that user has made during the course can be found in the Portfolio.

Gate responses Having accumulated enough points to ‘level up’, sometimes it is necessary for the user to take an ‘end of level gate’ question in order to progress to the next level. Any answers are recorded in the Portfolio section.

PeersUsers are encouraged to upload objects as they progress through the course. In the Peers tab, users can see objects that have been uploaded by other participants on the course.

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Objects Objects are displayed with an image of the user who uploaded it.

Search Users can filter objects by groups.

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DiscoverDiscover allows users to search throughout the course and will bring back any objects or comments that include that search term. Figure 8 shows all results for the search ‘social learning’.

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Building the course Users with administrative privileges can access the back-end of Curatr to create and administrate courses. This can be accessed using the spanner icon on the left hand side of Curatr or visiting ‘/admin’ in the browser’s address bar.

Navigation The navigation panel on the left allows the user to move around the back-end. Selecting ‘Front-end’ allows the user to leave the back-end and enter the course at the front-end.

Course list Here is a list of courses that exisit within this organisation. The user can also view how many students are enrolled, and whether the course is secret or public.

New course Selecting the ‘New Course’ button opens a box where a new course can be created.

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Figure 9

Manage contentOnce your course is set up, you can start adding objects and levels. Learning objects are digital objects that users are required to watch and comment on to win points.

Add Level All courses are built around a structure of levels and each level contains objects.

Objective The Objective is a summary of the content of the level and what the user should expect to learn by the end of the level.

New Object Learning object can be any digital object: a video, piece of text, website etc.

Gate (Discussion) At the end of the level you can set users a challenge that they must participate in to move up to the next level.

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Object Here the basic settings for the object – its name and object type – can be added. There are four types of Object; URL, Embed, Text and Upload. If adding a link to a webpage, the URL is the correct type. If working with a video from a website like YouTube where an ‘embed code’ is available, embed is the type to use. If you simply wish to add in your own text as an object, select the text type. Finally, to upload a file to Curatr, use the upload function. Curatr will accept any ‘Office’ document type, PDF, images, videos (use .MP4) or you can upload a .ZIP package from a popular E-learning Author Package, such as Articulate Storyline. Export for SCORM 1.2 for best results. Finally, an image can be added and you may select in which ‘collection’ the object should exist within.

Social Settings The settings for the social element of Curatr are applied here. The administrator can set a discussion point – this can be a question that users should answer, or a suggestion of content that users can discuss.

Game Settings For each object, users can win XP. The number of XP for both viewing and commenting can be set in Game Settings. To ensure users actually view the object, a view time can be set; users must watch the video for this length of time before they gain viewing XP.

Object settingsAdding an object requires completing a small form about the object. As previously mentioned, any digital object can be used and the administrator can apply a number of functions to the object.

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Adding usersOnce the course is created, select Users from the left-hand menu. Here users can be enrolled into the course.

Invite Users The Invite Users button allows you to send an email to course users with details about how to login.

Add User To add a single user to the course, you can select Add User in the top right hand corner.

Add Multiple Users Multiple users can be imported as a spreadsheet. Users who are members of the organisation but have not yet been enrolled on the course can also be enrolled here.

User scores Course Enrolments allows the administrator to see at a glance how users are progressing.

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Object and Comment ModerationUsers are encouraged to upload their own objects and leave comments. As the administrator of the course, you have the ability to view these objects and moderate if need be.

Objects uploaded Here you can view the objects uploaded. The administrator can delete objects if they deem them inappropriate.

In addition to administrating objects, users comments can be moderated from a similar screen.

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CollectionsIn the Collections section you can set up tags that can be applied to objects. Once objects have been tagged, they can be brought together to be viewed as a collection. You can also use this feature to make Objects easier to ‘Discover’.

Add New Tag Here you can add a new tag. Once this has been added it will automatically show in the list of available tags when you upload an object.

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When a new object is uploaded, it can be assigned a tag which will group it within a collection (see figures 11 and 15).

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QuestsQuests are challenges that your learners can attempt to achieve whilst taking a Curatr course. Quests represent a collection of Badges, which allow you to create complex sets of goals for learners to achieve. Quests exist at the Organisation level, allowing their re-use throughout all courses within that organisation. You may need to enable these Quests within a Course, as is shown in Figure 16).

Existing quests Here are the default quests. Quests in grey have not yet been added to the course.

Add quest There is the flexibility to design a quest that is directly in line with the course objectives.

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Figure 16

Each badge (Figure 17) has a name, description, type (quality, quantity), action and number of occurrences. The type of badge is significant; Quantity badges can be gained by a user performing a ‘quantity of actions’, i.e. View 10 items. Quality is driven by the comments voting system.

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ReportsThe administrator is able to access the ‘Reports’ section where it is possible to view which users have completed each level and view their gate responses. From this information, reports can be compiled about how many users have reach each level, which topics are the most discussed, information about answers at each gate and more.

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Gate reports A list of responses for the level gate are included here.

Level reports Users who have and have not completed the levels can be viewed here.

Users The Users screen shows a complete list of users enrolled on the course and a detailed breakdown of their rank, levels completed, points, score, number of comments, number of views and number of objects uploaded.

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Get in touch!If you have any questions about using Curatr, please do not hesitate to get in touch at the contact details below.

Phone: +44 (0) 1865 873 862Email: hello@curatr.co.ukTwitter: @curatrwww.curatr3.com

www.curatr3.com Curatr is a product of HT2 Ltd.