Private Table of contents
First steps
We’ll start by looking at the working model with an example. This will be followed by a number of tips, a brief description of the components of the model and, finally, instructions on how to enable Folio and the Agoras, if you haven’t already done so.
Working model
Here is an example of a workflow:
What can you do with this model?
- Identification: Centralize submissions from all courses in one private place.
- .Socialization: Publish content in Agoras for classmates too, improving communication and strengthening the community.
- Professionalization: Have the possibility to turn your portfolio into a professional portfolio.
- Gain the skills to publish online.
- Provide a way to showcase students’ work and assess it quickly (the continuous assessment register is now linked to the Agoras. See how students use it.
Tips:
- Start early by encouraging the members of the classroom to get started, and don’t wait for the first submission before starting to use Folio. You can do this, for example, by encouraging students to enable Folio if they haven’t already done so, customize its appearance and replace the content of the About me page with their own.
- Make a non-graded activity (so that they can link it to the classroom) and give it a name such as What I want to do on this course or similar. Encourage students to create content that is only visible in the classroom (classroom permission) introducing themselves through videos, photographs, references, text or however they want.
- Tell them that they can use the classroom ActiFolios to share references, links or anything else that may be of interest and – for content not relating to any specific activity – remind them that they can select the parent ActiFolio (which has the same name as the course).
Things to cover and convey:
- Folio is the student’s personal space. They can use it to create a professional portfolio. They can export it when they finish the programme or keep it on the website, if they wish. Folio is based on WordPress and can be migrated.
- Make sure you tell students that they can use it for different courses, because it will come in useful for a variety of things.
Key approach:
- Activities carried out on Folio must be meaningful for students: Folio is not recommended for activities whose sole purpose is to submit them to the teaching staff. The activity must be useful for:
a) reinforcing the student’s own identity;
b) sharing among peers and socializing the learning process;
c) creating a content history that gradually builds a meaningful portfolio. - If you ask students to submit a graded activity through Folio, they must use the Folio pathway. In other words, they must submit it to the continuous assessment register from Folio. This makes sense to students. We have received a great number of complaints from students saying that teaching staff are asking them to submit their work to the continuous assessment register in a PDF file separately from Folio, which duplicates their work. See this tutorial on how Folio is linked to the register.
Folio: sections and tutorials
Folio
Folio is a WordPress-based personal blog for UOC students and members of the UOC community. It is linked to the UOC model and collects data from the classrooms where students are enrolled.
Enabling Folio
To enable Folio, add the widget to the Campus home page and click on it to enter. See this tutorial on enabling Folio widget.
Here is a screenshot of a sample Folio screen. As you’ll see, the URL is the member’s username followed by “.folio.uoc.edu”:
You’ll also see the word Login (Enter) in the blue bar at the top, on the right-hand side, next to a set of numbers 
. This is because you’re in the public area of Folio. The number 10 means that there are ten content items you can’t see ( 
). If you’re a member of the UOC community and you’ve enabled Folio, you’ll be able to log in and see whether there is content specific to the UOC community.
Once you’ve logged in, the bar will turn grey, and the numbers will be updated based on your permissions.
How does it work?
Students always publish content in their own Folio space, but they can link the content to classroom activities by means of ActiFolios (see below) and by giving a variety of permissions (see below) that will allow them to decide who can see each item and whether it should be published in the classroom Agora spaces (see below).
Agoras
An Agora is a site where all published content from activities carried out in a given classroom is automatically posted. Community members wishing to do so can link any content they publish to the Agoras of which they are members. The amount of public content in the Agora will depend on how these content items have been published and permission to view content can be set for just Campus users, classroom users or teaching staff.
This is what a course Agora looks like:
Publishing content
When a UOC community member clicks on Add to create content, a space for writing and uploading images, videos and other types of content will appear. It contains a similar box to the one used for WordPress categories, but this one is automatically updated and contains the courses in which each student is enrolled and the activities from those courses. They are called ActiFolios, because they let students link classroom activities to their Folios. Here’s an example of what they look like and a couple of tips:
ActiFolios
All activities, whether they are continuous assessment activities, practicals or non-graded activities, appear in the ActiFolio box. There’s no need to edit them, as they’re synced with the classroom activity calendar.
- Content can be linked to more than one ActiFolio.
- You can assign the same ActiFolio to a range of content.
- You can change ActiFolio at any time.
- Content can be assigned to the course name (parent category). This way, students can share content in the Agora even if it’s not directly related to an activity.
UOC members enrolled in at least one course will therefore be able to see the ActiFolio box with all their classroom activities displayed in the admin area of their blog whenever they post an entry.
Publishing content
Whenever you create content using WordPress, the choice to either publish it or keep it private will appear in the admin panel in the top right-hand corner of the screen. Folio works in the same way and with the same structure but, in line with the UOC’s system, there are six publication levels:
- Public: visible to everyone.
- Password protected: visible to anyone who has the password.
- Campus: visible to anyone using Folio on Campus when they’re logged in.
- Classroom: visible to classmates when they’re logged in to the Campus.
- Instructors: visible to affiliated teaching staff and coordinating professors when they’re logged in to the Campus.
- Private: visible only to that student.
Pages have a different box. This is because they can’t be linked to Agoras. Pages only have Public, Password protected, Campus and Private permissions.
Àgora
Agoras are places where members of a classroom can interact and share content. They search the Folio spaces of the students and teaching staff of a given classroom for content published with classroom or higher permissions to which one or more ActiFolios of that classroom have been linked. They then replicate the content they have found and make it visible in the course Agora so that all the work done so far is visible to all members in a single place.
How to set up an Agora
1. Enable the Agora in the classroom.
From the Canvas classroom, click on ‘Settings’.
Then click on ‘Navigation’ in the top menu.
You’ll see a list of the items installed in the navigation menu for your course and those that are hidden.
Drag ‘Folio Agora’ from the bottom list to the top list to make it visible to students.
Then click on Save at the bottom of the screen.
This will let your students access the Agora directly from the course.
Folio is a personal area that can be used by each student to submit their activities for all their courses from a single place (ActiFolio), gradually building their future professional portfolio in Folio as a result.
The automatic publication of content in the Agora boosts communication among students and between students and teaching staff, as well as increasing the community feeling and helping them socialize online.
For more information and help for teachers, check out folio.uoc.edu/en/
Congratulations! You’ve successfully set up Folio and the Agora for your course. You’re now ready to go! All that’s left to do is tell your students about the tool on the noticeboard and start setting assignments.
This is a personal work space for a student of the Open University of Catalonia. Any content published in this space is the responsibility of its author.