ICT in het Onderwijs

How do I use Lockers for Groups?

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When you choose to divide your students into Groups to enable them to work together on an assignment, have discussions, and/or give peer feedback, it is important that they are able to efficiently communicate with each other. A Group Locker gives your students the possibility to quickly and easily share files with each other.

The advantages of a Group Locker:

  • It is a group specific digital storage space of 1 GB (comparable to Dropbox) in which students can upload, and save several types of files (documents, videos, images etc).  
  • All group members can create folders and HTML files to organise the contents of the locker.
  • As a teacher you will have access to every locker related to your course (you have the same permissions as the students in said locker).
  • Teachers can easily mail students from a locker with the Email Group Members function.
  • All group members can download and edit the files in the locker allowing them to view, add additional information, and provide feedback on each other’s work.
  • The files in a group locker are only available to those specific students (and the teacher) and cannot be made public.
  • All group members can see when and who last edited a file.

Let your students know you have access to all files in the locker. It could be that students do not want their teacher to see all of their drafts, so they want to keep in mind that you can see everything when they are adding files. 

Setting up Lockers

  • Go to Administration in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Groups. You will go to the Groups homepage.
  1. Go to View Categories and use the drop-down menu to select the group category to which you want to add a locker (the example above shows the group category Groupwork is selected, and the group category consists of two groups, namely Group 1 and Group 2).
  2. Click on the fold-out arrow next to the name of the group.
  3. Click Edit Category.
  1. Scroll to Additional Options at the bottom of the page and select Set up lockers.
  2. Click Save. You will now return to the Manage Groups page.

To go to lockers, click Edit Category again, which is below the fold-out arrow next to the group category.

At the bottom of the page you will see Existing Workspace. Below that will be the lockers you have created. Each group in the group category will get their own locker (in the example above two lockers have been created: one for Group 1 and one for Group 2).

  1. Click on (one of) the link(s) to go to a locker (for example to add a file to the locker).
  2. Click on Save or Cancel to return to the overview page of the group category for which you have created the lockers.

In the column Locker you can now see that you have linked a locker to the group(s). Click Group Files to open the locker of a specific group and to add or view files in the locker. (the example above shows that the two groups, Group 1 and Group 2, within the group category Groupwork both have their own locker).

Adding a (README!)file

Files that have been removed from the locker cannot be restored by either you or your students. It is therefore important that you provide every locker with a README! HTML file and write a short warning in the description about the fact that removed files cannot be restored so your students (and fellow teachers) are up to speed about this issue when they open a locker.

  • Click on Group Files for the desired group in the overview page of the group category (in the Locker column).
  • Click on New File.
  1. Give the file a name (e.g.: READ ME!).
  2. Write a short message below Description.
  3. Click Create.

The image above now shows a clear warning message so all members of the group know that they have to be careful when removing files:

  • This method can also be used when you want to add instructions (Upload Files can also be used). 
  • Click New Folder to create standard folders for the locker.

Note that you cannot simply add the same file to different group lockers. You have to open each locker separately in order to create (New File) or upload (Upload File) the warning file.

If you go to a Group Locker you will land on the (second) tab: Group Lockers (see the image above). Click Group Lockers again to get an overview of all the group lockers that are available in this specific course. You can click on one of these lockers to peruse its content.

A group lockers also has the tab My Locker. All the files that are kept in this locker are only visible to yourself and will be available in every course. We do not recommend the use of the personal locker as it has maximum storage of only 1 MB and is only accessible through a group locker. The personal locker should therefore only be used for small (group related) notes.

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