Edit A Community

Once you’ve created a community, you can edit all of its preferences/settings or give teacher privileges to additional MySciLife teachers.

To edit a community, go to the Manage Communities panel under the Teacher Tools menu. Click “edit” icon (pencil) to the right of the community’s name and access code. From within this page, you can customize all of the Community Preferences. To the right of each setting, you will see MySciLife’s default settings for reference.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to click “Save changes” at the bottom of the page for changes to take effect!

You can change the following settings for each community:

Unique Access Code: This is the code your students will use to join this community. Each community can have only one access code at any given time. If you wish to change the access code, you can change it here. Changing the access code will not affect students currently enrolled in that community, but new students enrolling for the first time will need to use the updated access code.

Community Title: This is the name of the community that will show in the Community Menu for all community members. If you wish to change this name, you can change it here.

Tip: Use the name of a class, class period, class nickname, small group, science club, or any other name your students will recognize.

Allow Posts: Toggles whether or not community members are allowed to make posts in the community. Posting is set to “yes” by default. 

Tip: You can turn this on and off in a flash if you do not want students posting for a day or two, or if you want them to make their posts directly to the Main Stream.

Allow Comments: Toggles whether or not community members are allowed to make comments on posts within the community. Comments are set to “yes” by default.

Tip: You can turn this on and off in a flash if you do not want students commenting during class today or if you want them to interact with the full MySciLife community in the Main Stream.

Student Identification: Lets you choose whether students in your community can see each other’s real names, or just their identities. Student identification is set to “identities only” by default.

Note: Best practice shows that displaying ONLY their science identities will reinforce “ownership” of their identities and keep the focus on science! Remember that real names never show in the Main Stream.

Moderation: Changes whether or not student posts and comments need to be approved by a teacher before appearing in the community. This setting is for the full community and can be overridden for an individual student in the Manage Students panel. Moderation is set to “on” by default.

Set to Read Only: Changing this to “On” turns off the ability for community members (including teachers) to write new posts & comments. Read only is set to “off” by default.

Tip: This is useful when you wish to stop all posting for “teachable moments” in class.

See the “Manage Students” section and the “Understanding & Adjusting Moderation Settings” section.

Teacher Privileges

By default, the teacher that created a community is the only teacher that can moderate posts and comments, approve new members to the community, and edit community preferences. If subsequent teachers join your community they will be able to make posts and comments without moderation but will not be able moderate student activity in the community until you grant them “Teacher Privileges.”

The other teacher(s) join using the community Access Code and must be approved by you in your Activity Feed.

You can allow teachers who join your community to moderate content and approve new members by granting them “teacher privileges” in this area of the panel. All teacher members with teacher privileges in a community can see all community activity and interact much as the students do.

To grant full teacher privileges to another teacher, slide the "Teacher Privileges" toggle to "ON." Revoke Teacher Privileges by sliding the toggle to "OFF." 

Co-teachers essentially “share” the same activity feed activity for the community in which they both have teacher privileges. If you have a co-teacher with teacher privileges in your community, the action EITHER teacher takes in the Activity Feed for that community will mirror across all other co-teachers for that community. For example, if Teacher 1 approves a Community post, it will show as approved in Teacher 2’s Activity Feed. If Teacher 1 marks an item as “read,” it will show as read for Teacher 2 (even if teacher 2 never looked at it). If Teacher 1 disapproves a student post (and the post is returned to the student’s Drafts), the post will disappear from BOTH teacher’s Activity Feeds until it is resubmitted by the student.

Tip: Provide community access to your Learning Support Teacher, ESL/ELL teacher, Gifted teacher, or other specialists who work with students in that class. You can decide together who should moderate these students’ posts, but teaming up with other specialists will support students’ individual needs.

REMEMBER: Be sure to click "Save Changes" so your changes take effect!

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