NOTE: These features may have been disabled by your school in order to simplify Echo's interface. To enable these and other advanced features, contact your school's Echo administrator.
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A gatekeeper is an activity within a course that has certain requirements that must be met before a student can either move on to new course material, access an item in the syllabus, or pass the course.
Some examples of using a gatekeeper might be:
- Require students to complete a pre-assessment before accessing the project entry event.
- Require a group to submit their collaboration contract before starting the project.
- Require students to read two articles with opposing views before posting their own view to a discussion board.
Within an activity's settings there are three options for creating and managing gatekeeper tasks:
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Activity Gatekeeper (Advanced activity options panal)
- This option allows you to set an activity so that the student must complete the activity before they can move on in the course. All items below the gatekeeper task on the syllabus will be inaccessible to students until the gatekeeper task is completed.
- Also on the Advanced activity options panel, teachers can define what constitutes completion (i.e. submission, graded, passing grade).
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Activity Lockout (Visibility and access panel)
- This option works in reverse of the Activity Gatekeeper by preventing students from opening an item until they have completed another item in the syllabus. Using this method, teachers can conditionally block access to a specific activity without affecting other items in the syllabus.
- Course Gatekeeper (Advanced gradebook options panel)
- Here you can make an activity require a passing score for course credit. We call this the mother of all gatekeepers! If a student doesn't pass this activity, they will receive a 0% for the course this activity lives in until a passing score is earned.
Important consideration: When using any gatekeeper task, it's important that sufficient scaffolding is provided to ensure all students can complete the task. A gatekeeper tasks holds both the student and the teacher accountable. Teachers who establish performance hurdles must also support students to successfully overcome them.
In a pinch, you can use the Override Complete button when grading the student's work to mark the activity complete and allow the student to move on.
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Activity Gatekeeper
To make an existing activity a gatekeeper, enter a course through the editor tool.
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Locate the activity you would like to make a gatekeeper.
Click the edit icon.
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Select the settings tab and scroll down to advanced activity options.
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First, select an option for determining when the system will mark the activity complete.
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To make this activity a gatekeeper, select student must complete this activity before continuing to the next one.
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When finished adjusting the gatekeeper settings, click save.
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Activity Lockout
To conditionally lock an activity until another activity is completed, open or create an activity using the Course Editor tool. On the Settings tab, then locate the Visibility and access panel.
- Enable the "Block access until student completes other activity option.
- Click CHOOSE ACTVITY to identify the activity students must complete before they can access this item.
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Course Gatekeeper
To set an existing activity as a course gatekeeper, enter a course through the Course Editor tool and navigate to the Setting tab. Locate the Advanced gradebook options panel.
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To make this activity a course gradekeeper, select require a passing score for course credit.
NOTE: You do not need to enter a passing score in the passing score (%) field, unless the passing score of this assignment is going to be different than the passing score set at the course level.
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Activities that require a passing score for course credit, are denoted by the "thumbs up, thumbs down" icon in the student's gradebook. Hovering over the icon reveals that the particular activity requires a passing score for course credit.
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If the student does not pass the assignment, their overall course score will appear as a 0% until they receive a passing score.
The activity will then have a red "thumbs down" icon in their course gradebook.
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If the student does pass the assignment, their overall course score will appear.
The activity will then have a green "thumbs up" icon in their course gradebook.
Echo is constantly being improved based on the feedback from users and we strive to keep our documentation up to date. If this document doesn’t match what you are seeing in Echo, please let us know.
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