Ways to Halt Student Conference Posts

Ways to Halt Conference Participation
(Know the consequences of your actions!)

What is the best way to close a WebTycho conference discussion to student postings beyond a certain date? Here are some suggestions — and cautions — concerning managing conferences with an eye to pacing discussions, precluding late student postings, and keeping the conferences menu clear and accessible.

Closing conferences is just one management style; some instructors prefer never to close conferences.

Three WebTycho Conference Management options, described below, allow instructors to close student "Write" access to conferences. Only the method of making the conference "Read Only" is broadly recommended, because it allows students to retain "Read" access to both the content of the conference and the related information and statistics in their portfolios. In conjunction with the TIPS also shown below, the "Read Only" method makes "closing" conferences transparent and user-friendly for both instructor and students.

1. Make a Conference Read Only

This method changes the student access level in conferences from one that allows both reading and writing to one that allows only reading.

Steps

Click on Faculty Center on the class menu.
Click on Manage.
Click the Edit link for the conference you wish to "close" to student posts. (See the image at right.)
Edit the title to indicate "closed."
Select Students Can "Read Only."
Click Submit.

This is the recommended method for "closing" conferences.

Students DO lose the ability to post in the conference.
Instructors can continue to post, e.g., wrap up a discussion, after closing the conference.
Both instructor and students continue to be able to read and review all postings in the conference.
Both instructor and students continue to have access to conference statistics (including links to their postings) via their own portfolios.
Instructors retain access to statistics and links on all student activity in the conference.
The action is completely reversible.

Please see TIPS below for ways to make this method most user-friendly for students.

2. Make a Conference Not Visible to Students

This method removes the link to the conference from the class menu. At the same time, it removes all references to the conference from all students' portfolios.

Steps:

Click on Faculty Center on the class menu.
Click on Manage.
Click the Edit link for the conference you wish to "close" to student posts.
(See the image at right.)
Select NO in the section Make Link Visible to Students.
Click Submit.

Make conference not visible

This option is not recommended because it limits students' access to information either for review of class discussions or for assessment of their own work in the class.

Students DO lose the ability to post in the conference because the conference link disappears from the class conferences menu.
Students also lose their access to read/review all conference posts.
All links are removed from each student's portfolio to their own posts and to their conference statistics related to their posts.
Instructors retain access to the conference to read or write via the Faculty Center's Manage Conferences interface.
Instructors also retain access to all conference statistics and links from individual portfolios or All Portfolios to each student's posts in the conference.
The action is completely reversible.

3. Delete a Conference

The WebTycho Faculty Guide contains instructions on how to delete a conference that contains no student posts.

Please do not delete a conference that contains student work!

If a conference is deleted, its links and all its contents and statistics permanently disappear from all parts of the classroom, for both the instructor and the students.
Neither students nor instructor can review conference postings or statistics or portfolio links.
In case of grade challenges or other circumstances, there is no class record of instructor or student posts in the deleted conference.
Attempts by instructors to compensate for the disadvantages of this method (e.g., recreate discussions and statistics in other formats) are labor-intensive.
The action is irreversible.

Conference Management TIPS When Making Conferences Read Only

Inform students at the beginning of the semester of your intention to keep conferences open only for a limited period of time. Inform them again in announcements when you "close" a conference.
Include the active dates of each "closable" conference in its title, e.g., "Session 9 (4/5 - 4/11)".
When making the conference "Read Only" to close it to further postings, edit the title to indicate that the access has been changed, e.g.,
"Session 9 (4/5 - 4/11) -- CLOSED" or
"Session 9 (4/5 - 4/11) -- Read Only".
Reorder the conferences to streamline class members' access to the current/open conferences:

position open conferences at the top of the conferences index
position closed conferences at the bottom of the index.

image of conferences menu

In the above example (at week seven in the term), the instructor has 3 conferences at the top of the conferences menu that are "open" (i.e., students can both read and write):

the Admin Questions conference that remains open all semester
the conference for one week into the future (Session 8)
the current week's conference (Session 7), labeled "Current"

Reordering open conferences to the top means class members don't have to scroll down to access the conferences they are most likely to want to open. All other conferences are still available at the bottom of the conferences menu, in "closed" (i.e., Read-Only) status.

For instruction on reordering conferences, see the WebTycho Help website's Faculty Guide/Conferences page.

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Ways to Halt Conference Participation (Know the consequences of your actions!)