Customizing the Unit Map
Instructors have the option, using settings in the NROC Course manager, to hide Topics they do not want to cover in class. Hidden Topics will not be required for "mastery" of the associated Unit in the course, and will not be available to the student in the Unit Map.
However, hiding Topics does not necessarily prevent that material from showing up in some form on the pre-assessment. The pre-assessment contains questions designed to cover multiple objectives. If you hide a Topic, a question may remain in the pre-assessment that covers the content in the removed Topic because it also covers content that remains in the Unit.
When Topics in the NROC Course Manager are hidden (unchecked):
- The Units displayed in your LMS do not change, even if you hide all Topics.
- The Topic is hidden in the Unit Map.
- Pre-assessments may still contain some concepts covered in the hidden material.
- "Detailed" pre-assessments will not contain any follow-up (low-level) questions that cover the hidden Topics. (See further details below.)
Since the pre-assessment is intended to guide instruction (not demonstrate mastery), we want to know what students do not know as much as what they do know. So students may encounter questions that require knowledge of these hidden Topics when taking the pre-assessment. However, the student will not be presented with the hidden Topics when studying through the course.
Understanding High and Low Level Questions
The detailed pre-assessment contains both high-level and low-level questions. The high-level questions are designed to test as efficiently as possible - so they assess for several learning objectives at once. If a student gets the question wrong, the student with be presented with a series of low-level questions, one for each objective covered by the high-level question.
When you turn off (uncheck) Topics, then those objectives that the Topic covers exclusively are pulled out of the assessment.
But when a high-level question covers multiple objectives, then that high-level question is left in -- as long as one of the objectives it covers is part of a Topic that is still in the course (checked).
This can occur when a high-level question covers multiple learning objectives. As long as one of the learning objectives it covers is included (checked) in the pre-assessment, the high-level question will be presented.
Example
For example, if you uncheck (hide) only the Topic "absolute value", your students will still see a high-level question on the pre-assessment that includes the concept of absolute value. The high-level question covers multiple objectives, only one of which is "absolute value". If the student does not understand absolute value, he may get the question wrong.
Getting the high-level question wrong will -- in the "Detailed" pre-assessment only -- cause the student to see all of the low-level questions that correspond to objectives covered by the high-level question he missed, except the ones corresponding to Topics you have unchecked (hidden) in the NROC Course Manager configuration: in this case, absolute value.
So in this example, the student will not see the low-level question that checks knowledge of absolute value but will see the other low-level questions for Topics you did not hide in that Unit.
If you have questions, please contact tech support.
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