Phoebe User Guide

Note: This is the text of the Phase 1 guides. Phase 2 functionality will be different.

GETTING STARTED WITH PHOEBE

Use your browser’s Print button or File menu to print this guide for easy reference.

Key concepts

Phoebe is designed for planning learning sessions, where a learning session equates roughly to one of the following: classroom-based (“face to face”) lesson, tutorial, seminar, lab/practical class, lecture, field trip or a unit of a computer-based/online course. A learning session can be either a “stand-alone” piece of learning or one of a series of sessions that make up an entire course or module within a course.

A learning session consists of a sequence of learning activities: “tasks” that you want your students to do, with or without your involvement. If part of the sequence involves a presentation/lecture by you, then that also counts as an activity (in that you talk, while the students listen and, if required, take notes).

A learning design is the equivalent of a lesson plan.

Phoebe is based on wiki technology. In brief, a wiki is a very simple Web-based tool which was originally intended for online collaborative writing. When you create a learning design in Phoebe, you are in fact creating wiki pages.

Launching Phoebe and logging in

Note: Even if you do not have an account in Phoebe, you can still explore the tool. However, you won’t be able to create any learning designs.

The URL for the Phoebe prototype is  http://phoebe-app.conted.ox.ac.uk/

1. On the introductory (welcome) page click the Login link towards the top right corner.
2. Type your user name and password and click OK.
3. Click Explore the prototype.

The Contents page appears, showing a list of topics. We recommend that you use this list to navigate your way through Phoebe, as the map has not yet been implemented, and the tags may not be meaningful until you are more familiar with the tool.

Starting a new learning design

1. Click My Designs towards the top right of the Phoebe window.
2. Under “Create a new design”, type the name of your design and click Create. The name is added to list of existing designs, with its “Active” button selected.
3. Click Contents towards the top right of the Phoebe window.

Exploring Phoebe

You are now free to explore Phoebe and make notes for your new plan. The topics in the Contents are laid out in a structured way, but you can explore them in any order you like. They assume that a learning design (or lesson plan) consists of:

• “Global” information about the context (environment), curriculum, the students and/or your approach to teaching
• A sequence of learning activities: things you want the students to do, together with the resources that they (and you) need to carry out these activities
• A contingency plan: alternative or additional activities in case things don’t go as expected
• Some reflections on how the learning session itself went that you may want to record for future reference

Creating a learning design

You create your learning design by writing notes in the Notepad sheet that appears on the page for each component of the design. To practise making notes::

1. Under the heading “Contextual Information,” click Title and author. The page will appear, together with the notepad.
2. Click Add notes for this page and start typing.
3. When you have finished your notes for this page, click Save changes. You can come back and edit them later.

Not all pages have a Notepad sheet, for reasons which you’ll see. It’s also important to understand that you don’t have to make notes on every page, just the ones that are relevant to your design.

Things are slightly different when it comes to designing the learning activities themselves. We have split the sequence of activities into 5 types:

• Preparatory
• Main sequence (which may consist of more than one activity)
• Assessment
• Follow-up
• Additional/alternative

The Phoebe page for each activity type includes a checklist of things to remember, which you can obtain from a text file and paste into the Notepad. However only do this if you are confident with formatting tables in a wiki.

Managing your learning designs

Reviewing a learning design

To review your entire design at any time:

1. Click My Designs.
2. In the list of “Existing designs,” click the name of your design.

You will see a list of all the Phoebe pages on which you have made notes. (They are named according to wiki conventions, but should be meaningful to you!)

• To see a page of notes in context, clicking the relevant page name.
• To review all notes, click Standard Design Report under “Reports”.

Note: If you have made notes on a “What technology can I use for...” or “What can I do with...” page, they might not yet appear in the standard report. This is because we are still developing those sections of Phoebe.

Printing a learning design

Follow the previous instructions for reviewing all notes. Then, use your browser’s Print button to print the design.

Exporting a learning design

You can export a learning design as an HTML file by following the instructions for reviewing all notes. Then, use your browser’s File menu to save the page. However, note that this currently outputs a rough and ready document only.

Re-opening a learning design

Exiting from Phoebe will save your design so far, provided that you clicked the Save button on each sheet of the Notepad. When you return:

1. Log in and click My Designs.
2. To re-activate your design, click the button in the “Active” column next to your design. Then click Make changes and confirm the action.
3. Click Contents to start navigating through your design again.

Switching between learning designs

To switch from one learning design to another:

1. Click My Designs.

• If the second design already exists, click its “Active” button, then Make Changes. Confirm the action and then click Contents.
• If you want to start a new design, type its name in the box below “Create new design,” click the Create button and then Contents.

Deleting a learning design

To delete an unwanted design:

1. On the “My Designs” page, click the relevant box in the “Delete” column.
2. Click Make Changes and confirm the action.