Watch Lists

Watchlists are time savers. Instructors and students can use watchlists to generate emails for very specific activities. In this segment you will learn to create watchlists. 

Watchlists are designed to let instructors and students be notified by email when very specific things happen within the online course platform. An example is when a new video has been posted to a forum, or when posts are made to specific topics withing a class forum, or a student can get an email when an instructor is going to open a new class in a specific course. 

All of these, and more, can all be handled in the watchlist filters and they are simple to set up.

CLASS WATCH LISTS

For each class, you can choose whether you'd like to be notified when someone posts a new forum topic or uploads a new homework video. By default, new topics posted will automatically be added to your watchlist. (You can change this in your account settings.)

You can customize which topics you'd like to receive emails for by visiting your Watched Topics page.

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Difference Between

Watchlists and Private Messages

The watchlist system is similar in concept but different than a private message.  Adding something to your watchlist is like saying “I care about this topic, so I want the system to send me a message as soon as somebody replies, to make sure I don’t miss it.”

When we first wrote the university, these two systems were not separate.  Everything, including all the watchlist items, went into the private message inbox.  When people used the watchlist a lot, all the watchlist messages took over their inbox and it made finding important messages from other users very difficult to stand out. To fix this the watchlist was moved to its own area where it is today, separated from the private message inbox.

Now, people can use the watchlist as much as they want (or ignore it, if they don’t want to use it), and it won’t interfere with their important messages.

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Difference between Watch Lists

and Notification 

In this segment you will learn how to set up or turn off watch lists.

There are two ways instructors can monitor activity in a course or class. 

1- Notifications log all activity in the course or class. Notifications are not emailed to instructors or students. They can only be seen when the user logs into the course and selects notification form the main top task bar.  If you choose watchlists can also be emailed to you. For example some instructors only want to get an email when a student uploads a homework video. 

2- Watch lists, on the other hand,  is a list of specific activity of your choosing that's displayed when you select the Watchlist button right next to notification on the main task bar 

Both Watch Lists and Notifications have filters which users can set to control the type of information they receive. Those filters are simple to learn.

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How to create a Watch List

After you login the course the watch list icon can be selected from the main taskbar. It's located on the task bar that has your small photo after you login. To be clear you will need to be logged into your courses or class to see that task bar. 

There are 4 options once the watch list icon has been selected. 

1- Activity

2- Topic

3- Classes 

4- Courses

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Activity

When the ACTIVITY button is selected you will see the screen below.  From this screen you can select the course you wish to monitor from the drop down under Filters. 

When you select a course a popup window will appear to select the class in that course you want to monitor. This will only apply to instructors with multiple classes of that course running at the same course.

After selecting the class you can check the Posts box and/or the video box. (see red circles in the image) The two images below will show these options. 

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Posts :

After selecting the the posts box you will receive an email whenever a student makes a post on the forums in the class. The same happens if the video box is checked.

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Topic 

When the Watchlist > TOPIC > Teaching Courses> pick the topic from the forum to be on the watchlist.  This sends an email when someone posts to a selected topic in a forum. See the image below.

When the Watchlist > TOPIC > Enrolled Classes  - button is selected students can select specific from the classes they are enrolled in. See the image below.

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Class Watchlists

For each class, you can choose whether you'd like to be notified when someone posts a new topic or uploads a new video. By default, new topics posted will automatically be added to your watchlist. (You can change this in your account settings.)

Rather than having all forum posts added to your watchlist, you can choose the topics you wish to watch and ignore the others.

In the screen below we see that we are in the WATCH LIST CLASS window and have selected Teaching Classes. You will then be able to select what course you wish to monitor. Your option are to select Watch, Email, or both. 

We can check the WATCH BOX for any class we are teaching and get notifications when students have any activity in those classes.

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The image below shows how to create a watchlist for a class you are enrolled in. Notice the Classes button is selected and the Enrolled classes button is slected. See circles in the image below

For a student to watchlist a class they simply check the WATCH check box next to every class. 

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Create a watch list for

upcoming courses/classes

When the Watchlist>Courses button is selected we have the option of selecting from two buttons. The window that opens has two options: "View Upcoming Courses and Browse Course Catalog. See the image below.

View upcoming Courses:

Selecting the VIEW UPCOMING COURSES brings up the image below.

The default list of courses are those courses that are listed as COMING SOON. In the image below you will see two classes that are listed as "Coming Soon".

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Browse By Category > drop down

The viewer can also select three additional options (in addition to coming soon) in the drop down for Browse By Category-  see image below:

1 - Select

1 - Category

2 - Instructor

3 - All Courses

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 If "INSTRUCTOR" is selected from the drop down, the screen below is displayed. 

The viewer can then select one of the instructors and they will be notified when new classes are offered by that instructor.