Creating a Cabinet¶

To create a cabinet, the teacher should go here or click on My Cabinets on the dashboard. This page will list all created cabinets, and the teacher can create a new cabinet by clicking the Create Cabinet button.

By clicking this button, the teacher will be taken to a page where they can create a cabinet. On this page, it is mandatory to first select the group of students who will have access to the cabinet. Next, it is mandatory to select the course that students will follow. After that, you need to give the cabinet a name. You will be offered a cabinet name that contains the group and course name, but you are free to enter any name you wish. We recommend that the names be such that students can recognize which cabinet it is based on the title. In addition, you can add a short course description that will appear on your cabinet card in the control panel and will be shown to students when they start working. Below the short description, there is a field for a longer course description, which serves to explain in more detail what will be done in the course and to provide students with more relevant information. For both the short and long descriptions, you can use the recommended texts, but you are also free to change and adapt them to your needs. Finally, the teacher needs to click create cabinet.

Once you create a cabinet, it will be visible to students as soon as they log in to Petlja under “My Started Courses,” and by clicking the appropriate button, they will be able to access the desired cabinet. On the Petlja homepage, students will be able to see the names of the cabinets you have set up.

When students go to the homepage of the cabinet you created for them, they will see the short description you wrote, as well as the longer description immediately below it. From the homepage, they will also have the option to start working.

All students who belong to the group you added will be included in the cabinet. If these are students using accounts you created for them, it will be enough for them to simply go to the course page and they will be able to see the course. If these are students using personal accounts (or accounts created by their parents), they will receive a notification that they have been invited to the cabinet and will need to accept the invitation.

When students access the course page, on the homepage they will see a card with the cabinet in which they are following the course and will be able to access the cabinet. All progress that students have made in independently going through the original course or other cabinets will be transferred to the new cabinet, and the teacher will be able to see it. They need to click continue with course to access the course.

When they access the course, at the top of the screen, the short description of the cabinet you entered, as well as the cabinet name, will be displayed.

Managing the Cabinet¶

When you click on the cabinet icon in the My Cabinets section, you will be taken to a page where you can manage the cabinet. On this page, you can change the cabinet name or delete the cabinet by clicking the appropriate button in the upper right corner of the page.

Here you can also see the link for joining the cabinet, which you can send to a student or colleague who needs to join your cabinet. It is enough for them to go to that link and, after logging in to Petlja, they will become a member of your cabinet. You can also change the link by clicking the GENERATE NEW JOIN LINK button, which will change the link and deactivate the old one.

Users¶

The first thing you will see on the Manage Cabinet page is information about the students who have joined your cabinet. On the left side, you will see their names. If these are students using their own accounts and have been notified that they have been added to the cabinet, you will see their status. It can be pending if the student has not responded or rejected if the student has declined to join the cabinet. In the latter case, you will have the option to invite the student to the cabinet again. If the student has accepted the invitation, they will be displayed the same as all other accounts in this table.

In addition to usernames, you will also see their progress in the course. More about tracking student progress can be found in the chapter Tracking Student Progress in the Cabinet.

Students using their own accounts will see a notification like this, indicating they need to accept access to your cabinet.

On this page, you also have the option to search for users, which can speed up the process of finding a particular student by username and reviewing their progress.

Finally, if you need to remove a specific user from the cabinet, you can do so by clicking on a field in their row in the table and then clicking the trash can icon in the menu that appears on the right.

User Tags¶

To make it easier to keep track of student usernames, you can add your own tags. Since usernames are often difficult to track, whether they are names chosen by students themselves or names automatically assigned by the system when you created the accounts, you have the option to add unique tags that are visible only to you and can help you better recognize who is who in your cabinet. It is enough to click the MY USER TAGS button and assign a tag to each user there.

After that, a window will appear where you need to enter the tags next to the accounts to which you want to add tags. When you finish, click SAVE CHANGES and then you will see the user tags next to the usernames in the USERS table.

You can also copy this table by clicking the COPY TABLE button. After that, it will be enough to do paste in any spreadsheet program and the table will be copied.

Additionally, you can copy a table from a spreadsheet program back into the cabinet by selecting all fields, copying them, and then clicking the PASTE TABLE button. This will fill in the fields, and after that, it will be enough to click save changes.

Tracking Student Progress in the Cabinet¶

When the USERS tab is selected, you will have insight into the progress of each student for each lesson. The statistics show you which part of the lesson the student managed to complete, that is, how many activities out of the total number of activities in the lesson the student successfully completed. For an activity to be considered successfully completed for videos and for parts of lessons where the student needs to read the text, the student must click the MARK AS COMPLETED button. For a quiz to be considered successfully completed, the student must answer at least 70% of the questions correctly.

By clicking on the student whose progress you want to see in more detail, you will get a menu on the right where you can see the progress for each individual lesson in the course for that student. You will see whether the student has read the required parts and how many points they scored on the quizzes.

Homework Assignments¶

When you create your cabinet, you have the option to add a homework assignment that you created yourself. This means you can create your own assignment and add it so that students see it in the lessons while working in the cabinet. Unlike online tests, which are automatically generated from questions that exist in our Collections of Short Questions, a homework assignment is something you create independently.

To create a homework assignment, you need to go to the Additional Activities page within the cabinet and click the Add Homework Assignment button there.

After that, a window will open where you need to add the homework assignment to the cabinet. First, you need to determine where the homework will be positioned in the course (before or after which activity). Then, you need to give the assignment a name and then select the method of submitting the homework. Finally, write the assignment text. When you are done, click the Assign Homework button.

The homework assignment will immediately appear in the table of added activities, and you will be able to see the status of the homework assignment for each cabinet member.

Students will be able to see this homework assignment among other activities in the course, in the place where you positioned it. It will appear to them as follows.

To students, your homework assignment will look like an integral part of the course and will be included in the content of all activities located on the left edge of the screen. The text of the homework assignment will be at the top of the page when students go to that activity. Along with the homework assignment, they can also send you a message, and they can submit the homework assignment as a file by first clicking on Browse, which will allow them to select a file from their computer. After that, they need to click on Submit Homework and the file will be sent. In addition, students can send you a message related to the homework by typing the message text in the text editor and clicking Send.

You will be able to see what your students have sent you by selecting the appropriate student in the table on the Additional Activities page and clicking on the speech bubble in the field for the homework you added. In our example, this is the homework Domaći zadatak 1 and we will see what it looks like for the student VII_2_Petlja_238087.

When you click on the field, a window will open where you will see what the student has sent you. First, you will be able to download the homework by clicking on the download icon. It is important to know that you will always be able to download only the last file that the student sent. If a student sends several files one after the other, you will only be able to download the last one. If the homework assignment requires sending a large number of files, students need to zip them and send them as one .zip file.

Also, in the window that opened, you will see the messages that the student has sent you and you will be able to reply to them. When you send a reply, the messages will be visible on the homework assignment page within the course (the page from which the homework was sent).

Here you can mark whether you consider the homework completed or not, that is, if you check that the homework is completed in the upper field, a check mark will appear in the field for that student for that homework assignment, as you can see the marked checkmarked assignments in the image above. If you included homework in a lesson, it will also be included in the statistics calculation, so the student can only have a 100% completed lesson if their homework is checked.

If you want to receive homework assignments by email as well, you can click on the Admin Information field and enter the email address where you want to receive the homework assignments and click on Change Email.

After that, you should receive an email from domaci@mg.petlja.org with the file that the student sent and information about which homework was done, in which course, and which user did it. Below is an example of what this email might look like in a specific email client.

Finally, you can edit or delete the homework by clicking on the pencil icon next to the homework title in the table header, which will open a new window where you can edit the homework assignment.

In the field that will open, you will be able to change the position of the homework assignment in the course, its title, text, and submission method. Also, in this window, you will be able to delete the homework assignment.

Including Tests in the Cabinet¶

In addition to homework assignments, you can also include tests with short questions that you have previously generated. At this link you can see how to generate a test and how tests are used (both from your side and from the students’ side). To include a test in the cabinet, you need to go to the Cabinet Management page and click on the additional activities button and then click on add test with short questions.

This will open a window where you need to determine where the test will be located by selecting an activity from the course and then choosing whether the test will be before or after that activity. You also need to give a name to the test and select the one you want to include from the drop-down menu of your created tests.

Students will see this test among the activities in the course just like any other activity.

When they finish the test, you will be able to see in the cabinet, in the additional activities table, how many points they scored, and if you want, you can also choose a more detailed view where you will be able to see what they did for each question by clicking on the magnifying glass. You can find more about tests here

Including iFrame Content in the Cabinet¶

In addition to homework assignments and tests, you can also include iFrame content (content from other web pages) in the cabinet. To include iFrame content in the cabinet, go to the Manage cabinet page, click the Extra activities button, and then click Add iFrame Lesson.

This will open a window where you need to determine where the iFrame lesson will be located by selecting an activity from the course and then choosing whether the iFrame lesson will be before or after that activity. You also need to give a name to the iFrame lesson, a description that goes before the iFrame to explain the context, and enter the URL of the web page you want to include in the iFrame URL field.

Students will see this iFrame lesson among the activities in the course just like any other activity.

When you consider that a student has completed the iFrame lesson, you will be able to mark it as completed by clicking on the corresponding field in the Extra activities table.

Communication¶

Another feature that cabinets on Petlja offer is communication with students through the built-in chat. To start a conversation, you need to go to the COMMUNICATION tab, which is located all the way to the right in Cabinet Management. This chat allows cabinet members to communicate individually or in groups as well as to send small files to each other.

To start a conversation with a cabinet member, you need to click on Start Conversation, which will open a window where you can select one or more students from the cabinet to start a chat with. There is also an option to address all cabinet members. Once you have selected the recipients, click the Start button

This will open a window where you can see all the ongoing conversations on the left side and choose which one you want to open, on the right side you can see all the users participating in the currently selected conversation, and in the middle, you will see your messages and the messages that the chat participants are sending to each other.

When someone sends you a message in the chat, if you didn’t have the chat open at that moment, you will receive a notification on your profile drawing your attention to the fact that you have unread messages. A red circle will appear next to your picture, and when you go to the control panel, you will see that you have a new notification (bottom left). Finally, when you open all the conversations on the Cabinet Management page, you will see which of them have unread messages.

Students will be able to see your messages when they access the course by clicking on the Conversation button in the lower left corner, where they will be able to see all the conversations they are included in and where they can also start conversations with other cabinet members.

Students will also receive a notification to check the conversation if they receive a new message that they haven’t read yet. A red circle will appear in the lower left corner of their cabinet, suggesting that they need to read the new messages.