Ultra Sandbox

All academic staff are issued with a personal Ultra Sandbox on Weblearn. The sandbox is a personal module available to you for testing and development purposes – you can try copying content from other modules, create new assignments, and share with colleagues.

Access your Ultra Sandbox Module

Search for ‘Sandbox’ on the modules page and you will see an Ultra Sandbox with your name on it.

Note: new members of staff will be notified once their sandbox has been created.

8 Things to try with your Sandbox

1. Add a Module Image

You can add a banner at the top of the Content tab in Ultra. The banner will also be used as image on the module tile on the Modules page in Weblearn.

Banners need to be 1200 x 240 pixels in size.

Download a sample banner to try it out: Sample Module Banner (requires M365 login)

1. Click on ‘Edit display settings’ under ‘Module Image’.

2. Click on the Image icon on the Display settings panel

3. Click on the ‘Image source’ and choose to either upload a banner form your computer, or select an image form the image repository ‘UnSplash’

4. Once you have either selected or uploaded your image, click on ‘Next’

Optionally, reposition the image

5. Click on ‘Save’

You can find more information on banners in the Custom Banners (Ultra) guide.

2. Set a Primary Instructor for the module

A primary instructor will show up as the first instructor of the ‘Module Staff’ section when a module has more than one instructor. A module can have more than one primary instructor.

1. Click on ‘View everyone in your module’ under ‘Users’ in the Details & Action menu.

2. Click on the three dots to open ‘More Options’ for the user you want to edit and select ‘Edit member information’.

The Member Information panel opens.

3. Tick the ‘Primary Instructor’ tick box and then click ‘Save’

You can find more information about the Users tool in the Managing Users guide.

3. Create a Learning Module with content

Add a Learning Module

Weekly content on an Ultra module should be added to a Learning Module.

All content is added on the Module Content page in the ‘Content’ tab

1. Move your mouse to the location where you want to add the Learning Module until a Plus sign (+) appears in purple
2. Click on the Plus sign (+)
3. Select ‘Create’ from the dropdown that opens

The ‘Create Item’ panel opens.

4. Click on ‘Learning Module’

5. Enter a name at the top of the screen and click ‘Save’

Add a document to the Learning Module

Ultra documents can contain text, images, links to files and embedded tools such as Padlets.

To add a document to the Learning Module

1. Click anywhere on the Learning Module to expand it
2. Move your mouse to the Plus sign (+) and click when it turns purple to open the option menu
3. Select ‘Create’ from the option menu

The ‘Create Item’ panel opens.

4. Select ‘Document’

The document opens.

5. Add a name in the name field in the top left hand corner.
6. Select the ‘Content’ block to start adding content

The text editor opens

• Add a couple of lines of text.
• Click ‘Save’ to save the text
• Click the purple X next to the documents name to close the document once you’re done

Add a file to the Learning Module

You can add slides, word documents, PDFs and other files to an Ultra module. Standard files such as slides or word documents will open in a viewer. Zip files and other file types that can’t be displayed in a viewer can be downloaded by students.

1. Go to the expanded learning module and move your mouse until the purple Plus sign (+)appears.
2. Click the Plus sign (+)
3. Select ‘Upload’ to select a file from your computer

4. Add a Display Name
5. Leave File options on ‘View and Download’
6. Click ‘Save’

4. Add a weekly reading list section

Reading Lists, Panopto and Turnitin are accessed through the ‘More Tools’ option which lists a number of available Institution Tools (external tools available through Weblearn).

1. Go to the expanded learning module and move your mouse until the Plus sign (+) appears.
2. Click the Plus sign (+)
3. Select ‘More Tools’

4. Click on the ‘Reading List Link’ tile

The Reading list integration will open in a new browser tab.

For teaching modules modules with a valid module code, the reading list will show the most likely match to the module code and academic year. For sandbox modules you need to search for a list manually.

If you don’t have a reading list with sections, use the ‘Coffee’ reading list for testing.

5. Type the name of a list into the search box
6. Click ‘Select section’

6. Click on ‘Embed Section’ for the section you want to use

A success message appears in the Reading list browser tab

7. Close the reading list browser tab
8. Close ‘More Tools’ panel
9. Refresh the Weblearn page for the reading list link to show on the page (press F5 key for Windows PC or command + R on a Mac)

The link to Reading list section will now be visible in the Learning Module. Click on the three dots to open ‘More Options’ if you want to change the name of the reading list.

5. Add a formative Test

Watch the session recording (35 mins) to find out about creating formative tests on Weblearn

6. Edit an existing Ultra Document

1. Click on the three dots to open ‘More Options’ for the Ultra document
2. Select ‘Edit’
3. Click on the Plus sign (+)
4. Choose ‘Content’ to add text, images, tables etc directly to the document

5. Enter text and use the content editor to format the headers.
6. Click on ‘Save’ to confirm your changes

7. Make content visible to students

By default, any content created or copied into an Ultra module will be ‘Hidden from students’. The setting can be changed for each individual item by clicking on the ‘Hidden from students’ message and changing it to ‘Visible to students’.

Note: setting a Learning Module or folder be visible won’t change the visibility for items inside the Learning Module or folder. You’ll need to change each item to ‘Visible to students’.

Use Batch Edit to change availability

1. Click on the three dots to open ‘More Options’ for the Module Content page
2. Select ‘Batch Edit’

3. Select all items you want to edit by clicking the checkbox next to the item title

Note: if you select a folder or learning module all content inside is automatically selected

4. Click on the ‘Edit Visibility’ button

5. On the ‘Edit Visibility Setting’ panel, choose either ‘Visible to students’ or ‘Hidden from students’
6. Select ‘Save Visibility’ to confirm the change

A confirmation message will appear at the top of the screen and content items will show their new status in the Visibility column.

8. Use Student Preview and save the test data

The student preview user can be used to add responses to discussion, take test, create tracking data by viewing content and more.

Instructors can save the data created by the student preview user to check what student activity in a module would look like, test how marking works etc.

You need to have created some content on your Sandbox and made it visible to students before you can test the student preview.

1. Enter the student preview by clicking on the preview icon

2. Select ‘Start Preview’

3. Try out some of the content you have created

4. To exit the preview mode, click on ‘Exit’ at the top of the screen

Make sure you save the data when you exit the student preview so you can see how an instructor can view tracking data and student interactions.

• Click on ‘Exit’ in the top right corner of the page
• Click on ‘Save’ to retain the data of the preview student