Glossary

• Guided Journey: 

A feature designed to organize content into sections and provide students with a structured guide.  It simplifies the learning process by providing students with step-by-step guidance and instructors with information on student progress. 

• Section: 

Each part of an class is divided into sections, allowing instructors to organize materials into manageable steps. Each section contains content and a title, and can include an estimated completion time.

• Progress: 

A measure tracking the amount of the course the student has completed. Progress is tracked in real-time and shared with instructors. This helps instructors monitor student engagement and course effectiveness.

• Track Progress: 

Progress refers to the tracking and assessment of students’ advancement through the Guided Journey. It is monitored based on the time spent in each section relative to the estimated time set by the instructor. Progress is displayed in real-time with color-coded statuses, allowing both students and instructors to get a clear idea of student engagement and completion levels and adjust the content if necessary. 

Introduction 

The Guided Journey feature allows instructors to organize course content into various sections, enabling students to access relevant materials for each section and follow the steps throughout their course using CloudShare. This eliminates the need to refer back to other source instructions. This structured approach promotes effective content organization and task performance assessment. Additionally, the Guided Journey feature automatically monitors students' progress based on their interactions, providing both individual and aggregated progress data. Instructors receive real-time reports on student and class progress, offering valuable insights. Moving from a single-content format to a section-based system greatly enhances the class, improves instructional oversight, and enables instructors to more effectively monitor class progress and structure their CloudShare class into manageable steps.

Limitations 

• Multi-step Classes: The new editor does not support multi-step classes.
• Environment Deletion: If the environment is deleted and recreated as a new environment, the end user's progress in the guided journey will not be retained. However, if the environment is reverted, students' progress in the guided journey will be saved. For more information, please consult the <environment reversion> link.
• You have the option to include one Guided Journey per class.

Creating a Guided Journey

To add a Guided Journey to your class, click Customize Viewer to access the Editor, then click + Content Item, and select Guided Journey. 

This will open a window on the left where you’ll be able to create and manage your sections and a window at the bottom right where you can name the Guided Journey tab.

Add Sections to your Guided Journey

Click the + Section button at the bottom of the Guided Journey window to add the first section.

This will open a settings window on the right, where you can add the section’s title, content, and HTML. 

In the Estimated Time section, you can set a time estimate within which you expect students to complete the section.

Note:  You should ensure the time estimate is realistic as it is used later on for the class’s analytics. 

Make sure to click the Save button at the top right after making changes to ensure they’re saved. You can edit your Guided Journey and save changes only before the class starts and when there are no active student or instructor environments.

You can add more sections by clicking the + icon at the top of the sections window or the + Section button at the bottom, depending on where you are in the interface.

You can change the order of the sections by dragging them and dropping them in the desired location.

Sections can be edited or deleted by clicking the menu icon to the right of each section’s name. 

Editing a Guided Journey in Progress

Once a class begins, you can still make adjustments to your Guided Journey without affecting student progress. This allows for ongoing improvements while preserving the user experience.

To access your Guided Journey, click the Guided Journey icon on the left panel in the Editor. This action displays all sections currently included in the journey as numbered tabs, each representing a different part. Hover over any tab at the top of the Guided Journey menu to view the section name, and click a tab to jump directly to that section.

While a class is in progress, a notification banner will appear at the top of the editor, indicating that the class you are editing is active. Any changes made will take immediate effect.

To edit a Guided Journey, click on the section you wish to edit. This action will open the section’s content in the editor window. The section’s content will open in the editor window, allowing you to update the text, HTML, or estimated completion time.

Always ensure changes are saved by clicking the Save button at the top right after editing. When saving changes to a live class, a popup will inform you that modifications have been made. You will then be presented with options for resetting the Guided Journey progress:

• Don't Reset Sections’ Progress: Retain all current student progress.
• Reset Progress Status for All Sections: Clear the status for all sections, resetting them to Not Started.
• Reset All Sections’ Progress Starting From: Select a specific section number to reset progress from that point onward.

The option selected should be based on the significance of the changes made and their potential impact on the overall effectiveness of the class. This approach ensures that students only need to revisit sections that have undergone substantial modifications.

After making your selection, click Continue. A second confirmation box will appear, reminding you that changes are being made to a live class, which will have an immediate impact on students. You'll also have the option to draft a message for students and instructors to inform them of these changes.

Students are automatically updated of any changes made by a push notification informing them to refresh the page to view the latest version of the class. Refreshing the page will restore students’ progress to the option selected above. 

Students who have not logged into the system for several notification cycles will receive aggregated messages upon logging in. This ensures that all users are informed of any changes made while they are absent from the platform.

Click Save to confirm and apply changes. 

TrackingViewing Student Progress

Instructors can track student’s progress in near-real-time via the collaboration room in the Instructor Console, where each section will appear below the students’ screen, color-coded by status:

• Explored: Dark Gray
  This status indicates that the student has invested an adequate amount of time in this section. The status calculation is based on whether the student has spent more than 40% of the 'Estimated Time' configured for the section.
• In Progress: Gray
  This status indicates that the student has started working on this section. The status calculation is based on whether the student has spent less than 40% of the 'Estimated Time' configured for the section.
• Not Started: Light Gray
  This status indicates that the student hasn't started working in this section.
• In Focus: Blue
  This status indicates that the section is currently being viewed by the student.

When a live class is updated, a notification will appear in the Console, alerting you to the modifications made. To view the latest updates, simply refresh the page.

Analytics

The Insights icon to the far right of the screen opens an analytics window that includes a progress tab, indicating how students are progressing through the Guided Journey, with color-coding based on the statuses used to indicate students’ progress through each section. 

These analytics provide detailed insights into participation, engagement, and instructor interaction, as well as a new tab for class progress. Key metrics include 'Explored,' 'In Progress,' and 'Not Started' rates. Additionally, two extra dashboards enable instructors to monitor overall progress along the guided journey and the average time students spend on each section. This helps instructors understand actual student engagement with each section and adjust course timing for efficiency. Instructors can use this information to tailor lessons more effectively to students’ needs, identify areas of difficulty, and devise appropriate solutions.

Student’s Guided Journey

Click the Guided Journey icon on the left to view the list of all sections in the journey. You can click the section you want to see, or click Start at the bottom to start the Guided Journey.

Once a section is opened, other sections appear as numbered tabs at the top of the Guided Journey menu.

You can hover over any of them to view a section’s name, or click them to move to that section.

The numbered boxes are color-coded by status:

• Explored: Dark Gray 
• In Progress: Gray
• Not Started: Light Gray
• In Focus: Blue

In the event that the Guided Journey is updated while you're in progress, a notification window will popup informing you of the update and to refresh the page, along with a message from the instructor.

Once you’ve completed the Guided Journey, you can click Finish. You can return to any of the sections you haven’t completed at any time.