- Learn how to set personal goals as a student.
- Learn how to scaffold learning outcomes as a teacher.
Categories can be used for two purposes:
Categories can be linked to evidence and receive feedback. Any evidence or feedback linked to a category is grouped in dashboards and used to visualize the development of a student (see the user dashboard and course/programme dashboard for more information).
You can support a wide variety of use cases with categories, such as learning goals or comptencies. Here is an example of a category that is used to represent a study programme's 'Presenting' competency:
You can read on to learn more about category levels (mastery levels in the competency example) and subcategories (subcompetencies in the competency example), but please note that this is a fairly complex example. You could make do without mastery levels and the use of subcategories all together!
When using categories to guide feedback, you may want to use Category Levels, to indicate different stages of development. Such as "Beginner" or "Advanced".
Each category level can hold its own description, instructions and set of corresponding criteria. This allows you to set different expecations for each category level and/or criterion.
When giving feedback on a category, you are always giving feedback on a specific level of that category.
Not all workflows require the use of category levels.
You do not need to configure any levels to work with categories. The application will use a level default level and it will simply work.
When using categories to guide feedback, it is common to define multiple aspects that relate to that category. For example when working with the learning outcome "Communication" some aspects could be "Verbal", "Non verbal", and "Paralingual" (communication). Within eJournal these are called Subcategories.
Each of these help to disect the overal goal of the category, and might even receive their own feedback criteria.
A strength of subcategories is that they can be shared between different levels of a category, whilst still being able to adapt the corresponding requirements of that subcategory to match the level. This allows you to capture and visualize the development of a skill between different mastery or competence stadia.
For example, you could track the development of the subcategory "Non verbal" (of the category "Communication") between the category levels "Beginner" and "Advanced".
Anywhere you find a category, you can inspect the category to read more about it by simple clicking on it. Here you will find information such what the category aims to achieve, and if set, any configured feedback workflows.