The WAC Online Writing Environment is a forum through which professors can post and rate class assignments and allow students to engage in peer review.  Although the site is designed to be user friendly, I’ve constructed a short user guide to assist you if you choose to set up a site.  Once you are in the site, you can also select “Help” for much more detailed explanations, or if you run into any trouble, you can send an email with your questions to wac@gsu.edu

To setup an account, go to www.wac.gsu.edu/wow/setup and create a user id and password. 

Once you create an account, you can customize your site’s main page by selecting “Customize” in the tool bar and then “Edit Login Page.”

You and your students will be able to locate your page through the Online Writing Environment index: http://wac.gsu.edu/wow/

There is also a link to the index page on the main WAC site: http://www.wac.gsu.edu/

The calendar on the left hand side provides access to the assignments that you have created.  The highlighted days reflect assignment due dates.  The student page setup is almost identical to the instructor page, so the highlighted days on the calendar will let them know they have an assignment due.  To access the assignment, they merely need to click on the highlighted day.

The main tool bar gives you options to assess student work, add assignments, customize your site, etc. 

Select “Assignments” on the tool bar and then select “New.”

Once the new assignment page opens, you can give the assignment a title, select a due date by clicking on the calendar, and choose a due time.  You can also select whether or not you would like the assignment to be open to peer review.

In the instructions field, simply type in the instructions for the assignment.  You may cut and paste assignments that you have already created in Word or type them directly into the field.

At the bottom of the instruction field, you will find a selection of generic rubrics.  Click on the question mark next to a rubric to view its parameters and check the box next to the rubrics you intend to use.  You do not have to use rubrics, you may merely comment when you receive their assignments, but the rubric scores can be helpful.

Once you are finished, click save.   The site will time out after 20 minutes, so you should save frequently if you are typing the assignment directly into the instructions field. 

Once you have created an assignment you can access the “Edit” or “Delete” functions by clicking the “Assignments” button and then “View Existing.”  From there, click on the assignment you would like to edit or delete and select the desired function.

Assessment:

Once your students have completed the assignments, you can assess their work by clicking “Assessment” and then selecting either “View” or “Expanded View.”

The “View” function lists all of your students’ names in a collapsed form. 

“Expanded View” shows all of your students’ names and all of the assignments they have completed during the semester.

Color coded boxes appear next to the students’ names in both functions.  These boxes indicate whether the students have completed the assignment and whether you have graded the assignment.

When you are ready to grade, click the “Assess it” link next to the assignment title. 

Your student work will appear in the text field in the middle of the page.  Above that, you will see the student’s name, the title of their work, the time they last revised the work, and a word count.

When assessing their work, you can type directly into the text field.  You can also place emphasis (bold, strike through, color code, etc.) on certain aspects of the student’s work using the tool bar above the assignment field and the color selectors to the right of the work.

You can rate the work using the rubrics you chose when you created the assignment.  The scores you give the assignment will be automatically averaged.

Finally, you can comment on the student’s work in the comment box.

When you finish assessing the student’s assignment, you can select one of four options:

• Save: stores the work but does not make your comments visible to the students.
• Save and Close: stores the work and makes it visible to the students on their site.
• Save and Email: emails a copy of the assignment, the rubric scores, and your comments to the students. 
• Close: Allows you to leave the assessment function.

You can also check the box next to the save functions if you would like a copy of this information emailed to your email account.

The “Reports” function under assessment allows you to see the class rubric averages per assignment.

The “Archive” function allows you to see all of the student work, and your comments, even if you have deleted the student.

To use the peer review function, click “Peer Review” and then “Create Groups.”

Once you are in the “Create Groups” mode, you will give a title to your first group and then click the boxes next to the names of the students you would like to add to that group.  Once you create a group, only you and the group members will have access to the papers within that group.

To view peer editor responses, click on "Assessment" and the name of the student who was reviewed.  You will see a link titled "Reviews" in the top left corner above the text box.  When you click on that link, you should see your reviews and the reviews of the peer editors.

In the “Customize” function, you can edit your login page and bring in your old assignments from your previous versions of the course.

Currently, you are also able to add your own rubrics into the system; however, this is a temporary feature.

Using the upload files function, place documents on the internet for their students to view.  Documents are limited to 1MB each, so if you would like to upload a larger document, you will need to break the document up.  In the student, students will have the option to open and save any documents you upload to the system.

Students can find a link to your Online Writing Environment page by visiting the main WAC site (http://www.wac.gsu.edu/) and clicking the link for the Online Writing Environment, or they can go directly to the index page: http://wac.gsu.edu/wow

They can locate your class by scrolling down to their departmen, clicking the link next to the course number, and selecting the instructor name.

Once they arrive at the login page, they should click “sign up” to create a user id and password.

Students will access assignments by clicking the highlighted dates on the calendar.

Once they click the date, the assignment will appear with its instructions, due date, and the rubrics you’ve attached to the assignment.

Students begin the assignment by clicking “Start this assignment.”

Students can enter the text of their assignments directly into the text field or they can cut and paste from Word.

Once they have entered their assignment, they can choose to open the assignment to peer review by selecting the “peer review” box or they can simply save the assignment.

When they save the assignment, it will be visible in the instructor’s site.

Students can receive your comments in two ways:

1.    Via email— if you select the option to “Save and Email” when you finish assessing their work

2.    In the site by clicking on the link marked “Yours.”

If they choose to view your assessment or the assessment of their peer group by selecting “Yours,” they will see the work they completed as well as an average of the scores they received on the rubrics. 

In this screen, they can also access their reviews.  Above the assignment, a category marked “Reviews” will have links to the names of all the people who have reviewed their material.  When they click on those links, they will see the comments from their reviewers and, if they allowed editorial privileges, any changes the peer editors made to the assignment.  

If you are using the peer review function, students can access “Articles for Review” by clicking on the button marked “Theirs.”

When they are constructing their assignments, students will have the option to allow their peers to have editorial privileges.  If they have selected this option, the peer reviewers will be allowed to make changes directly to the student document.  If not, they will only be allowed to comment on the work.

When students click on this option, they will see a list of documents they can download from their instructor.  At this point, students are not able to open files directly from the system.  They must save the documents first and then open them outside the system.

This feature offers some tools to help students improve their writing before they submit it for a grade.  It offers a style checker, a paragraph scrambler, and a statistical analysis function.

This option provides a list of all the standard rubrics in the Online Writing Environment and their explanations.

Here, students can change their email address and/or password.

* A Note for MAC Users

The Online Writing Environment will work with Macs, but it does not function as smoothly with Safari.  If you have a student using a Mac, you may suggest that they download a recent version of Firefox, or that they submit their work from a campus computer.