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MLPR tutorial discussion groups

This year (2020/21), we’ll be using Microsoft Teams for online tutorials. If you are not yet familiar with MS Teams, please have a look at the meet-up instructions.

Even though these instructions are long, please take the time to read them. Most importantly, complete the preparatory tasks Part 1-3 below before your first discussion group meeting.

To get the marks for the discussion task, your group needs to submit a discussion report. See below for details.

1 Getting started with your MLPR discussion group

Please ignore your MLPR timetable entries. We will assign you to a tentative discussion group in Week 2 and will finalize these in Week 3 after course registration settles. If you haven’t filled the tutorial preparation form yet then please do so now to let us know about your availability and friends.

Each tutor will be responsible for multiple discussion groups of up to 6 students each. Each group will have its own team, so only course staff and other members of your group can see it. All the chat messages sent in that team (including chat during meetings in the channel) will stay there for the whole course.

Before your first discussion group meeting, complete Parts 1 to 3 below. This should take about 15 minutes.

If you have trouble getting part of the Part 1-2 instructions to work, please post to the MLPR Chat team or if for some reason you cannot post anything in Teams, contact Arno (). Unfortunately the interface to Teams and OneNote looks different on Android, iPhone, iPad, and laptops, so there may be issues we didn’t find when testing, but hopefully together we can sort it all out!

1.1 Part 1: Introduce yourself to your group in Teams

We aim to finish putting you into groups by Friday of Week 2. Once we’ve notified you that you have a group, do the following:

  1. Open Teams and find your MLPR group team, called MLPR Group <number>. Open the team and navigate to the “Discussions” channel.

  2. Post a message in your group discussion channel (not the General channel) to introduce yourself. Include the following information, plus anything else you like (and of course, you can reply to other student’s messages too!).

    • What name you want the other students to call you

    • If you recently moved to Edinburgh: where did you move from, and what is one thing you found nice or surprising about Edinburgh so far?

    • If you did not recently move to Edinburgh: where are you now, and what is one thing you like about that place?

1.2 Part 2: Explore your group OneNote notebook

We have set up each discussion group with a shared OneNote notebook which you can use to collaborate, either asynchronously or while talking to each other. You can share text, photos, documents, equations, and drawings, and your group members will be able to see them.

We will not require you to use OneNote for group collaboration, but we hope that some of you will find it useful. To prepare, you should spend a few minutes exploring the tool on your own, following the steps below.

(There is also a whiteboard app available during Teams meetings if you want, but it has much more limited functionality and disappears after the meeting. We will focus on OneNote here, to encourage you to collaborate asynchronously as well as live.)

1.2.1 Using OneNote inside Teams on your laptop/desktop computer

  1. While not required in all settings, we recommend that you install the OneNote app rather than relying on the browser version, which has more limited functionality. OneNote is part of the University’s Office365 suite, so you may already have it installed. (Note: there is no OneNote app for Linux, but there is a mobile app, both Android and iOS.)

  2. For now, please open the Teams app on your laptop/desktop and go to your discussion group channel in Teams. (We’ll try the mobile version of OneNote later.)

  3. Find and open the OneNote notebook in your discussion group channel: click on the tab called Notes.

  4. In the notebook, click on the “Draw” tab and add something to the page using the drawing tools. Also try undoing something you added. (The ‘undo’ button is the leftmost item in the “Home” tab.)

  5. Click on the ‘>’ symbol in the upper left of the drawing area to open the navigation panel, and either add a new page or move to another page someone else added. Add something to that page.

  6. Now, if you have the OneNote app installed, also try clicking on the dropdown list ‘Open in browser’ and select ‘Open in app’. The app has more functionality and allows you to create other sections and notebooks for other classes, but they won’t be shared with your discussion group.

  7. Feel free to explore other parts of the interface too, or watch this video, a quick introduction to other parts of OneNote.

1.2.2 Using OneNote for handwriting on a mobile device

Now let’s try out some ways to share handwritten work in OneNote (for example diagrams or equations). For many people, drawing will be easier using a mobile device, where you can use your finger or stylus instead of a mouse. (Capacitive styluses that cost only a few pounds usually work well.)

Note: The interface to OneNote differs depending on whether you are using a laptop, Android, iPhone, or iPad. We’ve tried to write instructions that aren’t too specific to any of those, but that means they’re a bit vague in places. If you’re having trouble, try messaging your group or posting in the MLPR Chat team to see if anyone else with your setup has got it working.

  1. Leave your OneNote notebook open in Teams on your laptop/desktop computer.

  2. Install both the Teams app and the OneNote app on your mobile device. Log in to Teams, go to your group channel, and open the OneNote notebook. This should open it in the OneNote app. If you return to it later, you won’t need to come through Teams (you can just use the OneNote app), but you need to open it with Teams the first time to get synchronization set up.

  3. You should either see the MLPR notebook immediately, or you can find it by opening the navigation panel on the left. You should be able to see all of the pages that you and other group members have created already. If not, try looking for a ‘sync notebook’ option. (Again, the exact instructions depend on whether you’re using Android, iPad, or iPhone.)

  4. Go to the ‘Draw’ tab, select a pen tool, and try drawing something with your finger or stylus. Depending on what OS and device you’re using, you may need to enable the ‘draw with touch’ option. How to do this depends on your device: try looking for a ‘hand with pencil’ or ‘scribble’ icon, or do a search if you can’t find it right away. (If you enable ‘draw with touch’, you’ll need to use two fingers to pan around.)

  5. Finally, write the phrase ‘hello to my group’ in your native language on a piece of paper and take a photo of it. Then go to the ‘Insert’ tab and upload your photo. Later you might use this option to share other written work you’ve done.

1.3 Part 2a (optional): sharing handwriting with video

This is another possible way to share live handwriting for those who want to try it, but it can be a bit trickier to set up so probably only makes sense if you plan to do this a lot. You also can’t have multiple people writing on the same surface.

The basic idea is to turn your phone into a document camera which broadcasts you writing on paper. This works as follows:

  1. Stack up some books or other objects and place your phone on top with the camera facing down at your writing surface over the edge of the stack. Check that your writing area is visible and the landscape/portrait orientation is correct.

  2. Join a Teams call first from your laptop and then from your phone. turn off input and output audio on your phone to avoid feedback, and turn off video on your laptop to ensure that others see the video feed from your phone (showing your writing).

1.4 Part 3: posting questions for discussion

Navigate to the “Preparatory Questions” channel and ask questions you would like to discuss. You can do this by whatever means is most appropriate for the question. You could post the question directly in the channel. You could also add a page to the OneNote notebook in the Notes tab of the “Preparatory Questions” channel, or you could add a file such as a Word document to the files list of the “Preparatory Questions” channel. For the latter, first select the “Preparatory Questions” channel, then select “Files” at the top. There, you can upload a file or create a new file. Make sure to first select the “Preparatory Questions” channel.

Great! Now you should be ready for your group meeting.

2 During your scheduled meeting time

We recommend you join Teams on your laptop and also have a mobile device available with OneNote, to make it easier to use the collaborative whiteboard.

To attend your meeting, go to the “Weekly Meetings” channel in your MLPR group team. If you arrive and see the meeting already happening in the channel, click ‘join’. Otherwise, you’re the first person to arrive, so please start the meeting by clicking the ‘meet’ button in the upper right of the channel window. (Note: If you are using Teams on a mobile device, you won’t have this option. So we recommend you use your laptop, or else you will need to wait for another student to start the meeting, and then you can join it.)

Please keep your video on during the meeting if possible. But also be aware that some students may need to keep it off due to bandwidth or their surroundings.

If not all your group members have arrived after a few minutes, send the missing student(s) a message to gently remind them that the meeting is happening now! It may be that they are struggling to access Teams, so try emailing them to check. Perhaps you can help them resolve their problems over email either during or after the meeting. (If they respond during the group meeting, nominate one person to try to help them while the rest continue with the activity.)

First discuss the weekly discussion task and submit your weekly discussion report. After that, discuss the questions that people posted in the “Preparatory Questions” channel. Your tutor will also join the meeting at some point during your scheduled hour. Discuss the questions in your group and agree on questions you would like to ask when your tutor stops by.

As with other help hours, please do not send a meeting invitation to the tutor. But you can let them know if you would like them to pop in by @mentioning them in the meeting chat (or the channel chat), but please do this only during the scheduled meeting time except for notifying your tutor of your weekly discussion result (see next section).

2.1 Submitting your weekly discussion report

After discussing your weekly discussion task, have somebody in the group post a summary of your discussion in the “Discussion Reports” channel of your MLPR group team.

During the weekly meeting, just one member of the group should summarise your discussion and post the report.

Like for the preparatory questions, you can use whatever means is most appropriate for summarising your discussion results - a simple post, a file uploaded to the files of the “Discussion Reports” channel or a OneNote page in the “Discussion Reports” channel. Please use the “Discussion Reports” channel only for your weekly discussion report submissions.

Once you posted your discussion report, please @mention your tutor and describe in what form you posted your discussion report.

Each weekly discussion report is assessed and forms 10% of your total weekly marks. Your tutor will just assess whether your discussion is sensible and if so, will award full marks. So there is no need polishing the writing or presentation and you should generally submit your report by the end of the meeting.

3 Using the team at other times

You may also use your discussion group team to communicate with your group at other times, however you like (using chat, meetings, etc). Please coordinate this with your group.