Welcome to Learning Circles Dashboard’s documentation!¶
Contents:
Introduction¶
What is a learning circle?¶
A learning circle is a study group of about 8 people that meets weekly at a physical location to complete an online course together. A facilitator is present to help with logistics and seed peer learning. Content expertise come from the online course and associated online community.
For a complete guide on organizing and facilitation learning circles you can download the Learning Circles facilitator handbook.
Tools for learning circles¶
To help organize and run Learning Circles, we’ve developed a set of online tools. The tools address the needs for three different roles:
- Learners. The people taking the learning circles.
- Facilitators. People facilitating individual learnig circles.
- Organizers. People organizing several learning circles.
Learners can:¶
- Browse learning circles available in their aread
- Sign up for a learning circle
- RSVP for weekly learning circle meetings
Facilitators can:¶
- See who signed up, when meetings are scheduled, who can come, etc.
- Send messages to learners
- Customize the weekly reminders
- See whi is coming to the learning circle meeting
- Capture feedback after a meeting to gather and share reflections.
Organizers can:¶
- See feedback from facilitators on weekly meetings
- See what meetings are happening each week
- Receive weekly updates on what happened in learning circles the previous week
- Manage learning circles and facilitators
Using the tools¶
To use the tools, it should be installed on a server you control. You need to be familiar with using the linux command line and setting up accounts on the web. You can find all the information you need to do so here.
If you’re uncomfortable doing this on your own, or would simply prefer paying someone else to do this, you can reach out to P2PU and we can talk about setting this up for you.
You can always ask for support on our forums should you get stuck at any time.
For more information on using the tools from a facilitator or organizer perspective, you can skip over to the facilitator user guide
Deploy Learning Circles on your own server¶
This guide runs you through the steps needed to setup the Learning Cicles web app on you own server. You should be comfortable using the linux command line and following basic instructions. Most of what you need to do is straight forward, but should you run into any trouble, you can ask for help on our forum.
If you find that you need to do anything different or that some steps or info is missing, please let us know on the forum.
To make things easier, we are using docker to distribute the application.
Requirements¶
- A server running Ubuntu 14.04 with at least 1GB of RAM capable of running Docker - we recommend using a Digital Ocean 1GB droplet at 10 USD p/m (If you use this link you get 10 USD credit and we get 25 USD if you spend 25 USD or more). The rest of this guide will assume that you are running Ubuntu 14.04 on DigitalOcean.
- Domain name to use (You can use namecheap)
- Mandril, Sendgrid or Mailgun account for sending email.
- Twilio account for sending text messages.
- Amazon Web Services account for backups to S3.
Setup¶
Create a new 1GB droplet on Digital Ocean and select the Ubuntu 14.04 docker image.
SSH into your Digital Ocean droplet:
ssh root@ip-of-droplet
Download https://github.com/p2pu/knight-app/raw/master/docs/env.txt to /var/p2pu/lc/env.txt on the server and edit the environment variables:
curl --create-dirs https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/knight-app/master/docs/env.txt -o /var/p2pu/lc/env.txt
Edit the variables in /var/p2pu/lc/env.txt using nano. You can use Ctrl+w to exit once you are done editing:
nano /var/p2pu/lc/env.txt
Setup postgres:
docker run --name postgres --env-file=/var/p2pu/lc/env.txt -v /var/p2pu/lc/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data -d postgres:9.3
Create a database & user:
docker exec -i -t postgres psql -U postgres
You will need to enter your password that you specified in /var/p2pu/lc/env.txt for POSTGRES_PASSWORD. You will then see postgres=#, this is the Postgres psql prompt. Here you need to enter:
CREATE USER p2pu password '<insertyourpassword>';
CREATE DATABASE learningcircles;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE learningcircles to p2pu;
\q
Setup rabbitmq image:
docker run --name rabbitmq -e RABBITMQ_NODENAME=rabbitmq -v /var/p2pu/lc/rabbitmq:/var/lib/rabbitmq -d rabbitmq:3
Setup Learning Circles app:
docker run --name lcapp --env-file=/var/p2pu/lc/env.txt --link postgres:postgres --link rabbitmq:rabbitmq -v /var/p2pu/lc/media:/var/app/upload -p 80:80 -d p2pu/learning-circles:latest
Create a superuser:
docker exec -i -t lcapp /var/django-venv/bin/python /var/app/manage.py createsuperuser
Setup your DNS by creating a A record to point to the IP address of your server
Go to http://www.example.net/en/ to view to page.
Go to http://www.example.net/en/admin/ and log in with the username and password you created above.
Go to http://www.example.net/en/admin/studygroups/organizer/add/ and select the username you just logged in with and click ‘Save’.
You can now return to the site and view the Organizer dashboard.
Team organizer guide¶
As a team organizer, you get an overview of what is going on in learning circles run by facilitators in your team. Before you can get started, your team needs to be created for you. Chances are good that ist’s been done already if you are here, but if not, get in contact with the P2PU team.
Log into your dashboard - https://learningcircles.p2pu.org/en/accounts/login/
Dashboard overview¶
At the top of your dashboard, there are 4 different tabs for you to switch between upcoming meetings, active learning circles, facilitators and invitations.
The upcoming meetings view gives you an overview of what learning circles are meeting this week. You can also see what is happening the previous week or the next week.
The active learning circles view gives you a list of all the learning circles that still have meetings scheduled in the future.
The facilitators view gives you a list of all the facilitators that are currently part of your team.
The invitations view shows you a list of everyone who was invited to join your team, this is also where you will invite new facilitators.
Adding facilitators¶
To inviate a facilitator to join your team, you should go to the invitations tab mentioned above. Once here, you should enter the email address for the facilitatoryou want to invite below the list of current invitations.
If you invite a facilitator that is already signed up to learning circles, they will receive a notification asking them to confirm that they wish to join your team.
If they haven’t already signed up, they will receive a message asking them to sign up.
Once the facilitator signed up, they will need to accept the team invitation on their learning circles facilitator dashboard.
Weekly update¶
As a team organizer you will also receive a weekly update every Monday. This update with contain all the meetings that happened in the previous week and any feedback that was submitted by facilitators in your team.
Facilitator dashboard¶
You can still access your facilitator dashboard to create and run learning circles yourself. Use the dropdown menu in the top right with your name on it to switch between your team dashboard and your facilitator dashboard.
Facilitator dashboard guide¶
Before you can log into your dashboard, you need to contact your learning circle organizer and ask them to create an account for you. Once you’ve done so, you need to obtain your password. You can do so by going to: http://example.com/accounts/password_reset/ and resetting your password. You will receive an email with instructions on setting your new password.
Log In¶
After setting your password you will be logged in and redirected to the dashboard. You can also access your dashboard directly at http://example.com/facilitator/. Whenever you log in, this is the page that you’ll see.
Collect and Manage Signups¶
Learners can sign up for Learning Circles on http://example.com and we recommend that you ensure all learners are signed up during the first meeting. If you need to add or remove learners from the Learning Circle, you can do so on the “Members” part of the dashboard.
To add a learner manually, click the “Add learner” button and fill in the learner detail. You will need to fill in the “Goal” and “Support” fields, so make sure that you get this information from the learners if you plan to add them to the dashboard at a later stage.
View and Edit Meeting Times¶
The dashboard will show you a list of all the meetings that are scheduled for you Learning Circle. Students have the opportunity to RSVP to meeting reminders via emails they receive, and as they RSVP you will be able to see their responses here. If there are some meetings that will happen at a different time than normal, or if you would like to add an extra meeting, you can do so here.
Contact Learners¶
To send a new message to all learners, you can click on “New message”.
Here you can author a message that will be sent out to everyone who signed up for the Learning Circle. The text you put in the “Email body” field will be sent to the learners who signed up with an email address, while the text in the “SMS body” field will be sent to the those who signed up with a mobile number. SMS text should be short (limited to 160 characters).
Automatic reminders will be generated for Learning Circle meetings 4 days ahead of the meeting time. When this reminder is generated you will receive an email with an example of the reminder. If you wish to edit the content of the reminder, you can follow the link in this reminder or you can go to the dashboard and edit the reminder from there.
The reminder will be sent to Learning Circle participants 2 days before the meeting time. If you do not want to make any changes to the meeting reminder, you can simply ignore the reminder.
Capture Feedback¶
Each week ends with a short intervention where the facilitator should capture feedback from the Learning Circles. The facilitator can capture this information in any way that they want, but at some point (during or right after the Learning Circle, the facilitators should record this information in the dashboard by clicking on the “Capture Feedback” button next to the appropriate meeting date.
