Collaborating in Smart Author
Whether you are developing courseware by adapting content from Acrobatiq’s library or by creating it from scratch, the effort will require teamwork. Smart Author helps organizations scale the development of rich, interactive adaptive courses by facilitating not only authoring but also reviewing. Smart Author supports full-team collaboration in three ways:
1. It allows administrators to define multiple roles so that all contributors have access to the content and functionality that each contributor needs.
2. It provides easy-to-use commenting tools.
3. It supports a staged and easy-to-manage review process.
Roles
By default, Smart Author administrators have the option of giving team members one or more of the system’s pre-defined roles: Author, and Reviewer. The administrator can also assign a custom-designed role.
Administrators access the Roles pane from the Roles button on the Smart Author home page.
Questions about a role assignment should be sent to the administrator who is managing your team’s work in Smart Author.
This section elaborates on how, for example, the Reviewer, identifies and solves the problems that are mentioned in the comments shared on the platform.
Role Descriptions
|
Role |
Description |
|
Author |
Authors write initial drafts, compose instructions, design activities, and conceptualize visuals and interactive media. They are also able to add, view, manage, and resolve comments for others. |
|
Reviewer |
Reviewers have the ability to view course content and comments. As reviewers work through the content, they can leave and resolve comments for course authors. |
|
Custom |
Administrators can create new roles and customize the permissions assigned to suit your institution's needs. |
Comments
Comments can be left for the team at the section level, and any comments made in the Page Builder (edit mode) can be viewed on the Preview page (preview mode). Likewise, comments may be added and reviewed on the Preview page. To add/review comments from a preview page:
1. Click the Toggle comments button at the bottom right of the screen to activate commenting.
2. Click the Toggle intext comments quote bubble, then click Comment here, to highlight text and add your in-text comment.
3. Click the Toggle comments on the blocks quote bubble to open the comment(s) on the top of a section. You can also comment on the block of comments at any time after you have activated the comments.
For more detail on commenting, see the Building Pages module.
Review Process
Smart Author supports three stages of reviewing. Click the quote bubble at the bottom right of the page one time to toggle on the first stage of Comments Mode. Click it again to cycle through the other stages of Comments Mode.
Stage One: Toggle Intext Comments. In Stage One of Comment Mode, the comment counts are revealed for each section. Click on the comment count icon to reveal the comments in that section.
Stage Two: Stage Two of Comments Mode gives team members the ability to leave new comments on the preview page in Toggle Intext Comments mode.
Stage Three: Toggle Comments on the Blocks. Stage Three of Comments Mode is the ability to expose all section-level comments.
Note: A best practice for reviewing courseware that is in development, as well as resolving comments, is to work with two documents close at hand: an organization's Project Style Guide for the course and its Project Review Checklist.