Can classrooms be set up in Onshape?

elizabeth_malesich

As a CTE teacher I have 4 different classes and I was wondering if their work can be tracked in the program.

Domenico_D

Hi! @elizabeth_malesich

There is no concept of a "class" or "classroom" in Onshape. There are however teams. A team is just a list of users, but this makes it easy to share documents with everyone in the team or see documents that the team has access to. Often, teachers will make a team for each of their classes and then share their documents with the class. If you haven't already I recommend taking this self paced course on sharing documents: https://learn.onshape.com/courses/fundamentals-sharing-and-collaboration 

One of the most important things to make collecting/grading work easier is implementing and enforcing a strong naming convention for documents. Something like [Class], [Lesson/Assignment], [Last Name], [First Name]. This will make it a lot easier to search for all the documents a class created for a project or just the work of one student. Potentially adding a line item on the rubric worth a point or two for correct document name could help enforce this.

Folders are great way to share assignments/document to a whole class, however anything in the folder will have at minimum the same permissions as the folder has. So if you give a class edit privilege's to a folder that they can create documents in, then they can edit anyone's work in the folder. If you want students work to be private to the student, either you have to create a document and share it with a student, or the student has to create the document. If you have a document that you want a student to start from, you can share the document with view only privilege's and add the copy permission. You can do this to a whole folder of your assignments so that the student can see and copy the assignment. When they copy the assignment it won't get added to the folder if they have view only privilege's. Instead it will be created in their My Onshape with just the student able to see/edit it. 

Another option would be to have each student create a folder that all their work will be in, and then share the folder with you. You'd still be stuck searching for the student though if you have a lot of students. So it might be easier to just enforce a naming convention and search for a students work by searching for their name.

To make it easier to submit/grade document there are also a few ways you can try. You can have students copy the URL from the browser of their document and submit it to you in an LMS like google classroom or through a form. The student will have to share the document with you to be able to open it. You could also turn on Link Sharing. Link Sharing allows anyone with the URL to open the document in a view only form (including people without Onshape accounts).

There is also the Onshape Education Enterprise plan with features to bulk add students to Onshape, access to analytics on how students are using the enterprise, and the ability to see all of the work in the enterprise even if the students havn't shared their work with you. You can also use Comments/Action Items as a way to organize student documents for grading. Action Items applies only to Education Enterprises. Students can create a comment on a document they want graded, @you and then assign it to you. These comments then show up in your Action items tab. You can open the document from the action items tab, provide feedback by replying to the comment, and then mark it as completed after you've graded it.

If you are interested in Education Enterprise you can learn more here and contact Onshape to setup an enterprise here