Welcome to the seventh and final post in our “Teaching through COVID-19” series. A quick recap for those just tuning in. Over the past few weeks, bahabeach has published different installments in our series “Teaching through COVID-19”, with each article highlighting a different learning product. These posts are meant to answer your most frequently asked questions about learning products, and how you can use them in a distance learning capacity. Our post today covers CADLearning, a fantastic learning platform for PC and Chromebook based learning. Check out the details about launching and utilizing CADLearning below.
- CADLearning is mapped to which bahabeach certifications?
- CADLearning has material mapped to all Autodesk Certified User and Autodesk Certified Professional exams. All certifications are mapped through CADLearning’s “Goals” function, available from the user home page. Students can select a chosen goal, or certification, which is broken down into specific medallions and badges. The medallions represent the Autodesk learning objectives, and badges represent competencies for each objective. The goal-based learning is up to date with the current learning objectives. Many schools are adopting the goal-based learning as it is more engaging for students, and is broken down into bit-size components, with quizzes available at the badge level.
- What features are available in this program to help my students continue learning at home?
- CADLearning is a browser-based learning program to help students progress in their Autodesk certification journey. There are many features and components that students can use to continue learning at home.
- Lessons: Within the CADLearning library there are dozens of courses that students can choose from. Each course has videos that the students can watch to master given topics or skills within programs like AutoCAD, 3dsMax, etc.
- Assessments: Each course includes an Overall Knowledge Assessment and a Skills Assessment.
- The Overall Knowledge Assessment is a multiple-choice quiz. Students can take it as many times as they would like. This assessment is highly recommended by the CADLearning team, because any question they answer incorrectly will be paired with a video lesson they can view to master that topic. This creates a clear path to close any knowledge gaps the student may have.
- The Skills Assessment is also a multiple-choice quiz. However, this quiz requires the student to download the Assessment files in the Resources section (more information below). Students will then need to open the files in the corresponding program and follow the instructions in the quiz to receive the correct answer.
- Resources: While students are watching their video lessons, they can download exercise files to work along with the given tasks being executed. These files will give them hands-on mastery, not just theoretical understanding of the programs.
- How do my students get access and set up their accounts?
- Before your students can access their accounts, you must log-in and make sure you are set as an admin. Visit www.cadlearning.com to login. If you have administrator rights, you will see a menu labeled “Organization” in the top bar. Click “Organizations” and then click “Users” from the menu that will appear on the left-hand side of the screen.
- There are many ways you can add your students as users. You can Invite Users, Add Users, or Import Users. The quickest way to set up a group of students is to Import Users.
- Once you click “Import Users” you will be taken to a new page.
- On this page, you will click “Download Template”. This is a CSV file, labeled with “First Name”, “Last Name” and “Email” columns.
- Once you fill in that information for all your students, you will import it on the “Import Users” page. Make sure you have not selected the “Send Email Invitations” box, since this will send a separate message, rather than having you add them manually.
- Once you have completed this process, you will notify your students that their accounts are ready. These are the steps they will need to follow:
- Visit www.cadlearning.com.
- Click “Login”.
- Click “Forgot Password”.
- Follow the prompts accordingly to set up their password, and then finalize their account login information.
- Do my students need to install anything?
- If students are planning on only watching the videos within CADLearning, they won’t need to install any additional applications. However, if students want to follow along with the additional resources, they will need to install the corresponding Autodesk application on their machine. Remember, students have access to Autodesk applications for free here.
- What web browsers work best?
- Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge are your best options.
- Can they work offline?
- No. CADLearning is entirely browser based, so all course content is only accessible with an internet connection.
- If I need to provide my students printable materials to accompany their online course, what can I give them?
- Unfortunately, there are no printable materials with CADLearning. However, all video tutorials have scrolling narrations, if the student would like to read along.
- Is there a video/demonstration component that the students can complete before taking any practice quizzes?
- Yes. All CADLearning lessons are video based. They are typically screen recordings with highlights and text points to make sure your student is focusing on the proper area of the screen for the given topic. All videos also include an interactive scrolling script. Students can skip ahead to the part they need by finding it in the script, and the video will jump to that segment of the lesson.
- Can I see what my students are doing? What they have completed, how they have done on their quizzes, etc.
- Absolutely! If you select the “Organization” menu from the top of the browser, and then “Reports” you’ll be able to see your students’ progress. You can also look at individual student assessment results by selecting their name in your user list, and then selecting “Transcript”.
- The Reports section is broken down into two sections: Activity and Assessments. Activity reports track video views, while the Assessment reports track the questions answered.
- The following Activity reports are pre-built for you to see:
- Lesson Activity
- Product Activity
- Product Command Activity
- Product Version Activity
- User Activity
- Group Activity
- Group Activity by Product
- Sign-ups by Month
- The User Activity report will be the best way for you to track individual progress within the course, since it shows which individuals have watched which videos/lessons.
- The following Assessment reports are pre-built for you to see:
- Assessment Report Card
- Assessment Distribution
- Assessment History
- Download Assessment Data
- The Assessment History report will be the best way for you to track progress for a given student over time.
- Is your course broken up in modules so I can assign short learning every day?
- The CADLearning content is broken down into atomized building blocks. Each training is roughly four minutes in length. This means that each training is focused on one skill, one command, one task. This way your students won’t need to sift through a 15-minute lesson to find the information they’re looking for.
- CADLearning also has a Playlist feature that is excellent for distance learning environments. As a teacher, you can create a Playlist and share it with your students. If you wanted to have them cover a specific subset of videos, or to create sections to cover each day, the Playlist feature is a great way to do that. Students can also select the “Assess” option from a given playlist, to make sure they’ve mastered the topics you have assigned.
- What works without downloads and what needs to be downloaded to be fully functional?
- All video lessons and Overall Knowledge Assessments will be fully functional without downloads. However, if the student wants to follow along with projects in the lesson, or use the Skills Assessments, they will need to download the corresponding data set and Autodesk application.
- Can I give feedback to my students within their account?
- CADLearning has some options to help you communicate directly with students through the application. You can use the Message option available under the Organization menu to broadcast messages to all your students. You can also share video playlists with students to make sure all students are watching the same content.
Looking for a more visual representation of the platform? Check out bahabeach’s full CADLearning demonstration here. You can also join CADLearning’s office hours to ask additional questions.