Getting started guide

Simple, Powerful LMS

for Schools and Universities
For Teachers 1
 Getting started guide for Teachers

Table of contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................................................3

Home page and Navigation .........................................................................................................5

Help Center .....................................................................................................................................9

Example of a class ..................................................................................................................... 11

Creating a class .......................................................................................................................... 23

Configuring a class .................................................................................................................... 25

Adding lessons............................................................................................................................ 28

Mastery......................................................................................................................................... 34

Adding assignments .................................................................................................................. 35

Grading assignments ................................................................................................................ 38

Using gamification in a class ................................................................................................... 45

Enrolling students ...................................................................................................................... 48

Communicating with users ...................................................................................................... 51

Notifications ................................................................................................................................ 53

Taking Attendance ..................................................................................................................... 54

Importing/Exporting class content ......................................................................................... 56

Summary...................................................................................................................................... 58

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 Getting started guide for Teachers

Introduction

NEO is a world class, award winning LMS for use by schools and universities. The platform is
known for its easy-to-use and beautiful user interface, comprehensive set of innovative features,
and pricing that provides great value for money. With NEO its easy to create great classes that
students will enjoy anytime, everywhere.

NEO is a product of CYPHER LEARNING, a company that specializes in providing e-learning

platforms for organizations around the world. CYPHER LEARNING provides a similar LMS for use
by businesses called MATRIX. Both NEO and MATRIX are used by over 20,000 organizations,
support 40+ languages, have millions of users, and have won several awards.

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NEO incorporates all the tools educators and students need in their activities and makes learning
an enjoyable experience.

We want users to get the best results when using our site, especially when they are just starting
out, and that is why we created three getting started guides for the main types of users on NEO:
administrators, teachers, and students.

Getting started guide for Administrators explains topics such as: navigating in NEO, using
the Help Center, creating accounts, configuring the class catalog, setting up policies,
customizing the canned messages, and more;

Getting started guide for Teachers (this guide) explains topics such as: navigating in NEO,
using the Help Center, creating and configuring a class, adding lessons and assignments,
grading assignments, enrolling students, and more;

Getting started guide for Students explains topics such as: navigating in NEO, using the Help
Center, enrolling in a class, submitting assignments, viewing grades, communicating with
teachers, and more.

In the following pages we will go into detail about the most common options for teachers when
they start using NEO. Please consult the table of contents if you want to find a specific topic.

If you have any additional questions, please browse the Help Center or visit our support forum.

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Home page and Navigation

The home page is the first page you see when you log into your account. To jump to the home
page from any page in the platform, click the portal name at the top left. The default landing page
is usually the Dashboard where teachers can see an overview of the most important site
information. On the home page teachers can also see their calendar, to-do list, announcements,
and more.

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Left bar

The left bar displays tabs that allow you to quickly navigate to the main areas of the site, such as
Classes, Groups, Dashboard, News, Welcome, Users, Resources, and Reports.

The left bar allows you access to these tabs regardless of where you are in the site. If you hover
over a tab, a pop up window will appear with the most important options for that area.

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Top right bar

The top right bar displays icons which you can click to access your messages, notifications,
calendar, trash can, help center, search, and profile.

Right bar
In the right bar you can find listed the following: games leaderboards, to-do list, announcements
for the last 7 days, upcoming items in the next 7 days, and a list of any minimized windows. To see
more details, just click on an item.

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News feed

The home page news feed aggregates news items from your friends, classes, groups, and school.
By default, a news feed only shows the latest items. If you scroll the page down, it automatically
shows more news items. When the end of the feed is reached, the message no more news is
displayed.

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Help Center

We provide extensive support at every step of our collaboration. To access the Help Center, click
the icon in the top right bar.

A pop-up box will open with options for choosing the searchable online help, support forum, getting
started guides, how to videos, suggestions area, product news forum, student help desk (if
enabled), and roadmap. If the page that you're on has help content, a "Help for this page" option
will also appear.

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The searchable online help has topics organized by account type, it includes detailed instructions
with screenshots for most of them, and because the Help Center is a pop-up, you can browse
through the topics without having to leave your current page.

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Example of a class

Before we show you how to create your own class, we would like you to become familiar with how
a typical class looks in NEO. We will show you how to navigate in a class, explore the main tabs,
view lessons and assignments, and more.

The default landing page of a class is its Lessons area, which provides a convenient overview of
many aspects of your class, including its lessons, a left bar with tabs that give you direct access
to the most important class areas, and a right bar with games leaderboards, to-do items,
announcements, and more. Now we will go over each section.

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Main left navigation

When you are in a class the main left bar is minimized, allowing you to navigate within any area of
the site by simply hovering over the icon from the top left.

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Left bar
The class left bar shows tabs that allow you to navigate in different areas of a class such as: news,
lessons, calendar, assignments, gradebook, and more.

The left bar displays tabs with direct access to the following areas:

Admin - has options for configuring the class, copying the class, importing/exporting
content, deleting the class, and more;

Welcome - you can create a welcome page for your students to see, with content such as
a description of the class;

News - shows the latest news items from your class;

Lessons - lists the lessons in the class;

Calendar - shows current and upcoming class events;

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Assignments - shows the class assignments;

Gradebook - displays all the grades;

Resources - the area where you can store resources that are independent of any particular
lesson;

Students - lists all the students that are in the class;

Teachers - lists all the teachers that are in the class;

Teaching assistants - lists all the teaching assistants that are in the class;

Parents - lists all the parents in that class;

Game - if the class has a game this is the area where you can see an overview of the game;

Attendance - tracks student attendance;

Seating chart - allows teachers to organize how students are seated in class.

Forums - forums for discussions between members of the class;

Groups - groups for the members of the class;

Chat - chat rooms, where members can exchange text messages in real time;

Wiki - wikis, which are a collection of pages that more than one person can edit;

Blog - blog area where students and teachers can share their online journals;

Analytics - allows you to see lesson and assignment progress for the students in the class

as well as coverage analysis if the class has an associated curriculum;

Syllabus - the syllabus area allows you to create an overview page of the class.

You can configure the class to enable/disable most of these tabs.

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News feed

The news feed shows class announcements, posts from teachers and students, new assignments,
new lessons, new events, and more.

You can delete any news item, including posts and comments by students, by clicking its Delete
option.

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Right bar

In the right bar you can find listed the following: games leaderboards, to-do list, announcements
for the last 7 days, upcoming items in the next 7 days, the class access code (for self-enrollment),
and a list of any minimized windows from your class. To see more details, click on an item.

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Lessons
If you click on the lessons tab you will see all the lessons in the class. You can reorder lessons
using drag and drop.

A lesson is comprised of sections, which can be content pages, assignments, and SCORM
packages (the industry standard for reusable education content). You can see the sections of
lessons by going to Sections tab.

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Content pages
A content page is created using our built-in HTML editor, and can contain any kind of media,
including audio, video, office documents, and Google Docs. You can thus create rich, engaging
lessons without any technical knowledge. Here is how a content page might look:

If a class is self-paced you will see the Completion tab, where you can add rules that should be
performed when a student completes the section.

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Each page also has its own resources area, where you can upload resources such as files, pages,
web resources or add existing resources from your personal or school library.

Assignments

To see a list of the assignments for a class, click the Assignments tab. An assignment can be a
section in a lesson or a standalone task.

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We support twelve different kinds of assignments:

Quiz - presents the students with a set of questions that they can answer online;

Essay - students can submit their response using the HTML editor, and include an unlimited
number of attachments;

Offline - represents a traditional assignment such as a paper-based test or reading a book.

There is no online submission for this kind of assignment, and the teacher is expected to
enter the grades for each student based on the results of the offline work;

Survey - presents the students with a set of questions that they can answer online;

Discussion - allows students to earn points by participating in a single thread of discussion

that is started by the teacher;

Debate - allows students to add arguments for or against a proposition that is supplied by the
teacher;

Team - allows groups of students to work on joint submissions. The teacher organizes the
students into teams, each of which get their own private group;

Dropbox - requires students to upload one or more files as their submission;

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SCORM - captures the results of a SCORM item (SCO);

Attendance - awards points based on a student's attendance record;

Turnitin - add assignments that can have an originality checking through our Turnitin
integration;

Custom LTI assignments - integrates 3rd party LTI assignments.

To see the details for a particular assignment, click on its name. Here is how an assignment in a
lesson looks:

Depending on the type of assignment, you can find some or all of the following tabs:

Overview - shows the most important information about the assignment, such as its
grading status, submissions, instructions, and more;

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Questions - displays the questions of an assignment if its a quiz or survey, and the number
of points that is allocated to each of them;

Grades - shows the student grades for the assignment, submissions for each student, and
more;

To grade - indicates the assignments that need to be graded;

Not submitted - indicates the assignments that havent been submitted yet;

Analytics - displays the grade distribution amongst students;

Proficiencies - if the class is associated with a curriculum you can set the proficiencies
that are assessed by the assignment;

Completion - if the class is self-paced you can add rules that are performed when the
assignment is completed;

Personalize - you can personalize an assignment and give it only to certain students;

Rubrics - you can use a rubric to grade assignments;

Samples - you can provide students with a sample answer.

We will go into more details about how to add assignments later in this guide.

Now that you know how a complete class looks like in NEO, you are ready to start creating your
own. The next sections of the guide will show you how to create a class, configure it, add lessons
and assignments, grade assignments, enroll students, and more.

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Creating a class
To create a class, hover over the Class tab from the left bar and click Add. Select if you want to add
a new class or a copy of an existing class.

If you choose to add a new class, enter its settings and click Save. Here are some notes when
creating a class:

Access code - if you select the "access code" option when creating a class, its access code
(for self-enrollment) is displayed on the class landing page, in the right bar under Admin;

Style - you can choose from three different styles: Instructor, Blended or Self-paced;
o Instructor - learning takes place in a traditional classroom environment. This is the
most common choice for schools that are using online learning in combination with
their regular school setting;
o Blended - learning takes place in a classroom environment, but some of the modules
are self-paced, often with gateway assignments that only allow a student to proceed
once they've achieved a certain score;
o Self-paced - all lessons are self-paced, and students can take the class anytime,
anywhere.There is no class schedule, no dates for particular lessons, no "giving" or
"due date" for assignments, and no grading periods.

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Duration - you can select the dates between which the class will be held, or if your class is
self-paced, you can specify a duration without setting fixed dates;
Subject - choose the subject of the class from the list provided;
Grades - the grade level(s) associated with the class.

To see more advanced options, visit the Options tab.

Here you can set up your class language, time zone, class and section codes, the semester that
the class is held, the number of credits for the class, and organization.

Once you've added a class, you are taken to its default landing page, which is its "Lessons" area,
where a list of tips on how to get started with the class is displayed.

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Configuring a class

To configure your class settings, click Admin/Configure from the left bar. You have options for
configuring the class picture, landing page, left tabs, curriculum, schedule, catalog, enrollment
settings, assignment settings, weighting scheme, prerequisites certificates, completion
certificates, and more.

Now we will go over the most important configuration options.

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Tabs
You can select the tabs that are displayed to you and your students, such as news, lessons,
calendar, people, collaboration tools, and more. By default, only the most common features are
enabled, and less common features such as wikis and chat rooms are disabled.

Enrollment
This area allows you to select the enrollment options. For example, you can choose if you want
students to be able to unenroll, if you want to notify teachers of enrollments, if you want to allow
deactivated students to be able to access a class, and more. You can also set up rules that should
be performed when students are enrolled/unenrolled.

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Lessons
This area allows you to set options related to lessons, such as including a list of sections at the
top of each lesson, requiring lessons to be completed in order, and more.

Completion
In the Completion tab you can add actions that should be performed when a class is completed,
such as awarding a certificate, awarding badges, enrolling students in groups, classes, learning
paths, sending custom messages, and more.

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Adding lessons
To add a lesson, click the Lessons tab in the left bar, then click Add. Then either click New to add
a new lesson, or Existing to add a copy of one or more of your existing lessons. If you add a new
lesson, enter its title, an optional date, a description, then click Save.

Once youve added a lesson, you can use the edit icon to change its settings or description and the
picture icon to change its picture. You can add sections which can be content pages, assignments,
or SCORM packages. You can also set proficiencies for your lesson, rules, and add teacher notes.

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Adding sections

To add a section to a lesson, click its Sections tab, then select the kind of section you want to add.
For example to add a content page, click Page and a pop-up window will appear.

Then enter the title of your page and use the HTML editor to create the content, which can include
any type of media, such as audio, video, office documents, and Google Docs.

You can click the picture icon to upload a picture, and click the file icon to upload any kind of file
such as video or audio. We automatically display files using the appropriate media player. After
youre finished adding your content, click Save.

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Here is how your created page might look:

To add resources to a content page, click its Resources tab, then select the type of resource that
you want to add.

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For example, to add a file from your computer, click File, select the file you want to upload, a
description, the library you want to put it in, then click Save.

Setting proficiencies for a lesson

If your class is associated with a curriculum, you can set proficiencies for a lesson. Go to the
lesson, then click its Set Proficiencies tab, select the proficiencies that are taught by the lesson,
then click Save.

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Adding rules

You can add actions that should be performed when the lesson is completed.

To add a new rule, click Add.

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Adding notes
To add a note to your lesson, click the Notes tab, then click Add.

Write your note, then click Save.

To reorder lessons or sections in a lesson, you can use drag and drop. To delete items, select them,
then click Delete.

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Mastery

You can tag lessons and assignments with proficiencies, then you can automatically analyse how
well the class covers its curriculum and track the progress of each student by proficiency. In
addition, a student can see how well they are progressing through the proficiencies in the
curriculum. To associate a class with a curriculum, visit the Mastery tab and click Add.

If your admin has enabled "US Common Core Standards" via Admin/Policies, these curricula will
automatically show up in the listing if you select "Library" when adding a curriculum.

To disassociate the class with its current curriculum, click Clear.

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Adding assignments
An assignment is a task that a student has to complete in order to earn points. These points count
towards a final grade based on the selected weighting scheme.

There are two ways of adding assignments: you can add an assignment as a section of a lesson,
or add an assignment as a standalone task. To add an assignment as a section of a lesson, go to
the lesson, click Add Section, then click Assignment.

To add an assignment as a standalone task, go to the Assignments tab of your class, then click
Add Assignment from the top right. Regardless of which approach you take, you will then see a list
of assignment types to choose from:

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Select the kind of assignment you want to add, enter its initial settings, and click Save. For example,
if you selected an Essay assignment, you would see the following

Here are some notes on the assignment settings:

Max score - is the max score that a student can obtain;
Points - if you have selected weight by points, then these are the points that the
assignment is worth;
Category - is the category of the assignment. You can see the available categories via
Admin/Configure/Assignments;
Grading - here are the options:
o Normal - the assignment grade, counts towards the final grade;
o Extra credit - the assignment grade is a bonus towards the final grade;
o Ignore - the assignment grade does not contribute to the final grade;
o Not graded - the assignment is not graded and does not contribute to the final grade;

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Max attempts - indicates the max number of attempts that a student can have for
submitting an assignment;
Allow late - allows students to submit after the due date has passed;
Lesson - indicates the lesson to which the assignment is allocated;
Allow students to comment - allow students to comment on the submissions of other
students;
Gateway - an optional minimum percentage that a student must achieve in order to pass
the assignment;
Instructions - instructions on how to perform the assignment.

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Grading assignments

There are three ways for an assignment to be graded:

Automatically - quiz assignments are fully auto-graded if they do not contain freeform
questions; survey assignments and attendance assignments are always auto-graded;
From the assignment page - online assignments that are not graded automatically are best
viewed and graded from the assignment page;
From the gradebook - offline assignments are not submitted online, so the most common
way to enter their grades is via the gradebook.

Note that when you visit your home page or a class landing page, assignments that need grading
will appear in the to-do list, and you can click on the item in the to-do list to see more details.

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Grading from the assignment page

If you go to an assignment page and there are submissions that need to be graded, they will be
indicated under "Grading".

Or you can visit the "To grade" tab.

To grade a submission, click its Edit icon.

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A new window will open that shows the students submission.

In the left side is displayed information such as the date of submission, attempts, and more. The
central part is where you can enter the grade, leave a comment, and add an attachment if
necessary.

The right side gives you the option of overriding the default max number of attempts and/or
whether late submissions are allowed.

The bottom part displays the students answer which you can edit to insert notes. After youre
finished entering the grade you have two possibilities: you can save the grade and go back to the
Grades tab, or you can save the grade and move to the next submission.

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Grading from the gradebook

Another way of grading assignments is from the gradebook, which is particularly useful when you
have offline assignments such as a traditional test paper or reading a book. To see the gradebook,
either click Gradebook from the left bar, click Gradebook from the assignment page, or click the
Gradebook shortcut icon next to the class in the Classes pop-up.

Depending on how many students and assignments there are, scroll bars will appear that let you
scroll through the grades.

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Each assignment is listed at the top of the gradebook, with an icon to indicate its type, a link to the
assignment, and the number of points associated with the assignment.

To edit a gradebook cell, click on it and then enter the number of points, a percentage (a number
followed by %), a letter grade, a blank (to clear the grade), "X" for excused, M for missing, AB for
absent, or I for incomplete.

If you double click on a cell, a pop-up window will appear with an extra option for leaving a
comment.

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To configure the settings for the gradebook display, click the Configure icon in the top right. You
can then select options such as what combination of points, percent, and grade to be displayed in
each cell, and more.

The gradebook has a full-screen mode and configurable display options, including ordering of
students and assignments. It also has pop-up analytics for the whole class, for individual
assignments, or for individual students.

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To export the gradebook, click the Export icon in the top right. Then select if you want to export a
XLS or CSV file. If you select CSV file, select the fields to export, then press 'Export'. This creates a
comma-separated-value (CSV) file that you can import into other systems.

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Using gamification in a class

Gamification allows you to create site-wide and class-wide games where students can earn points
and badges by doing certain tasks, advance through levels, and see leaderboards with rankings.
Gamification is based on our rules engine feature which allows you to define rules for when points
and badges should be awarded to students.

To start using gamification, first it must be enabled by an admin from the App center. Admins can
go Admin/App center and install gamification. Then you can start creating site-wide and
class-wide games. For the purpose of this guide, we will show you how to add a game to a class.

Once gamification is enabled, visit the Admin/Configure/ Tabs area and select Games from the list

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Then visit the Games tab and click Add to add a new game.

Now you can start adding levels for the game

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To add levels for the class game, click Add in the Levels section, then enter the name of the level
and the number of points.

Then you can go ahead and add rules for lessons, sections, and assignments that award points
and badges and help students advance in the class game. For more details on gamification, visit
the Game topic in our Help Center.

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Enrolling students
To enroll students into a class, first click its Students tab from the left bar.

Then Add from the top right, and select one of the following choices:

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Classes tab

If you give students the class access code, they can enroll themselves by hovering over the Classes
tab, selecting Enroll, entering the access code and clicking Enroll. Alternatively, if you have enabled
the class catalog, they can hover over the Classes tab, click Catalog, then select the class and
enroll from the catalog.

People picker

You can enroll students using the people picker, which allows you to filter people by name, account
type, groups and classes. Select the students you want to add and click the arrow to move them
in the right column, then click Add.

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Email invitations

Select the approximate number of invitations to send and click Continue. Then enter the email
addresses and names of the students and click Send.

A student account is immediately created for each user that doesn't already exist for a specified
email address. In addition, each invited member will immediately appear in the class student roster
with the status invited.

An email is sent to each user. The email includes the invitation message and a clickable link. When
the person clicks the link, they are sent to this site and asked to click an Accept option. When they
click Accept, they are logged into the system and taken to their home page.

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Communicating with users

You can communicate with students through our private messaging system. To see your inbox,
click on the message icon in the top right bar. A drop down menu will appear that lists your most
recent messages.

To read a message, click on it. To reply to a message, click Reply, enter your response and click
Send. To delete a message, click Delete.

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To send a message to someone, hover over their name (links to users appear in most places in the
site such as a list of students, teachers, profile pages, and in the forums), click Send Message, then
enter your message and click Send. For convenience, URLs in messages are automatically
converted into clickable links.

To send a message to multiple users at once, select them from a list and click Message.

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Notifications

To see all your notifications, click the notifications icon in the top right bar. A drop down menu will
appear that lists your most recent notifications. Notifications include posts from forums you are
subscribed to, enrollments, new submissions that need grading, and more.

To select which notifications are automatically emailed to you, click the Configure option. If you are
subscribed to a forum, you can reply to a posting directly from the notifications box, or click See
thread to see the entire thread on the forum.

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Taking Attendance

You can track student attendance for a particular class session, including whether a student
arrives on time, arrives late, leaves early, or is absent. You can also excuse a student and include a
note. You can award points for attendance by adding one or more attendance assignments.

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Enable Attendance by visiting the Admin/Configure/Tabs area and selecting the Attendance
option. Then visit the Attendance tab in the left bar. To record attendance for a particular session,
click Add, enter the time of the class session, the details for each student, then click Save. To edit
an attendance record, click its Edit icon. To delete an attendance record, click its Delete icon.

To see a summary of students attendance, click the Summary tab.

To award points based on attendance, add an attendance assignment for one or more grading
periods. To export the attendance data as a CSV format suitable for import into software such as
a spreadsheet, click Export.

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Importing/Exporting class content

Our site allows you to import/export class content using Common Cartridge Format (CCF), which
is the industry Standard for import/export of class content. We also support importing classes
from Moodle or Blackboard.

To import content into a class, click Admin/Import.

Then select the type of file that you would like to import.

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Select the file to upload and click Continue. You will receive a message when the upload is
completed.

To export the contents of a class, click Admin/Export. You will receive a message when the export
is completed with a link to download your CCF package.

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Summary

The Getting Started Guide for Teachers provided the basic information that teachers need when
they first start using NEO. The topics we covered were: navigating in NEO, using the Help Center,
the layout of an example class, creating and configuring a class, adding lessons and assignments,
grading assignments, enrolling students, communicating with students, taking attendance, and
importing/exporting class content.

If you have any additional questions, please browse the Help Center or visit our support forum.

www.neolms.com

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