After accessing ACU Unitpulse you will see your home page (activity feed), as in the example below:

Functions on the activity feed

     
1. Notifications  – this will let you know if there has been any recent activity on your activity feed, for example, questions that have started or ended.

2. Settings – access your profile and notification settings including the code needed for downloading the Bluepulse app.

3. Help 
4. Log-out of ACU Unitpulse. 

The main activity feed displays the most recent posts in all your units that are active in ACU Unitpulse.

All posts will be displayed in chronological order from the top of the activity feed. Note that ‘Course’ refers to an ACU unit. Click on a unit to view the activity feed of a specific unit.

Each unit that is active in ACU Unitpulse has a distinct activity feed. The image below shows the activity feed for a particular 'test' unit. It shows the posts that have made and any student responses that have been posted. The most recent activity is 'feedback' received from a student. The second is a question posted by the instructor.

There are two ways of posting questions in ACU Unitpulse, either through the 'Check-in ' or 'ask a question' functions:

1.Check-in

Click on the white text area for the question pop up box to appear, You have the option of either posting a question (Check-in) or sharing information. 'Share with' allows you to select which unit to post the question/information:

2. Ask a question

For the full range of options when posting questions please go to the 'Ask a question' box to the right of the activity feed. Note that you can elect to share responses with students for each question type except for text response questions:

You can add your question to this page and select how you want your students to answer, either by selecting a rating or by free-form responses. You can also ask students to select an answer, such as 'yes' or 'no'.

a. Write your question, or select a question from the question bank (menu icon on right):

b. Select timing and sharing of results:

c. Final step to publish question:

The question will show in the Activity feed:

Stopping and editing a question

If you decide you no longer want to make a question available to students for responses you can stop or archive a question using the settings in Central Pulse. Once a question is stopped, you can then use the same settings to archive it and remove the question and responses from the student activity feed.

Central Pulse is where you can see all activity for all units and generate reports:

To edit, stop or archive a question, go to the question tab and select the relevant question. Go to settings, and select either archive or stop. Archiving a question removes it completely from the activity feed:

Choice - A choice question type provides students with multiple options to select from. One or more responses can be selected from a set of responses.

Suggested uses:

• Gauge student understanding level before or after a class.
• Discover knowledge gaps and misconceptions.
• Help you plan learning and teaching approaches.
• Check students understanding of key concepts.
• Test knowledge of the curriculum and learning objectives.

Likert scale - A Likert scale is usually a 5-point or 7-point scale but can measure up to 10-points. It offers a range of responses to measure a student's sentiment based on different statements (level of agreement, satisfaction, etc.). As a result, you obtain granular feedback.

Suggested uses:

• Measure the what students are thinking, perceiving, or feeling towards a class assignment, exam, pace of the unit, or teaching methods.
• Identify areas of improvement, effectiveness, or satisfaction about specific topics or unit areas.

Open-ended - An Open-ended question does not vhae a predefined answer. Instead, Students are invited to open up about their thoughts, knowledge, experience, and feelings, allowing you to collect meaningful and context-rich feedback. These questions are typically formulated in a way to avoid "yes" or "no" answers.

Suggested uses:

• When more detailed information is required about an opinion or experience.
• To learn about student attitudes, sentiments, perspective of overall experience or specific elements of the unit.

Rating - A Rating question asks students to rate something with a score from 1 to 5 (represented visually with stars, hearts, thumbs up, etc.). The higher the rating, the better the score. Most rating questions start with "How much..." or "How likely..." or "Please rate..." You can also choose to include an optional or mandatory comment box for Students to share additional feedback with their rating.

Suggested uses:

• A quick rating to determine students' likelihood of giving a review, or a preference about their progress in the unit.

Trivia - A Trivia question is an easy way to test the students' knowledge, who must choose one or multiple correct answers from a list of up to 10 possible choices. Once the question results are shared, they will find out whether they answered the question correctly or not.

Suggested uses:

• Run a quick check-in to see if students have absorbed content.
• Encourage engagement in a lighthearted and fun way.

Rank order - A Rank Order type question provides students with multiple options to rearrange and rank in order of their preference.

Suggested uses:

• Measure understanding and engagement of curriculum.

Source: Explorance

Formative evaluation is used to quickly identify gaps between what students understand and/or skills they possess and the expected learning outcomes for a unit or learning activity in that unit. With this information, lecturers can offer feedback and other forms of support that help students to close these gaps, before they confront high-stakes tests and assignments.

Questions need to be carefully formulated so that student responses are meaningful and enable to be acted on promptly. The questions are also located in the question bank.

Rating type items

The examples ask students to rate an aspect of teaching/learning, usually on a scale of one to five. These items can be adapted for other types of responses, such as yes/no, agree/disagree. In the Unitpulse tool, the responses to these types of items can be shared with students.

Content/teaching

• The presentation of this week’s lecture content was the right pace for me.
• This week’s lecture/class content was easy for me to understand.
• The lecture/class had the right balance of theory and real-world examples.
• The lecture/class content stimulated my interest.
• I can relate this week’s reading to the lecture content.
• The group work activity in class helped me to understand the content.
• The use of multimedia (e.g. videos) in the lecture helped my learning.
• Students had enough time to discuss and ask questions in class.
• I understand how the content relates to my future profession.
• The class was organised so that all the content was covered.

Student learning

• I was able to demonstrate my knowledge in class.
• The examples used in class helped me learn.
• I am confident that I understand this week’s topic.
• This week’s readings were easy to understand.
• I was encouraged to ask questions in class.
• The discussion about the assignment helped me to understand what I need to do.

Specific topics

• Was the (class activity) useful to your learning?

Class activities include in-class group work, quizzes, discussions, assessments,
discussion boards, review sessions.

Assessments

• The last assignment reflected the course content.
• The rubric for the last assessment was useful in understanding my grade.
• The feedback on the assessment I received was useful.

Open-ended type questions for ACU Unitpulse

These questions ask students to post a written response in Unitpulse. Written/ text student responses cannot be shared with other students in the class.

• Which of the concepts in the last lecture (or last week's lectures) was the most difficult for you to understand?
• Which class activity best helped you learn the content?
• Which of this week’s readings was most useful to your learning?
• How does the use of technology (state technology) in class help you learn?
• What is one thing from today’s class that needs more explanation?

Student responses to your questions will appear in your unit activity feed. By clicking on the See results icon under the question you can view student responses.   The follow-up icon allows you to respond to a student or groups of students. You can decide if you want students to reply to your response.

You may have asked students to rate one of your questions. To follow up with students, click the speech follow up icon.

When a student logs into ACU Unitpulse, the activity feed will appear similar to yours. They also get alerts when there has been a new posting in one of the units. Students also have the option of submitting confidential feedback to lecturers using the feature shown in the following image:

Students can submit one piece of feedback in each 24 hour period for each unit. Their feedback will appear in your activity feed as in the following image:

To respond to feedback use the follow-up function. Any responses to confidential feedback are only between the student and the lecturer.

Besides posting questions, ACU Unitpulse allows lecturers to share information or ideas with students using the Quickpulse function. This allows you to send small bits of information to students instantaneously such as links to articles. When you type your thought in the Quickpulse box, select the option to share a thought:

ACU Unitpulse allows lecturers to create subgroups within a unit in LEO so questions can be posted to specific groups of students. Go to the feed for a particular unit and select 'Personal groups' from the menu on the left:

Click on the create a group area. The following pop up box will appear. Add a name to the group and select the students to add to the group:

Click save, and the group will appear in the group list. To send a question to this group, select 'Ask a question'.  Select the unit you in which the group is, select the magnifying glass icon - this allows you to select the group withing the unit:

CENTRAL PULSE is the dashboard where your units, thoughts, questions, and feedback are analysed with more detail about the full activity, levels of student engagement, feedback, and follow-ups. You can also generate reports of activity in this area.

Central Pulse is also where you can manage and keep track of all of your activity items from one place:

Email notifications of ACU Unitpulse activities may assist in engaging students with the tool and responding to questions. Students will receive an email to their ACU email account advising that new activity (question) has occurred. To activate the notification function in ACU Unitpulse please contact Evaluations LTC after the tool has been added to the unit in LEO as the facility needs to be activated for the unit. Furthermore, each student user must turn on notifications within ACU Unitpulse to receive emails. Students must click on the ACU Unitpulse link in the unit in LEO. When the ACU Unitpulse tool is open, go to Profile settings and switch on notifications.