Once you’ve created a Community, you can edit all of its preferences and settings or give teacher privileges to other MySciLife teachers. 

To edit a Community, hover over the Teacher Tools icon and click Manage Communities. Click the pencil icon to the right of the Community’s name and access code to edit it. You can customize all of your Community preferences from this page. To the right of each setting, you will see MySciLife’s default settings for reference.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to click Save changes at the bottom of the page for changes to take effect!

You can view and edit the following settings for each Community:

Unique Access Code: This is the code your students will use to join this Community. Each Community can have only one access code at any given time—you can use this setting to change it. Changing the access code will not affect students currently enrolled in that Community, but new students enrolling for the first time will need to use the updated access code.

Community Title: This is the name of the Community that will show in the Community Menu for all Community members. 

Tip:  Use the name of a class, class period, class nickname, small group, science club, or any other name your students will recognize.

Allow Posts: This setting toggles whether or not Community members are allowed to make posts in the Community. Posting is set to Yes by default. 

Tip: You can turn this on and off instantaneously if you don’t want students posting for a day or two, or if you want them to make their posts directly to the Main Stream.

Allow Comments: This setting toggles whether or not Community members are allowed to make comments on posts within the Community. Comments are set to Yes by default.

Tip: You can turn this on and off instantaneously if you don’t want students commenting during class or if you want them to interact with the full MySciLife Community in the Main Stream.

Student Identification: This setting allows you choose whether students in your Community can see each other’s real names or just their identities.  Student identification is set to Identities only by default.

Note:  Best practice shows that only displaying students’ science identities will reinforce ownership of their identities and keep the focus on science! Remember that real names never show in the Main Stream.

Moderation: This setting controls whether or not you or your co-teacher need to approve student posts and comments before they appear in the Community. This setting applies to all Community members and can be overridden for an individual student in the Manage Students panel. Moderation is set to On by default.

Set to Read Only: Changing this setting to On turns off all Community members’ (including teachers) ability to write new posts and comments. Read only is set to Off by default.

Tip: This is useful when you wish to stop all posting during teachable moments in class.

See the Manage Students and Understanding & Adjusting Moderation Settings articles for more information.

Teacher Privileges

By default, the teacher that created a Community is the only teacher that can moderate posts and comments, approve new members to the Community, and edit Community preferences. If subsequent teachers join your Community, they will be able to make posts and comments without moderation but will not be able moderate student activity in the Community until you grant them Teacher Privileges. 

You must approve the other teacher(s) request to join your Community in your Activity Feed. Teachers join your Community by hovering over the Community Menu icon, clicking +Join a Community, and entering the Community access code. 

You can allow teachers who join your Community to moderate content and approve new members by granting them teacher privileges in Manage Communities. All members with teacher privileges in a Community can see all activity and interact within that Community, much as the students do. 

To grant full teacher privileges to another teacher, click Grant teacher privileges next to the teacher you’d like to give permissions. Revoke it by clicking Revoke teacher privileges. 

Co-teachers essentially share the same activity feed activity items for the Community in which they both have teacher privileges. If you have a co-teacher with teacher privileges in your Community, the action EITHER teacher takes in the Activity Feed for that Community will mirror across all other co-teachers’ Activity Feeds. For example, if Teacher 1 approves a Community post, it will show as approved in Teacher 2’s Activity Feed. If Teacher 1 marks an item as “read,” it will show as read for Teacher 2 (even if teacher 2 never looked at it). If Teacher 1 disapproves a student post (and the post is returned to the student’s Drafts), the post will disappear from both teachers’ Activity Feeds until it is resubmitted by the student.

Tip: Provide Community access to your Learning Support Teacher, ESL/ELL teacher, Gifted teacher, or other specialists who work with students in your class. You can decide together who should moderate these students’ posts, but teaming up with other specialists will support students’ individual needs.

Remember: Be sure to click Save changes so your changes to take effect!