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Investigate Educational Technologies :: Illinois Compass

Maximizing Illinois Compass Performance

To help improve your work experience with Compass and best meet your online teaching objectives, here are some tips on heavy traffic times and deadlines.

  • To begin with, you may not be aware that midnight is a peak time for Compass use.
  • Consider staggering deadlines for your courses by section and, thus, distributing the load on the system.
  • One deadline strategy is to set due dates just before your class meets. This will stagger deadlines throughout the day for the entire campus.
  • Deadlines at night or on weekends will not allow your students to have access to instructional support or technical assistance. Most likely neither you nor technical staff will be available for students who have problems trying to submit something late at night or on the weekends.
  • Some conservative quiz settings in Compass (quiz duration and number of attempts) can create a high pressure context, leading to student failures that have little to do with course content. It may be best to set no limits or raise limits on number of attempts and quiz duration. Consider designing your online quizzes as learning tools rather than assessment instruments.
  • When creating content for your online course, remember that you can often work offline, using other programs such as Dreamweaver, Word, PowerPoint, or Respondus to create web pages, content documents, or quiz question sets.
  • As you gain experience with Compass, you will develop strategies that will improve your navigation and work processes within the system. EdTech offers classes that may help you to become a more efficient user.
  • As with any technology, have a backup plan and be prepared for the unexpected.