Ascend

Building a course

A course is training people work through: modules of lessons in a learning order, an optional quick quiz after a lesson, an assessment for each module, and, if you want one, a final exam. Like a Quick Quiz, everything in it is written only from the Data Management documents you assign to it. Building a Quick Quiz

Step by step

1. In Ascend, open Courses and press New course. Name it and press Create course. It opens on Documents: tick what it teaches from and press Save.
2. On Outline, press Generate outline — Ascend proposes modules and lessons in a learning order — or build it by hand with Add module and Add lesson. You can also press Design it with Ascend to plan it by conversation. Designing a course by conversation
3. Write each lesson: Write beside it, then Write it from the documents, or type it yourself, and Save. A green dot marks a written lesson.
4. Give each module an Add assessment — the test people must pass to finish that module — and generate or write its questions.
5. Optionally add a Final exam on Tests, drawn from the whole course.
6. Optionally, Add quiz on a lesson: a short check people can take after reading it. It does not count toward passing.
7. Assign it to people in your account, or publish it from Settings. Assigning a quiz, and My learning

Designing a course by conversation

On an empty course's Outline, Design it with Ascend opens a conversation beside a Proposed outline. Say who the course is for and what they should be able to do. Ascend asks for anything else it needs, then proposes modules, lessons and assessments, and changes the proposal whenever you ask: "merge the first two modules", "add one on complaints", "no assessment for module 3". Everything it proposes comes from the course's documents. If you ask for something they don't cover, it says so, and a proposed lesson that doesn't come from an assigned document is left out.

Nothing is saved until you press Build this course. That creates the modules, the lessons and empty assessments; you then write each lesson with Write and each assessment's questions as usual. It builds into an empty course only. Each reply uses AI credit from your account.

Modules open in order

In Settings, Modules open in order is on for a new course. Each module then opens once the one before it is passed — its assessment passed, or, for a module with no assessment, all its lessons read — and the final exam opens once every module is passed. Switch it off and people can work through the modules in any order. The setting applies to the people a course is assigned to, in My learning; visitors to a published course can take its tests in any order.

Finishing a course

A course is complete when every module is passed and the final exam, if there is one, is passed. Lesson quizzes are practice: they have no attempt limit and never hold anyone back. Progress in My learning counts lessons read and assessments passed.

Taking a course

Assigned courses appear in My learning with how far through each person is. Opening one shows its modules: Read opens a lesson, Mark as read · next lesson moves on, and a lesson with a quiz offers Check what you learned. Each module's assessment appears under its lessons; a locked one says why.

Ask the tutor

Under every lesson, Ask the tutor answers questions about it. The tutor answers only from that lesson and the course's own documents, and shows which one each answer comes from, with the passage it relies on. If the material doesn't cover a question, the tutor says so instead of answering. It never falls back on general knowledge.

To ask out loud, press the microphone beside Ask and speak. When you pause, your question is turned into text and asked for you. To check the words first, press the microphone again instead: the text stays in the box until you press Ask. The recording is not kept.

Each question uses AI credit from your account, the same as other Ascend writing, and speaking a question uses a little more, shown under Ascend in Billing. Each person can ask up to 40 questions a day.

Role-play practice

A role-play lets people practise what a module teaches in a conversation. The AI plays the other person, for example a hesitant participant or an unhappy customer, and the learner plays themselves.

1. On Outline, press Add role-play on a module and name it.
2. Press Write it from the documents to have the scene and rubric written for you, or fill them in yourself. You set The situation, who The AI plays, who The learner plays, an optional opening line, and the Rubric: one point per line, each something you can tell from what the learner says. A rubric point written for you that can't be traced to one of the course's documents is discarded.
3. Set the Pass mark and the Turn limit (how many times the learner speaks), and press Save.

In My learning, the role-play appears under its module with Practise. The learner sees the situation and the rubric, then talks with the other person, who stays in character. The learner can type each reply and press Say it, or press the microphone and speak: when they pause, what they said is turned into text and said for them, as in a real conversation. Pressing the microphone again instead leaves the words in the box to check first. The recording is not kept. The other person only states facts found in the course's documents. When the learner presses Finish and get feedback, each rubric point is marked Met, Partly or Missed, with the learner's own words that show it and a line of advice. A point is only marked met if something the learner actually said shows it.

Role-play is practice: it never counts toward passing the module or the course. Each reply and each piece of feedback uses AI credit from your account, and each person can have up to 60 a day. Speaking a reply uses a little more, shown under Ascend in Billing. The role-play's Who has practised list shows each person's score, the conversation and the feedback, to the course's creator and the account's owners and admins.

Placement check

In Settings, Offer a placement check lets people who already know some of the material skip ahead. It is off for a new course. With it on, a person opening the course can take the check once, before or after they start. It asks up to two questions from each module's assessment. A module whose questions they all get right is marked Placed out and counts as passed, and its lessons stay open to read. The final exam, if there is one, still has to be passed.

Refreshers

In Settings, Send refreshers is on for a new course or quiz. When someone passes but gets a question wrong, that question comes back under Refreshers in their My learning about a week later. Each time they get it right it comes back less often, and after about a month of right answers it stops. If they get it wrong, it comes back in a few days. Refreshers never change a result. They show the explanation only if the author has chosen to show the right answers.

Signed in to VeraGen? Press Guide me on any screen for a walkthrough, or ask Odin.