Continuing Education: Comment Builder

Overview

TWebCE contains two Comment Banks: School, and Personal. The School bank stores domments that are available to all users within a school. Personal domments are accessible only to the user who created them. The TWebCE Comment Builder pages are used for creating and maintaining the Comments that are used when reporting Achievement in the Entry by Student page. This article describes the processes of creating, viewing, editing and deleting Comments.

Creating a New Comment

Note: Admin users are not associated with a person_id and so do not have a personal Comment Bank.

1. TWebCE maintains separate pages for each of the two Comment Banks. To work with the Comments in a particular bank, click on the applicable link:

School Comments
Lesson-Based Courses > Achievement > Comment Builder > School

Personal Comments
Lesson-Based Courses > Achievement > Comment Builder > Personal

2. TWebCE opens to the Comment Page for the selected bank. New Comments can be created and added to the bank while Comments stored in the bank can be viewed, edited or deleted. The instructions that follow are applicable to both Comment Banks;

3. By default the Comment Page opens to a new Comment. Comments can be categorized according to Comment Type. To categorize a Comment, select a type from the Comment Type drop-down list.
4. Enter the text of the Comment into the Comment box situated under the Comment Type field. Note that as you enter information the Current counter is updated to reflect the number of characters in the Comment box. When the number of characters in the box reaches the maximum number of allowable characters, as indicated by the number to the left of the counter, a message box will display, and you will not be able to enter any more information.

Note: When creating Comments you can copy information from an external source, such as Microsoft Word, and paste it into the Comment box using the right-click mouse menu or the CTRL+V keyboard combination. You can also draw upon Comments that are stored in the Comment Bank. See the Retrieving Comments section of this activity for details.

5. You can use the Insert Pronoun list to insert placeholder variables into the text of the Comment. These variables are converted to student names or the applicable gender-specific pronouns when the Comment is selected from the Comment Bank on the Entry by Student page. To insert a placeholder variable into a Comment, ensure the cursor is in the correct spot in the Comment box then double-click on the desired variable. The variable will appear in the Comment box as a number with asterisks on each side.

Note: You can also insert a placeholder variable by clicking on the variable to select it, then click Copy.

6. Optionally, you can check the spelling of the contents of the Comment box by clicking Spell Check.
7. To remove the contents of the Comment box, click Clear. This is useful if you want to clear the Comment box to start fresh. Be aware, however, the Comment box will be cleared without warning or prompting.
8. Click Save when you have finished creating the Comment, to save it to the Comment Bank.
9. To clear the Comment box and create a new Comment, click New, then follow the previously outlined steps.

Note: Once you have created and saved a Comment do not use the Clear button to start a new Comment. If you do, the previous Comment will be overwritten when click Save.

Retrieving Comments

10. The area under the Comment box is used for retrieving Comments. Retrieved Comments can be viewed, edited or deleted.
11. Select the Comment Bank from which the Comments are to be retrieved by using the Find Comments radio buttons: School and Personal.
12. To limit the list of Comments to a particular type, choose a Type from the Comment Type drop-down list.

Note: Displaying a large number of Comments can adversely affect system performance. Consequently, TWebCE will display a prompt before doing so, to let you to cancel the retrieval. You can then adjust your selection criteria before performing the retrieval again.

13. Click Select. Comments matching the selected criteria will display in the results pane at the bottom of the page.
14. Click on a Comment header to sort the Comment list. Comments can be sorted alphabetically by Comment text, or type; or numerically by Comment Code.
15. Comments that are too long to fit onscreen are indicated by ellipses at the end of the visible Comment text. To view the full text of such Comments, hover the mouse pointer over the Comment. The full Comment text will be shown in a tooltip. Alternatively, you can click on the magnifying glass at the start of the Comment row to expand the Comment text. Clicking on the button a second time collapses the text.
16. Click on the text of a retrieved Comment to insert it into the Comment box. The text can be edited to form part of a new or modified Comment.

Modifying Comments

17. Comments can be edited by changing the Comment type or Comment text. Comments that are no longer wanted or needed can be deleted from a Comment Bank.
18. To edit a Comment, click Edit at the end of the Comment row. The Comment will be inserted into the Comment box. Edit the Comment text as desired.

19. To re-categorize the Comment, select a different type from the Comment Type drop-down list.
20. Click Save to save the changes. The results list will refresh to show the modified Comment.
21. Select the Comment, or Comments, to be deleted by clicking on the checkboxes at the end of the applicable Comment row(s).
22. Click Delete. A confirmation prompt will be displayed.

23. Click OK to delete the selected Comment(s). To close the prompt and abort the delete operation, click Cancel.

Note: Use the Delete button with caution, because deleting Comments is permanent and cannot be undone.