Normal Unit Type – Most units are normal units. A normal unit has all unit stages and is not related to other units.
Shared Unit Type – This unit type allows a unit to be shared/linked into multiple courses; the courses can come from different departments. The unit that gets created first and shared to other courses is the parent unit; all editing takes place in the parent unit only. Only one parent unit is allowed but the number of child units is not limited. The child units are not created until the parent unit is distributed; the "Distribute" button is located at the bottom of the parent unit. The "Distribute" button is not displayed once child units are distributed from the parent unit unless a new course is added to the parent unit. A distributed child unit starts as an editing unit and it has to be published before it is available to other users. All stages in a child unit are read-only and can not be edited by any user, but the unit title, unit description, start date and end date in each child unit are editable. All updates done to the parent unit are automatically applied to all distributed child units. This unit type is supported for all templates: UbD, MYP, PYP etc.
Integrated Unit Type – This unit type is not turned on by default. This unit type is similar to the shared unit type except only stage one is shared and only the UbD template is supported. This unit type allows multiple units to shared the same desired results such as learning targets and essential questions, but each unit (parent unit and all child units) can have its own distinctive assessments and activities. The child units will not be created until they are distributed from the parent unit using the "Distribute" button.
Meta Unit Type – This unit type is not turned on by default. A meta unit is similar to a normal unit but only stage one is available and only the UbD template is supported. In general, this is used for setting a desired result template and teachers can copy this template into a new unit using the "Copy Unit" feature. All copied units using the "Copy Unit" feature are copied as normal unit therefore copying from a meta unit will create a new normal unit with identical stage one from the meta unit plus an empty stage two and an empty stage three. All stages in a copied unit can be edited and the changes don't affect the unit it copied from.
Published Unit – A published unit is readable by all users including the guest users. A published unit is read-only. All editing of a unit takes place in the editing unit which is created by the system with a duplicated copy of a published unit. The "Turn Editing On" button on a published unit generates the editing unit if an editing unit does not exist yet. A new unit always starts as an editing unit when it is created. A published unit always comes from an editing unit by using the "Confirm and Publish" button located at the bottom of an editing unit.
Hidden Published Unit – This is hidden from all users except for the editors and read-only teachers assigned to the course where a hidden unit is located. Editing units are already hidden from other users therefore the hide unit feature does not apply to editing units. When an editing unit gets published, the newly published unit will be readable by all users even if the previous published unit was hidden.
Editing Unit – An editing unit is completely hidden from all users except for editors and read-only teachers assigned to the course where the editing unit is located. An editing unit can be a newly created unit or a unit that gets generated by the system when an editor edits a published unit. Clicking on the "Turn editing on" from a published unit would generate an identical copy of the unit and this newly created unit becomes the editing unit. If an editing unit already exists for a published unit then clicking the "Turn editing on" button would bring up the existing editing unit. There can be only one editor editing a unit at any given time, the application locks the editing unit until the editor clicks the "Done Editing" button or the editor did not edit the unit for more than 8 hours, the 8-hour timeout is configurable by your administrator.
Unit History – This feature can be accessed with the "Compare" button located at the top of all editing units and the "History" button located at the top of all published units. These two buttons can be disabled if there are no sufficient history data. The system always saves a copy/version of the previously published unit when a unit gets published and replaces the previously published unit. The unit history feature allows a user to select any 2 versions to compare side-by-side, the two versions can be the current editing unit, current published unit or any previously published unit saved by the system.
Copy Unit – This feature allows an editor to copy any published unit from the system into a course. The copy function makes an identical physical copy and places the newly copied unit into the selected course. This is different compare to shared units where all child units point to only one physical unit.
My Courses – All the courses assigned to a user are listed in the My Courses menu tree. This allows a user to easily access his/her assigned courses. The following is a sample My Courses tree:
Course Editor – A user can be assigned as a course editor for one or more courses from the "My Courses" list. If a user is a course editor then the "Add Unit" and "Copy Unit" links would appear for the course in the menu tree:
Read-only Teacher – A user can be assigned as a read-only teacher for one or more courses from his/her "My Courses" list. The "Add Unit" and "Copy Unit" links are missing from the course in the menu tree. A read-only teacher is allowed to add/edit unit reflections in editing units located in his/her "my courses". Read-only teachers are not allowed to edit unit reflections created by other users.
