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Buzz Glossary

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Term Definition/Description
Activities The Activities tool displays the Course Home pages for the selected course. Teachers can use this view to access what their students are seeing.
Activity Editor Course authors use the Activity Editor to create and revise activity content and configurations.
Activity Stream The Activity Stream appears on the Home page as well as on Course Home pages for students; it shows their activity history, starting from the most recent. Users can click each entry to open the activity, badge, or announcement listed.
Activity Types

From the Editor, course authors can add new activities, edit existing ones, and change non-gradable items to gradable items. They can choose from the following activity types: 

  • Assessment
  • Assignment
  • Blog
  • Custom Activity
  • Discussion
  • Embed Code
  • File Attachment
  • Google Drive Document
  • Journal
  • Peer Assessment
  • Practice Questions (formerly Homework)
  • Project
  • Rich-Text Activity
  • RSS Feed
  • Survey
  • Website LInk
  • Wiki
  • YouTube Video
Announcements Announcements are messages that can be sent to all members of one or more courses. They appear on the Home and Course Home pages above the To-do List and in the Communication tool.
Assessment activity type Review this activity type.
Assignment activity type Review this activity type.
Badges Badges can be awarded to recognize and encourage students. Buzz allows for two types of badges:
  • Automatic badges are configured to be automatically awarded to students by Buzz when they complete an activity, unit, or course.
  • Teacher-assigned badges are configured to be assigned by teachers to reward a specific achievement or behavior. Teachers can choose from badges in specific categories (e.g., leadership, scholarship, service, etc.) and provide personalized comments and/or evidence, so students know why they're being recognized.
Blog activity type Review this activity type.
Calendar The Calendar displays due date notifications that are color-coded by course. Users can select a date or view to see activities listed on the left.
Choice Activities To provide students with greater control over their education, course authors can give them the opportunity to choose which activities they'd like to complete from a list of relevant activities. These are called "Choice Activities."
Clipboard Teachers can use the Clipboard to quickly provide personalized attention to individuals and groups of students. It is always available in the toolbar for ease of use, and teachers can assign activities, award badges, assign tasks, and message students quickly and easily based on their needs.
Comma-separated values (CSV) files CSV files are editable by spreadsheet applications like KSpread, OpenOffice Calc and Microsoft Excel. Buzz reports are generated as CSV files. You must also use CSV or tab-delimited values text (.txt) files when importing course, user, and enrollments data into Buzz.
Communication With the Communication tool, teachers can post announcements that appear above the To-do List and compose and send messages to members of their courses. Other Buzz users can use the Communication tool to review announcements.
Contextual help Buzz provides contextual help, meaning that, when you click on the help button, Buzz directs you to information based on the page you are on.
Continuous enrollment Continuous enrollment courses are self-paced courses for which completion is usually indicated by completion of certain activities rather than by the ending of a semester or other timeframe.When you set up a continuous enrollment course, Buzz automatically schedules suggested due dates for all gradable activities based on the sequence of activities in the Editor, the number of non-gradable activities between gradable activities, the weight of each activity, any blackout dates that have been specified, and the number of days and date range assigned to the course.
Course Cards Course Cards appear on the Home page and are made up of a course's assigned color and the course image (or the first two letters of the course name if no image is assigned). For students, Course Cards can display progress in the course and their current grade.
Course Chooser The Course Chooser is a dropdown menu next to the Main Menu that includes all courses a user has access to. Users can open it and jump to another course at any time.
Course Home Course Home pages are the Activity tool's landing pages. They display course announcements, the To-do List, the course activities, course links, and, for students, it displays current score and the Activity Stream.
Course Links Course Links are provided by course authors using the Editor. These links are significant to students' understanding and performance in a course, and students can access them by opening the Course Links dropdown in the toolbar on Course Home pages.
Curve Buzz allows you to apply a grade curve to an assignment by specifying a max score that is lower than the default, and scaling the student grades to that value. This improves scores for all students that are displayed.
Custom Activity type Review this activity type.
Derivative Child Course Buzz allows courses to be created as linked copies of another course. The linked copy is known as the Derivative Child Course and the original course is the Master. Any changes made in the Master Course are reflected in the Derivative Child Course. If course authors make changes to a Derivative Child Course, the changed components are unlinked from the Master and won't be overridden by changes to the Master Course. Course authors can relink those components by changing them to match the Master Course again.
Derivative Sibling Course Buzz allows courses to be created as linked copies of another course. The linked copy is known as the Derivative Child Course and the original course is the Master. If you make changes to a Derivative Child Course and then copy it, those changes are carried over and you create a Derivative Sibling Course. Any changes made in the Master Course are still reflected in the Derivative Sibling Course. If course authors make changes to a Derivative Sibling Course, the changed components are unlinked from the Master and won't be overridden by changes to the Master Course. Course authors can relink those components by changing them to match the Master Course again.
Digital Library Course authors can access content from various online resources from the Digital Library. These can include other courses within their district or organization as well as open sources like OpenEd and Khan Academy.
Discussion activity type Review this activity type.
Domain A domain houses courses, users, enrollments, and the data associated with each. Admins manage this data and configures the domain settings. 
Editor Course authors can plan, build, and manage course content using the Editor.
Enrollments An enrollment is a user's association with a course.
Feedback Indicators Icon that indicates that a teacher has provided feedback for an activity. It appears anywhere teacher and students see an activity score displayed, and give users access to the feedback. Teachers can turn off feedback indicators off on their Performance > Grades screen by clicking Options in the toolbar.
File Attachment activity type Review this activity type.
For Me The For Me report displays all activities a student has created or chosen, as well as activities the teacher has created specifically for the student.
Formative Assessment Formative Assessments evaluate student performance in relationship to objectives that are aligned to the assessment questions. If students perform well enough to demonstrate mastery of any objectives, Buzz allows them to skip activities meant to teach those objectives.
Google Drive Document activity type Review this activity type.
Grade Weights Teachers assign a number value to every gradable activity representing its weight in the grade book. This number defines how much impact each activity’s grade has on the final grade relative to other activities in the category and/or course; relativity is determined by comparing each assigned weight value.

When using Multi-Outcome Scoring, you can also assign weight to outcomes to determine how much impact each outcome has on the grade.
Gradebook Reports Teachers and admins can run Gradebook Reports. They are generated as spreadsheets that provide a high-level perspective on student performance as it relates to activities. They can be organized around individual activities or activity categories and time periods.
Gradebook Settings Content authors encounter this section when editing an activity and can complete the fields to specify due dates and scoring details.
Grading Schemes Grading schemes are criteria-based models for measuring performance. When creating a grading scheme, course authors define things like which activities are graded and which aren't, how much they are worth, how much their worth is weighted compared to other activities and activity types, what constitutes a passing grade, and in what way grades are communicated (e.g., letter grades, percentages, GPAs, etc.,).Teachers and course authors create a default grading scheme when they build a course and they can create alternative class-wide grading schemes using the Final Grades screen.
Group prefix A Group prefix is the common identifier applied to all groups in a Group Set to show they're part of the same Group Set.
Group Set A teacher can group the same class in various ways; each different grouping is a Group Set.
Home Home is Buzz's landing page and starting point for navigating the app. It displays current announcements for all courses, the To-do list for all courses, and Course Cards.
Journal activity type Review this activity type.
Links The Links tool lists resources that are important to the course.
LTI Keys Learning Tools Interoperability keys are used to sync Buzz with external learning tools, like Turnitin.com.
Main Menu The Main Menu is on the far left of the toolbar. With it, users can navigate between Buzz's tools.
Master Course Buzz allows courses to be created as linked copies of another course. The course that is copied is known as the Master Course, and any changes made in that course are reflected in the linked copy, or Derivative Course. When content authors make changes to a component of a Derivative Course, that component becomes unlinked from the Master Course and won't be overridden by changes made there.
Mastery Teachers can review the Mastery list in the Performance tool. There, each objective that is linked to one or more course activity is listed along with an indication of how well the class, as a whole, seems to be mastering it.
Mastery Reports Teachers and admins can run Mastery Reports. They are generated as spreadsheets that provide a high-level perspective on student performance in relationship to educational standards.
Metadata Content authors encounter this section when editing an activity and can complete the fields to provide additional information about the activity.
Multi-Outcome Scoring The Multi-Outcome Scoring gradebook allows course authors to create multiple desired outcomes for students, align them to activities with varied weights, and track performance against them.
Objective Map An Objective Map is a group of defined correlations between Objectives in different Objective Sets (a collection of objectives that belong together).

If a course needs to align activities with objectives from different sets, you can create an objective map to show which objectives should be correlated between those sets. For example, if Objective 1 from Objective Set 1 covers simliar criteria as Objective 2 from Objectives Set 2, and you need students to meet both, you would correlate those objectives. This is most frequently done to align state standards with a national standard.
Objective Mastery Students can access the Objective Master screen from the Performance tool. It displays course objectives, which activities they are aligned with, and the student's progress in mastering each objective (in percentages).
Objective mastery threshold The objective mastery threshold is the percentage of points a student has to earn on an objective-aligned activity to show mastery of that objective. If an objective is aligned with multiple activities, Buzz uses the average.
Objective Set A grouped collection of related Objectives. Objective Sets are defined at the Domain level.
Objectives Course authors create Course Objectives by creating activities based on educational Standards and showing/describing how the activities meet those Standards.
Override Complete The Override Complete button is available when grading. If a teacher has designed an activity to require students to successfully complete it before they can continue to other activities, the teacher can use Override Complete to remove the requirement, allowing the student to move on.
Peer Assessment activity type Review this activity type.
Peer Help When activated, peer help allows students to see which of their classmates have completed an assignment, so they can engage them for help. Students access this information by clicking a Peer Help button in the toolbar of the Activities tool; the icon only appears when the feature is enabled by the admin and an activity has been completed by at least one student.
People The People tool gives teachers at-a-glance access to various student data points in one simple table. They can use it to track student progress, create and manage groups, send mail, and invite, add, or drop students.
Performance The Performance tool enables users to track student progress in many areas.
Placement and Navigation Content authors encounter this section when editing an activity and can complete the fields to specify where students can find the activity.
Practice Questions activity type (formerly Homework) Review this activity type.
Project activity type Review this activity type.
Proxy A user with the appropriate permissions can sign into another user's Buzz account; when doing this they are considered that user's proxy.
Quick Lists Teachers can generate Quick Lists using the Clipboard to assign supplemental activities to specific groups of students who need them.
Registration Code Students use Registration Codes to join courses. Teachers can generate Registration Codes and send them to students they want to invite to join a course.
Remediation Assessments Remediation assessments are given to evaluate student performance on material they should have learned, and give them the opportunity to return to material they haven't mastered. When students fail to demonstrate mastery of aligned objectives on the remediation assessment, Buzz automatically identifies activities meant to teach to those objectives and suggest that students return to review them.
Reports The Reports tool allows teachers to run Gradebook, Student, and Mastery Reports for their courses. These reports provide high-level perspectives on student performance and course effectiveness.
RSS Feed activity type Review this activity type.
Rubric A scoring guide used to indicate activity expectations, possible performance outcomes, and the scores associated with them.
Scoring outcomes When the Multi-Outcome Scoring gradebook is set up, a course author is able to align activities with various scoring outcomes by which they can assess student performance.
Self Assessment The Self Assessment feature allows students to evaluate their personal understanding, interest, and effort in a course using a simple four-point scale for each. Teachers can easily access these assessments and use them to guide intervention and personalized attention.
Self-assigned tasks When enabled, students can assign themselves tasks; they are called "self-assigned" in the For Me section of Performance. Creating and completing self-assigned tasks helps students manage their time and direct their own learning path.
Sidebar navigation Course authors build courses using a vertical folder structure. This structure appears as the sidebar navigation in in the Activities tool and on Course Home pages. In User Settings, users can choose to use a full-view version of it with expandable/collapsible folders or to use a simplified view that shows only the contents of the currently selected folder.
Standards Educational Standards describe what students should know and be able to do at a specific stage of their education. Within Buzz, they are managed at the district or organizational level, and teachers use them to build activities and learning objectives.
Static Copy Unlike with Derivative Child and Sibling course copies, none of the changes made to the Master Course impact a Static Copy.
Student Choice Activities (i.e., Student Choice, Choice Activities) Student choice activities enable students to review a teacher-curated selection of approved activities and choose to complete the ones that best align with their interests and goals. Teachers are able to specify:- How many activities a student must complete.- The group of activities from which students can select activities.- Whether students can choose activities from other libraries. - Whether students can complete more than the required number of activities.
Student Reports Teachers and admins can run Student Reports. They are generated as spreadsheets that provide a high-level perspective on individual student performance.
Survey activity type Review this activity type.
Tab-delimited values text files Tab-delimited values files are text files (.txt) formatted to store data in tables. When importing course, user, and enrollments data into Buzz, you must tab-delimited or comma-separated values (CSV) files.
Tasks Tasks are personalized, non-graded activities that teachers can quickly assign to students using the Clipboard.
Theme A theme is made up of a color and/or image users choose to display in their Buzz interface.
To-do List For students, the To-do List displays all past-due assignments, as well as all assignments with due dates coming up within seven days. For teachers, it displays student submissions in need of attention.
User Menu The User Menu is on the far right of the toolbar. With it, users can manage their account and themes, learn more about Buzz, access help, and logout.
Variables Replacement variables allow course authors to personalize content for students, randomize assessment content, and easily keep parts of a course updated. Buzz uses two types of variables:
  • Replacement variables: Using predefined variable codes, Buzz automatically replaces content with dynamic values drawn from user, course, and/or domain information.
  • Assessment variables: Course authors can create and use assessment variables to test each student by the same concepts while using different questions.
Visibility and Completion Content authors encounter this section when editing an activity and can complete the fields to specify when and where students can find the activity and how to complete it.
Website Link activity type Review this activity type.
What If Calculator The What If calculator lets users project possible grade outcomes based on hypothetical scores on activities.
Wiki activity type Review this activity type.
YouTube activity type Review this activity type.
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