Say 👋 hello to BusyBee, your AI-powered learning & teaching companion for Buzz. Learn more!
Flashcards are non-gradable activities designed to allow learners to review content and help them commit it to memory.
Authors can add text or an image to each side of each card. Learners see the front of the card, and try to remember, imagine, guess, etc, what's on the other side. Flashcard activities are marked complete when a learner has flipped all of the cards in the activity.
Related articles
This article covers the following sections of the activity editor:
How to create Flashcard activities
Add this activity to your course.
With the activity editor:
- Use the Filter by group icon to make and/or review activity settings that apply only to specific groups.
- Note: This only appears if your course has students in Groups.
- Preview the activity.
- Save changes.
- The Flashcards Activity Editor includes three tabbed screens:
- Use the Activity screen to add/edit basic content, information, and metadata about an activity that is visible/accessible to the students (e.g., activity titles, thumbnail images, introductory content, instructions, attachments students need to complete the activity).
- Use the Settings screen to configure the way you want the activity to work for the students (e.g., objective mastery and badge details, visibility, access).
- The History screen only appears when changes have been made to an activity since its creation. Use it to review changes and restore previous versions of the activity's content.
Some cards in the Activity Editors are collapsed by default; to expand them, click the arrows.
Activity tab
Use the Activity tab to:
- Provide the Title.
- If you've set up Activity themes in your course, you can apply one with the Themes dropdown.
- Provide a Thumbnail image to represent the activity by clicking the plus sign next to the thumbnail.
- Recommended file type: PNG or JPG (Buzz converts all files into PNGs.)
- Ideal size: 400px x 400px (Buzz automatically resizes images, so uploading images smaller than 400px x 400px may reduce quality.)
- Create descriptive Content that appears at the top of the activity using Buzz's rich text editor.
- Click Add Activity Instructions to open a rich text editor to create additional instructions.
- On the Flashcards card, select the desired Card display format that you want students to see:
- The Stack display shows the front of one card at a time. Students click it to see the other side, and then move to the next card in the stack.
- The Grid display shows the front of all of the cards at once, and students can click any of them to see the other side.
- Click Add card to create each card.
- Specify what you want displayed on the Front and Back of each. For each card, you can choose:
- Text and enter any text you want. Text that exceeds the size of the card can be scrolled.
- Centered image and provide the image you want centered on the card so it is all shown. You will also need to provide Alternative text that describes the image for accessibility purposes.
- Full card image and provide the image you want to take up the card (if the image is not square, it will be cropped). You will also need to provide Alternative text that describes the image for accessibility purposes.
Centered image example
- Click Add attachment to provide files for students to review before starting the activity.
Settings tab
Note: Some activity settings can be altered for multiple activities at once using Bulk edit.
Activity settings
If you choose to set a Due date (not available for continuous courses), you can specify:
- The grading Period you want the activity to be a part of. Separate grading Periods allow you to divide grades by date range without building additional courses in Buzz.
- Note: This appears only if you've enabled Periods in your course.
- A Due date and set the Due date and time (not available for continuous courses).
- This can also be managed in the Editor > Scheduling screen.
- Learn more: How does Buzz handle Due dates, Visibility dates, and Score release dates for students in different time zones?
- Whether to Allow late submissions, and what the Late rule and Grace period rules are (not available for continuous courses).
Visibility and access
With Visibility and access settings, you can choose to:
- Make the activity Visible to:
- Students, teachers and observers: This is the default setting for activities intended for students to complete.
- Teachers and observers: This setting works well for Lesson Guide materials that observers like parents, mentors, etc. need access to. A map icon appears next to these activities in the Activities pages for teachers and observers.
- Teachers only: This setting works well for Lesson Guide materials that only teachers need. A map icon appears next to these activities in the teacher Activities page.
- Check the Hide from student's table of contents and to-do list box. Note that it is still accessible with course links and bookmarks unless otherwise restricted.
- Check the Block access until student completes other activity box.
- If it appears, you can check the Require passing score if gradable for mastery (optional).
- Click Choose Activity, and select the activity or activities that you want to make access dependent on.
- Check the Block access until student masters objective(s) box, click Choose Objective, and select the objective(s) you want to make access dependent on.
- Check the Block access until a specified date box and enter the desired date and time.
- This can also be managed in the Editor > Scheduling screen.
- Learn more: How does Buzz handle Due dates, Visibility dates, and Score release dates for students in different time zones?
- Check the Student must enter a password box, and enter the desired Activity password in the field.
- By default students must enter this password only once, and can access the activity without entering the password thereafter.
- If you want, you can check the Require password each visit to override the default.
- Note: Students can be excused from this setting for a specified amount of time by an administrator as part of their Accommodations. Overriding this setting for a student can be useful in a situation where passwords are provided during class, but a student is unable to attend for a period of time.
Badges
Click Choose Badge to select one or more badges that you want automatically awarded to students who successfully complete this activity.
Learn more:
Metadata
Admins can create custom Metadata fields for activities in their domain. This content is only visible to teachers, course authors, etc. and provides further insight into an activity, such as:
- An activity Description for course authors.
- An idea of how this activity fits into the goal of the course or the Big Picture.
- Essential Questions that should be answered by the activity or that students should keep in mind as they complete it.
- Any relevant Vocabulary.
- Associated Resources.
Some of the fields under Metadata ask for content that, if set up by your system admin, can be used to make an activity searchable in the Digital Library. Contact your system admin to find out if there are fields in your domain that can be used this way.
Advanced activity options
Manage Advanced activity options, like:
- Changing the activity's folder Location using the dropdown.
- Giving the activity a new Activity ID in the field.
History tab
The History tab records changes made to the activity and allows you to retrieve previous versions:
- Click the version you want to restore.
- Preview the content.
- Click Restore.
Buzz does not itemize changes to all settings, but does track them. Users can access them by clicking the Details link that appears at the bottom of the history table.
