Our learning management system Dragons’ Exchange (DX) is an integral part of teaching and learning, both in face-to-face and blended/online learning environments. DX is the first point of reference for MS and HS students when it comes to accessing learning resources and deadlines. It is also a single location for parents of these students to get an overview of class information, teacher contact information, student deadlines and (in the Middle School) gradebook information. 

While there are many features within DX that can be used on a regular basis with students, it is not expected that DX will be sufficient for all learning tasks. Rather, DX is the system that is used to help manage all those tasks regardless of whether they take place in DX or not.  

Common Practices for Dragons’ Exchange 

Dragons’ Exchange (DX) is the only LMS that will be used at ISB for MS and HS students. This does not mean that other tools cannot be used to provide content to students or to develop tasks for learning. Please keep in mind: 

    • All deadlines and key assessment dates are to be posted in DX so that students, parents and other teachers have a single calendar to refer to for assignment information. 
    • Links to resources, regardless of where they are housed, should be accessible and organized in DX so that students have a single starting point for their learning journey. 

About this Course: Teachers will complete the “About” tab for each of their courses in DX prior to the first day of class. This page is visible to parents and students, as well as other teachers. MS and HS each have their own specific instructions for what to include but in general there should be:

    • Course Overview: General outcomes of the course and units to be taught. This should be common for the same course across a grade level, regardless of teacher.
    • Assessment information: Information on reporting strands, assessment standards, Student as A Learner (SAL) assessment, and assessment levels. This should be common for the same course across a grade level, regardless of teacher.
    • Feedback guidelines: How and when students will receive feedback from teachers
    • Teacher Contact Information: How do you prefer to be contacted? Email address?

These details can either be: 

    • Uploaded/attached files that will appear on the page. This includes documents and video files; 
    • Text added directly to the page and formatted with the rich-text editor (Bold, Italic, Underline, bullet points, ordered lists, hyperlinks). 

Newsfeed: Newsfeed posts (thoughts, questions, tasks) are used to communicate with the entire class and can be for student-teacher and student-student interaction. 

    • Regular Updates: A weekly or cyclic post should be posted to inform students of upcoming deadlines and expectations for that time period. This post should be “pinned” at the top of the newsfeed. These posts can also be made visible to parents (optional) when they visit DX so that they are aware of the learning expectations on a regular basis. 
    • Posting HW Tasks: Teachers should post their homework as a Task in the newsfeed. This ensures that the deadline is placed on the student’s to-do list. Students must manually mark a task as done and should be encouraged by teachers to stay on top of this organizational step. 

Assessments: All summative assessments deadlines must be posted in DX at least 1 week prior to that deadline. This will do three things: 

    • Inform students of upcoming summative assessments 
    • Inform parents of upcoming summative assessments 
    • Place this assessment on the grade-level assessment calendar to help teachers and administrators manage the overall workload for students 

Course Workspaces: All teachers should be members of course workspaces for each course they teach. The purpose of the workspace is to make Materials accessible for collaboration in creating content for students. This workspace is to be used in the following way: 

    • Finalized Course Material: Units and assessments that are currently in use are to be organized in this section.  
    • All Material should be copied from the Course Workspace to an active class. Teachers should not “share” any unit from the workspace to their classes. 

Gradebook (Middle School Only): All summative assessment data (data used to determine report card levels of achievement) should be recorded using the standards-based rubrics in DX. Refer to the ISB Assessment Policy for additional details.  

Other Features in DX 

    • Messages: Messages allow the teacher to contact students in their classes individually or in small groups. It also allows teachers to easily contact student parents. 
    • People: Teachers may add co-teachers to their class as needed. They must contact a DX Admin to remove any teachers manually added. IBDP teachers who teach a combined SL/HL class can choose to add their SL students into their HL class and only update one area in DX. Again, if an SL student moves from that section, teachers must contact a DX Admin to manually remove that student. 

DX Skills Checklist for Teachers

Access the DX Checklist of Skills for Teachers, a comprehensive list of skills with either video or text tutorials.: http://www.tinyurl.com/dxteachers or http://bit.ly/dxteachers 

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