Creating groups and assigning laboratories
Group with associated laboratories, within a institution's LabsLand space.
Introduction
Each higher education institution has its own space in LabsLand, which can be accessed via an address such as "https://example-college.labsland.com". A space will have one or several associate professors, and potentially also students.
In this space, instructors with administration privileges can create groups. A group represents a class or a course. For example, "Physics and Chemistry group 2020-2021". Each group will be assigned the labs that this group will use during the course. For example, the group above might be assigned labs such as "Inclined Plane" or other physics labs.
Students will access these laboratories through these groups. A student who joins a particular group will be able to access the laboratories that are assigned to that group.
Through this system, instructors can control which labs students can access, provide them with access, view statistics on their groups without mixing them with other instructors' groups, etc.
Prerequisites
Before you can create groups and assign labs to a group, you need to be an administrator of a LabsLand space. Normally the space will be associated with your higher education institution (for example, "https://example-college.labsland.com") and may have several administrators. If you do not yet have a space for your institution or do not have administration permissions on the space, please contact us at support@labsland.com. You will need access before you can follow the rest of the guide.
Creating a new group
Creating a new group is easy.
Step 1 - Access your institution's space
The first step is to access your institution's website. The address will be similar to: "https://example-college.labsland.com", except that instead of "example-college", it will possibly be the name of your institution. If you are not sure if you have a space or what the address is, check with the person who created the space or contact us at support@labsland.com.
Step 2 - Click on "Add new group"
If you are in your institution's space you should see a set of buttons at the top of the web page.
Figure 1. Top of a LabsLand space, with the various buttons that appear.
As shown in the figure, several buttons should appear.
Note: If the buttons in the image do not appear, there could be several reasons for this:
You may not actually be on the main page of the LabsLand space. Make sure you are on the main page. For example, https://example-college.labsland.com (replacing "example-college" with the correct name).
It is possible that you do not have administrator privileges within your institution's space. In this case, contact the administrator of the space.
If you are unable to solve the problem, please contact us at support@labsland.com.
If the buttons appear normal, to create the group, just click on "Add new group" on the left.
Step 3 - Starting to set up the group
After clicking on "Add new group" you should see something similar to Figure 2.
Figure 2. Group creation or configuration screen.
The first thing we recommend you to enter on this screen is the name of the group. We recommend something similar to the following: "Technology Group 2020-2021". Although it is not compulsory, the recommended naming scheme is to include the name of the subject, the level and the year.
Then, in the "Instructors" field, you can invite other classmates to also access the group, view statistics, etc. If you include instructors who are already in LabsLand, they will automatically be added to the group. If they are not yet in LabsLand, you can also enter their email address, and they will receive an invitation that will allow them to register in LabsLand and join the group.
The "Instructors" option is only for inviting instructors and administrators. Students will access the group and labs in a different way (see the other guide on this).
When inviting an instructor, you will sometimes see an option to choose their privilege level. We recommend that you set all instructors as "administrators". That way they can also create their own groups.
If you prefer that the person you invite cannot create groups, but can simply use existing groups, you should invite them as an "Instructor".
Step 4 - Assigning laboratories
Once you have named the group and invited other instructors you want to see it, the next step is to assign labs to the group.
The assigned labs will normally be the labs you want the students in the group to use. This way, the students in the group will not see all the labs that exist: they will see only the ones you assign to the group. This reduces the possibility of error, and the instructor controls access more directly.
To assign a lab, just select it from the list that appears. By marking a lab, the color of its border will change, and the number of labs selected will increase.
In this example, in which we are creating a Technology group, we are going to assign the labs "Arduino Board" and "Arduino Robotics".
Finally, you must click on the "Save" button to finish creating the group.
Step 5 - Checking that the group is created
After clicking "Save", if all goes well, you should have automatically returned to your institution space. You should see something similar to Figure 3.
Figure 3. Institution space, after the creation of the Technology Group 2020-2021
As you can see, the group you have just created should now appear. The group should appear in a white box, with the title you have given to the group. In our case, the name was "Technology Group 2020-2021".
Also, inside the white box, the laboratories you have assigned should appear. In this case, we have assigned Robot Arduino and Arduino Robotics, so as can be seen in Figure 3, that is what we see.
Next steps
You now have a group.
Through this group, you can access the labs by clicking on the "Access this lab" button and following the instructions.
You can also set up everything so that your students can access them. For this, you will need to follow the following guide on how to set up access for students.
If you want to assign different labs or change the name of the group, you can do it easily by clicking on the "Edit group" button.