1. What is TIM?

1.1 Goal

The original goal for TIM was to be an easy platform to read and write interactive material like these CS1 lecture notes where the interactions are inside the theory.

The student can do tasks (interactions) and get feedback, like in this Parson’s problem.

1.2 Interactions

The interactions can be for example

• videos
• multiple choice questions
• modules for students to track their learning outcome during the course
• animations like this how to call a function

1.3 Programs

In case of programming, the student can run and modify every program in the lecture notes.

For example, in this very first program example the student can look at either the full code or just the interesting part. They can run it, modify it and run again.

We could have different languages such as this VPython example.

1.4 Algorithms

Programming tasks could also be algorithms where the student does the problem and the plugin writes the code for the student. After they have done the code, they can copy it to program area and test to get results.

1.5 What is read?

While reading the material the student can mark blocks they have read.

The student can also leave comments and the teacher gets email for new comments and can click and answer to the comments/questions.

So, this way we have all these lecture notes that would be 300 pages when printed.

1.6 Answer history

The weekly exercises can be inside the lecture notes or as separate documents. The teacher can take a look at every students’ every answer. For example, this student has tried this task 6 times where the second one did not compile and the third trial already passed the tests.

2. Editing material

2.1 Create a new document

Now let’s see how to make interactive material with TIM.

TIM has two main concepts: document and block. Everything needed can be done using those two!

One can create an empty document or start it from a predefined template. The rights for the document can be chosen now or later.

2.2 Adding a block

A document is made from blocks (paragraphs).

A block can be normal text that can be formatted. To format text we use Markdown language. There is no need to know markdown, because the TIM editor helps to write that.

In the preview we see what the result will actually look like.

2.3 Editing a block

One can use ready-made text templates or just write everything by them self.

Students have asked why we have so many LMSs to use? So, we made one more :-) But that is enough for everything.

2.4 What student benefits?

The student can read theory and make exercises in one place.

The student comments in materials is the most used way to communicate now.

Also, a Master’s Thesis and smaller assignments have been written with TIM. One big benefit is that the comments and the feedbacks stay over the whole process.

2.5 What teacher benefits?

The teacher can give feedback using pre-formatted Post-it notes and they get a lot of data from the students’ work.

One can also borrow blocks from other documents, so when the original changes, the borrowed reference changes as well.

2.6 Adding interactions

The blocks in TIM can also be interactive components.

Let’s add a few for example. Imagine we are writing a theory and those components comes inside the theory. Of course, a document can be just for exercises.

There could be automatic assessments.

Teacher can look at the student answer history and think if there is something that can be underlined more in teaching to avoid some usual mistakes.

2.7 Drag and drop

If something is missing from us, we can borrow it, so student has no need to go outside TIM to use it.

In drag tasks there could be any images or texts to drag and drop, and one can also draw on them. We flew from here.

2.8 Programs

In programming courses, the tasks could be programs that the student can run and modify.

Thank you!

3. Course-level summative

3.1 Fields and functions

In the teacher’s questionnaires one of the most asked feature for TIM was a possibility to follow weekly points and course-level summative functions.

Now it is possible to do all this and even more.

Teachers can freely decide what information they are collecting from the course.

They can do whatever functions they want to calculate points and choose conditional colors for the fields.

They also can get different statistics and graphs from what learners are doing.

Of all this information, the teachers can decide what to show to students and they can even borrow parts of it, for example to show in the weekly exercises page or in the course main page.

3.2 Filtering

The teachers can easily sort and filter data with multiple conditions and they can check the students whom to send email to.

The teachers can also mark who they have contacted and who has answered to them.