Domain Settings allows you to customize your domain to best suit your district or organization. This article walks through the options in Edit Settings to provide an overview.
To access Domain Settings:
- From the Main Menu, select Domain.
- Select More in the Header Menu.
- Select Domain Settings.
The editable settings on this screen are arranged in alphabetized cards.
Clicking the angle brackets icon, < >, in the toolbar opens the Text editor for Application settings, Domain customizations, and XLI settings.
Activity templates
If enabled, Pearson Connexus allows you to create activity templates so that content authors can copy items from the syllabus of the indicated course and edit for their own needs.
Authentication
Pearson Connexus supports the use of single sign-on (SSO) features to allow users to sign in to one application (e.g., a student information system) and be automatically logged into Pearson Connexus without needing to re-enter credentials.
Learn how to enable Single Sign-On (SSO) in Pearson Connexus.
If you don't want to use SSO:
- Select Pearson Connexus in the authentication Type drop-down.
- Indicate if you want to Allow users to create their own accounts.
Note: Domain password policies are now handled on their own card: Authentication-password policy.
Authentication-password policy
- Set up your domain password preferences:
- Minimum password length, in characters.
- Minimum character classes used, up to four (a-z, A-Z, 0-9, other).
- The number of unsuccessful login attempts before lockout.
- The minutes until lockout expires. By default, lockouts don't expire.
- The number of days until passwords expire. By default, passwords don't expire.
- The number of days to wait before you can reuse a password. By default, there is no wait.
Avatars
Users can choose a profile picture from a list of pre-approved avatars. From this card, you can add, upload, and delete these avatar images.
Badges
Course authors can set up badges to be automatically awarded to students upon their completion of a specified activity or accomplishment, or awarded manually by a teacher or grader. From this screen, you can add, edit, and delete these Badges.
Blackout dates
Use blackout dates to specify the dates to exclude when calculating due dates for continuous enrollment courses in your domain.
Provide a Name, and Start and End dates.
Clipboard tabs
Add tabs for third-party apps to seamlessly integrate for intervention or other personalized learning goals. For example, you may integrate with a messaging tool. To do so, provide:
- A tab Title.
- The third-party URL.
Course templates
Add course templates that content authors can use as a structure when creating new courses.
Editor: These fields control elements of the Editor tool. From this screen, you can:
- Hide Activities (activity types), so they don't appear in the Editor by listing them in the field; check the box(es) that you want to hide:
- Assessment
- Assignment
- Blog
- Custom Activity
- Discussion
- Flashcards
- Journal
- Peer assessment
- Practice questions
- Survey
- Wiki
- Check the boxes next to Required rights you want a user to have in order to see the Editor tool.
G Suite service account
G Suite service account: G Suite integration enables:
- Easy creation of Google Drive documents in the Student app when completing a dropbox activity.
- PDF snapshots of Google Drive submissions.
- Automatic permissions management.
- Automatic copies of Google Drive documents when duplicating activities.
Landing content
Easily create domain-wide landing page content that appears on the user's Home page, and specify when and which roles see it.
Language
You can easily set a default platform language for a domain, as well as provide other language options that other users can choose.
Learning standards
To help assess objective mastery, you can align course activities with Standards from various states or organizations (these are drawn from the Achievement Standards Network (ASN) catalogue). By default, Pearson Connexus makes the following standards available to all domains (contact your account manager to add standards to your domain):
- Common Cores State Standards (CCSS)
- Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
- Standards from all states in the US, which are represented by their two-letter code.
- To make an organization's standards available in your courses, add its code to the Comma-separated list of standard sets.
- In the Grades drop-down menu, check the boxes for the grade levels to include as well.
Login redirects
Add redirects to allow users to access Pearson Connexus data in third-party apps by authenticating in Pearson Connexus first. To do so, provide:
- The ID of the redirect entry.
- The third-party URL.
LTI 1.1 tools
LTI 1.1 tools: Pearson Connexus allows you to integrate with other learning tools (like Turnitin). From this screen, you can add and delete Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI 1.1) tools.
In 2019, 1EdTech (formerly IMS) announced that its LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage specifications, which provide additional functionality and security, would replace the soon-to-be deprecated LTI 1.1 specification. Pearson Connexus continues to support LTI 1.1, and is also now a 1EdTech-certified platform for LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage.
Metadata for activities
Add and remove the metadata sections associated with items (folders and activities) in the Editor tool for the teacher role. From this screen, you can add, edit, and delete metadata sections. To create a metadata section, you are asked to:
- Provide a Name, which is not visible to the users and cannot include spaces or special characters (you can underscore or hyphenate between words).
- Provide a Title visible to students.
- Choose Input Type from the options listed here. The content entered in these fields is used to create searchable metadata tags.
- Provide Placeholder text for the activity.
- Use the Default field to define the default state or content present in the field (this is not available for the Rich Text input type).
- Indicate the Levels within the course folder structure at which you want this metadata displayed. Level one is the first level of folders under the course folder, level two impacts any folders or activities you add to those folders, and so forth. If you don't specify here, the field is shown at all levels.
- Choose the Item Type for which the section should appear (folders, activities, or all).
- Indicate if you want to Allow setting per group.
- Indicate if you want to make the item Visible to students when they select the item in the Activities tool (only applicable to folders).
- Indicate if you want the metadata Editable in Clipboard in the Teacher app. Checking this box causes the metadata field to appear in the Clipboard when creating activities.
Metadata for courses
Create metadata fields for teachers, course authors, etc to complete for courses.
Metadata for domains
Admins can create Domain Metadata fields where users can record and track additional information about a domain.
Metadata for questions
Create metadata fields for questions by providing a:
- Name: The XML element name for the data.
- Title: What you want shown in the UI.
Metadata for users
Create User Metadata fields where users can track additional information about a user.
Miscellaneous
The Miscellaneous card includes:
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The Miscellaneous card includes:
- Idle Timeout: Enter, in minutes, the amount of time Pearson Connexus can remain idle before logging a user out. Providing a timeout value prevents users from staying logged in indefinitely and having that time recorded and reported as activity. If you leave this field blank, users are not logged out due to inactivity.
- Prohibited Files: List any file types that you want to prohibit users from uploading to Pearson Connexus. Do not include periods before the file type and separate items with commas.
Observer Options
Observer options control settings specific to the Observer app.
Check the Allow observers to view gated content box to allow observers to see upcoming activities that are blocked from students until they complete prerequisites. This can allow an observer to provide better support to their student(s).
Note: To maintain assessment integrity, this option does not allow observers to view assessment questions ahead of time. Observers can only view assessment questions once a student has completed it.
Resource Libraries
Resource libraries are collections of categorized content pages that are built at the domain level and can be searched, bookmarked, shared, and rated by users in all subdomains.
Admins with domain edit rights can create and manage multiple libraries and the pages found in them.
Rubrics
Create rubrics for course authors to use with the Rubric editor.
School years and grading periods
Set up domain-level Grading Periods for courses in your domain to use. To do so, define a school year, create Grading Periods within that school year, then select the current year and Grading Period for the domain.
Scoring objectives
Add Scoring Objectives to use in Multi-Outcome Scoring courses.
Student options
Student Options: Here, you can:
- Allow students to change their email address.
- Allow students to change their password.
- Allow students to change their profile picture by uploading a new picture.
- Allow students to change their profile picture by selecting an avatar.
- Allow students to see peers who have completed course activities. (Peer Help)
- Include non-gradable activities from continuous courses in the calendar. By default, only gradable activities are included in the student Calendar and To-do list. This option enables you to include them.
- Enabling or disabling this option can take up to ten minutes to be reflected in your domain.
- Show affirmation messages when students complete continuous-course activities for the day.
- Hide the ability for students to register themselves for courses by entering the registration codes.
- Specify when you want a course to start counting down days before it ends for students with the Course-ending countdown field. This countdown appears in the Activities and Gradebook tools for students.
- Specify how you want to manage visibility of Excused activities (activities a teacher has excused a student from). Options include:
- Allow students to show or hide activities they have been excused from (default).
- Always show activities students have been excused from.
- Always hide activities students have been excused from.
- Specify when an activity will display as Due soon in a student's To-do List by completing the Due soon field.
Theme
Click to learn how to manage themes.
Text Editor (Formerly XML Editor)
You can open the Text Editor from the toolbar.
This screen allows you to edit Application settings, Domain customizations, and XLI settings.
You will be required to use these screens to complete some tasks in Pearson Connexus, but for the most part these screens are for advanced users who prefer this editor to the Pearson Connexus UI.
For more information on editing certain domain settings, review this video on Changing Primary Domain Settings.
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