ConnectLite
How this works

How Connect Lite works

A whole CELTA course runs on it, for four kinds of person, with no accounts and no passwords. Your link is your way in — that is the only thing you have to keep.

Start here If you are a candidate If you are a tutor If you run the centre If you are the assessor Questions

Start here

Three things that are true of every screen.

  1. The link is the key. There are no usernames and no passwords. Whoever holds the link can open the page, which is why your own link is yours and is not for forwarding. Keep the whole thing, including everything after the ?.
  2. It saves as you type. You do not press Save to keep your work. Nothing you write is lost by closing the tab, and nothing reaches anybody else until you turn it in or return it.
  3. Turning in is the moment that matters. Before you turn in, a form is yours alone. After you turn it in, it is your tutor's to read and you can no longer change it.
The screens work without a signal. What you write while offline is kept and catches up with the course record when you are back online.

If you are a candidate

Four rooms, in the order you need them, and one grid that shows where you are.

Before you teach

Write your lesson plan and language analysis in one place. Choose a lesson shape and the stages fill themselves in; change any of them. Turn it in before you teach.

After you teach, before you read the feedback

Fill in your self-evaluation. Your own plan sits beside it so you can see what you said you would do. Writing it before you read your tutor's comments is the point of it — it is your judgement first, not a reply to theirs.

When it comes back

Your teaching practice record holds every feedback your tutors have returned, with their comments on your plan and your self-evaluation. It stays there all course, and the whole lot prints as one PDF at the end.

Alongside all of it

The written assignments, in your centre's own wording, each showing the criteria it is marked against. You can resubmit where your centre allows it, and the record shows where each one stands.

Your progress puts every teaching practice and every assignment on one grid. It is the same view your tutor has of you — there is nothing about you they can see here that you cannot.

If you are a tutor

One link opens the course. Put your name in once and everything you return is signed with it.

The dashboard

Who has turned in what, and what is waiting for you. Open a candidate from there.

Returning feedback

Write one point per line under strengths and action points, for planning and for teaching, and tag each point with the criteria it relates to. Star an action point and it carries into that candidate's next teaching practice as a priority. Their plan and self-evaluation are pulled in beside you as you write.

Marking assignments

Mark against the criteria, record the outcome, and set a resubmission where one is needed. The candidate sees the marked record, not a grade on its own.

At the end of the course

The grades report is the Cambridge centre grade form: the same fields, in the same order, in Cambridge's own wording, so it goes into Appian by paste rather than by retyping. Under each section, Add from the TP records hands back the points you already wrote about that candidate in their teaching practice feedback, newest first — click one and it is in the box, with its criterion code.

The assessor pack gathers the timetable, the portfolios, the grades and the registers behind one view-only link to send.

If you run the centre

Course admin sets up the course; the owner console mints them.

Set the course name, dates and number of teaching practices, add your candidates, and send each of them their own invitation. Write your own version of the four assignments — rewrite the instructions, add or remove sections, set the deadlines — and every candidate on the course sees your wording, not ours.

Everything the course produces lives in one Google Sheet that belongs to you. If Connect Lite went away tomorrow, the record would still be yours.

If you are the assessor

One link, read-only, nothing to sign into.

The pack holds the assessment timetable and the joining link, the candidate portfolios and descriptions, the provisional and final grades, the tracker and marking record, and the attendance registers. Nothing on it can be changed from your link, and the centre can see that too.

Questions

The ones people actually ask.

Do I need an account or a password?

No. The link you were sent is your way in. There is nothing to set up and nothing to remember.

I have lost my link.

Ask your tutor, or your centre, to send it again. Nobody can look it up for you from an email address, because there are no accounts to look up.

Where has my work gone?

Work in progress is kept in the browser you wrote it in. If you started a plan on your laptop, it is on your laptop — it does not appear on your phone until you turn it in. Turned-in work is on the course record and follows you anywhere.

Can I use it on my phone?

Yes — every screen works at phone width. A few things are simply wider than a phone, like the plan table and the tracker grid; those scroll sideways inside their own box, and the page itself never does.

What if I close the tab by mistake?

Nothing is lost. Every form saves as you type. Open your link again and carry on where you were.

Who can see what I have written?

Nobody, until you turn it in. After that, your tutors on the course can see it, and the assessor can see it at the end. Other candidates never can.

Can I change something after turning it in?

No — that is what turning in means. Tell your tutor; they can return it to you if there is a reason to.

Two of us tutor this course. Do we each get a link?

A course has one tutor link and you both use it. Each of you puts your own name in on your own device, and everything you return is signed with the name in front of you. You see each other's work; neither of you overwrites the other.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Once you have opened a screen, it opens again without a signal, and what you write is kept until you are back online.

Is this the same as Connect?

No. Connect Lite runs a course; Connect runs a centre. If you get on with this, Connect is the bigger version of the same ideas.

Connect Lite — designed and built by Ramy Sakr.