Atomic Guide to Free CLEP Exam College-Credit Website: Modern States Walkthrough

Hi everyone! My name is Tracy and in this video I’m going to walk you through the Modern States platform and what it looks like when you sign up for the first time.

As a disclaimer, I am a Modern States ambassador. I’m also going to be walking through this with my first impressions because I have not been inside the new version of Modern States. That being said, I might pause the video in case I get a little stuck on things, but hopefully it should be pretty straightforward. Last is that my baby is in the background, so I hope that you guys enjoy this video. So with that, let’s get started.

Okay, so this is what the modern state’s website looks like. You’ll notice that it’s pretty straightforward. You’ll be able to see and peruse what the basic steps are and how it works. It also plays a little bit of a video for you, so you can take a look at that as well.

Scrolling further down, you’ll also see a couple of the different options that you have as far as courses that are available to you. And there’s even some AP courses for those that are interested. So what I’m going to do now is I’m going to go ahead and scroll up, and I’m going to log in.

For anyone else that might be new to the program, this might be your moment to sign up. So I’m going to go ahead and try to log in, see if I can do that right now okay. All right. Can log in. And in this video I’m going to blur this part obviously where my credentials are at.

Okay. So this is the introduction that you’re going to see when you first log in to Modern States after you’ve registered. So we’re going to walk through this section together. So here you will see that we have a welcome. And it lets you know that we’re going to watch a five minute video.

I’m going to go ahead and click play and then play maybe the first couple seconds and I’ll pause the video and continue on through the rest of the introduction. Okay. Okay. So now we’re going to click next.

Here you’re going to go through the navigation of what the new platform looks like. Great. So in this next section it’s going to talk about the actual navigation of the new platform, what it looks like. And there’s also a video that you are going to be able to walk through.

I will play the first couple of seconds of this video and pause it and then move on. You, of course, can watch this video on your own. There are three parts of every Brightspace course you’ll navigate through as an online learner. And what I’ll also do is I will show this in full screen so you can kind of get an idea of the general layout of what the platform looks like.

So in this last section, it basically summarizes what you’ve kind of learned in this new onboarding. And it also mentions that if you notice a little bit of familiarity with the platform, and maybe a couple of your traditional college courses, it’s because this new platform is D2L Brightspace, which is a very common platform that a lot of community colleges, universities, you know, traditional colleges use for their courses.

So if that sets your mind at ease, it’s good to know that the Modern States courses are on a very familiar platform, and you don’t have to worry about learning a whole new system again. All right. So now I’m going to go ahead and click dismiss. And we’re going to jump into the platform.

So here is you should be able to see what the layout looks like. If you don’t have any courses that you’ve signed up for since you’re completely brand new to the program, welcome. This should be what your screen should look like right after you sign up.

So we’re going to go through. Here is your home button. And this is where you can start selecting your courses. Traditionally, this is, I’m not sure what it’s called the official name, but I’ve heard it being called a waffle or a little square selection icon. I’m sure that in the comments, somebody can clarify what the official name is.

So then you have your notification icon or your subscription alerts and then your update alerts. We’re going to start from the top left and go all the way down. So here on the top left you should see your home button. Then you’ll see your course button where you’ll be able to select courses and you can call this like your little waffle. You can also check out your subscription alerts. That’ll kind of tell you what’s going on? If you have some kind of alert with a course. And then this is a little update alert bell. So if you have any other updates not related to your course specifically, this is where they will show up.

Again, I’m walking in through this video with the first impressions so some of the details I might be slightly off on, but I’ll clarify those in an upcoming video Okay. So let’s walk through the new platform together. So what I see is I see a home button. I see a course button where I can select all the different courses. I’m seeing subscription alerts and update alerts okay. Pretty straightforward. I also see where I can make changes to my profile and yeah, so there’s that. I’ll actually come back to notifications in a little bit.

So now we’re going to go through the navigation bar. You have enroll, awards, voucher request, test center reimbursement, Modern States help and Brightspace help. So what I see here is that if I want to enroll in a course, click on enroll. Find some kind of awards. That’s where it is. Voucher request. This is when you are done with one of your courses. You won’t need this button until later. Test center reimbursement. You won’t need to use this button unless you are going to go take a test somewhere and they charge you for taking that test that’s separate from what Modern States pays for. So again, you won’t need this button unless there’s certain situation arises for you.

Then you have your Modern States help button, which is different from your Brightspace help button. So if you need something that’s related to the platform itself, it’s more than likely the Brightspace link. And if it’s related to the courses, you would click on that one.

All right. So now looks like on the left hand side, if I needed to go through that orientation that we just went through, I needed to go through that again for any reason. You could click on that on the top, left hand side. I forgot to mention, this is just a header. So that might vary or change or it might just stay the same. But this is an area you don’t need to really worry about.

On your left hand side you’ll see that you have courses. Right now I don’t have any. So we’re going to go and add one course in there and I’ll walk you through that. And then the bottom part you have approved auditors. Again, we won’t have to worry about that right now. Announcements. Pretty self-explanatory.

So I’m going to go ahead and go to notifications because I want to see if I can change that setting right now or if I need to wait. Let’s see. Okay. So I’ve used the Brightspace D2L help platform before. And one of the good things that I like about it is that I can change the way my notifications come to me.

One of the main things that I like to do is to have a summary emailed to me every day. Now, I know some people might not want that, but I am not the best at remembering things from like little notifications. I prefer to have something in my emails just to kind of keep me on track. So I’m going to request one at 7:00 am in the morning.

So first thing in the morning when I wake up, I have an email that tells me if there’s anything that’s due, if there’s anything that I may have to read, etc… And then instant notifications are the items that will pop up inside the platform. So, if you want any of those to be emailed to you, you have that option here as well. In my in this case, I don’t think I need any of these to be emailed specifically. Only thing that I would do is maybe if there’s an assignment or end date that’s two days away, if I need that for any reason. So I’m going to go ahead and hit save.

So in this part we’re going to go ahead and add a course. So I’m going to try to do it two ways. I’m going to go through and click through enroll. And I’m also going to go through the little course section here. I just want to make sure if there’s anything different. So do I have access to any courses. Okay. So let’s enroll.

I know that I need to take Principles of micro and macro economics. So I’m going to go ahead and sign up for this course. Okay. All right. Now it says I’m already enrolled. So I’m going to check this top part. Nothing yet. Go to my home. All right. Looks like I’m able to go into my course. With that, I’m going to check if there’s any alerts. Nothing. I see that there’s 20 on attempted quizzes. All right, let’s. All right, so I will go back to this part later in the video. So let’s go back to the actual course and jump in.

All right. So this is what the course looks like. Specifically, this is what the navigation looks like for just one course. I hope that this makes sense. So let me backtrack. So we went to the homepage. You will have a specific type of layout right. So you have welcome, courses, announcements, and content. The content will be anything that will show up. Traditionally it’s like if a teacher has any kind of announcement, but there could be something else that the course might show up for you on the main content section.

So let’s say you have three different courses that you’re working on. There might be something that will pop up on the right hand side of your homepage, under the content section, that is related to one of the three courses. Okay. So now let’s jump back into the course. And this is the layout that pertains to this specific course.

So on the top left hand you have overview which is this page that tells you all the details that you need to know about the actual course. Then you have any bookmarks that you may have saved. Course schedule. And then here is what the course layout is. So you have your table of contents, getting started, course materials, and then all the different chapters that you’ll need to cover. Excuse me, they’re not chapters. That would be more like sections.

So in this course you have seven sections and each section has sub sections, if that makes sense. So let’s go through and click on Table of Contents. Okay. So you’re welcome. Overview. Goals professors and fact sheets. You also have video transcripts, textbook slides. I will say keep an eye on slides. That’s very, very important. I learned a lot from slides. And I think slides are very useful when you’re going through your course. So we’ll come back to that I think. And then here is the sections okay. Great.

So this is section one. And each section has subsections. You can look at here section two. It has four section has four subsections. Section three has only one subsection. That makes sense. So we’ll just keep scrolling through. And then the final exam information. All right so this is your table of contents. And again this should kind of look familiar. Section one. Section one. Section two. Section two. What. Okay. What else. So let’s go through.

Okay. So I am now in section one. And it tells me that this section has a module and menu. And then a quiz. The subsection has a module and then a quiz and another module and then a quiz. So I hope that this kind of is making sense. So now you’ll have a module, a second module in this case and then one quiz. So once you finish all these sections you’ll be able to move onto the next big section. So here we go.

I told you that I will go back to quizzes. So, that quiz list that we saw earlier, that is comprised of all the quizzes that are in the course. So that quiz list took all of these quizzes that you see listed here and puts them all together in one big list. So I hope that makes sense. All right. Getting started. Let’s go through getting started. Okay. Course materials. Okay. All right. So table of contents is a summary. All the main links that are for the section right here on the left hand side. So you’re not. So just to be clear. The same links are available in different areas. So I hope that makes sense.

What you want to do is you want to download everything individually. It’s one option if you download the whole package and then sort through it. That’s another option. If you want to print your sections or modules, you can certainly do that. I don’t know that it’s going to be very helpful, because it basically gives you a screenshot of the beginning of the video. So this print button is not really going to help you at all. So okay, I think that that is it for now.

If you have any questions please drop them in the comments. If you want to run through the orientation again, that is provided for you by Modern States. Click on the little welcome and orientation guide. You’ll see that it’ll pop up again, and I’ll walk you through steps one through six one more time and you’ll be able to go through it and learn what you need or what you might be missing. So, I would encourage you to check this again if you have any questions and if you have any questions about this video, then feel free to drop them in the comments. So alright, I hope that you enroll. Talk to you later. Bye.

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