The dialogue template, is an important part of Unikum, and for your school/municipality to benefit from Unikum, you need to have a well-designed and purposeful template that suits your working methods and models.
The principal decides on the design and whether a common template or different templates should be used for different age groups, for example.
A dialogue template is not personal but belongs to the school/municipality and is edited by the school or municipal administrator.
Before you start editing dialogue templates, carefully read through everything about template design and preferably use an existing example template the first time to make it much easier to understand how the templates should be designed in Unikum.
We at Unikum are more than happy to help with advice, tips, and even the design/implementation of dialogue templates in Unikum.
Prerequisites for creating dialogue templates:
You need to have the role of administrator for an individual school or municipality.
The template editor needs to be enabled for the school where the template will be created (or for the municipality if only the municipal administrator will create dialogue templates).
You always start from an existing template or example template and make a copy of it.
Guide - Designing Dialogue Templates:
- What is a dialogue template? The dialogue template is the basis used by schools/preschools for documentation before development discussions and to document any agreements made during the dialogue. What should be documented, how, and who should be involved is determined by the school/municipality. For inspiration and examples, there are plenty of templates in Unikum Share that you can use or adapt to your school's needs.
To make the work easier, clearer, and more secure, the template is designed so that different roles can write in different fields. For example, only the student can write in their fields (exceptions can be made), but both teachers, mentors, and parents can see what the student has written.
The letter in front of the questions in the dialogue (S, T, G) indicates which role the question is directed to. Only the roles that have been selected to answer the question have the opportunity to write, but everyone involved can read.
- Roles: There are four different roles used when designing the template. The roles are used to indicate to whom the question is addressed. We call it the question's "owner." The roles have different names for different types of schools and employee discussions.
For all school types except preschool and employee discussions:
S = Student
T = Teacher
M = Mentor
G = Guardian
Preschool:
C = Child
T = Teacher
M = Mentor
G = Guardian
Employee discussions:
Ma = Employee
C = Manager
M = Mentor
Roles are also used to indicate if more than the question's owner should be able to answer the question. For example, it is common to want both the mentor and the guardian to be able to answer the child's/student's questions in preschool or in the lower grades of primary school.
Opening up the student's/child's field for the mentor or guardian allows them to answer questions directed to the student/child through their login. Another place where it can be useful for multiple people to fill in at the same place is Agreements since these are usually documented when everyone is gathered, and it is good if the logged-in person can fill in all parts, including questions from other roles. There are more areas of use, and it is important to consider who should be able to write in which fields when designing the template. More tips are available under each question type.
See who can write in a field
It is not visible on the screen who can answer other than the owner of the question, but if, for example, it has been chosen that the mentor should be able to write in the student field, it also opens up for the mentor.
TIP! You can see which roles can answer a question by hovering the mouse pointer over the role symbol before the question.
Template structure
The template consists of several parts divided into pages, which in turn consist of headings, subheadings, descriptive texts, links, images, and of course, a number of questions and fields to enter or upload information. There are many possibilities and a lot to consider when designing a dialogue template. This section describes the different parts of the dialogue template.
Usually, the following elements are included in a template:
Overview page - Always included. Contains information about the different phases and the agenda, etc.
Preparatory questions ("About Me", "My Development", "My Learning", etc.)
Agreements - For documenting agreements between home and school/preschool. The page can be named, for example, VUP (preschool) "My Plan," "My Goals," or "My IUP" or "Agreements."
Pages
The content of the dialogue template is divided into different pages to structure the content and make it more manageable. The person designing the template determines the number of pages and their headings.
TIP! Keep the headings short to make it more understandable for the user. All headings should fit on one line for clarity. Do not name pages "dialogue," as the tab in Unikum is called "dialogue." It could make it unclear for the user. "Dialogue preparation" is a good alternative. The page with agreements can be named that or "Goals," "Forward-looking planning," etc.
Parts of the page
- Introduction text- At the top of each page in the template, you can add an introductory information text or description. It can also include clickable links that, for example, open in a new window.
- Section heading - Each page can be divided into different sections with subheadings. Only one level of section is possible.
- Questions - In each section, you add associated questions.
Question types
The content on each page consists of questions of various types. There are many possibilities but also some limitations.
Rating question - icons
A question that is answered by selecting one of 4 symbols with icons. There are always four icons. Only one can be chosen as the answer option. The options mean, from left to right: Never, Rarely, Often, Always.
Comment question - use this primarily
Looks like and is used in the same way as a Free Text question, with the important difference that when the answer is saved, a timestamp and the name of the person who answered the question are added before the answer to clarify who answered and when the answer was added.
If multiple people can answer the same comment question, their answers are added one after another. This makes comment questions clearer and more secure than free text questions. There is no risk of someone changing what another person has written.
TIP! This question type is very useful, for example, for "Guardian's comments" or in other places where multiple people can write, as it becomes clear who has answered what. If you instead use a free text question, everyone answers in the same field, but it is not clear who wrote and when.
Comment question without owner
A good way to make the template more compact is to use ownerless comment questions where students, teachers, and guardians can all comment.
This question functions in the same way as a comment question with an owner, with the difference that it is not directed to any specific role. Anyone, regardless of their role, can respond. This makes the template more compact, but otherwise functions the same as a regular comment question.
Free Text Question
(Use in exceptional cases - see comment question)
An open field where you can freely write text. There is no limitation on the length of the answer, but the field displayed on the screen is always the same size. If the content doesn't fit, a scroll bar will appear on the right side so that you can read the text that is not visible.
Note: In a free text field, you cannot see who wrote it or when. If there are multiple teachers in the class, they can all write in the same field. If the field is open to multiple roles, a guardian, for example, can accidentally delete what the teacher wrote, so think carefully before using this question type and only use it where one role can answer.
Multiple-Choice Question - Dropdown
This question type is used when you want to be able to answer by choosing one of several predefined options. Only one of the options can be selected. Multiple-choice questions can be used anywhere, and the number of answer options can be one or more.
Tip: Keep the answer options short for clarity.
The chosen option should be described at the top of the page since only the selected option will be visible to the reader. Only the person answering the questions sees all the answer options.
Formulate the questions as short as possible to fit on one line, if possible.
File Upload Question
Used to upload a file directly into the development plan. The file can be text files, various types of images, videos, or audio files.
Note: The maximum file size is 15MB.
Each upload question allows the user to upload one file of any type. If you want to allow multiple file uploads, you need to include multiple upload questions in the conversation template. You also need to determine who or which roles (S, T, M, G) can upload files. It's advisable to direct the question to a specific role to avoid mistakes.
If a new file is uploaded where there is already a file inserted, the old one will be replaced with the new file.
One option could be to use Learning logs, Planning, and Assignments in preparation for the dialogue. Retrieve what the child/student wants to show so that it appears on the conversation overview under "I want to show...".
Conversation Overview
This page is a collection of important information before the conversation, which can be accessed through links. You cannot directly influence the content of this page except for the section where the agenda for the conversation is displayed and if you want to change the texts shown in the different phases of the conversation process.
Agreements - Goal page
The page with agreements is special and is meant to be used to document agreements made during the conversation (sometimes called "IUP goals," "VUP," or similar).
All conversation templates need a page for agreements.
(This means that you should include that page even if you don't plan to use agreements. It will still be possible to create agreements, but they won't have a dedicated page to gather under.)
You can, just like for other pages, choose a page title and write an introductory text, insert links, and more at the top of the page. However, the appearance itself is predetermined in Unikum and cannot be changed. However, what you can influence is which subheadings and which questions should be associated with each agreement.
Just like on regular text pages, you can determine which subheadings and questions should be included for each agreement. All question types can be used here as well.
Normally, all questions are answered before the dialogue is marked as completed, i.e., when the dialogue template is active and open. For agreements however, the evaluation field needs to be usable in a locked plan, so there is a special checkbox that should be used here and only here.
For the evaluation section, check "Section remains open after locking."
Some tips for the agreement page:
Make all fields open for the student and mentor to write in, as it makes it easier to fill in during the dialogue regardless of who is logged in.
Always use comment questions because multiple roles can write in the same boxes, making it clear who wrote what and when.
Make it possible to write in the evaluation section when the plan is locked. But only there.
Limitation: All agreements have the same format in the same template.