Overview of myWURtoday functionalities
myWURtoday is a platform that helps students at Wageningen University to access everything they need for their education and campus experience. It is clear, efficient, and engaging. It is both a mobile and a web application that offers course information, grades, timetables, calendars, news, and practical tips in one place. Users can also choose what they want to see and get notified about, depending on their present study and campus life needs.
The app has been designed with students in mind, however, teachers and other university staff can also download and use the app.
In this article, you will learn about the main features of myWURtoday and how it works for both students and teachers.
More information on how to use the application can be found here: myWURtoday - Gateway to all you need to know | Student Support
1. Home screen: a snapshot of your day
What students see
The home screen shows only what matters for today: announcements from Brightspace and Osiris, schedule changes, and important alerts. Students can also check their calendars in the ‘Calendar’ section.
Students can get notified, if they have given permission for each of the following events:
- Brightspace,
- TimeEdit, and/or
- WUR-Outlook
What should I know as a teacher?
If you download the app and give your consent to accessing your calendars, you will see your agenda for the day as downloaded from:
- Outlook,
- Brightspace and/or
- TimeEdit.
On the Home screen, you will also see important alerts sent to all users. In this way, you will be notified of possible crises or disruptions on campus.
2. News: always up-to-date
Under the News tab, students can see the latest news published on the feeds they are subscribed to, and on the feeds visible automatically to all users.
There are 14 news feeds in total, covering all the important areas of student life.
| Type of News Feeds | Topic |
|---|---|
| Automatically visible to all users |
|
| Available after subscription |
|
| Automatically visible by all first-year BSc and MSc students, and exchange students |
|
The news is displayed in the My Topics partition. Other available options are:
- My Courses,
- My Events,
- My Study Association, where students can find pertinent updates.
What can I see as a teacher?
- If you want to stay in the loop, you can follow the news in the generally available feeds and subscribe to feeds of your choice
- The only feed not available to you is the one for first-year students - Getting started @WUR
How to subscribe to and/or unsubscribe from News
To access the side menu,:
- Swipe right or click the hamburger menu in the upper left corner.
- Then, select 'News' to view the available news feeds. Here, you'll find a list of all the news channels, each accompanied by a subscription button.
Channels with greyed-out buttons indicate that you are not currently subscribed to them. The light green buttons represent channels to which you are subscribed by default.
- To customise your subscriptions, scroll down to the bottom of the page and use the toggle switch to select the feeds you wish to follow.
The news is displayed under My Topics partition.
This is the view of a personalised news feed:
3. Brightspace: your tool for communication with students
Brightspace on myWURtoday
Under the Brightspace tab, students see all the courses that they currently follow.
By clicking on the external icon, students can access the course page in Brightspace with materials uploaded by the teacher or send an email to the teacher or other participants.
The source of the information displayed in this tab remains Brightspace, with myWURtoday serving as a display tool.
What should I know as a teacher?
When you send students an announcement through Brightspace, they will receive an instant notification on their smartphones via pop-up messages. Additionally, an alert in the form of a bell icon will appear in the upper right-hand corner of their screens.
The most recent message will also be prominently displayed at the top of the Homepage, under the 'Today' section.
You can see this illustrated in the screenshot below:
This is how the announcement will be displayed in full once the student clicks on it:
Important Note:
When you create a message in Brightspace and push the publish button, it is automatically sent via myWURtoday, even if the course is not yet open in Brightspace. To avoid this, you can adjust the message's publication date to match the intended release date.
Important notice on Attachments and Additional Release Conditions
When creating an announcement in Brightspace, it is crucial to consider the following:
1. Attachments and myWURtoday: Please note that attachments will not be visible in myWURtoday when included with your message.
2. Additional Release Conditions: Adding extra release conditions to your message will prevent it from being sent through myWURtoday.
Look at the screenshot and table below for more information:
| Brightspace Announcement Section | What you can do in Brightspace | What happens in myWURtoday | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. General | Title and content body -the place for actual information. | Will be seen in myWURtoday, (including HTML in 'Content') | |
| 2. Availability | Show Start Date |
See the text in box - "If unchecked, only users with permission to edit announcements will be able to see the start date in the Announcements tool" | When the start date is reached, the announcement will be sent to myWURtoday |
Start Date |
When the start date is reached, the message is shown to the readers. | While myWURtoday lacks this functionality, it does display a published date. |
|
End Date |
When the end date is reached, the message becomes invisible to students. | Once the end date is reached, the message is removed from myWURtoday. | |
| 3. Attachments | You can add different attachments to messages. | Attachments are not sent to myWURtoday | |
| 4. Additional release Conditions | Release conditions are criteria applied to a message, ensuring that it can only be accessed by those who meet specific requirements, such as completing an assignment, receiving a grade, or holding a particular role. |
If any release conditions are in place, the message will NOT be sent to myWURtoday | |
| Publish/ Update | Updating the message in Brightspace will also update it in myWURtoday. | ||
4. Schedule: an overview of your daily appointments
Under the Schedule tab, students can see when lectures, practicals, or other appointments are scheduled, what time they start, and where they need to be. Schedule is a combined view of their TimeEdit, Brightspace and WUR Outlook calendars. They can see their schedule for a specific day, week, or month. From here, they can also book a study place.
4.1. Generic Schedule
A generic schedule is a timetable that lists all the courses in which the student is enrolled as shown in TimeEdit, along with all individual groups of that course. Students report that they find this view confusing.
Below is a view of the Generic Schedule, including all course groups.
4.2. Personalised Schedule
When GroupTool functionality is used to assign students to groups, the student only sees the course groups they are assigned to. Thus, the schedule view on the student's end depends on whether their teachers have used GroupTool or not.
Below is a view of a student's Personalised Schedule:
What should I know as a teacher?
- If you give myWURtoday consent to integrate your Brightspace, TimeEdit, and/or WUR Outlook calendars, they will be displayed on your Schedule tab.
- If you make use of GroupTool to assign students to individual groups, they will be able to see their Personalised Schedule.
- As an app user, you can see your own appointments in a daily, weekly, or monthly overview.
- If you click on the item on your agenda, you will see its details. Click on Go to Event to go to the original webpage of the event. You can even take part in Teams meetings from here.
5. Osiris: study overview
Under the Osiris tab, students can access the system, where they can monitor their study progress. From here, they can register for courses and tests, review their grades, and track their earned credits.
Furthermore, this platform serves as a hub for receiving official notifications about the status of their enrollment in courses and tests. Notably, if teachers have entered grades into the system, students will be notified with a pop-up message on the home screen, facilitating quick access to their updated results.
Below is a view of a student's Osiris tab:
What should I know as a teacher?
As teachers are not enrolled in courses, you, as an instructor, will only have access to the default view of Osiris.
6. More: find information faster
Under the More tab, users can find answers to frequently asked questions. Suggested answers appear dynamically once they start typing a question.
Below, they can see topics with links to useful information, including on wur.nl.
The topic titles match those of the news feeds. However, it's important to highlight that the information under these links remains consistently accessible and beneficial to both students and teachers, unlike the news feed messages, which are only visible for 2 months.
Related Topics
Want to know more on how to link Brightspace, Schedule, and myWURtoday?