Disclaimer: Some of this information is Blackboard-specific. Since TWU has now migrated to Canvas, there may be differences in how the courseware works.
When you submit your FEP, you will go to the FEP submission site, which is only opened to FEP students during a two or three week period. It's important that you look at the instructions on the FEP submission site because you will need to verify that the information your advisor gave you was correct.
My advisor recommended I put everything in a single Word document, but the instructions on the submission site were completely different.
Remember, the FEP submission site only opens two weeks prior to the deadline. Until then, these instructions are unavailable anywhere else. So if your advisor gives you incorrect information, your FEP will have to be reformatted. Depending on how much embedded content and inter-document links you have, this can cost you time you might not have.
You will need to submit your Professional Development Plan, three Work Products, a Work Products essay, a Certificate of Completion, and three grading rubrics. A total of eight separate documents.
These are blank grading rubrics that you will download from the FEP submission site and fill in your name. You then upload the rubrics back to the FEP submission site. There are three members of the FEP grading committee and each one fills out the rubric when grading your FEP.
It's a document that will be submitted to the Graduate School when you pass your FEP. You download the CoC from the FEP submission site, fill in your name and student ID, and reupload it back to the submission site.
Verbatim instructions:
"Submit your Professional Development Plan here as one document. It should include 1) Cover Page and 2) Professional Development Plan."
Verbatim instructions:
"Attach each of your three work products (as separate documents) and your essay about your work products (one additional document) in this folder. If you select a work product that is a website, blog, or other similar medium, submit a Word file with the title of the work product, a working URL, plus one screenshot of the homepage.
You can attach multiple documents by clicking on the "browse my computer" button before you submit. DO NOT hit "submit until you have attached all work products!"
Yes, absolutely! Once the FEP submission site closes, the submission links are replaced by a different set of submission instructions.
Key differences:
"A Professional Development Plan that includes: 1) Cover Sheet and 2) Professional Development Plan. This will be submitted as one document with page breaks between sections. Students may not submit their Professional Development Plan as a website."
"Work Products and an an Essay about Work Products. All Work Products and the Work Product Essay are submitted in the same folder by submitting multiple attachments. Click the "browse my computer" button and attach all of your documents before you submit. If a website is a work product, students must submit screen shots and source code.
I'm pretty sure it won't affect you. For one thing, these instructions aren't available until after the FEP submission site closes. Ideally, you shouldn't be penalized for instructions that essentially don't exist, especially such specific instructions. I didn't submit either website code or use page breaks and wasn't penalized for it.
That's a fluke of Blackboard. You shouldn't be able to see the FEP module, much less the submission site, until it's made available to FEP students. It's possible you were added to the FEP module before the site was made available. Most FEP students will not see this until the submission site closes.
At this point, the best thing to do is reformat your FEP as best as you possibly can. Try to at least split up the Professional Development Plan and Work Products. When you upload the files, be sure to put in the comments section that you were following the advice given to you by your instructor and did not have time to completely reformat your FEP to match.
Include a copy of your original FEP and put in the comments that you have included the original for context if it is needed. Make sure you indicate which files are the original FEP and which files you are submitting for grading.
I cannot guarantee this will be successful, but it's what I had to do and I managed to pass the FEP.
Technically yes, but the instructions state you shouldn't do that.
I had previously contacted one of my instructors (who was also on the FEP committee) about whether submitting as a zip file was okay. My advisor had said submitting a bunch of different files was also acceptable and I hadn't yet decided whether I would do it in a single Word document or a collection of smaller files. I thought perhaps a zip file would be a less messy way of doing it. I never received an answer, so I decided if I went with the multiple files option, I would just go ahead with putting all my supporting documents in a zip file.
However, once the submission site opened, I found the submission instructions said that we are to NOT submit a zip file because "Blackboard cannot open zip files."
This is only half right. You can upload a zip file to Blackboard and an instructor can easily download it. I had to do this with one of my classes because Blackboard will not accept upload of .css files.
What Blackboard cannot do is display the contents of a zip file embedded within the submission area the way it can display a Word file. This indicates that the FEP grading committe will be grading the FEP submissions directly from Blackboard rather than downloading the file. Though since the FEP committee has to download each rubric and the Certificate anyway to fill out the information, the no zip rule is slightly perplexing.
You won't be able to see them until the FEP submission site opens (and closes). Screenshots of the instructions are available: