Where do I
get support?
Contact the HelpDesk
-
Telephone: 401-URI-HELP
(401-874-4357)
-
Email:
helpdesk@uri.edu
-
AIM: HelpDesk's screen name - URIComputing
-
Walk-in: Lower Level (LL19) of URI
Library at Kingston
Refer to
http://www.uri.edu/helpdesk for support hours and other
important information.
I Can't
Login!
Refer to the link "How
to Login" on the left pane of
http://www.uri.edu/webct.
Contact the HelpDesk (401-874-HELP)
Safety
Precautions and some important tips
-
Always Logout your session when
you finish working with WebCT. Otherwise, someone else can
assume your identity when they use the same machine.
-
Empty your cache frequently!
-
Click the Update Student View
button after making changes!
-
Do not use special characters,
such as a blank space, * / \ ? " ' { } etc., in the
filenames.
-
Backup your WebCT course onto
your harddrive, memory stick or CD for record keeping, in case
your students want to argue the grades.
How do I configure my browser(s)?
Why do I need to configure my browser?
For the most up-to-date information on browser requirements and
recommendations, visit the
WebCT Browser Tune-up.
How do I find which version of
WebCT I'm using?
Once you have logged into WebCT, look in WebCT Help. The current
version at URI is Campus Edition 4.1 as of Summer of 2007.
Where do I get "Getting Started with WebCT"
Training?
Contact the WebCT
administrator at
webct@etal.uri.edu to arrange consultation.
How do I change
the "Instructor's Name" listed in my WebCT course?
The instructor's name
could be incorrect if there is any change in the teaching
assignment after the WebCT course site is created.
Faculty can correct
the instructor name by:
Click Control Panel
--> Course Settings --> Instructor's Name; There is only
place for one name. If the course is taught by more than one
faculty, enter full names of all instructors into the First Name
field as a workaround.
How do I allow other faculty or TA to
co-design my WebCT course?
On the homepage of the course:
-
Click
Control Panel
-
Click
Manage Course
-
Click
Shared Access (only the Primary Designer has this
button)
-
Enter the WebCT ID
of the shared-access designer
-
Click Add
Repeat the process
for however many additional designers you want to assign.
How do I view both the designer and
student view at once?
First, you need to have two different browsers installed, such
as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Firefox.
Then, you will need to add a
student to your course by clicking:
Control Panel ->
Manage Course -> Manage Student -> Add/Import Students -> GO.
Enter a new test
student WebCT ID beneath "Add one student at a time to your
course:". Contact
webct@etal.uri.edu to request a test student WebCT ID if you
don't have one.
Once you have done
this, open a different browser (e.g. if you're already logged in
as Designer on Netscape, open an Internet Explorer browser
window, or vice versa) and login as the student.
How to remove
the word 'conditional' underneath the tool icon in the Designer
Option tab?
The icon shows 'conditional' because the
designer has specified "selective release" to certain students. To
remove the "conditional release" option,
follow these steps:
-
Access the tool page where the icon
appears and select Designer Options.
-
Select the radio button next to the link
you wish to modify.
-
Click "Specify Selective Release"
on the right-pane of the screen.
-
In the Selective Release Specifications,
set all specifications to None. Choose "--" in date and time fields.
-
Click Update.
The link should now be available to all
students
Why can't I add back a tool that I have removed from the homepage
before?
You probably have not removed the tool link in the "course menu" on
the the left of the screen together with the link on the homepage.
Go to Control Panel --> "Edit Course menu"
under "Course Settings" --> select the tool and click Delete.
Then you will be able to add back the tool.
How do I hide all or part of my WebCT course materials
from my students?
The student access to
WebCT courses is released two weeks before the semester starts.
Faculty can block the student view even longer than the schedule
by clicking the radio button next to any tool (such as
discussions, chat, content module, syllabus...etc), and select
'HIDE' from the right-hand site column. Then those icons/tools
will be invisible to the students, but still available to the
faculty.
Why my student loses his email postings
and quiz answers and grades in WebCT several time a day?
This problem occurs because the student first dropped your
courses and then
registered your courses AGAIN. Both the DROP and re-ADD
actions were recorded into the e-campus database.
WebCT obtains the roster data from e-campus and loads the data
into WebCT roster. During this process, WebCT will first
DROP the student (so the student would lose his email postings
and quiz results), and then re-ADD the student (with a fresh
WebCT space). This process is run three times a day (6:30am,
12:30pm and 6:30pm). That is why the student lost his work in
WebCT several hours after he entered them.
Even though the student loses his work in the student's WebCT
space, the faculty/designer has a copy of the student's
submitted work in faculty/designer's webct space so that the
faculty/designer can review the student's submitted work.
As of now (June 5, 2007), there is no fix to this problem. The
workaround is for the WebCT system administrator to create a
new, separate WebCT id for this student to continue the WebCT
course work.
Please report this problem to the WebCT system administrator
(webct@etal.uri.edu)
as soon as possible.
What is the URL of
my Welcome page?
It is
https://webct.uri.edu/public/your_WebCT_course_id/index.html,
such as,
https://webct.uri.edu/public/2079-URIPS-COM-101-SEC0001-nnnn/index.html
where nnnn is class number which appears in your student roster,
and in URI's course catalog.
What does the
title "Interpersonal Communication
(2079-URIPS-COM-221-SEC0200-nnnn)" mean in the listing of MyWebCT
area? How do I change it?
The above title is an example.
The first part "Interpersonal Communication"
is the short course description listed in URI's course schedule.
Email to the WebCT administrator
(webct@etal.uri.edu) to to
change this short description in WebCT if the WebCT course site is
already created. To update the short description in the future WebCT
course site, contact the Enrollment Services to update the course
catalog.
The second part,
2079-URIPS-COM-221-SEC0200-nnnn, is the unique course ID that can
not be changed.
The first four digits of each course id, such as 2071,
2076, 2079, signifies the term (spring, summer, fall). These
codings are also used by e-campus to identify the term.
- 2071 means January (the last digit '1') of 2007, i.e.,
Spring term of 2007
- 2076 means June (the last digit '6') of 2007, i.e.,
Summer term of 2007
- 2079 means September (the last digit '9') of 2007,
i.e., Fall term of 2007
URIPS means URI PeopleSoft system (People Soft is the
software vendor of URI's e-campus system).
COM is the course discipline.
221 is the course catalog number.
SEC0200 is the Section number, in this case, it is section
200 of COM221
The last four digits is the class number which is listed in
the student roster and in the URI course catalog.
To communicate with the WebCT administrator, please always
include the unique course id. You may copy the unique course id
from your MyWebCT area after you login. If the course
description is too long, it will be truncated.
Why I kept losing
a student several hours after I added her into my WebCT roster?
This student has registered and then dropped
out of your course. The e-campus roster recorded her DROP action,
and then signals WebCT to remove her from WebCT roster. This process
is run three times a day (6:30am, 12:30pm, 6:30pm). Therefore, you
would keep losing her several hours after you add her.
The workaround is to use a separate,
temporary webct id that is not in the e-campus system. Please
email to the WebCT system administrator
(webct@etal.uri.edu) if
this problem occurs.
How do I join the WebCT-L and WebCT-Faculty
mailing lists?
Two mailing lists are used for the WebCT system administrator to
announce to the WebCT community about WebCT's scheduled system
maintenance, unexpecte system problem, bug reports, and system
support news. They are not used for general discussions, and
therefore, spam-free.
- WebCT-Faculty: consisting of all WebCT designers of
CURRENT semester
- WebCT-L: consisting of all WebCTdesigners and students of
CURRENT semester
The email addresses of the members are extracted from e-campus
personal profile, every semester. You are automatically added
into the lists if you use WebCT in the current semester. Please
update your email address in your e-campus profile so that you
are automatically added into the mailing lists.
Please email to the WebCT system administrator
(webct@etal.uri.edu) if
you are not automatically added to the lists.
How long do you keep my WebCT courses
online? MyWebCT area is getting crowded with too many WebCT
course sites. Can you remove some of them? Also, can you list
the courses chronologically in terms?
WebCT courses are kept online for two
years. The following is the webct course removal schedule -
-
2061 -
Spring 2006 courses - to be removed on
June 30,
2008
-
2066 -
Summer 2006 courses - to be removed on
June 30,
2008
-
2069 -
Fall 2006 courses - to be removed on
Jan 2,
2009
-
Older
courses - to be removed on Jan 2, 2008
You may email to the system administrator
(webct@etal.uri.edu) to
request removal of your webct course sites before the scheduled
removal. Please make sure you include the unique course id
(such as 2061-URIPS-COM-100-SEC0001-1234) for the courses you
wish to remove to avoid mistakes by the system administrator.
At this moment, it is not possible to list
the courses chronologically in terms.
Why there are old students in my new
course? How do I remove them?
The old students are carried over when
you copy the WebCT course materials from an 'old' course to the
'new' one with using the KEEP
users option.
The KEEP user option is to remove the
old students, but to KEEP the NEW
students in your new course. Without using the KEEP
option, the old students are carried over. Those old students
are denied access to your new course by default, therefore they
have no access to your new course. However, they appear in
the Browser window in the WebCT email recipient list, and could
be confusing to you and your students.
There are two ways to remove the old
students,
-
If your students have NOT
started any course activities (mail, discussions, assignments,
quizzes....etc.), you may remove all the students (old and new)
by going to the Control Panel --> Reset Course --> click the box
next to "Student Database" and then click Reset. You may also
clean out old mail messages, old discussion postings, ...etc
here.
Three times a day (6:30am, 12:30pm and
6:30pm), the WebCTsystem will re-load the student roster with
new students.
Then click the radio buttons next to
(1) Show access denied users and (2) Show inactive users and
click 'Update'. The subsequent student roster will show your old
students with a + sign and a * sign next to their webct id.
Click the last name of the old student and click the 'Delete'
and then 'Update' button. You need to do this one-by-one for all
your old students.
How do I enter course materials into one
WebCT course site (Master course), and let students in other
WebCT courses view the course materials and join the activities
of the Master course?
This feature is called "Cross-Listed
courses" within WebCT.
A set of cross-listed courses in WebCT means faculty only need
to build the course materials into one WebCT course (the Master
course) while allowing students in other courses in the
cross-listed set (the Alias courses) to view the course
materials and join the activities (such as quiz, assignment,
discussions...etc) in the Master course.
Creating Cross-Listed Courses
In order to properly cross-list courses, faculty
should do the following at least TWO
weeks before
the class begins.
-
Request the WebCT shells for ALL the
classes/sections that you wish to cross-list.
-
If applicable, restore the course backup into
the course that will become the Master course.
-
Email to
webct@etal.uri.edu with all the course ids you wish to
cross-list into a set as below. Indicate which course is the
Master course.
2071-URIPS-COM-100-SEC0001-2011 (Master)
2071-URIPS-COM-100-SEC0002-2022
2071-URIPS-COM-100-SEC0003-2023
2071-URIPS-COM-100-SEC0004-2024
Note, if you do not know your webct course id in the format as
above, make sure you include the discipline, catalog number,
section number and class number of each course in the email.
-
The WebCT administrator will run the
cross-listing job as requested.
-
After the courses are cross-listed, you will
only see the Master course in your MyWebCT area after login to
WebCT. Students in the Master and the alias course(s) will all
be listed in the WebCT roster of the Master course.
Important:
How does a new faculty start building a
WebCT course without an e-campus id?
-
E-mail to the WebCT system
administrator
(webct@etal.uri.edu) to request a WebCT course site,
including the necessary information of new faculty's name,
course discipline, catalog number, section number and class
number.
-
The WebCT system administrator will
create a temporary WebCT id for the new faculty to access the
new course to build course materials.
-
When the employment paper work is
complete with the Human Resources, the new faculty can go to
URI's e-campus site to
request an e-campus login id.
-
The e-campus login id will be loaded to
the WebCT system within one business day to be the login id for
WebCT as well. However, the login password to WebCT is not the
e-campus password, but the birthdate in mmddyyyy format (such as
02151966) by default.
-
The new faculty should send his/her
e-campus login id to the
WebCT system administrator. The WebCT system administrator
will give this new WebCT id the designer access to the new WebCT
course. The new faculty should then use the new WebCT id,
instead of the temporary id, to work on WebCT.
How can the Primary Designer and Shared
Designers all have separate identities in a WebCT course
Details
By default, Primary and Shared Designers all appear in the
course with the same "Instructor" name from the course settings.
This makes it hard to tell which of them is in Chat or
Whiteboard, or which has created Mail or Discussion messages.
Solution
Although users with Shared Designer Access each have a unique
WebCT ID and password, they all share the course tools with the
Primary Designer. They are all, functionally, the same user and
share the same account inside the course.
For example, all Designers, Primary and Shared, share one mail
tool and receive the same mail. In Mail, Discussions, Chat, and
Whiteboard, they all appear with the name designated in the
Course Settings "Instructor" field.
This raises two issues:
- From the students' point of view, the Primary Designer and
anyone with Shared Designer Access appear as exactly the same
person.
- If one of the people using any Designer access checks
"new" mail or discussion messages, these will no longer appear
as "new" for the next Designer who logs in to the course.
Workaround
These are workarounds most commonly used to clarify the above
issues.
- As well as sharing designer access, Shared Designers are
assigned another WebCT ID and are added to the course as
Teaching Assistants. The second TA IDs give them access to
Mail, Discussions, Chat, and Whiteboard with their own names.
*Note: *With this workaround, as a Shared Designer, you would
have two WebCT IDs. To help manage content, you would log in
using the WebCT ID that has Shared Designer Access. For all
other functions, you would log in using the WebCT ID with TA
access.
- In Course Settings, the course instructor's name is set as
something generic like "Instructor". Then, when Designers,
both Primary and Shared, create mail or discussion messages,
they place their own names into the subject line, or at the
end of the posting as a signature line. In chat, they enter
their initials at the beginning of each chat string. This
method eliminates the necessity for two WebCT IDs for each
Shared Designer, but it may cause confusion if the name,
initials, or signature line are occasionally forgotten. This
workaround does not address issue #2 above concerning new
message notifications.
How the
out-of-students or non-matriculated students access the
electronic materials in the Library?
Students need to bring in their URI photo-id to the Library
to request a Libaray Barcode to access the electronic materials.
Non-matriculated students are also eligible to have URI
photo-ids through the Campus Access office (874-2055). However,
the students need to come in person to the Campus Access office
in the Memorial Union to have their phone taken. It wouldn't be
convenient for the students who work during the day or the
out-of-state students.
The workaround is for the faculty to provide a list of student
names and addresses to the staff the the Library Reference Desk.
The barcodes will be generated and mailed to the students.
Please contact the Library Reference Desk (874-2666) for
detailed information.
Macintosh Issue
Mac users find that their chat postings keep getting erased
before they can complete them.
Symptoms
When incoming chat messages appear from other users, the
message which the user is typing gets erased.
Workaround
What happens is that every time a new message is posted in
chat, the message you are composing is highlighted, and then the
next character you type overwrites the rest of your message. I
can appreciate that this is extremely frustrating for you.
In the short term, if you keep a window open with TextEdit or
your word processor, you should be able to compose your postings
there, and then use <Command><C> and <Command><V> to
copy and paste them into the chat window, and then send them. As
long as you don't enter any characters while the text is
highlighted, this issue shouldn't actually affect your text once
you've pasted it in.
If this doesn't work, I'm afraid the best we have to offer
you until the fix is applied to your college's server is to
suggest that you use somebody else's Windows computer for the
chat sessions, either a friend's or one in a library or internet
cafe.
How do I manually enter/override
student grades?
You can manually
enter/override students grade in grade book from:
Control Panel ->
Manage Course -> Manage Student -> Select "Manage Columns"
from the pull-down menu under Organizer and click GO -> Click
Edit underneath the title of the column, or, click the
student webct id. Then you can enter or override the student's
grade manually in the subsequent screen.
Also, if a student
has taken a quiz, in Student Management you can click on
Submissions. This will then allow you to override marks and
provide comments on student results by using the Override Mark
and Comment text boxes beneath each question.
You can also adjust
overall quiz results by using the Quiz Mark Adjustment text box
at the bottom of the quiz. To affect all your changes click
Update Grade. Click Reset Attempt to allow the students
submission to be attempted again.
For your student who
has not submitted through WebCT, you can make a dummy submission
on their behalf and adjust their grade as above.
How do I allow
my students see their own
grades?
You must make the
grades visible to the students in Control Panel -> Manage Course
--> Manage Students-> Select "Manage Columns" from the pull-down
menu under Organizer and click GO.
The table indicates a
column's current status. Toggle Released to "Y" (from the
right-pane of the screen) to show this column to your students.
Why can't my students view their quiz
grades?
There are several reasons why your students may not be able to
view their grades:
Control Panel ->
Manage Course --> Manage Students-> Select "Manage Columns"
from the pull-down menu under Organizer and click GO.
You will see the
status for each column in the Released row of the Column
Editor. "Y" means that the column is released and the students
can view their marks. "N" means the column is not released and
students will not be able to view their marks. The Hidden
toggle works in a similar fashion, except that if a column is
Hidden it means that it does not display on your (designer's)
Student Management page. To change the status for any column
select the box above the appropriate column, or columns, and
click the [Released] button on you designer toolbar.
-
Open the Quiz
Editor by clicking on the Quiz hyperlink.
-
Select the quiz
and click Edit on the left-pane.
-
Click Edit
Quiz Settings on the left-pane in the subsequent screen
of Quiz Editor.
-
Beneath the
Results section you can see the settings for Student Score
release. If it is set such that the students score is not
released you will need to change it to "release the score
once the quiz has been submitted" and click Update
to save this change.
-
Click
Back on your designer toolbar to return to the
Quiz/Survey Management screen.
-
Click the
Submissions link for the appropriate quiz.
-
Click
Mark All, and then Regrade on your
designer toolbar. This will regrade each students quiz
submission so that their marks will now be viewable. Please
note that if you have manually overridden any students'
grades, the Regrade function will reset the grades to their
original values.
-
Click the
Submissions link for the appropriate quiz.
-
To view a
student's quiz, click the number link in the submissions
column.
-
Grade the
paragraph question, or questions, by entering a grade into
the appropriate mark box and clicking Update
to save these changes.
How do I remove a
quiz column in the student management area?
When you delete a quiz, the column still remains in Student
Management. You can only delete a quiz column in Student
Management if the associated quiz has been deleted.
To delete a quiz, go
to the Quiz homepage (i.e.. click the Quiz icon), select the
quiz you would like to delete, and click Delete in the bottom
frame.
When you now go back
to Student Management, you should be able to delete the quiz
column: from the homepage, click
Control Panel ->
Manage Course --> Manage Students --> Select "Manage Columns"
from the pull-down menu under Organizer and click GO.
This will bring you
to the Column Editor screen. Select the quiz column and click
Delete Columns from the right-pane of the screen.
What do I do
with error message in
Survey: "There are no results available"?
The reason the message shows "There are
no results available" is because you have not yet updated the
tables. To do so, look for "Manage Columns" on the right frame
when you are in 'Details'. Under it, you will see the option
"Update table". Select it and click on Go. You should be
able to see the details of Survey.
How do I backup and restore a WebCT
course? How do I copy the course materials from an old course to
a new one?
Refer to
http://www.uri.edu/webct/backup_restore.shtml.
How do I load my Publisher WebCT course materials to my
WebCT server? OR How do I restore any WebCT course to another
WebCT course as a designer?
Refer to
http://www.uri.edu/webct/ePack.shtml.
What
do I do with broken links?
-
Check the name of the linked file in
your HTML document and the name of the actual file that has
been uploaded to the WebCT server. Make sure that the case
matches! For example, if you link to a file called Mytest.html
in your document but the name of the actual file on the server
is mytest.html, you will see a broken link. To correct
the problem, use the editor to change the filename in your
HTML document to match the name of the actual file.
-
Check the path of your linked file or
image in the the HTML document. If it carries something like
C:\Windows\My Document\Mytest.html, or,
href="file:///C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\fac_todd\Local%20Settings\Temp\quizzes.htm">Quizzes.htm</a>
remove everything before
the actual filename (such as quizzes.htm in the example above)or image name if the HTML document and the
linked file or image are stored in the same folder on the
server.
Where do I store short (2-10 minute)
audio/video files on a server and link them in my WebCT course?
At URI, you can store
your audio files onto the media server, media.uri.edu. Fill out
the
form to request an account to upload audio/video files to
the media server. Once you upload your audio/video files to the
media server, you will get URLs to access them.
WebCT has a feature
that allows you to create a linked list of audio/video files
associated with a page in a content module. You can find
information on that in the online help. However, most people
prefer to have audio more tightly integrated with the content of
the page, either playing it automatically when a page loads or
when a link with the page text is clicked or passed over with
the mouse.
How do I allow students to save a text
file which is linked in the "Single Page"?
for
faculty and designers
