--
To ensure that your students have access to your WebCT site from the first day of semester you will need to complete preparation of your site and submit an Application to Activate by June 27th, 2007.
]]>This deadline applies only if you must have your site ready for the first week of semester. Those applications which arrive after the campus deadline will be processed as quickly as possible, however, we cannot guarantee they will be ready for the first week of semester.
If you are unsure about the site activation process, please read the information available on our website (http://www.usyd.edu.au/webct/staff/develop/activate/a2a_info.shtml )
As you know, sites are now made available in WebCT CE6. If you have not yet used this environment you will notice that your site looks a little different. You may like to attend a clinic session where you can get hands on assistance with the transition from CE4 to CE6. You do not need to book a session, just visit the following link to obtain the latest dates, times and locations: http://www.usyd.edu.au/webct/lms/orientation/index.shtml
Thanks,
The USyd eLearning Team
Monday 25th June, 2007
Remember, if you get it in earlier than that, your site will be checked & ready well before start of semester. :)
]]> * Ross can make a successful WebDAV connection to WebCT CE6.1 using Dreamweaver 8 from Windows XP SP2.
* Bec can make a successful WebDAV connection to WebCT CE6.1 using Dreamweaver 8 from Mac OS 10.3.9.
* If you don't have DW8, you can still make a WebDAV connection; you just can't use it in DW (believe me... I've tried!!). On Windows XP, do this from the Network Folders window. On Mac 10.3.9, you'll need to use a 3rd party client called Goliath. The rumour is that from 10.4 you can connect from Finder as you'd expect, but I haven't confirmed this yet.
Great general info on how to connect to WebCT CE6 using WebDAV, for both Mac & PCs, from Brock U.
]]>Read on for more info, a list of eqipped theatres, and details about our WebCT site "Using Multimedia in Online Teaching & Learning".
]]> Easiest to tell by email:Note! If you're interested in doing this, drop the usyd WebCT Helpdesk a line and ask to be put into our "Using Multimedia in Online Teaching & Learning" site. It has step-by-step instructions on using Camtasia and excellent examples of use in a teaching program provided by Jo Lander (SPH).
=================
Ross West wrote:
Hi all,
Can anybody help Michael Kennedy out below? Wants to know if any academics
are using Camtasia to record lectures and host the resulting .avi files
within WebCT?
Cheers,
Ross
----- Forwarded message from Michael Kennedy -----
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2006 11:20:52 +1100
From: Michael Kennedy
Subject: Camtsia files on web
To: Ross West
Dear Ross,
How are you going? I hope well.
We are using Camtasia in the Lecture Theatres and are interested in how many lecturers are uploading the saved .avi files to the web.
Do you know if any lecturers are doing this or of any way to find this out?
Kind Regards
Michael
Michael Kennedy
Audio Visual Technician
AudioVisual Services
Client Services
Information and Communications Technology
University of Sydney
=================
From: Bec Plumbe
Sent: Wednesday, 8 November 2006 3:59 PM
To: Michael Kennedy
Cc: Flexible Online Learning Team Staff
Subject: Re: [eLearn-Staff] Fwd: Camtsia files on web
Hi all,
Michael, I know that Public Health are using Camtasia to record lectures in a sense-- they do the narration in their offices, create a narrated slideshow using Camtasia + Powerpoint. The Educational Design team in Public Health (Jo Lander & team) save this in Flash (SWF) format and upload the resulting files to the appropriate Public Health site in WebCT.
We'd definitely prefer it if the lecture theatre machines could be set to save files as SWF by default: the results are still good, and the files are nice and small, suitable for online teaching use. The files can be zipped for student download if desired.
Personally I haven't come across any academics who've mentioned using the lecture theatre Camtasia facility, but of course that doesn't mean they're not using it and uploading it without needing to contact us. We could have a look for AVI files on our servers, but it would be a big job to look through and find out whether any were created by Camtasia.
One idea to get a feel for how many people were using the software (although uploading & using is something else) would be to have a VBscript or similar that recorded how often Camtasia was launched and how long it was left open for. It's a very rough measure, but it may at least give an indication of use attempts, which if collected over the course of a semester could also give a feel for how many lecturers stuck with using it.
We would be interested to know which lecture theatres have Camtasia installed on the computers-- can you give us more details? This could also help us identify which courses / lecturer groups may have used the software, if we were to try and identify if the results are being used in WebCT sites.
-bec
===================
Subject: RE: [eLearn-Staff] Fwd: Camtsia files on web
Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:48:41 +1100
From: Michael Kennedy
To: Rebecca Plumbe
CC: Jason Wheatley
Dear Bec,
Thanks for your reply. It is good to know that there is some use of the Camtasia software. My understanding is that it is used in the Pharmacy Faculty as well.
Saving the files on the lecture theatre computer as flash files is not feasible as the rendering of the storyboard from the file recorded is time prohibitive. Camtasia saves files either as .avi or .camrec.
Only when the file is saved as a .camrec file can it be rendered to one of various formats including flash. Unfortunately this rendering process takes roughly half as long as recording the lecture. Ie an one hour lecture will take about half an hour to render to flash. This is prohibitive as it leads into the following lecture. Thus to obtain a useable file the .avi format was chosen as the default file to save to.
At the moment the theatres that have the capability to record audio to PC (as needed for Camtasia) are:-
Theatres that can record the Lapel Mic and Desktop
* Bosch Lecture Theatre 1
* Bosch Lecture Theatre 2
* Bosch Lecture Theatre 3
* Bosch Lecture Theatre 4
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 157
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 159
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 173
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 175
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 273
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 275
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 373
* Carslaw Lecture Theatre 375
* Chemical Engineering Lecture Room 1
* Chemical Engineering Lecture Room 2
* Chemistry Lecture Theatre 1
* Chemistry Lecture Theatre 2
* Chemistry Lecture Theatre 3
* Chemistry Lecture Theatre 4
* Civil Engineering Lecture Room 1
* Civil Engineering Lecture Room 3
* Eastern Avenue Auditorium
* Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre
* Education Lecture Room 424
* Education Lecture Theatre 351
* Electrical Eng Lecture Theatre 2 (Rm 450)
* Electrical Eng Madsen Theatre 351
* Farrell Lecture Theatre
* Footbridge Theatre
* Institute Lecture Room 2
* Institute Lecture Theatre 1
* Marjorie Oldfield Theatre (208a)
* Merewether Lecture Room 5 (Rm 277)
* Merewether Lecture Theatre 1 (Rm 131)
* Merewether Lecture Theatre 2 (Rm 136)
* Mills Lecture Room 209
* Norman Gregg Lecture Theatre
* Old Geology Lecture Theatre
* Peter Nicol Russell Lecture Theatre
* Pharmacy Lecture Theatre
* Physics Lecture Theatre 1
* Physics Lecture Theatre 2
* Physics Lecture Theatre 4
* Physics Lecture Theatre 5
* Quadrangle Building, General Lecture Theatre N205
* Quadrangle Building, History Room S223
* Quadrangle Building, Latin 1 S224
* Quadrangle Building, McRae Room S418
* Quadrangle Building, Oriental Room S204
* Quadrangle Building, Philosophy Room S249
* Quadrangle Building, Room S421
* School of Information Technology - Presentation Room
* Slade Lecture Theatre
* Teachers College Assembly Hall
* Wallace Theatre
This list will be increasing as we build more audiovisual systems. There is a plan to build 50 more systems in small to medium tutorial rooms over various Faculty and School spaces.
I hope to speak to the Desktop Support Team to create a way for us to find out how often the software is being used on each machine.
Again; thanks a lot for your reply.
Kind Regards
Michael
With the pushing of these new browsers, both Mozilla.org and MS have hidden their older browsers deep in their sites and made them somewhat hard to get to. On request of Mary-Helen, I've dug up the URLs of a few pages where you can grab earlier browser versions.
For comparison: our team are having most luck with:
* Firefox 1.5.07 or Safari 1.3.2 for OSX 10.3.9, for those on Mac
* IE 6 for Win XP SP2, for those on Windows
Firefox:
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/
Mozilla:
http://www.mozilla.org/releases/
Safari:
Saf 1.2: http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/safari.html
Internet Explorer:
IE7, Win: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx
IE6 SP1, Win: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1e1550cb-5e5d-48f5-b02b-20b602228de6&DisplayLang=en
* Summer School 2006-7 (sessions 42, 43, 44, 45)
* Semester 1, 2007 (sessions 1, 6, 7)
Here are the UNOFFICIAL dates (not yet canonised by Stephen), but pretty reliable-- we usually ask for sites to be in 4 weeks before the start of semester / session, to allow us enough time to get through the checks and get back to people.
December term (Session 42 - Summer Dec)
Friday 10th November 2006 (Classes start: [day varies; earliest is Monday 11th] December 2006)
January term (Session 42 - Summer Main)
Thursday 7th December 2006 (Classes start: Thursday 4 January 2007)
Late January term (Session 44 - Summer Late)
Thursday 14th December 2006 (Classes start: Friday 12 January 2007)
Other Late January term (Session 45 - Summer Sem)
Tuesday 5th December 2006 (Classes start: Tuesday 3 January 2007)
Semester 1 (Early intensive), 2007 (Session 6 - S1 Intensive)
Friday 9th Feb 2007 (Classes start: Tuesday 2nd Jan 2007)
Semester 1a, 2007 (Session 7 - Semester 1a)
Friday 9th Feb 2007 (Classes start: Monday 5 March 2007)
Semester 1b, 2007 (Session 8 - Semester 1b)
Friday 23rd March 2007 (Classes start: Monday 23 April 2007)
SEE ALSO:
* a2a form
* a2as explained
* Usyd session calendar
I have made a checklist for our team to use when checking webct ce 4.1 sites migrated to ce6.1:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/webct/form/ce6upgrade/ce6-migration-checklist.html
It ain't perfect, but it highlights the issues we suspect we're going to find in many of the sites we need to migrate.
* My Files also exists for students-- will we turn this on? how to allocate quotas? will we have enough space? we'll be on the SAN shortly but there's still disk costs... Also if we give students quotas there are questions of file retrieval at end of semester, post-course, etc.
* One identity per Instructor (and per Designer? not sure)! Instead of one shared identity for all designers
* More roles, hopefully more nuanced: Designer, Instructor, Teaching Assistant, Student, Auditor (old was just: D, TA, S).
* The Portfolio tool is only at version 1,0 and we haven't bought it yet (note this was a specific question from one of the FDs), but once we've had a chance to see it in action, we may do so. I have my own understanding of Portfolio (saved work per student; the "persistent student records" I was talking about earlier-- I hope!), but 'm not sure how this tallies with the WebCT implementation. One to look at (but probably not just now).
* The have also been FD questions about blog tools and wiki tools in ce 6-- there are not native ones that I can find. Plugins maybe? Do we want to ask about using blogs.usyd for students? (see earlier post)
Part of preparing for this session is having a look at what other institutions who've made the same switch have written in the doco they've made available online. I'm making notes of things to follow up & check out myself, and of things to mention.
]]> Some to Mention, some to Investigate further* Some course functions are exclusive to a tab! For example… the Gradebook can only be accessed via the Teach tab.
* Who’s Online: The new Who’s Online tool enables course participants to see fellow classmates who are logged into the course and chat with them. Instructors have the option of hiding their online status if they do not wish for students to chat with them.
* Group Sign-Up Sheets: Students can use the Group Sign-Up tool to sign up for a class group.
Yes yes!! Electronic tute allocation at last!
* Link annotation feature: Instructors can annotate links (or icons) on course pages. This is an effective way to give students a better sense of what is available through a particular link (or icon).
Could be great for annotated reading lists as recommended- cf Gelnn Sakeld's Pub Health annonated reading lists. We could use this with CORS. I wonder if you can easily import entire lists of links + comments? It would be great if you had articles in CORS and could import the article refs + links directly from what the Library sends.
* Selective Release function: Most types of content or activities in WebCT can now be selectively released to students.
Also, perhaps far more importantly, you can now release based on more-- and cumulative criteria! Date, group, results on vairious assignments, etc.
* Graded Discussions: Instructors can now grade discussion board postings from within the Discussion tool.
* Assignment tool: Several new features have been integrated into the Assignment tool, which include the ability to create group assignments, return assignments for review & submission, and the ability to publish a completed assignment viewable by other students in the course.
Publish Assignments sounds a bit crazy to me (ok, wrong word but still). Probably need to check how this can be locked down-- I imagine one would usually not want to allow release until ALL other students had submitted? Maybe only useful for group assignments which differ a lot between groups, for example tute papers which are typically on a different topic for each group.
* Student Tracking: Student tracking has been greatly improved to include new tracking information such as number of mail messages read, calendar entries viewed, and pages viewed in Folders (formerly known as Organizer Pages).
This is a lot better than 4.1, which only showed views of items in Content Modules and not Organiser pages. This led some groupds (eg Pub Health) to use CMs almost exclusively. One hassle with CMs if that they couldn't have items like Quizzes, Assignments, links etc in them (except via the Action Menu but that was a poor option in my opinion; far too hidden, and as a very tiny link when one may be pointing to a very important assessment item!) Which brings me to:
* Learning Modules - a better Content Module!
LMs replace CMs, which had a number of shortcomings, some of which are listed in the point above.
LMs can now have all types of items in (as far as I've seen so far)-- the lack of which was one of my major bugbears in v4! So you can now have, for example, pdfs, web pages, URLs, docs & spreadsheets, audio and movie items, images (I think-- shoudl test this one). links to individual quizzes and assignments (hurray!!!), and so on. ROCK. This is finally working more like it should! NeridaJ phrased it well yesterday, saying it was easier to group by topic than by type than in previous versions. Much better pedagogy.
* New Quiz Question Types: Four new question types have been added to WebCT version 6, including jumbled sentence and fill-in-the-blank question types.
Meh. I'm sure some people will like this; guess it's worth mentioning, but it sounds far more K-12 level than tertiary to me.
========================
CREDITS: Most of these notes made from various pieces of doco from Sacramento State U. Nice work guys!
In WebCT ce 4, "content module" (henceforth CM) pages are often used to present lecture materials. This means the files are presented as a simple hierarchicial list.
]]> One of the fairly basic features available in organiser pages (pages with icons, in the manner of a desktop) is "selective release", which allows you to give define which users have access to any given link. This can be based on a set list of usernames, performance on a given assessment, etc.This is not available in CM pages. It's one of those fairly basic and unexpected asymmetries within WebCT, and as such is annoying. Why should I have to change my nicely presented list to a collection of icons for this? Why couldn't they just have given the selective release option in both areas?
It's not a big thing. There are workarounds. Nonetheless, it's the sort of time-wasting asymmetry I'd love to see disappear in the next version. (My bet: won't be fixed).
]]>One of our most common student enquiries at this time of year (start of semester) is "Where are my sites?". Students often expect that there will be a site in WebCT for each of the units of study they're enrolled in. This isn't currently the case.
]]>For a start, there are multiple LMSes within the uni (WebCT centrally, Blackboard in Econ & Bus, and the in-house one for GMP.
There are also a lot of sites which sit outside LMSes, usually on departmental servers (Bio, Maths, Comp Sci, Physiol, most of Engineering are a few). I get the feeling that most departments are moving away from this, however, or at least moving to integrate them with WebCT. This usually means having the simplest possible site on WebCT, with a link or three on the home page to lead students to the correct area on the departmental server.
And of course, there are many, many courses which don't have sites at all.
There's another case this early in semester as well: sites which are sitting on the development server, and are on their way to the live server, but which are awaiting changes or corrections to make the sites ready for students (eg updating information for the current year, getting correct release dates on assignments and quizzes, working links etc). These deserve their own post (on academics' understanding / confusion about their sites and how students get access) at some other time...
Students get confused (and often worried) when they log in to WebCT and they don't see the sites they expect. Understandable really: they don't want to mis anything, and they want to know that their enrolment is OK. Fair enough (yes, they could get this info from the student centre or MyUni, but there's no reason not to give confirmation in multiple places).
So what I'd really like is to have a better match-up, in the course list displayed to students, of
* what courses they are enrolled in
* what courses have a webct site
** what courses have a webct site currently available to students
** what courses have a webct site awaiting release (and maybe who to contact-- primary designer)
* (maybe) possiblity of direct links to departmental sites which are essentially external to WebCT.
Another thing missing from WebCT 4.1 is persistent student records. E.g.: A student can't make a homepage in one course and use it in another course (unless they make another copy in the second course, but that's not the same thing at all), or use it the following semester. Because courses get archived, a student can't check back on their previous material, work, posts or marks within the system-- even across semesters.
]]> One thing we've had academics ask for is (obviously I'm paraphrasing here) a system that will more accurately reflect a degree course, which may span 3-4 years, multiple UoS sites, many sessions / semesters, and obviously a whole lot of student work.It would be great if a student were able to see their own progress across a degree within the system (obviously this can be seen on paper, with a bit of effort, but again, that's not the point... it's about ease of use / access, here). This is particularly the case for courses where one's development as a professional is central-- most health science courses, teaching, etc. Health Science courses in particular often make good use of reflective diaries, but these are "lost" each semester, and entries a student makes in one UoS (unit of study) site can't be seen in the student's other sites. So if you wanted a reflective journal on one's preofessional development and practise across a year or across an entire degree.... well, at the moment it just doesn't happen. It's so much work as to be essentially impossible.
Of course, one way of managing this would be student blogs (so this blogs.usyd service could help a lot). However, this only gets around one part of the problem-- persistency of journal-type entries. It doesn't help preserve submitted work across semesters, doesn't preserve marks, doesn't have any integration with class lists or teachers / academics / coordinators. There's no integrated way of saying things like "show these posts to my lecturers / current lecturers only", or "also display this post on the site / board for this unit of study", or any of the other things one might want to do with an education-related blog.
I haven't talked to the blogs.usyd guys yet (Web Services) about this, or FlexSIS (student records)... partly because I'm still doing the thinking about what a good working system would look like. Also because in some ways, this kind of project is, well, not yet a project or a priority, so there are no allocated hours for it. It's something that comes up occasionally and I think "that's right! This came up a few months ago!" etc. Frustrating... but thinking about the way work hours are allocated is a subject for another post. At least I've got some of this on paper now!
Note also: To some extent, there is a related problem of persisten records for academics: They can't write pages / have images up in some central folder on the system and use them across courses. This also means that erros like bad links might have to be fixed one by ne by one by one painstakingly across sites. Which means often things are missed, or just don't get done, and even if they do, it takes waaaaaay longer than it should.
I think there is some kind of central foldering system in CE 6 that addresses this.... and once we're out of a2a period, I should have some time to look at it! (and we should have those CE 6 test accounts to play with).
]]>This is annoying and restrictive and doesn't make a lot of sense. It can be done in an organisesr page; why not a Content Module?
There are lots of small things like this that I'm hoping work more intuitively in 6.1.
Upgrade ~ Sept '06 (knock on wood - purchase order for servers is currently with Sun!).
We are currently experiencing technical problems with our development server.
We anticipate that it will be back online by 5pm this afternoon.
The live server and student access are not affected by these technical problems.
Kind regards,
The WebCT Helpdesk
]]> Zeppo (develop-on-line.usyd.edu.au) is currently ill and being looked at by doctors from Sun.
This email has been sent to all staff members listed as WebCT designers in one or more currently live WebCT sites. Please read this email only if you are personally responsible for the creation, activation and/or restoration of sites. If your WebCT site(s) are created and/or managed by another designer or by a faculty or department administrator then please ignore this advice as these deadlines will be dealt with by your designer or administrator.
1. The deadlines for release of your 2006 second semester unit of study websites.
To ensure that your students have access from the first day of semester you will need to update your sites and send us your Application to Activate Form by:
Deadline for Semester 2 site activation is Monday July 3rd, 2006
The Application to Activate form and more information about this process is available at:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/webct/staff/develop/activate/a2a_info.shtml
Note: This deadline applies only if you must have your site ready for the first week of semester. Applications arriving after the deadline will be processed as quickly as possible, however we cannot guarantee that the website will be ready for the first week of semester.
2. Retiring and archiving of first semester sites
By default, all first semester sites in WebCT will be closed off to students and retired on: Monday July 3rd, 2006. All sites are then zipped and archived to DVD. The archived copy of your site will retain all the student data from the semester, so that it may be retrieved if the need arises.
If you need your site to remain open to students later than this date, or if you want the site to be automatically copied to the development server, please read and complete the form at:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/webct/staff/develop/archiving/archiving_form.shtml
Workshop news
Would you like to make your site for next semester work better for your students? There is an intermediate workshop being offered on 19 June
that might help you, called 'How to organise your site around your teaching'
This is a workshop for staff who want to organise their WebCT sites around the material they teach rather than the tools that WebCT makes
available. This workshop will show you ways to structure content modules and organiser pages so that quizzes, discussions, text-based materials,
images and other WebCT tools are integrated to support your teaching.
More information is available at:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/webct/teach_online/workshops/int_ws.shtml
Thank you for your cooperation
The Flexible Online Learning Team
WebCT Helpdesk
webct.helpdesk@usyd.edu.au
www.usyd.edu.au/webct