WebCT

End of the Semester Cleaning

Overview of this workshop

• Is there anything you see that has been neglected or omitted from this lecture?

What this workshop is not:

• A workshop where you will create a full fledged course.
• A workshop that will teach you to author HTML pages or web images.
• It presumes previous experience with WebCT.

Having said that: This course *is* an introduction on how to prepare your WebCT course for the next semester.  I will cover:

• Course Backup
• Deleting student accounts while preserving your "guest" (and other special) account(s)
• Resetting the Bulletin Board Tool
• Resetting the Chat Room Tool logs
• Resetting the Course Calendar Tool
• Editing/adding to course content

Course Backup:

1. Using Netscape
2. Open your WebCT course (you need to have had one created by Computing Services (contact Garrett Collins for a WebCT course)).
3. Click the "Course Management" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of your WebCT homepage).
4. Click the "Course Backup" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the Backup frameset).
5. Click the "Make New Backup" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the Backup frameset).
6. Enter any comments (e.g.: end of spring 1999, before updates for fall 1999, etc.) in the text box provided and click the "Continue" button in the top frame.
   Note: The date and time of the backup are part of the backup file; you need not include them as comments.
7. When the backup is done, click the "Continue" button and you will see this backup listed under the heading "Course Backup Utility."
8. You course backup is complete.

Deleting student accounts:

It is important to clean our your roster after you stop accepting student work so that students cannot log onto your course while you calculate and submit final grades.

In theory, what you need to do is generate a list of all the students that you wish to remove (this may be all the accounts in your "Student Management" roster, or it might be a list that excludes certain accounts from your roster).  After generating the list you need to remove the accounts.  You may delete individual students at any time (if they drop the class, for instance), but this would be a time consuming process to "clear out your roster" at the end of a term.  The following steps detail: differentiating between the accounts to be removed and those you wish to keep, generating the list of accounts to be removed, and removing them.

Differentiating between the accounts to be removed and those you wish to keep

1. Using Netscape
2. Open your WebCT course (you need to have had one created by Computing Services (contact Garrett Collins for a WebCT course)).
3. Click the "Course Management" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of your WebCT homepage).
4. Click the "Student Management" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of your WebCT homepage).
5. Click the "Edit Columns" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the Student Management frameset).
   Note: Here's where you create a column where you can place a mark to preserve the accounts you want to keep.
6. Select a column (by clicking the radio button at the top of one of the columns displayed in the top frame); the column you add will be inserted in front of this selected column.
7. Click the "Add" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the Student Management frameset).
8. Enter a "Column Label" (I called my new column: Keep) and select "Alphanumeric" for "Column Type" where prompted and click the "Add" button in the top frame.
   Wait: Do you see your new column?  If so, continue.  If not, try steps 6-8 again.
9. Click the "Back" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the Student Management frameset).
   Look: You will see your roster list with the new column.
10. Click each account name (it's the blue underlined text in the left-most column of the roster list) to select each account you wish to keep.
11. When presented with the frame (in the top frame) that allows you to edit the account, place your cursor in the field below your new column and type an "x".
    Note: you could type anything so long as this column has something in it.   You'll see why in just a minute.
12. Click the "Update" button in the top frame to update that account with your addition
13. Repeat steps 10-12 for each account you wish to preserve.

Generating the list of accounts to be removed

14. When you're done marking accounts to keep, click the "Listing..." button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the Student Management frameset).
15. Click the "Query" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the Student Management frameset).
    Look: Under the "Hide Query Screen" button (in the bottom frame), you'll see a select list where you may choose a field/column to search on.
16. Select the name of your new column from the first list.
    Look: In the next selection list to the right, you'll see a list that starts "Less Than."
17. Select the option "Blank" from this list to select all accounts that have nothing in the first field (your new column).
18. Click the "Search" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of  the Student Management frameset).  Be sure that "Whole Class" is selected in the final field to the right.
    Wait: You will be presented with a list of accounts that have nothing in the column you added in steps 1-13.  These are the accounts you do not wish to keep.

Removing the listed accounts

19. When you're done generating the list of accounts to remove, click the "Hide Query Screen" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of your WebCT homepage).
    Look: You will be presented with a new set of designer tools in the bottom frame of your browser window.
20. You may now click the "Delete Listed" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of  the Student Management frameset).
    WARNING: After being prompted twice to be sure you wish to proceed you will remove all shown accounts.  There is no undo for this (you'd have to restore a previously backed up copy of the course (if you had one) to restore your roster.
    Look: When WebCT is done purging your roster it will return you to the "Student Management" screens.

What this means

• Removed accounts are removed from the Student Management roster.
• Accounts are removed from all course statistics.
• All references to deleted accounts (i.e. quiz grades and quiz statistics) are removed from WebCT.
• etc.

Resetting the Bulletin Board Tool:

1. Using Netscape
2. Open your WebCT course (you need to have had one created by Computing Services (contact Garrett Collins for a WebCT course)).
3. Click the Bulletin Board Tool icon for your course
   Note: You might want to save any "Welcome" messages you intend to use again (I recommend viewing them in the Bulletin Board and copying and pasting them into a Microsoft Word file that you save to a local disk or personal network drive).   This way you will not have to retype these messages (you can just cut and paste from the Microsoft Word file to the Bulletin Board at some later date).
4. Click the "Options Menu..." button in the left frame of your browser (in the Bulletin Board Tool).
5. From the sub menu that appears, Click the "Reset" button.
   WARNING: After being prompted twice to be sure you wish to proceed you will remove all Bulletin Board posts and reset the numbering system for your course Bulletin Board.
   Note: There is a glitch with WebCT 1.1 that reopens the Bulletin Board in your right frame so you might want to close Netscape at this point, just for sanity's sake.

Resetting the Chat Room Tool logs:

1. Using Netscape
2. Open your WebCT course (you need to have had one created by Computing Services (contact Garrett Collins for a WebCT course)).
3. Click the "File Manager" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of your WebCT homepage).
   Note: In the top, left frame you will see "[COURSE FILES]" and under this directory you will see "chat"
4. Click the "chat" link/directory I just mentioned and you will see the list of room logs in the top right frame.
   Note: Each of these logs may be backed up or removed.
5. To reset the log files, check the boxes preceding each log file (in the top right frame of your browser) to select them.
6. Then click the "Delete" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the File Manager frameset).
   WARNING: You will only be warned once that you are about to delete files.
7. Click the "Continue" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the File Manager frameset).
   Note: You will be given a "Delete Report" telling you if the removal was successful.
8. After deleting these files you will be returned to the File Manager frameset.
   

Resetting the Course Calendar Tool:

1. Using Netscape
2. Open your WebCT course (you need to have had one created by Computing Services (contact Garrett Collins for a WebCT course)).
3. Click the Course Calendar Tool icon for your course
   Note: You might want to save any calendar items you intend to use again (I recommend viewing them in the calendar entry "edit" window then copying and pasting them into a Microsoft Word file that you save to a local disk or personal network drive).  This way you will not have to retype these calendar items (you can just cut and paste from the Microsoft Word file to your Course Calendar at some later date).
4. Click the "Clear Calendar" button from the designer tools (at the bottom of the Calendar Tool frameset).
   Look: You will be presented with a screen that allows you to "Select the period you wish to remove."
5. Select the dates between which you'd like to clear the calendar and click "Continue" in the upper frame.
   WARNING: You will only be warned once that you are about to delete files.
6. After the deletion is complete you will be returned to the Calendar Tool frameset.

Editing/adding to course content:

Adding files to your WebCT course

WebCT is not an HTML editor; it does not create WYSIWYG web pages.  Though, you may edit your web site, within WebCT, if you know HTML.

I recommend you author your web pages and images on your desktop computer, using your favorite editors (for HTML and images); then, upload the files (HTML and images) to your WebCT course.

Anytime you make changes to your web files (on your desktop computer) using your favorite editor(s), you need to upload those changes to the server so they are available to your students.  To keep things organized, be sure you are always editing on your desktop computer and moving the newly updated files to the server (this way there is never a question which files are most recently updated).

Editing files that already exist in your WebCT course

Things are no different when you are editing/updating a page from a previous semester.   You'll still either have to use a WYSIWYG editor or HTML to make changes.

Sometimes a technical assistant has done some updates for you (either at the end of the course development phase of your class or during the course of the semester).  This means that the files on your computer are outdated and the files server are actually the most up to date. 

When editing existing files, I recommend downloading the files (using the File Manager tool in WebCT) to your desktop computer so you can use your HTML editor on them (if you edit the files on the server there is no need to do this).

Once the file is on your local machine you may edit it and then upload it to write your additions to the server.

Important: DO NOT create files that have spaces or special characters (only numbers and letters, dashes and periods are acceptable characters) in the file name.

Q&A:

Maintained by Garrett Collins (garrett@mailhost1.csusm.edu), last updated 05/22/04

as of 5/3/99.