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FACULTY RESOURCESFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS How do I get a WebCT Vista Account? Who do I contact if I have a technical problem? How do I add a syllabus to my course homepage? Why am I unable to view comments I have included in the grade book? Is there a way to upload files to WebCT Vista File Manager directly from my PC? Is there a way to upload files to my course directly from Microsoft Office applications? How do I link to a discussion item from my (Course Outline) Learning Module? Can I forward new mail from my WebCT Vista Mail Inbox to my external email account? Are there any e-mail or email forwarding issues? How do I upload multiple files? How do you create groups and grade them? How do I add a URL to a Learning Module? How do I export my Grade book from WebCT? How does the “Selective Release Criteria” function? What is the best way to transfer file from Prometheus to my WebCt course? What is the best way to create links to e-reserves/online articles? What is the best way to copy and paste text into WebCT?
How do I get a WebCT Vista Faculty Account? A new policy is in place for the Spring 2006 semester. In order to receive a WebCT Vista Account you must attend an orientation session. This 55 minute session will provide each participant with a WebCT account, a practice course, information about how to access instructional resources for learning about WebCT, and information on the technical support resources available to faculty and students who are using WebCT. We have also developed a number of resources to help faculty with the transition from Prometheus to WebCT Vista. The training schedule is linked below: Who do I contact if I have a technical problem? There is a new support model for faculty outlined in the LMS Information Sheet. Please note the new support telephone numbers for faculty, staff to contact and other instructional support resources available. How do I add a syllabus to my course homepage? Instructions for Adding a Syllabus to your Course Homepage. I saved the file as a web page in Microsoft Word and now special characters are displaying when I view it in WebCT Vista. How can this be corrected? 1.) Saving as a web page in Microsoft Word: If you are using a newer version of Microsoft Word to create web pages, be sure to select the following option when saving your file: From File menu select Save As, click on Save as type drop down box and select the Web Page, Filtered option, then click on the Save button. 2.) Posting your file to File Manager in WebCT Vista: Outlined below are new instructions for posting your file to File Manager so that your web page will use the appropriate character set. Use these directions when you are posting a MS Word file that has been saved as a filtered web page to File Manager: - In File Manager, click on Upload File button. Some students are reporting that they cannot open Microsoft Word files I have posted in my course. What is the best file format to use? Because WebCT Vista is deployed via the web, it is best to post web pages (.html) to your course. Since Microsoft Word (.doc) files are in a proprietary format, the student would need Word or a free Word Viewer (downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads) to view to view the file. Unfortunately the Word Viewer is not available for the Macintosh. If you don't like the idea of creating web pages, the next best format to use is Rich Text Format (.rtf). Students using a PC or Macintosh will be able to open rtf files. It is possible to save a Word file as a web page or an rtf file. See below for instructions on saving your file in one of these formats. Saving your Word file as a web page: Note that when you save a file that contains images as a web page, Word also creates a folder called "filename_files." The folder contains all images included in the original file. To maintain the links to your images you will need to post the "filename_files" folder to the WebCT Vista File Manager within the same folder as your web page. Saving your Word file as an rtf file: Why am I unable to view comments I have included in the grade book? It is only possible to enter comments for grades that you have changed in the grade book. The grades that have been changed are indicated with a "^" symbol beside the actual grade. To view your comments you must first click on the link for the grade you have changed, then you will need to click on the View Audit History button. The comments you entered will be displayed in a pop-up window. Comments are viewable to the instructor only. Students are unable to view comments you have entered into the grade book. Is there a way to upload files to WebCT Vista File Manager directly from my PC? Yes, it is possible to set up a WebDAV folder on your
desktop. Follow these instructions: Is there a way to upload files to my course using Microsoft Office applications? Yes, if you are using Microsoft Office 2002 or above, you can install the Web CT PowerLink for Microsoft Office. After installing the application, open the file that you wish to include in your WebCT Vista course within the appropriate Microsoft Office program; Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or Microsoft PowerPoint. Follow these instructions for uploading course content using PowerLink. How do I link to a discussion item from my (Course Outline) Learning Module? Instructions for Linking to Discussion Topic from a Learning Module Can I forward new mail from my WebCT Vista Mail Inbox to my external email account? Yes, to forward new mail from your my WebCT Vista Mail Inbox to your
external email account, access the mail utility from the specific course.
Select the Mail Forwarding icon within the Mail toolbar located to the
left of the Search this tool box, enter your correct email address and
click on the save button. Once that is done you will continue to receive
mail sent within the course in your course mailbox as well as to your
external email account. Faculty and Students must set up this option within
each course. Within my email account, I attempted to reply to an email message sent from my student and received an error message. Why is this happening? The email messages that you receive within WebCT are forwarded to your email inbox if you have set up mail forwarding. Email messages that you receive from WebCT Vista are indicated by the from field which displays: "DO_NOT_REPLY@umassonline.net." You will be able to read these messages outside of WebCT Vista, however you will not be able to reply to these messages outside of WebCT Vista. To reply to these messages, you will need to access your course and use the mail utility within WebCT Vista. I would like to include an audio or video file in my course. How should I do this? To include audio or video files in your course contact John Jessoe (john.jessoe@umb.edu) to take advantage of the streaming media services available at UMass Boston. I would like to create a survey but am finding it's difficult to do in WebCT Vista. What are my options? The survey tool in WebCT Vista is a misnomer. In fact WebCT surveys are
just "anonymous online tests for which there are no grades assigned".
There are some work arounds you can employ like checking all the boxes
for all possible right answers, but even when you do this, you'll find
that you have to use some additional workarounds to get at the data. To
see more details about this go to Instead of using WebCT Vista to create your survey, I would recommend a couple of other tools: Zoomerang - on-line survey tool which allows you to create free
on- Formsite - on-line survey tool similar to Zoomerang with different
Super survey Advanced Survey Survey Share Web site for designing and conducting online surveys
You can just create a link through the URL tool to the your survey. Are there any e-mail or email forwarding issues? It is possible to send an email to multiple (or all) students. Once
you are logged in to WebCT, click on ‘Mail? Create Message->Browse
for Recipients and select those students you wish to email. Clicking the
box to the left of “To” will select all students but only
on that page. Therefore, you may wish to change the number of addresses
visible at one time. In the pop-up window, click on “Edit Paging”
and increase the number of records per page from the default of 10 to
an amount greater than the number of students in your class. Students will encounter issues responding to forwarded e-mails. In WebCT, students can set it up so that some problems if they don’t use their johndoe@umb.edu addresses and forward their WebCT email to their home e-mail account. Although they can get their forwarded emails from their home account, they can only respond to an email from within WebCT.
You can use the WEBDAV method to achieve this. For more details, see the documents posted within the Job Aids folder in the UMB LMS Faculty Yahoo! Group. There are separate documents for Windows and Macintosh operating systems. How do you create groups and
grade them? How do I add a URL to a Learning
Module? The best way to do this is to export your Grade book to Excel. You can hide the columns and rows you don't want to view or print from within Excel. To export your grade book, select the Grade book in Teach view, and then scroll down to see the "Export to Spreadsheet" button. Select the options “All Columns” and “Comma Delimited”. Clicking on Export will generate a .csv (comma delimited) file which you can then save as a spreadsheet file. How does the “Selective Release Criteria” function? Selective Release can be used with respect to students(s), grades, date/time, groups, and individual members. There is a separate handout addressing this issue in ‘Job Aids’ which define the procedures of how to use “Selective Release Criteria” in the listserv. To access this, login to www.groups.yahoo.com and go to umbfaculty. On the left, click on Files and you will see a folder called Job Aids. What is the best way to transfer file from Prometheus to my WebCt course? See the Faculty Prometheus Resourses “Converting Your Course to Webct Vista “links at http://www.lms.umb.edu/prometheus_fac_guides.htm. What is the best way to create links to e-reserves/online articles? You can create links directly to e-reserves material the same way you do with online journal articles. Placing a link to your eReserves page in WebCT allows students to bypass the course password. WebCT is considered a 'trusted' site, since students already need a password to access their classes. More details about this can be found at http://www.lib.umb.edu/reserves/linking.html What is the best way to copy and paste text into WebCT? You can toggle between two applications (ex: Word and WebCt) and highlight
text you want to copy. Go to "Edit" and select "Copy".
Toggle over to WebCt and click on "Edit" and select "Paste".
You can also use keyboard functions "Ctrl+C" to Copy and "Ctrl+V"
for Paste
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