MANAGE COURSE

To access any of the Manage Course options, click in the upper left corner of your WebCT course home page. A Basic Control Panel screen appears. Click [Manage Course]. On the Manage Course screen, the following headings are available to you:

  • Manage Students (WebCT Help page) - From this screen, you may manage student records, including adding and deleting students from your course.
  • Manage Teaching Assistants - From this screen, you may add a teaching assistant or delete a teaching assistant from your course or manage teaching assistant records.
  • Track Students - From this screen, you may monitor the frequency with which students access your course and read and post discussion messages.
  • Track Pages - From this screen, you may view the number and duration of student visits to your WebCT course pages.
  • Backup Course - From this screen, you may create a backup copy of your course to be downloaded to your computer.
  • Share Designer Access - From this screen, you may allow another person designer access to your course.
  • Reset Course - From this screen, you may reset tools in your course such as discussion postings, email messages, etc.
  • Import Content - From this screen, you may import IMS content packages (quiz and content module information) to your WebCT course.
  • Export Content - From this screen, you may export IMS content packages (quiz and content module information) from your WebCT course.

Manage Teaching Assistants

Anyone who has a NetID account may be designated as a teaching assistant. This usually includes any faculty member or student at UNR. If the person you wish to designate as a teaching assistant does not have a NetID account, he/she must contact the computer help desk (784-4320 or help@unr.edu) to activate an account.

Teaching assistants do not have full designer access to a course. Teaching assistants may:

  • Access any tools or pages and course content in your course.
  • Access the Manage Students page.
  • Grade quizzes and assignments.
  • Change grades for quizzes/assignments.
  • Send mail messages and post discussion messages and topics.
  • Add/modify content in the student presentation areas.

Add a Teaching Assistant

To add a teaching assistant or view records of your teaching assistants, from the Manage Course page, click on Manage Teaching Assistants. The Manage Teaching Assistants screen appears with three drop-down lists: Options: Records, Options: Advanced, and Organize.

Under Options: Records you may add a teaching assistant by clicking on Add/Import teaching assistants and clicking [Go].

You will be prompted to enter the WebCT ID (i.e. NetID) for your teaching assistants. Enter the ID and click [Add]. Under the Options: Records drop-down list you may also view some or all of your teaching assistants on the Teaching Assistants screen. This may be useful if you have a long list of teaching assistants and wish to view only a portion of the list. You may also search or download your teaching assistants' records as a text file.

Delete Teaching Assistants

To delete teaching assistants from your page, click on the name of the teaching assistant on the Teaching Assistants screen. The Edit Record page appears. Click [Delete].

Under Options: Advanced you may adjust the access and status of your teaching assistants. If a teaching assistant is denied access, he/she will not be able to access the course, even though the course will still appear on his/her myWebCT page. This may be helpful if you wish to temporarily deny access to your teaching assistants while you make changes to the course. If a teaching assistant is inactive, the course will not appear on his/her myWebCT page.

You may also delete records of teaching assistants from the Options: Advanced drop-down list.

Under the Organize drop-down list, under Change settings, you may adjust the number of teaching assistant records that appear for every page, the download options for teaching assistant records, and whether inactive and denied access teaching assistants are displayed on your records.

Under Manage columns you may adjust the columns of your records. Under Show update log you may view a log of updates.

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Track Students

The Track Students screen displays when students first accessed your course, when students most recently accessed your course, and the number of hits. Hits indicates the number of times the student accessed a Homepage, tool page, and content module page in your course. The Articles column also displays the number of Discussion messages that the student has read and posted.

You may click on student's name for more detailed statistics.

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Track Pages

The Track Pages screen displays how your students are progressing through your course material. The screen displays the number of Hits, or visits, to your content pages, plus the total Time for all hits, the average time of each hit (Time/Hit), and the number of discussion Posts made from the page. Time/Hit is only calculated for hits lasting 30 minutes or less, assuming that if more than 30 minutes elapse, the student is no longer viewing the page. A Totals section displays the total hits and average duration for all content pages:

Below you may find the detailed information for each page:

The Discussion Posts from the content page will only be recorded if you provide a link on the content page's Action Menu to the Discussion tool. To add any links or change page settings, click on the name of the content page. The Content Page Settings screen for that page will appear, allowing you to change any page settings and links as desired.

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Backup Course

You may create a backup copy of your course which will be stored on the WebCT server and may be saved on your personal computer. The backup may be created during any stage of development and accessed and restored as your current course. A saved backup may be helpful if you wish to revert to an earlier version of your course.

To create a backup, click on Backup Course to bring up the Backup Courses page. Click [Create backup] on the right side of the screen.

After the backup course is complete, it will appear on the Backup Courses page. To download the course to your computer, select the course, click [Download] and follow the instructions on your browser's download window. If the course has already been downloaded to your computer, you may click [Upload backup] to upload the backup to your WebCT course. The Upload Backup File screen appears. Use the [Browse] button to locate the file if needed. Click [Upload] to upload the file.

If you wish to restore a backup file as your current course, select the course and click either or . Depending on the button, your list of students will either remain intact or be replaced with those in your backup course. *Note: regardles of whether you keep or replace the student list, certain areas of your course will always be overwritten when you restore a backup course, including:

  • Student records
  • Quiz and Assignment grades, Discussions topics, Mail messages
  • Uploaded content files

We also recommend that before restoring your course, create a backup of your current course for safe-keeping.

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Share Designer Access

You may allow any student or faculty member equivalent designer access so he/she may log in to your course and have the same designer privileges as you. To give another person equivalent designer access to your course, he/she needs to have a NetID account. If the person you wish to give designer access does not have a NetID account, he/she must contact the computer help desk (784-4320 or help@unr.edu) to activate an account.

To give someone designer access, click on Share Designer Access. The Designers with Shared Access screen appears. Any current designers of your course will be listed on this screen. You may add designers under Options on the right side of the screen.

Enter the NetID of the person in the textbox and click [Add]. The person's name will appear on the Designers with Shared Access screen. You may also delete designers by selecting their names and clicking [Delete] or delete all added designers by clicking [Delete all].

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Reset Course

Clicking on Reset Course brings up the the Course Reset screen, which lists every resettable course tool and database.

You may select any number of tools and click [Reset]. Resetting any tool will delete the user information stored for that tool.

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Import Content / Export Content

From either Import Content or Export Content, you may import or export content and assessment information from within WebCT. For example, you may export your quizes and quiz database questions or content modules to your My files, where they may be downloaded to your computer. The files may then be uploaded to yours or other's WebCT courses. This may be helpful if you wish to share your quiz or content modules with other WebCT courses.

To Export content:

  • Click Export Content. The Export Content screen appears.

  • Select the Content and a Destination. *Note: if you plan to download the content, select My-Files as your destination.
  • Click [Continue]. The files have been exported to your destination.

Content must be uploaded to your course before it can be imported. To Import content:

  • Click Import Content. The Import Content screen appears.

  • Enter a title for your imported content and the name in the Filename text box, using the [Browse] button if necessary.
  • Select the package type--usually WebCT if the content is from another WebCT course.
  • Select the location and settings of links for the imported content and click [Import].

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