Last update: 7 August 2008; RKH
See number 3 in the list below for the main online supplemental course options that we offer from this office.
Faculty who wish to provide course or research materials to students or colleagues via web pages need a web server, that is, a computer with lots of storage space, available through some URL such as http://www.uwyo.edu/path-to-my-class-materials (because it's connected to the network with an IP address such as 129.72.100.114, which users shouldn't need to know). A website is a set of pages written in HTML (plain text with tags), but often created with some authoring tool that presents a user-friendly graphical interface.
Note that a file server might meet your needs instead. You can store documents on the file servers "arthur" and "warehouse" and make them accessible by students and colleagues who are logged into the UWYO network on campus. Ask your user consultant, and see the AskIT "How-To" page on storage, http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/askit/howto/default.htm#store, for details. These are not websites, however; they are not available over the web. The alternatives listed below are web services using the HTTP protocol; hence, they are available over the web to anyone, anywhere, using a browser.
UW Web Server Options
For an academic site, such as for a class, ask your department's user consultant for space on uwacadweb.uwyo.edu. Listed first because it's obvious, this is NOT the best choice; the online course platforms described in option 3 are recommended.
>>>>
Your department probably has its own server space, however...
You have your own faculty web page on your department's website, right? Often, that will suit your needs, but such sites are naturally subject to department policy and access may be controlled.
>>>> So where CAN you put a website?
You can request an online course at the Ellbogen CTL website (go to "Online
Courses" and then "Faculty Resources"). This option will use our general online education platforms, WebCT
and eCompanion, to make materials, discussions, quizzes, and grades available to
your students. Course Studio offers similar tools for materials
distribution and communication, but no quizzes or grading. (WyoSakai is in
testing.) All pages are private to the course, not accessible to the world at large, which
may make a difference for the educational "Fair Use" provision of copyright law.
For more information on Course Studio, see the workshop notes "How
To... Set Up Course Studio." To compare all these options, see
the workshop notes "Introduction
to Online Course Platforms." And see the workshop
schedule, on the "Technology Workshops" link.
All UW students, faculty, and staff have
WyoWeb accounts. You can request creation of a group, with membership and
options determined by you, which functions as a shared website. A group is
similar to a course, with file space and communication tools, so if the group
consists of your students in a class, this is redundant to the Course Studio
shell described in option 3 above; just use it. Membership
is limited to UWYO domain account holders, however, so external research
partners or guest instructors cannot join in.
For mathematical work, with interactive capability, you can use WebWork (webwork.rochester.edu), to set up homework exercises that your students can answer online, with answer evaluation far more sophisticated than an online course. Contact us to set up a class.
>>>> What if you just want everybody to see the materials easily and
you don't
need a private website?
You can obtain a website that allows simple upload and display of cross-referenced or linked materials, like coursework and e-portfolios, through the Carnegie Foundation at www.cfkeep.org, with guided procedures, simple for both instructors and students. Explore other options at "How can my students develop their own e-portfolios for my class?"
>>>> What if neither
students nor instructors need authoring privileges-- you
just want to distrubute readings?
The UW Library provides, not full-blown websites with URLs, but PDF versions of documents to students with UWYO domain accounts, grouped by instructor. See http://www-lib.uwyo.edu/services/reserverq.htm, or click on "Library services" at their home page.
>>>> What if colleagues
outside the University of Wyoming need authoring privileges?
This is a difficult issue, under investigation. At the moment, a WebCT course will work for you, because we allow external collaborators to create accounts on our WebCT system (with permission from us) and gain designer privileges to course shells. No other alternative described here gives write access (editing privileges) to non-UW personnel. See us for more information.
You can try a free wiki site or some variation offered by a company or organization. A wiki is a set of web pages open to authoring by anyone, or by a restricted set of users. UW provides no such server, but some organizations do, some for free, at least on a trial basis. Go to http://www.wikimatrix.org to find a comparison of the facilities available through popular providers such as JotSpot, Twiki, and Confluence. Another free service, Writeboard (at http://www.writeboard.com) offers shared editing space with version control and comparison, but text-only export and no file import save copy-and-paste in the edit windows. We would be interested to hear about your experiences with these services.
>>>> Password Protection: How can I require password authentication on course web pages?
Password protection of web pages requires script execution, and whether such processing is allowed, and in what form, depends on the web page server. If allowed on that server, you can write and call the script in plain old HTML with Javascript, or probably with some kind of helpful interface in standard web authoring tools like Nvu or Dreamweaver.
If your page is on the academic server (scenario 1 above), your IT user consultant can help you. Or consider an online courses, using either eCompanion or WebCT, or Course Studio (option 3 above), which you already have in the WyoWeb portal, which provides exactly what you want-- a password-protected repository of course materials.
>>>> And where can I go if I need help?
This office, Instructional Computing Services, would be happy to help you try out and use these facilities, in person, here in the lab. See also the computer training available to faculty at http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/InfoTech/Training, and also other entries in the ICS Faculty Help page.
For student authoring, please see the questions "How can my students develop their own e-portfolios for my class?" and "How can my students set up their own class web pages?"
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Instructional Computing Services
Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning