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UWyo Instructional Computing, Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning

Online Course Minima

Last update: 13 October 2009; RKH

For instructors of any online course in any platform:

Course Studio (the default course site in WyoWeb) carries severe limitations that sometimes surprise instructors.  Please make sure that you understand the platform before you use it, by reviewing the documentation on "Faculty Resources."  Access to any of the platforms through WyoWeb is subject to the inactivity time limit imposed by that portal software.

The eCompanion and WyoSakai course shells provided by UW Instructional Computing Services are meant as supplements to on-campus courses.  We support access through the UW Student Lab Systems.  Reliance on other configurations such as connections from home or a commercial ISP may lead to problems that we cannot resolve, and students should be so informed.

Faculty should maintain their course materials on their own systems, outside their eCompanion or WyoSakai course shells, including all syllabi, notes, images, and exams, and student records.  The student roster should be downloaded for permanent archival at the end of the class.  WyoSakai courses will be routinely deleted at the end of each semester, and should be backed up regularly by the instructor onto his or her own file storage, both in compressed course shell form, and as separate materials. (But a future course can be based on a former one.)  Neither eCompanion nor WyoSakai is intended to be an archiving facility.

In eCompanion, courses are reached through the "Academics" tab and the term list.  Materials are uploaded through an edit window or the File Manager and connected to content items associated with units.  The "Author" interface makes these facilities accessible.  In WyoSakai, much of the action is in the Resources tool, which can be reached by a WebDAV interface, and by links to individual folders and files.  If you don't understand these references, attend an online course workshop or tutorial at Instructional Computing Services before you start to rely on your course website.

Make sure your students know what to do when you refer them to the eCompanion or WyoSakai component of the class.  They should start by reading the "Student Info" web page at http://www.uwyo.edu/ctl/Online_courses/student.htm; it contains sections of instructions for each of the platforms. Please have students try out the system early in the term by performing a low-stakes task such as reading or downloading some materials, taking a self-test, or contributing to a discussion.  (Because it's easiest to understand the procedure through a demonstration, the Coordinator of Instructional Computing will come to your class, on request, to hold one for your students.)

We recommend that you and your students avoid the new Microsoft Office 2007 document formats with file extensions ".docx," ".xlsx," ".pptx," and so forth, but rather stick to Rich Text Format (".rtf") or to the older versions of Offce for better interoperability.

For help with online course problems (your own or your students'), please call us or e-mail "ectltech@uwyo.edu," identifying the platform, course dept/number/section, and other details as available, such as operating system, browser, and version.

For eCompanion Instructors:

1. Students are enrolled in the eCompanion course automatically, and drops and adds are reflected in the "Course Enrollment" list within a couple of days under routine circumstances.  Because the current procedure is cumbersome and fraught with error, a course, and its students, may take several days to appear.  Student access to eCompanion course sites opens one week before the semester starts.

2. An eCompanion course will work only with recent versions of Internet Explorer or Netscape, and Javascript must be enabled.  Browser settings must allow cookies from various eCollege sites.  Please see the Troubleshooting section of the "Instructions" document.

3. Instructors who wish to have guest instructors or teaching assistants given privileges in their courses, or dummy students for testing purposes, must ask Instructional Computing Services.  For any of these requests, we need the person's name, the role that she will play, and either (1) her extant eCollege/eCompanion account user ID; or (2) her W-number (if student) and UW e-mail address so that we can create an eCollege eCompanion account and notify her; or (3) "eCollege status unknown," in which case we will search for an extant account, which may take some time.  Your request containing these data, along with the term and course dept/number, should be sent to "ectltech@uwyo.edu."

4. Schedule your exam in the course before you announce it to your class, as you may find it tricky; you can only specify dates, and, optionally, a time span to apply to each date.

5. In the Gradebook, when entering scores, "Save Changes" before you click "Share with Students."  Do not use a column in the Item Summary view to enter grades; they will not show to the students.  Use the column in the item's unit.

For WyoSakai Instructors:

1. Tools preserve state.  When you enter a tool, you will see the same screen, at the same level in the option hierarchy, as when you last left that tool.  To enter at the familiar top level, click the little blue "refresh" arrow.

2. In an exam, setting the feedback option to "Immediate" means that students will receive feedback right after they answer the question, which usually means during the exam.

3. Students join your course as "Guests."  You must change their status settings to "Student" (Site Editor, top level).

4. You can put shared materials in your "My Workspace" site and link to them from each course's Resources.  (In effect, this gives you a personal web and file server, private until you decide otherwise.)  When an issue arises with student access to Resources or other materials, make sure the materials are published and, if on a different worksite, that they are accessible to all, not just "entire worksite."

5. The DropBox is a file exchange site between instructor and individual student.  To associate grades with work, use the Assignments tool instead.

For more faculty help, see Instructions for Standard Teaching Tasks in eCompanion or Instructions for Standard Teaching Tasks in WyoSakai, or come to Instructional Computing Services at Coe 510B, or call 766-5499.