Back to Online Supplemental Homepage (and Login links)

Back to Faculty Resources

UW Homepage 

Center for Teaching and Learning

For common problems and their solutions, see  Online Course Connection Help

For more information contact Instructional Computing Services:

Engineering 1090

307-766-5499

ectltech@uwyo.edu 

Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning, University of Wyoming

Instructions for Standard Teaching Tasks in eCompanion

 

When you use your Login ID to enter eCompanion, you should see all your courses listed on your eCompanion homepage. Click on any of the course names to go to that course's homepage.

 

When you submit a course request for an eCompanion shell, we set up an account for you if necessary and send you the User ID, for use with the current and future course shells.  ECompanion accounts are set up automatically for students who enroll, or have enrolled, in a class with an eCompanion component obtained by the instructor.

 

The help button (question mark) opens the Help files and allows you can search through a list of subjects to find answers to questions about using eCompanion.

 

The new version of the eCollege/eCompanion course software, called ".NExT," will be coming in 2009.  For updates, see your e-mail (the news is sent to the "uw-ecompanion" mailing list) or the message archive.

 

Instructor as Author

In eCompanion terms, the instructor is a course author. You can switch between “Author” view and “Course” view (what the students see) with the tabs at the top left of the page.The left bar shows the course units you create, which are subdivisions corresponding to weeks, topics, lessons, types of work, or other groupings.

 

Across the top are course tool tabs.The Course Home tab holds several administrative functions, such as editing of general information, the Gradebook, and Document Sharing.

 

Backing up Materials

Please maintain your own course materials on your own computer, and export your gradebook regularly.  The eCompanion course shell is not an archive, but rather a vehicle for delivery of course materials.

 

Teaching Assistants and Other Instructors

In eCompanion, a Teaching Assistant has the same privileges as the instructor (but the TA name does not appear on the title bar).  A "Guest Instructor" role is also offered; it does not carry authoring privileges.  See the Online Course Minima to arrange for these options.

I.  Providing Materials

Content of various kinds is entered through a WYSIWYG edit window similar to that in a word processor. You can type directly, or cut and paste from a document of your own.

For a course Syllabus, use the “Syllabus” item on the Course Home page.  Choose sections, and paste text into the windows.

To Upload Written Matter

You can provide written material in the form of plain text, MS Word, HTML, PowerPoint, PDF, and other document types. This task has three parts: (1) creating a content item; (2) Adding the content item to a unit; (3) adding content to the content item.  A content item can appear in more than one unit.

But first, since content items belong in course units, use “Add Unit” if necessary, entering a title and introductory matter for the students to read.

And MS Office 2007 formats are now supported:

From eCollege: "The eCollege content item document converter, that converts Microsoft documents to HTML, has been upgraded to allow support for docx, pptx, and xlsx file types. Course content creators who are using MS Office 2007 may now upload their documents directly into a course content item without first having to backward convert the document to 2003. The process of uploading a document into a content item has not changed. After the content item has been created and the file has been uploaded, the system will automatically convert the document to HTML."

We continue to recommend that you instruct your students to save and submit their documents in the simplest format possible, such as RTF or plain text, or at least, Office 2003, for broader access and better interoperability.

To Add a New Unit

Course Home (with Author tab) --->
 Add New Unit --->
Enter Title, and check “Use title as navigation bar text” --->
           Add introductory text as you wish--->
            Save Changes

 Now open the unit, by clicking on its bar, to add content items.

To delete a unit, just click the "Delete" link on the right of the unit page.  And see Section V below.

To Add a New Content Item

In the unit where you want the item, under Author view:

Add Content Item (top part of screen)--->

  1. Name it
  2. Choose type from drop down menu:  text (for text entered through the edit window, or for plain text or HTML uploaded), exam, multimedia (such as video or audio—use sparingly), discussion, or Microsoft Office application
  3. Click on "Create." 
    If you chose a MS Office format, you will be prompted to upload the file and wait for conversion to HTML.  Avoid special characters and spaces in the file and folder names.

Add Content Item to Unit (middle part of screen)--->

  1. Select the item from list by highlighting it
  2. Add to Unit

Now put something in it!
Choose the new content item from the list (left side) under the unit bar, and switch to Author view to edit--->

What happens next depends on the type you chose for the content item.
For example, for a "text/mutimedia" item:

  1. Cut and paste or type in content window,
    OR choose the link and make it a reference to a file you have already uploaded.
  2. Save Changes

A Note from ECollege on Vista and the Visual Editor

"For users updating content (professors and course developers)- The visual editor on IE7/Vista is a plain text editor.  When a user goes into the visual editor to edit content, they will see the current content wrapped in html code.  However, html knowledge is not required to edit or add content.  The plain text editor does not allow for bold, italics, color changes, or other formatting without the use of .html.  The reason for this is that the current visual editor has an activex control that is not cross browser or cross platform- so it does not work with .net.  The new visual editor coming out in .NExT is a .net visual editor, so there will no longer be issues when .NExT comes out.  In the meantime, we can provide a suggestion for a visual editor outside of our platform- http://www.nvu.com/index.php - This is a visual editor you could use and copy the HTML to our courses."
[Nvu is described on the ICSL Faculty Help pages.]

To delete a content item, use the "Add Content Item" tab and the third pane.  See Section V below.

More on the File Manager

The eCompanion File Manager, found under the Course Home tab on the right, gives you access to the directory structure for your files on the eCompanion server (not your own local computer). You can upload, download, rename and delete, create folders, and so forth; see the two items above, on uploading files and modifying the Introduction.html file. These operations are independent of your course web pages, but the files in these folders can be associated with course pages or tools.

Troubleshooting File Uploads

1.  From the eCollege Help Desk:  These Microsoft documents will not convert for eCompanion use:

  • A file that cannot be saved as a webpage on your local machine
  • A documents are in Read-Only mode
  • A document with Auto-SpellCheck
  • Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, and Power Points that contain macros
  • Power Point presentations with animation

2.  Because the full path is used in the file name field, and folder (as well as file) names may be rejected if they contain special characters, if an upload operation yields an error such as "Invalid character," move and rename the file, and try again.

3.  As stated above in "To Upload Written Matter," use, and ask your students to use, the simplest document format possible.

To Add a Short Announcement to the Homepage

On the course homepage, with "Author" selected, go to the options at the bottom: at course home in the author section; edit course home; add new announcement  

II.  Student Records and Grades

To See your Students:
Course Admin (with Author tab) --->
    Course Enrollment

The enrollment will be updated automatically each night from UW Registration data. Note: The gradebook in eCompanion is under a separate tab in "Author" view.

To See the Gradebook:
Gradebook (with Author tab), separate from Course Enrollment list.
No gradebook grid will appear until you have defined gradable items using "Setup."

  In the Gradebook, note the two main tabs, "View" and "Setup."  Under "View Gradebook," you will see current percentages for each student (the "Grades to Date" view) and a drop-down list of other views.  Like other aspects of an eCompanion course, the Gradebook is organized by units.  Grades for only the unit shown in the drop-down box will appear, unless you have chose "Item Summary" or "Show All."

General Gradebook Setup

See above for "Views."  Under "Setup Gradebook," there are five tabs which can be used independently.  On entry, you're in "Current Setup."  The middle three form the main sequence of setup tasks:

  1. Add New Items...
    To make an item appear in the Gradebook
  2. Select Gradable Items....
    To make an item count toward the student's grade
  3. Assign Points/Weights....
    To define the value of the item in the student's grade (points possible and weight)

To Add an Assignment or new Graded Item:
Choose Custom Item in the "Add New Items" step and enter a name for it, or check one of the Content Items in your course, which are all listed.  In the next step, "Select Gradable Items," choose the unit or units in which the item will appear.  In the next step, "Assign Points/Weights," type in a number for the point value of the item.  Optionally, turn on weighting under the last tab, "Preferences," and enter a weight for the item as well as the point value.

For more procedures and details, see the document "Grading in eCompanion."

Fictional Students for Practice:
You cannot add students to your course, and even real students have no access to your eCompanion course until the first day of the term (which we have administratively defined as two weeks prior to the first day of class).  If you would like to have some phony students, for such purposes as taking quizzes and generating grades, please call Instructional Computing Services (766-5499); we can enroll them.

Dividing Students into Sections:
Like other course platforms, eCompanion makes no allowance for different sections (distinct student rosters) of the same course, where "same" means that they share materials and exams.  You must choose between a single course shell, with all students in the same pool, and different course shells by sections, where identical materials must be placed in each.  Lab sections with no credit hours may be requested as separate course shells.

III.  Exams

To Set Up an Exam:

Add an Exam content item to a unit, then click on it and make sure you are in “Author” mode.
Edit the Exam info, then switch to the "Exam Builder" (tab) to enter questions.  See below. 

After you add questions (see below), check the settings under the "Toolbox" tab.  You may want to select "Automatically display objective score..." so that your students can see the results in their own individual Gradebook, and you may want to deselect "Display Auto-Grading Quick Summary..." which shows the number of correct and incorrect answers grouped by type of question (true/false, multiple choice, and so forth)---not particularly revealing.

The points achieved on an exam are determined from the points assigned to questions, but you must still enter the grades manually.  (See below.)

To Write Questions for Exams

The eCompanion platform provides no facility for uploading or downloading exam questions from text or other types of files.  You can write the questions with some external word processor or editor and copy-and-paste them into the eCompanion exam question windows.  In the Instructional Computing Services Lab, however, we have a third-party product called Respondus, which will read your text or word processor document containing exam questions in a standard format, and then upload them to your eCompanion course.  Please come to us for help with Respondus.  No matter how you set up your questions, keep them on your own computer storage for your own records.

Questions must be associated with an existing exam tool, so add an exam content item to hold new questions. Questions may be transferred from there to other exams as needed.  Click on the exam content item, then choose the Exam Builder tab.

Choose question type from drop-down list, then “Add."  Types available include true/false, multiple choice, matching, and so forth. Click on "Help" in an exam content item to find the full list under "Adding Questions."  Note that "Multiple Answer" is actually a set of true/false responses, each of which will be assessed, not a set of answers any one of which will be considered correct by itself.

Enter text of question, and answers as appropriate, marking the correct one.  Some question types, such as "essay," will require manual grading.

To Generate a Random Questions from a Base Set

Choose "Question Pool" as the type, then specify the number of questions that will be drawn from the pool for this exam.  You will then be adding the next questions to the pool.  See the Help file for more details, under "Question Pool."

To Edit or Delete Questions

Click the arrow to expand the question and reveal the "Edit" and "Delete" links.

To Administer an Exam:

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 (but not "Dec 6 at noon through Dec 8 at 4:00 p.m." for example).  Your students will log in to your course, click on the Exam item, and then answer the questions on their computers, clicking "Save Answers" when they are satisfied with what they have written, and then "Submit for Grade" when done.  Multiple choice and true/false questions will be scored automatically; paragraph and essay questions will be held for you to score.

After you have added the exam as a gradeable item (see above), when you look in the Gradebook, you will see an asterisk, meaning that the exam has been opened, or dash, meaning that the exam has not yet been opened, under the exam entry for a student.  To enter the grade for a completed exam, click on the asterisk, grade any remaining questions (see below), and transfer "Points Received" to the grade field.

You can grant an individual extra time after he starts the exam by clicking on his entry for that exam item in the Gradebook, and filling out the "Grant ___ additional minutes" option.  Furthermore, the software now includes an Exam Multiplier option, which sets, for a given student, a time multiplication factor for all of that student's exams.  For example, student Smith might be given an Exam Multiplier factor of 1.5, meaning that Smith will get 50% more time on every exam.  This alteration cannot be made for specific classes, or specific exams, but only in the Student Profile, and it must be done by us (Instructional Computing Services staff), on request.

To Grade an Exam:

Enter the Gradebook, go to "View Gradebook," select the unit and the exam name, then click on each student's name.  You will see the answers and have an opportunity to grade unscored questions. "Points achieved" is shown, and you can override this value with an actual exam score under "Assign points to gradable items" in Gradebook, Setup.  For example, an exam with a total point value of 53 can be given 20 points in the Gradebook, and can be weighted (as of Dec. 2005) to your specification.

And please see the document "Grading in eCompanion."  There are other quirks of which you need to be aware.

To See or Save All Student Answers:

In View Gradebook, on the exam entry, click the Exam Statistics link, then the "Question-Level Statistics" tab.  For all the answers to a single question, follow the "View Student Responses" link.  The "Download" link will export an HTML file to your system, which you can open with MS Excel for a reasonable result.  Because the responses are an HTML table, it would work even better to save that student responses page as a web page, and then open it with a web-authoring tool like Netscape Composer or Nvu, to format the table nicely before conversion a text list, spreadsheet, or whatever form you want.

Self-Assessment Tests and Surveys

For a self-test or survey that will not affect the student grade, create an exam as usual (with points for each question. or not, as desired) and assign the exam zero actual points OR "Exclude from the course grade" (as of Dec. 2005).  Note that if you want the exam to appear in the student records or you want students to have access to the correct answers and Instructor Feedback fields, you must add it to the Gradebook.

IV.  Discussions and Collaborative Work

Discussion

Create (and add to a unit) a content item of the type "Threaded Discussion."  Then switch to that content item, in "Author" view, to add topics, which your students will see in a drop-down list on the discussion page.  Selection of a topic will reveal your initial question or posting, with a "Respond" link.  Contributions are indented under the active previous post.  As soon as students have posted, "Author" view will allow you to select and save or print the contributions.

In the content item Toolbar, you can lock a topic (precluding further posting) and allow students to edit their own posts (This is off by default, meaning that as soon as they hit the "Post" button, their words are permanent).

To Prevent Further Contributions

After some active period, you can block further posting but leave the discussion open for reading:  In the Discusion content item Toolbox, click "Edit Schedule."  Select "Use Dates Below" and set the ending date, but do not check "Restrict" (which blocks all acces).  Save the changes, then back in the Toolbox, check "Lock Topics."  The Discussion can be viewed, but no "Respond" link will appear.

Note that, under the "Course Admin" tab, you can control certain properties--

  • Make threads read-only after a certain date.  (Preferences)
  • Allow students to edit their posts.  (Preferences)
  • Define subsets of students for content item viewing, discussions, and other purposes.  (Group Management)

Wikis, for collaborative editing

The eCollege/eCompanion software does not provide a wiki tool.  Here are some suggestions from eCollege:

Web 2.0 tools (wikis, blogs and social networking sites) are becoming increasingly more popular with students and are a great way to encourage online collaboration.  Wikis, in particular, enable students to contribute to and modify content, which is then searchable by other users looking for shared knowledge.  Why not insert one in your course?  Simply follow the instructions below, and your students will be collaborating in no time.

Choose a site you’d like to use.  For example, http://www.wetpaint.com — a free wiki Web site which is quick and easy to use.

  1. Go to your course and click on the Author tab.
  2. Click on the item you wish to edit.
  3. Switch to HTML mode for authoring.
  4. Delete any HTML code which currently exists and paste the following:
    <BR COMMENT="Required Element">
    <SCRIPT language=JavaScript>
    document.location.href="http://www.wetpaint.com";
    </SCRIPT>
  5. Click Save. That’s it!  Your students will then see the Wiki when they click on the content item. 

Things to keep in mind:

  • Even though eCollege is a private, password protected site, the wiki may be public. You may want to include instructional text for your students, reminding them that anything they post may be viewed by others.
  • Your students may need to join or register for one of these sites. If that’s the case, make sure to direct them to the registration URL, so they are able to create an account. 
  • The external Web site you’ve directed your students to may go down, even if eCollege is up and running. If this happens, your student would see a “Page Not Found” error when they click on that content item. The student would be able to see other content items in the course without issue. 

Adding the HTML code above works with any Web site.  Simply replace the Wet Paint URL with another. 

V.  Correction and Deletion

To Delete a Content Item (text, Discussion, Exam, etc.):

To delete a Content Item from its unit, under the "Toolbox" tab, click the "Delete" link.

To delete an item entirely, look at the Edit/Delete section, the third one down in "Add Content Item."  If the item has been deleted from all units, a "Delete" link will appear next to it, and it can be removed that way.  If not, the item still has to be deleted from units, as above.

To delete a unit, just click the "Delete" link on the right of the unit page.

VI.  Troubleshooting and Tips

Some of these tips are from eCollege support messages.  See also "Troubleshooting File Uploads," above.

General Browser Support:  "Our goal at eCollege is to support the market leaders that when combined reflect over 90% of our user base...  At this time eCollege will not be adding support for Chrome."  Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari are supported by eCollege.

General System Notes:  "eCollege supports both Windows XP and Vista on Teaching Solutions 4.0 and .NExT.  At this time, eCollege continues to recommend XP as the main OS of choice for instructors when working on Teaching Solutions 4.0" (the version currently in use at UW).  Users on MS Vista will see a text box rather than the full visual editor.  We will upgrade to the new ".NExT" version of eCollege/eCompanion in 2009.  See the faculty e-mail messages about .NExT.

If you are using Safari or Firefox on your Mac and seeing only a blank page or a redirect error in the Gradebook, unblock cookies when accessing the Gradebook.

Safari

  1. Click the Safari menu at the top of your screen and select Preferences.
  2. Click the Security icon
  3. In the Accept Cookies selection box, chose "Always."
  4. Close the Safari Preferences box to return to the Safari window.

Firefox

  1. Click the Firefox menu at the top of your screen then click on Preferences.
  2. On the Preferences box that appears, click the Privacy button on the left and scroll to the bottom.
  3. Click the small arrow that points at Cookies.
  4. Make sure the checkmark is set next to Allow Sites to Set Cookies.
  5. Also, make sure that the checkbox next to "for the originating website only" is not checked.
  6. Click the OK button at the bottom of the Preferences box. 

If you have trouble with browser access to your course website:

Disable your popup blocker. From eCollege:  "Popup blockers can cause many problems within the course system. Popup blockers can come from browser toolbars such as the Google Toolbar, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, or others. They can also be built into your firewall or internet security programs such as Norton Internet Security, McAfee, or others. The easiest way to bypass a popup blocker is to try holding the CTRL or CTRL & ALT buttons on your keyboard when clicking on a link. You may need to disable the popup blocker within the necessary program as well."

With Internet Explorer 7, reset the browser security to Medium or lower.  And you may need to turn off the file download blocker when prompted through the bar at the top of the window.

If the Calendar shows an authentication error:

Add calendar.ecollege.com to your browser's list of allowed sites, or enable cookies.

If uploaded MS Word documents don't look right:

  1. Download (if needed) and open the file in Word.
  2. Save as... Web page, and close Word.
  3. Right-click on the icon for the new HTML version of the file and "Open With... Microsoft Office Word" from the drop-down menu.
  4. Edit the document as needed.
  5. "Save As... Word Document", and close Word.
  6. Upload your new version of the file to replace the one that is not displaying properly.

If exam questions show odd line breaks in the questions or answers:

In the editing screen for the exam question, switch to HTML view (the upper right of the toolbar shows the two views, HTML and Design, as buttons).  Also, see below for another method of detecting and removing extraneous HTML tags that result from pasting from word-processed documents.

  1. Find the HTML paragraph tags, starting with "<P" and ending with the closing angle bracket ">". 
  2. Remove those tags-- all characters between the angle brackets, and also the closing tag, "</P>", while leaving your text in the middle.

If exam questions copied and pasted from Word show extra space between the questions and answers:

The reason for the extra spaces is because Word incorporates extra HTML into the code, so when the text is copied and pasted into the Visual Editor the extra HTML is embedded as well.  To rectify:

  1. Copy and paste the test questions into Notepad. 
  2. Save the file as a "Plain text" (.txt) file, to strip the extra code from the document.
  3. Copy and paste directly from the text file into the Visual Editor.   The text will be copied without the additional HTML code.

If Your Students Are Not Able To See Their Grades:

  1. In exams, the most common reason students can't see their grade is due to a Gradebook Review Date that is set in the future.
  2. The "Show Grade to Student" box may be unchecked.
    (Located in the Gradebook for exams, threaded discussions postings and Dropbox submissions)
  3. Specifically in an auto-graded exam, there could be a setting in the Toolbox which is unchecked. This setting is the "Automatically display objective score of a finished exam to students in the Gradebook" check box. When this box is unchecked, the instructor must manually enter the exam results in the Gradebook.
  4. Specifically in a Dropbox item, the instructor may not have checked the "Return" box in the Dropbox Inbox area.
  5. The instructor may have entered a numeric grade in the letter grade box in the grading interface.

If a student grade disappears from an assignment's Gradebook entries:

That student may have dropped the course; check Enrollment.

If a picture on a course page does not appear near the text:

  1. Click on the <HTML> button.
  2. Find the Image Tag of your picture - here is an example:

    <IMG alt="photo of a school bus" src="/ec/courses/CRS-EDU-1199515/bus.jpg" align=left>

  3. Notice the .jpg or .gif followed by quotations marks.
  4. Right after the quotes, but before the ending carat (>), place the following: align=left (Please see step #2 for an example (in red))
  5. Click the Design button and view the text placed up against your picture!  (Notice that you can use align=right as well to place the picture on the right side of the screen.  Remember not to use spaces in this command)
  6. Don't forget to save your changes!

If you encounter a Session Timeout error:

These are typically caused by restrictive handling of cookies in a user's web browser.  To correct this issue in Internet Explorer:
  1. Go to Tools, then select Internet Options, then the Privacy tab.
  2. Set the slide bar to "Low." If there is no slide bar, click the Default button and adjust the setting to "Low."

If a PowerPoint presentation does not upload correctly:

Try "Save as..." Web Page ("html" format) on your ".ppt" file. If you receive an error message, the file has failed to go through Microsoft's Office Document Converter (ODC).  In that case, perform all of these steps.
  1. In PowerPoint, "Save as…" the file type PowerPoint 95.
  2. Reopen the new file in PowerPoint, and "Save as…" the file type Pesentation.
  3. Close PowerPoint, and upload the new presentation file.

Original by Kayle Jensen, Summer 2003
Last Update:  7 November 2008, by R. Hill