WebCT at SFU

Our Learning Management System is frequently used to house lecture notes from face to face classes. These come in the form of PowerPoint slides, word documents, or PDFs. Yesterday, an instructor called me, concerned that she’d found notes that she’d posted in our password protected system were being posted and shared online.

I started by saying that once we put items online, there is no 100% way of making sure that people don’t take and repost our materials. That being said, there are a few approaches to reduce it, or to make it more difficult.

1. Save as HTML: in either PowerPoint or Word, you can save items as a web page or HTM file. Since students are viewing the items on the screen, instead of downloading a PDF, it means there are a few more steps. It also means that you don’t have to worry about students finding their downloaded items, versioning (if you repost an updated PDF), or the correct software (.doc vs .docx).

2. Don’t post all the lecture slides: why are students asking for the slides? Are there a few key diagrams that are too complex to copy during class? Do they want an outline and key questions from the lecture so that they can follow the flow of the lecture and class activities?

What other methods have you tried or heard of? Would using Google Docs or Presentation help?

The University of Carleton has a teaching and learning blog, with some postings on WebCT use.

This postings discusses the use of educational technology as a means of acheiving (or at least approaching) a paperless classroom.  Instructors at the University of Carleton and at SFU post classroom materials online: syllabus, lecture outlines, links to readings and weblinks and assignment descriptions and guidelines online. This gives the student just one place to look for these materials (instead of coming through past emails, or stacks of paper). Online quizzes can also be a means of implementing regular assessment (graded or self-testing) and feedback into the course without contending with mountains of paperwork.

Another posting is more general, talking about creating learning opportunites using technology.  This is an opportunity to look at three different courses who use the WebCT online environment to:

• create long term resources
• reducing trivial emailed students from students
• fostering an online learning community
• create a common look and feel for the course
• using images on the course content home to reinforce key ideas and concepts from the course
• importing other tools (Google Calendar or Picasa photo management) into WebCT, to combine those tools ease of use with a central online location for the course materials and community.

We are planning on having some SFU faculty demonstrate their use of WebCT in the new year. Keep an eye on the LIDC calendar of events for dates and times.

ADETA has a list of the top 10 free tools that can be integrated into WebCT. Many of the tools provided will provide some HTML code or script that you can add to an HTML page for a direct link between the two applications.

There are some really good ideas here – I am going to start playing with Hot Potatoes, and link to a few google tools. Hmmmm, and what about Flickr? The theme here is to use the tools that you are comfortable with, and making things accessible to your students. These are opportunities to supplant lectures and readings with images, movies, sounds, maps and collaborative documents.

For more information on what an RSS feed is and it’s role in education, download the Seven Things you Should Know About RSS], or go to http://www.weblogg-ed.com/ and click on the RSS tab near the top to download Will Richardsons introduction to RSS. For quick browsing, go to the ”Finding and Adding Feeds section”

How to add an RSS Feed Reader to your WebCT course section.

1. Log in as a Section Designer and go to the section.
2. From Course Content Home, click Add Content Link and choose RSS Feed Reader from the dropdown menu.
3. Click Create RSS Feed Reader.
4. Add the RSS URL in field #3
5. Click save and preview in the Student View

The settings
The easiest way to add an RSS feed is to use the default options available. Just remember to add your RSS URL in field #3. For more information on how to find an RSS URL, please consult the resources listed above.

Advanced setting changes

If you are an advanced user of RSS feeds, there are other settings that you can change for your own needs.

The proxy tool settings consist of the following:

1. Title: The proxy tool title that appears in the Course Content Home.
2. Operational Timeout: Leave this set to the default (10).
3. RSS/RDF URL: This must be set to the URL of the RSS feed. (e.g. http://feeds.macworld.com/macworld/all, http://rss.cnn.com/services/podcasting/newscast/rss.xml))
4. XSL Transform Can be set to:
   • Default RSS: use the built-in RSS transform to convert the RSS to HTML. If this is selected, the XSL URL setting is ignored.
   • Default RDF: use the built-in RDF transform to convert the RSS to HTML. If this is selected, the XSL URL setting is ignored.
   • Custom: use a custom transform to convert the RSS to HTML. If this is selected, you must also set the XSL URL setting.
5. XSL URL: If XSL Transform is set to Custom, this setting must contain the URL of an XSL transform capable of converting the RSS feed to HTML.
6. CSS URL: Can be used to specify a custom cascading stylesheet (CSS) file. If empty, the built-in CSS is used.
7. Window title: The text to display in the title bar of the popup window (when applicable).
8. Title contains HTML: Set this to true if item titles in the RSS feed contain HTML (otherwise the HTML code is displayed).
9. Description contains HTML: Set this to true if item descriptions in the RSS feed contain HTML (otherwise the HTML code is displayed).
10. Custom parameter x: These five settings can be used to set parameters for the XSLT engine. This is only useful if you have a custom transform.-The format of each Custom parameter setting is:
    <parameter_name>=<parameter_value>
    -So if you want to pass the current username and the learning context name to the transform, you would enter
    Custom parameter 1: username=$USER$.name
    Custom parameter 2: lcname=$LC$.name
    -In your XSL transform, you’d have something like this:
    <xsl:param name=”username”/>
    <xsl:param name=”lcname”/>
    …
    <xsl:template match=”channel”>
    <p class=”channeldescription”>Hello, <xsl:value-of select=”$username”/> from <xsl:value-of select=”$lcname”/>!</p>
    …
11. Open in new window

My newest objective is to figure out how to embed content from other web-based applications in WebCT.

I started with You Tube, since they make it pretty easy. All you have to do is grab the code they provide, and put it in some body tags on an HTML page. It’s my duty, of course, to remind you that plenty of content on You Tube is not copyright protected, and some clips are taken down as soon as the original broadcast network can find them*.

Video can be an effective learning tool – it can provide a new perspective on a point you are trying to make in the classroom, provides information in a new format and it’s powerful combination of audio and video can propel some affective learning from your students. The clips on YouTube are generally less than 10 minutes, so they are an effective length to keep the students attention.

1. Go to http://youtube.com and find the clip you want to embed. If you don’t have an exact title that someone told you about, be prepared to get distracted by just about anything.
2. To the right of the screen where the video plays is a box with the clip title, tags and other metadata. There is a field called “embed” – copy all the code from that box. The code with start with <object width … and end with </object>. This code sets the size of the window, places a play/pause controls and gives the URL for the video.
3. Go to WebCT and create a new HTML page.
4. You need to put your YouTube code in the body of the HTML page. At the top of the page, type: <body>
5. Paste your YouTube code on the HTML page.
6. Type </body> at the end of the HTML page.
7. Save your new page.

In student view, you will now have a link to a YouTube video that will play in the WebCT course container.

.

* this is a whole other debate. My personal opinion is that the clips should be treated like quotes people use in book reviews. Seeing a two minute clip of the Jon Stewart show is only going to remind the fans of how funny it is, and attract new converts. jeesh.

part two: delivery

Your delivery will depend largely on the communication, administrative, assessment and content-driven tools that you have chosen to use.

Write expectations and guidelines for your students and the communication tools available. Use the discussion, mail tool, chat or announcements to give and receive regular feedback. Promote the the discussion forum as a place for student collaboration or the journal function to introduce reflective practice.

Use the goals tool to remind students of the expected learning outcomes. Attach different content, communications and assessments to specific goals to reinforce how goals and assessments connect to the syllabus and the whole semester.

Create formative evaluations to track student understanding or surveys to request feedback. When using the assessment or assignment tool (for small quizzes or homework), create a test quiz or assignment to reduce student anxiety. Create a rubric to attach to the assessment or assignment, and read all the options available. When you are done, use student view to complete all assigned assessments as the demo student.

Encourage student community by setting it up so that students can contribute URLs to the weblinks tool, add the roster tool or ask students to publish their assignments to the class.

The gradebook is a quick and secure tool to provide grades and feedback to students. Give the demo student grades so you can preview in the student view, release each column as you finish adding grades, and download grades into a spreadsheet for backup or to enter grades offline.

Keep your course design simple, so students can easily navigate it, and be consistent in your communications, grade delivery and content release.

This is going to be part one of a three part series: the planning, delivering and wrapping up a web-supported course.

With some simple planning, you can reduce the basic administration associated with the classroom and connect with students. Alternative texts, video or audio can provide depth or context to student learning. Extending the classroom discussion to an online environment or reinforce concepts with regular assessments and feedback. How might this save you time in basic tasks, help you connect with students, recognize diverse ways of teaching and learning, and increase student learning?

part one: planning and setup 

To start, get some inspiration by looking at other web-based courses (http://www.webct.com/exemplary), attending a workshop or asking colleagues.

Advance planning will help you set your objectives, manage expectations and prioritize your time. What do you want your students take away from this course? What materials, approach and assessments can help you reach these objectives? Incorporate ideas that you’ve seen in other web-supported courses or that your colleagues have told you about. Which administrative tasks take up time in the classroom? How can a web-supported course help?

Write a list of the content, links, resources, and media that you currently use or would like to use for a course. Use this content to reinforce concepts, use different learning and teaching styles or to provide alternative resources and viewpoints. Review the tools available – is there anything new you’d like to try? Take the content, the communications and the assessment and put it in a logical order.

Write a welcome message using the announcements tool or the discussion forum to state your expectations, and what students can expect from you in this environment. Describe to your students the learning path this course will take and how the combination of the web-supported and face to face classrooms will support their learning.

When you are ready, request an online course section using the form at http://webct.sfu.ca∞

Your course container is yours to customize. Start by adding the tools you want to use. Add your syllabus and any course material – you can hide it or set release date to manage student access. Using the assessments described in the syllabus, setup the gradebook, and give your “demo student” some grades. Use the student view tab to see how the content appears, which grade columns are visible and which tools are available. Reinforce the prerequisites needed for your course by creating a low-stakes quiz to bring students up to speed, and help connect your course with the prerequisites.

Students are added to your web-supported course section automatically at SFU, as they register in SIMS. By default, students will be able to access the online materials in WebCT on the first day of classes.

It is relatively easy to create HTML pages within WebCT. Create HTML pages (web pages) loads content faster for students and elimintates the need for downloading. There are simply fewer variables if an HTML page (instead of a word document) is used to deliver content.

Unfortunately, the webpages created from within WebCT do not have any page margins, and so text aligns with the edge of the page, and so right up against the course tools menu.

To add margins to a page, you can simply cut and paste the following text at the top of your HTML page (make sure you have selected the option to “use HTML”). Add your own content below this code.

body {
margin-left: 32px;
width: 80%;
line-height: 150%;
}
li {
font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;
}

There is a nice summary of some of the WebDav issues here. For me, WebDav seems to work best in IE6 on a PC. I dearly miss the ability to upload files with WebDav directly from Dreamweaver, and that has been reported to WebCT.

I havn’t explored all of the suggestions I got when I asked how to load audio files neatly into HTML pages, but I did learn that using the “a href” tag is not a good thing for audio files.