WebCT at SFU

We often get lots of questions at the beginning of a semester, and sometimes it requires a few emails before we can diagnose and advise. We sometimes use different vocabulary, and this can result in some confusion!

When emailing us, please give us plenty of detail: tell us what kind of error message you got, which tool you were using or trying to use when you ran into a road block. Tell us what you did to try an get around the issue, and what happened. Sometimes, it’s as simple as trying a different browser (check here for browser-related suggestions).

And finally, we love getting screenshots! It’s truly worth a thousand words. A screenshot of what WebCT looked like when you ran into a roadblock can help us narrow down our suggestions.

If you are interested in seeing if others have run into similar questions, you can always browse the Ask Dr.C discussion forum, hosted by WebCT, and with participants from many different universities (we use the Vista version).

I was talking to someone about the assignment tool the other day who didn’t understand why assignments were downloaded the way they were.

All I could do was explain the steps required according to how the tool was designed. We lease this software from a company called Blackboard.  If you have ideas that you’d like implemented (like drag and drop file management?) or design changes that would make your users experience better, then you should tell them! They have a suggestion drop-box that anyone can contribute to. It’s a big bit of software, so changes won’t occur overnight, but the more suggestions they get, the more likely the software will meet your needs.

If you are a student, you can use the link to Ask Dr.C on the right side of the student support page.  If you are faculty, teaching staff or a TA, you also have a link to Ask Cr. C on the instructors and designers support page.

The recent move to Daylight Savings Time (DST) has resulted in a slight timing inconsistency in some cases in WebCT.

Any time-stamped activity created between March 11th to April 6th will be 1 hour behind.

Here are a few examples.

1. If an assignment has a due date of March 24 at 2pm, and a student logs in at on March 24th at 1:55pm and submits the assignment, in WebCT it will be time stamped for 12:55pm.
2. Any discussion postings made between March 11th and April 6th will be time-stamped one hour prior. So the posting that I made at 1:30pm today was time-stamped in the discussion area as 12:30pm.
3. All calendar entries that you have created should be correct, because calendar entries are manually created by you, not time-stamped by the software.

These time-stamp irregularities will only occur until April 6th (when the clocks used to change). After much discussion, we think we have diagnosed the problem and the repercussions. There is a patch, but that would change all due dates in WebCT, so it was decided that this communications would cause the least amount of disruption.

Recently, we’ve received a few questions about the grade book. Instructors were adding grades, but the students could not see them in WebCT.

There is usually a simple solution – most times, the instructor had not added the My Grades tool, or had not released the column. For information on resolving this, check our wiki for instructions.

Another incident was when an instructor uploaded an Excel file with a new column. The column was created in the Excel file, and so when it was imported, it was not recognized as a graded column. We had to go into the column settings in the grade book and update the settings so it was a graded column and numeric, not text.

The reasons behind some of these settings:

The My Grades tool is not added by default to course containers, because not all instructors choose to distribute grades in WebCT, and some non-credit course containers do not have grades associated with them. It is good practice not to add tools that are not used to a course container, and so adding My Grades remains an option, not a default.

Grades are not automatically released to students. This allows instructors or teaching assistants to upload grades over the course of a couple of days, but without some students getting access before others. If you have a large class, you will likely not enter all grades at once, so this gives you some breathing room.

There continues to be some performance issues with WebCT at SFU – some pages are taking longer than usual to respond. The WebCT administrators at SFU are aware of this, and are continuing to work on this problem as their number one priority.

WebCT has been slow for many this Friday, January 4th, 2008. Currently, the WebCT administrators at SFU are aware of this, and are working on allocating more memory for WebCT. They will also do some maintenance on the weekend that will improve performance. In the meantime, your best option is to try and logout and login again, or to wait until Sunday.

When creating an announcement, there are two items that are worth noting.

1. You cannot edit an existing announcement. If you make a spelling mistake, your only option it to delete the offending announcement and post it again.

2. Later announcements appear at the bottom of the announcements list, not at the top, in reverse chronological order (which would make more sense).

Both of these observations have been sent to the developers at WebCT/Blackboard. They are aware of the issues, and the development team is looking at them.

In the quizzes, you can currently post settings so that a student can do the same quiz more than, and you take the highest, average or first score of their attempts. This is a means of encouraging students to learn immediately from their mistakes.

How it’s set up

This is done when editing the properties of a quiz. Under the heading attempts, you can allow a set number of attempts, and under the heading student score, you can choose which score you choose as the students grade.

Under the section results properties it would seem logical to choose options 1 (show the question text), a) i) (show the percentage value of the students answer), 3 (show the students score for each question) and 4 (show the students total score of the assessment).  Ideally, this would tell the students which questions they got wrong, but not give them the right answer.

The bug

It seems that if you do choose option 1 a) i) (show the students response for each question and show the percentage value of the students answer), then the quiz results will also show the correct answer. It makes the subsequent quiz attempts much easier if the student can simply copy down the correct answers, and misses the point of formative assessment.

The solution

I’ve recommended that under the results properties section, choose only option 1, 3, 4. Student will not see their response for each question, but they will still know which question they got wrong, and which they got right.

This is a short term solution. I’ll also look into this at the online forum, and send in this feedback to WebCT/ Blackboard.

Currently, instructors are unable to prevent students from making public entries in the calendar. This is due to a small big in WebCT – in rare instances, if students are allowed to make private entries only, the entry can appear in the institutional calendar, and viewable to all. To prevent this from happening, the WebCT administrators at SFU have changed a setting that means instructors cannot prevent students from making public entries.

The work-around is to advise the students not to make public entries in the course calendar.

This bug has been reported to WebCT, and they are working on it for a future release.

I found this great blog that a director of an educational technology centre is writing. His blog is what I intend this blog to be – a source of information on changes, work-arounds, and other comments.