WebCT: A guide to designing and managing courses Contents 1. Introduction 2. Content and Taking Full Advantage of WebCT An important section explaining why the integration of WebCT tools with imported content is an ideal aim. 3. WebCT Tools that can be integrated with Content Materials An overview of the various WebCT tools that you can use to encourage more active learning within WebCT. 4. Preparing Materials before importing them into WebCT An overview of the importance of preparing materials beforehand before designing your WebCT course. 5. Files you can import into WebCT Explains the different file formats that you can import into WebCT as well as a useful tip in creating PDF files easily. 6. The First page you see when logging on to a WebCT course as a Designer Describes the first steps you may need to take when designing a new WebCT course from scratch. 7. The Homepage Familiarises you with the Homepage interface of WebCT, where the important menus are and why you need 'Build' access rights to design in WebCT. 8. Getting Files into WebCT before Designing your Course Introduces you to the importance of the File manager within WebCT. 9. Organising your Files and Folders through the WebCT File Manager Interface Explains how to import files into folders created in the File Manager using the WebCT File manager interface. 10. Organising your files and folders in WebCT using WebDAV Explains how to import folders and files into WebCT using the WebDAV facility - absolutely vital
for anyone doing extensive design of WebCT. 11. Organising your Homepage - Establishing Folders How to begin the design stage of linking imported content in WebCT to folders (icons) youn place on the Homepage and other pages. 12. Learning Modules - Why they are important A vital section that encourages designers to make content available to students using the Learning Module features of WebCT. 13. Setting up the Learning Module and adding files to it The first steps in creating a Learning Module. 14. Adding WebCT Tools to the Learning Module How to interlace the various WebCt tools with the imported content within the Learning Module. 15. Adding Extra Files to the Learning Module 'on the fly' The section explains the best practice for adding addional files to Learning modules and warns against methods that can clutter the File Manager with mixtures of files. 16. Reorganising items within the Learning Module How to change the order of items within the Learning Module and retitling them. 17. Attaching the Learning Module to the Folder on the Homepage The final step in making a Learning Module available to students. 18. Removing (and Adding) Tools to the Course Tools Menu How to remove tools that you are not going to use in your WebCT course (and add them if necessary). 19. Hiding the Learning Module Link to Students on the Course Tools Menu Explains why you may want to hide the Learning Modules link and how to do it.
1. Introduction The following guide helps you to put together course material within WebCT and to integrate this material with the many tools that WebCT provides. The guide takes you through a series of steps using example materials and starts with a blank WebCT course to be designed. It should also be useful for anyone taking over an existing WebCT course (or one migrated from previous versions of WebCT) and who wants to continue the design process. Please take some time to consider some of the conceptual issues of placing content in WebCT before uploading material. These issues are explained in the opening pages of this guide. This guide contains images of screens from WebCT. 2. Content and Taking Full Advantage of WebCT WebCT will provide you with a password protected area where you can make available materials for your students. However, if you want to use WebCT only for this purpose, you are not really using it as a true 'Learning Environment'. The distribution of content can be done perfectly effectively though standard on-line web sites or content management systems. WebCT not only provides you with facilities to distribute or link to materials, it also offers a number of tools that can integrate with these materials. As a very general rule, when placing materials in WebCT, consider ways you can get students to interact with those materials by making use of the additional facilities within WebCT. These facilities are described in the next page of this guide.
3. WebCT Tools that can be integrated with Content Materials The following gives a very brief description of those tools within WebCT that you might consider integrating into the content that you import into WebCT. A much further description can be found in the 'WebCT Student User Guide'. You can have your students do on-line quizzes and questionnaires which can be marked automatically, feedback given to students and grades stored in a database. You can have students or groups of students submit text based or web-based assignments which can then be marked by you. You can have students enter a live chat area to continue discussion. You can have students contribute to a non-live discussion on topics. These include threaded discussions, journals and blogs. You can have students maintain an on-line logbook that records their reflections (both diary and directed) and which can be compiled into a portfolio for assessment. The logbook can be used as a discrete dialogue between individual students and instructor. How you integrate these tools into content materials that you import into WebCT is described later in the guide.
4. Preparing Materials before importing them into WebCT Bear in mind that WebCT provides you with an environment into which you can import materials but much of the work of creating an on-line facility involves getting together your materials beforehand. In this guide we are going to import some materials for a lecture into WebCT. Note that the first task is to design the materials themselves. In this case the lecture consists of a series of web pages that have been designed in a web editor (FrontPage). The image on the left is a screen shot from FrontPage and you can see that the materials for Lecture 1 consists of seven web pages (see left hand frame) together with folders where we can store additional images and articles. These files will reside on our computer until they are finished and ready to be imported into WebCT. If you intend to do a lot of designing of on-line materials, you will find it very useful to know how to produce and edit web pages. Using a web page editor like Dreamweaver or FrontPage can be very useful.
5. Files you can import into WebCT Although the majority of content in WebCT will tend to be web pages (.htm.html files), you can import a multitude of different files types into WebCT. The following describes some of the most common :- Importing PDF files into WebCT is highly desirable. If you are going to do a lot of work with creating and editing PDF files, you may need to use Adobe Acrobat Professional, however you can also create PDF files very easily using Primo PDF which is free (click on the link to the download site). It is easy to import Word files into WebCT and distribute them but there are some considerations. In Internet Explorer, Word files may often get opened up within the browser which may not always be desirable. It is a very good idea to consider converting Word files into a PDF format (see above) as this will mean that students are unable to copy and paste text directly into assignments. It is easy to import PowerPoint files into WebCT but there are some considerations. In Internet Explorer, PowerPoint presentations may often get opened up within the browser which may not always be desirable. It is a very good idea to consider converting PowerPoint presentations into a PDF format (see above) as this will mean that students are unable to copy and paste text and images directly into assignments. You may want students to download Excel spreadsheets from WebCT to work on as assignments. If all you want to do is to make Excel spreadsheets viewable, consider making a PDF version - see above. Larger files and folders can be 'zipped' and imported into WebCT. Bear in mind that some students may be accessing WebCT over slower connections and that large files will take time to download - 'zipping' can be a good idea. Individual images can be imported into WebCT and distributed as content. The most common format that should be used are.jpeg and.gif files. Animations and video can be used in WebCT. You may embed such clips into a web page or import them independently into WebCT. For further information, see Using Video and Audio in WebCT. Audio files can be used in WebCT. You may embed such clips into a web page or import them independently into WebCT. For further information, see Using Video and Audio in WebCT.
6. The First Page you see when logging on to a WebCT course as a Designer If you are designing a WebCT course from scratch, when you click on the course in the MyWebCT page (having logged on) you may see the following screen on the first time that you start designing :- Here you are being prompted to decide which of the WebCT tools you want to use in the design of your course. For the purposes of this guide, we are going to check the 'Select All Tools' radio button (see left). This is a good choice as it is easy to remove tools you do not want to use later. You can also add them back again. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click 'Save' :- IMPORTANT - A large number of WebCT courses will be set up using a Template that is specific to a School or Department. Please study the example below. It is more likely that you will be designing a WebCT course based upon a Template.
The above shows a Geography WebCT course set up on a Template. Please note :- The number of Course Tools in the left hand frame has been set to those tools that are most commonly used. It is easy to add and remove tools from this menu - please see the 'Removing (and Adding) Tools to the Course Tools Menu' section at the end of the guide. The other screen shots in this guide show a course where ALL the WebCT tools have been selected. These is an (H) against the Learning Modules link in the Tools menu. This is explained later in 'Hiding the Learning Module Link to Students on the Course Tools Menu' section at the end of the guide. Colours and icon sets are predetermined for courses based upon templates. It is easy to change these colours and designs if you wish. To start designing, click the 'Done' button at the bottom of the page.
7. The Homepage The Homepage of a new WebCT course that you are about to design from scratch will look more or less like the following :- In order to design a WebCT course you will need to be given the necessary access as a Designer. This means that when you log on to the course you will need to see the 'Build' tab in the top left corner of the window (see above). If you do not see this tab you will need to contact the e-learning team (e-learning@exeter.ac.uk) who will provide you with the necessary access rights. You cannot design a WebCT course unless you are in the 'Build' view.
8. Getting Files into WebCT before Designing your Course There are a number of ways of importing content into WebCT, including 'on the fly'. However, you are advised to follow the procedures outlined in this guide. As a general rule, import your files into the 'File Manager' of WebCT before you do anything else! Accessing the File Manager in WebCT is done through the Home Page of your WebCT Course :- When you have Designer (Build) access to WebCT, you will see that there is a set of 'Designer Tools' in the bottom lefthand corner of the screen. Click on 'File Manager'.
The above image shows the File Manager in a blank WebCT course that we are going to design. You will see that there is a folder within the Manager called 'Public Files' - ignore this for the time-being. The following pages discuss the various methods of importing files into the File Manager. Whatever method you use to import files into the File Manager, maintain good 'housekeeping' within the course by organising your folders and files as tidily and intuitively as possible. 9. Organising your Files and Folders through the WebCT File Manager Interface For the purposes of this guide we are going to import some files for a lecture into WebCT. These materials have been prepared beforehand and are on our computer for import into WebCT. The first step is to create a tidy folder structure within the file Manager. Click on 'Create Folder'. We are going to name this folder 'Lectures' (left). You will see that this new folder appears in the File Manager :- We are now going to create a sub-folder within 'Lectures' called 'Lecture 1' Click on the 'Lectures' folder. Click 'Create Folder' and name it 'Lecture 1'. (see left) This places a sub-folder in the File Manager hierarchy (see left) We are now going to upload our files for Lecture 1 (currently on our computer) into the folder we have created within WebCT.
Make sure you are in 'Lecture1' (click on the link) and click ' Get files'. In the dialogue box that appears, click the 'My Computer' icon :- You will need to browse for the files that you want to import on your computer. You can select multiple files (NB. NOT folders) by holding down the 'Shift' or 'Control' key on your keyboard. Click 'Open' (see left) Your files will now be imported into WebCT into the correctly designated folder within the File Manager Note that you cannot a whole folder into WebCT using the above method. You would need to create a folder within the File Manager (just like we have done above) and import the contents of the folder into it. This is a limitation and you may want to look at more sophisticated methods of organising your files in WebCT using the WebDAV facility (next page of the guide).
10. Organising your Files and Folders in WebCT using WebDAV If you are going to be doing a lot of file importing into WebCT, you may find it very useful to use the WebDAV facility. It provides functionality to create, change and move documents on a remote server and is relatively easy to set up. Once set up, you do not need to enter the File Manager within WebCT again as you can open it up in your own folder on your computer at any time. In order to set up a WebDAV folder for your WebCT course go to the File Manager and choose the 'View WebDAV Info' from the drop-down menu (see left). A dialogue box will appear with an address that you need to copy into your clipboard (highlight and copy) :- Once you have this information you can come out of WebC and find the ' My Network Places' icon on your computer's desktop. Double click on the icon :- Click on the 'Add a network place' (see left). This will pull up the 'Add Network Place Wizard'. Click the 'Next' button at the bottom. You should see the following which needs to be highlighted and then click 'Next' at the bottom:-
You now need to paste the information that you copied into your clipboard (WebDAV Info) into the dialogue box (see left). Click 'Next' in the wizard :- You will now be prompted to provide your username and password. Type these in and log in :- You will be prompted to give a name to this new place. Change the name to something that you will recognise easily later. The name of your WebCT course is a good idea. Here (see left) we are calling the place 'Designing in WebCT'. Click 'Next' in the wizard. This will take you to the final dialogue for the wizard. It is a good idea to uncheck the following radio button :- Click 'Finish' at the bottom. You will now see that an extra network place has been added to the list (here 'Designing in WebCT). From now on you can access all you files and folders in your WebCT course from the 'My Network Places' area. Double click on the icon. You will now be prompted to
provide your username and password. Type these in and log in :- This provides you with a window into which you can add, change, move, delete files and folders. You add files and folders by simply dragging and dropping them from your computer into the above window. Notice the 'Public Files' folder in the WebCT course. Ignore this folder for the time being. Note that you can set up a WebDAV folder for every WebCT course you have Designer access to. 11. Organising your Homepage - Establishing Folders Having imported files and folders into File Manager, we can look at beginning the design process of WebCT. Here we are going to look at organising the content. We shall look at adding the various WebCT tools later in the guide. It is important that you organise your content well so that students will find what they are looking for easily. It is straightforward to divide your course into sections using folders. We have already placed some content in the File Manager - we have uploaded some materials for 'Lecture 1' and placed these in another folder called 'Lectures'. We now need to reproduce this structure on the Homepage of our course. The first thing to do is to create a section on our Homepage called 'Lectures' :-
Click 'Create Folder' on the Homepage (see left) Give a name to the new folder (here Lecture) and click 'Save'. (see left) You are free to give each folder a description which will not appear on the Homepage but may be useful to remind you what the contents are. A new icon will appear on the Homepage :- 12. Learning Modules - Why they are important N.B. - we will look at changing the look of the icon and the link text in a following section of the guide. If you are going to be placing significant amounts of material into WebCT and making use of the various tools that WebCT provides, it is of great benefit to use the 'Learning Modules' facility within WebCT. A 'Learning Module' in WebCT allows you to combine basic content (web pages, text documents, spreadsheets, etc.) with a range of interactive tools that encourage students to engage more with that material. Refer back to the conceptual issues in the Introduction of this guide. The next pages of this guide take you through the process of creating Learning Modules.
13. Setting up the Learning Module and adding files to it The first step in the creation of a Learning Module is to click on the 'Learning Module' link in the 'Course Tools' menu (make sure you are in 'Build' mode) and click 'Create Learning Module' on the dialogue that appears to the right (see left). For the purposes of this guide we are going to create a Learning Module called 'Lecture 1' as we already have materials for this imported into the File Manager (see previous sections). The Learning Module needs to be given a name : here 'Lecture 1'. For the time being ignore the description and the other settings. Click 'Save' at the bottom of the screen :- This will create the Learning Module called 'Lecture 1. Click on the 'Lecture 1' link. The following screen should appear :-
Our first task is to add the files for Lecture 1 that we already imported into the File Manager. From the drop-down menu off the 'Add File' button, choose 'Browse for Files' The files that we are going to put into the Learning Module are already in the 'Class Files' (File Manager) area. Browse for them (see left) and select them by clicking on the radio buttons to the left of each file. You can select multiple files. Here we are getting files from the 'Lecture1' folder. Click OK at the bottom.
14. Adding WebCT Tools to the Learning Module The files now become part of the Learning Module (Lecture 1) and are numbered. NOTE - We will look at reorganising files within the Learning Module in another part of the guide. In this example, the titles that appear are taken from the title of the web page (hence a good reason to give titles to your web pages) however it is easy to edit these later. The advantage of arranging materials into Learning Modules is that one can add WebCT tools very easily and thus try to get students to engage more actively with the materials. For a list of the tools that one can add to a Learning Module - see the WebCT tools that can be integrated with content materials section of the guide. For the purposes of this guide, we are going to add a Discussion Forum to the Lecture 1 Learning Modules that we have already set up (see previous section). In principle, adding any other WebCT tool follows the same procedure. The first thing we are going to do is to create a Discussion posting specifically for our Lecture 1 materials. Click on 'Discussions' in the 'Course Tools' menu (see left) :-
This will take you into the Discussions area of WebCT where we are going to create a new topic. Click 'Create Topic' :- For the purposes of this guide we will choose a 'Threaded Topic' :- Click 'Next' at the bottom :- Give the topic a title : here 'Lecture 1 - Question 1' It is a good idea to make use of the 'Description' field as you can give clear directions about the nature of the task. Click 'Save' at the bottom of the screen :- You have now created the Discussion Topic (along with instructions). Now we need to return to the 'Lecture 1' Learning Module :-
We are now going to add the Discussion Topic to the Learning module. Decide where you are going to put the Topic - notice in the left image the radio button next to item number 3 has been checked - this means that I am going to insert the Topic as item 4. From the 'Add Content Link' dropdown menu (see left), select 'Discussions' :- Highlight the Discussion Topic (here 'Lecture 1 - Question 1' and click 'Add Selected' :- The Topic has now been inserted into the Learning Module The insertion of other WebCT tools into a Learning Module follows almost identical procedures to the one outlined above. 15. Adding Extra Files to the Learning Module 'on the fly' In this section we are going to address the important issue of best practice when one wants to add additional files that one has not yet placed in the File Manager into a Learning Module. There will often be occasions when one wants to add additional files that were not part of the original files that were placed in the File Manager.
As a general rule, place all your materials into the right folders in the File Manager before adding them to Learning Modules. See 'Getting files into WebCT before designing your course'. Let us say that we would like to add an additional file (a PDF file) to our Lecture 1 Learning Module :- The file that we are going to add to the Lecture 1 Learning Module is called 'lecture 1 - handout.pdf'. The first thing to do is add this file to the Lecture 1 folder in the File Manager (see previous section). You will need to be in the File Manager to do this. Once our PDF file has been put in the File Manager, we can return to the Lecture 1 Learning Module (see above). Notice that we want to insert the new file after item 8 as we have ticked the respective radio button to the left. By following exactly the same procedure as in the previous section of the guide (Choose 'Browse for Files' from the 'ADD File' drop-down menu) we can now add the new file into our Learning Module. Notice that the file (lecture 1-handout.pdf) is in the File Manager (Class Files). Select it and click 'OK' :-
Your new file has been added to the Learning Module (see left) Some users will notice that it is possible to add files 'on the fly', that is by not putting them into the File Manager first. When you are adding files to the Learning Module (as above) you will notice that it is possible to browse 'My Computer' and select files from there. This will place the file in the File Manager but one does not have any control over which folder the file goes into. If you import files 'on the fly' you will probably have to go into the File Manager afterwards and move them into the right folders to ensure good housekeeping. Hence, it is best to put files into the File Manager first before importing them into Learning Modules. 16. Reorganising items within the Learning Module Once created and added to the Learning Module, it is easy to reorganise items :- Moving items in the Learning Module :- Let's say we want to move Item 1 (Adolescents) to above Item 6 (Marcia's...) (see left) Select the radio button next to Item 1 (i.e. select the item you want to move) Click the icon in the 'Move' column next to Item 6 Item 1 will now become Item 5 in the list Changing the Title of an item in the Learning Module :- In the Learning Module, click the 'Edit Link Titles' button (left) at the top of the screen
Type in the new title for any item that you wish to change and click 'Submit' The title will then be changed 17. Attaching the Learning Module to the Folder on the Homepage The final stage is to attach the assembled Learning Module to the folder that we have created on the Homepage :- Click on the 'Lectures' Folder that we placed on the Homepage :- Choose 'Learning Module' from the drop-down 'Add Content Link' menu :- Select the Learning Module you wish to attach and click 'Add Selected'
The Learning Module with all of its contents will now be attached to the 'Lectures' folder. 18. Removing (and Adding) Tools to the Course Tools Menu There are many tools that you can utilise within WebCT and these can be accessed easily via the Course Tools Menu. However, if you do not want to make use of some of these tools, it is a good idea to turn them off in order to simplify the WebCT interface. Click on 'Manage Course' in the Designer Tools menu :- Click on 'Tools' in the right hand window that appears :- You can add and remove tools from the Course Tools menu by selecting (or deselecting) the radio button next to each tool in the list. 19. Hiding the Learning Module Link to Students on the Course Tools Menu
There are advantages to designing Learning Modules (already covered in the guide) and attaching these to icons (folders) within your WebCT course. However if you leave the 'Learning Modules' link turned on in the student view, you will notice that students can also access the materials via this link. This may not matter to you however you may want to ensure that students access your materials via the icons (folders) off the Homepage of the WebCT course as there may be other pieces of relevant content that you do want them to miss. Turning off the 'Learning Module' link is NOT what you want to do as you will be unable to use it for the design process. The only option is to hide it from your students. Click on 'Manage Course' in the Designer Tools menu :- Click on ''Course Menu' in the right hand window that appears :- Find the Learning Modules tool in the list and click the 'Hide Link' next to it. This will place (H) against the Learning Modules link indicating that it is available to you (as designer) but not to students.