What's New with WebCT This Fall

Over the summer, the WebCT support team has been busy working on upgrading the WebCT system from 1.3 to the 2.1 version, and as a result, all courses running in the fall semester will be using the WebCT 2.1 version.

So, if you're an instructor and you don't already have a WebCT 2.1 course site, now is a good time to request one. And if you already have a WebCT 1.3 course site, you will still need to request a new WebCT 2.1 course site, or request that your old course site be moved to the newer version.

WebCT Version 2.1 includes three major improvements over the previous release, in that it:

Allows you to access all your courses with one global id/password, which will be the same as your RCS userID;
Automatically adds all registered students to your courses;
Includes an assignment dropbox, where students can submit assignments and instructors can grade and give feedback on assignments.

If your course has multiple sections, you may want to consider collaborating with other professors, acting as a team on designing/developing one course site for all sections which can contain course content common to all sections, as well as section-specific content. The bulletin board can have public forums for all students and private forums for specific course sections; similarly, quizzes can be developed for all students or for specific sections. What's more, you and other professors can manage students' grades centrally. In short, we think you'll find that having one course site, rather than several sites, can speed up the course development process and considerably reduce the demand for development, training, support, and system resources.

If you would like to request a new WebCT 2.1 course site (or an upgrade for your current WebCT 1.3 course site), please complete the Web form located at the URL below:

	http://www.rpi.edu/dept/acs/workshops/cm/coursereq.html

To find out more about what's new in release 2.1, go to the URL:

	http://www.rpi.edu/dept/acs/workshops/upgrade_2_1/instructor/

From August 21 - 24, Don Bell, Academic Computing Services' Instructional Multimedia Consultant, will be giving a series of WebCT workshops that highlight WebCT 2's new features. In addition, CWIS Coordinator Kevin Bishop, a member of the Rensselaer Libraries' staff, will be giving a workshop on Dreamweaver, Macromedia's excellent web page authoring tool, on Wednesday, August 23. Please note that you will need to sign up in advance if you wish to attend these workshops; refer to the URL http://www.rpi.edu/dept/acs/workshops/schedule.html if you would like more information.

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