Web Enhancement General Questions

Do I need to request a WorldClassRoom course page?

No.  Every class that has students registered will be given a course home page.

When do I have access to my WorldClassRoom course page?

Instructors have access their course pages a minimum of 2 weeks prior to the start of the class.  Students are added later.  This gives the instructor time to prepare the course environment.  For those working on their class sooner, materials can be created and stored in the My Files area if needed until course access is granted.

Do I need to do anything to give my students access to my WorldClassRoom course page?

No.  Course home page access is granted by the enrollment system.  If a students signs up for your class, they will have access automatically.  If they drop your class, their access is removed automatically as well.

When do my students have access to my WorldClassRoom course page?

Students have access to the class the weekend before the first class meeting.

What do I do if my courses are cross-listed?

Please contact the FDC via email at fdc@webster.edu.  Be sure to include the full course and section numbers for your classes.  The enrollments in one class are moved to the other, so please indicate which one of these classes is the "parent" course.  After we combine the courses, the content in the "child" course is no longer available to you.

For example, a Psychology class and a General Studies class are cross listed, and the Psychology class is the parent course.  Before your request to combine the course home pages, you have a course page for both, and your students have a course page for the one they registered for.  After your request to combine the course home pages, you and your students have just the Psychology course home page.  Any work that went into the General Studies is no longer available to you.

Will my course content me moved from term to term automatically?

No.  Course content must be moved form term to term by exporting content or copying files.  You should have access to previous semester courses to get this content.  Please see the Course Term Move Checklist (pdf) for more information.

Can I backup and restore a course home page completely?

While the system does let you create a backup file for your own peace of mind, there is currently no way for you to import this backup file into a new course section. Individual course components (files, syllabi, quizzes, etc.) must be moved each term.  Please see the Course Term Move Checklist (pdf) for more information.

When will my courses be removed from the system?

You will have access to a course home page until the end of the semester that follows that course.

Mail Questions

Do messages sent to me by students in WCR come to my email address?

Some good news. Since the upgrade to the server the "Mail Forwarding" now works. You must have this setting enabled in the "My Settings" tool. To enable mail forwarding follow the path below:

My Blackboard> My Settings > My Tool Options > Mail Forwarding > Select the option to "Forward all messages to the e-mail address in your user profile" >SAVE

This address is your Webster e-mail address. There is no way to change that. (You can change your Webster email to forward to another address.) The mail forwarding was disabled because it wasn't working prior to the upgrade. It has since been enabled and is working! You can not reply to these emails, however, it is useful to know that you have received a mail message and that students may be waiting for a response.

Can messages sent to me by students in WCR be forwarded to my personal email?

Messages sent to you by your students in WorldClassRoom are read and managed on the course home page.  WorldClassRoom will notify you have been sent a message, by sending a copy to your webster.edu email address.  However, you must log in to your course home page to reply to these message.

In turn, you can set your webster.edu email to forward to an address of your choosing.  To learn how to do this, please click here.

http://www.webster.edu/helpdesk/new/faculty/extended/email_forwarding.html

Can I reply to student emails that are forwarded to my Webster email address?

Messages sent to you by your students in WorldClassRoom are read and managed on the course home page, you must log in to your course home page to reply to these message.

I sent a message to students, but the message said it was from 'Demo Student.'

This means you wrote and sent a message from the "Student View" tab.  When you are using this tab, you are actually seeing your class as a fake student call "Demo Student."  Make sure you send messages from the Build or Teach tabs to avoid this.

Discussion Questions

Can a student edit a post after it has been made?

If the discussion was created with "Students can edit their messages after posting them" selected, then yes they can.  This option is select by default when you create a new discussion.

Can an earlier discussion be made so students can read it but not post to it?

To allow students to access but not post do the following:

1. In the Build Tab, click on the Discussion Button
2. Click on the action link icon next to the discussion topic that you want to "lock"
3. Select "Edit Properties" from the action link drop down menu
4. Scroll down to the section "Topic Behavior Options"
5. Expand this option by clicking on the icon to the right of "Topic Behavior Options"
6. Click on the last radio button in this section "Lock this topic for Students"
7. Save

Can you reply privately to a student post in a class discussion?

Not in the context of a threaded discussion.  One trick is to select the Forward option on a message, then send your private response to a student this way (as an email).

Also, the Journal discussion type allows you to read and comment on posts that are private to you and your students.  This may be a solution as well.

Can I search to see how many posts a student has made?

These instructions will allow you to see how many posts a student has made:

On the Course Tools menu (left hand side of the window) select the Search button. Select the search parameters that you would like to use and be sure to set the Search Tool to Discussion. See the image below.

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Assignment Questions

Can I download all attachments to student submitted assignments in a batch?

Follow these instructions to download all assignment submissions including attachments:

1. In Teach view, go to the Assignment Dropbox.  Select the Submissions tab.
2. To view submissions for a particular assignment, use the drop menu on the upper right, select the Assignment title for the submissions you want to download, then click the green right pointing arrow.
3. To select all assignments for download, click the checkbox on the upper left next to Title.
4. Select Create Printable View at the bottom.
5. Select Save to File.  The file will save to your Content Manager.
6. Go to the My Blackboard screen, then Content Manager.
7. The file has been saved as a compressed (zipped) file with a .zip extension.  Select the ActionLink next to the file to download, then click Download. 
8. Save the file to a folder on your computer where you can unzip the files.
9. Right click on the compressed file (e.g. Assignment_submissions_Jul_30.zip) , then select Extract All.  If using Winzip or another program, or a Macintosh, your options may be different.  Use that program to unzip or extract the files.
10. A new folder may be created for the submissions.  Each student’s submission and attachment (if any) will be extracted into a single folder.   You can go to each folder to see the submission.

Is there a limit to the length of instructions?

Yes.  If you have lengthy instructions for an assignment, write them in a word processor (ie, Microsoft Word), and attach the file to the assignment.

Assessment and Question Database Questions

What are the Differences in the available Question Types?

There are nine types of questions that you can create for use in an assessment:

1. Calculated - A question based on a mathematical formula for which the student provides the answer.
2. Combination - A multiple choice question with one or more correct answers, all the correct answers must be selected for full credit.
3. Fill in the Blank - One or more blanks are made in a statement.  Students provide the missing information to make the statement accurate.
4. Jumbled Sentence - Two or more words in a statement are chosen to be jumbled.  Students must arrange all the words in the correct order for full credit.
5. Matching - Items in one column are created with a match in another column (such as a word and its definition).  The information is mixed, and students are asked to match the information correctly.
6. Multiple Choice - A list of answers are created for a question and students are asked to pick the single correct answer from the list.
7. Paragraph - A question is posed and students must answer in blocks of written text.  These questions must be grade manually by the instructor.
8. Short Answer - A question is posed and students answer in short blocks of text.
9. True False - Students are asked to select whether the statement provide is true or false.

Can I save individual student assessments as files?

If you are trying to create a file of all student's answers to a particular assessment (such as, for printing), you can use one of the following "tricks."

To save the individual student assessments as text files in Firefox:

1. In the Teach tab select the Assessment Manager
2. Select the "Not Graded" tab to view the Midterms
3. In the assessment manager click on the Attempt Date to view an individual student's submission
4. Right Click anywhere on the submission to display a context sensitive menu
5. Select "This Frame"
6. Select "Save Frame As"
7. In the Save dialogue window name the file
8. under "Save As Type" select "Text"
9. Be sure to navigate to where you want to save the file then click on "Save"
10. Do not double click the downloaded file to open it. It will open as plain text and you will see a lot of extraneous code.
11. Right click the saved document, select “Open With” and select “Microsoft Word.”
12. When the File Conversion dialogue opens select "Windows" encoding.
13. Be sure to Save the file as a Word document when you are done so that you won't need to repeat this process.

To save individual student assessments in IE

1. In the Teach tab select the Assessment Manager
2. Select the "Not Graded" tab to view the Midterms
3. In the assessment manager click on the Attempt Date to view an individual student's submission
4. Right Click anywhere on the submission to display a context sensitive menu
5. Select “Convert to Adobe PDF”
6. This will take a few minutes to convert and will tell you there is an error. I believe the error is the actually the Vista Frame that won’t convert. The file appears fine.

To generate a Report (IE or Firefox)

1. In the Teach tab select the Assessment Manager
2. Select the "Not Graded" tab to view the Midterms
3. Pull down the Action Menu adjacent to any of the Midterm links and select View Reports
4. Under "Select Assessment” choose "Midterm"
5. Under Select Report Type select the radio button in front of "Performance"
6. Click “Run Report”
7. In the report window you have some options to customize if desired
8. Select “Download Records” and Save
9. This will download as a csv file that will open in Excel. All student answers will be displayed for each student. A little difficult to read at first but with proper formatting is workable. Has the advantage of downloading all student submissions at one time.