Basic WebCT Course Design

Here is the 'Basic WebCT Course Design' course (57 minutes). It is designed for use with WebCT 4.1.

It is in .wmv format. If you do not have the software to view it, we recommend that you install Windows Media Player version 8.0 or above.

Introduction - 9 minutes

• Intro to course (0.48)
• What is WebCT? (2.21)
• Logging in (1.31)
• Checking your web browser (1.22)
• The MyWebCT page (2.38)

Adding Pages and Tools - 22 minutes

• Course Homepage (3.00)
• Types of access and tabs (2.02)
• Add Page or Tool - Options (0.51)
• Add a Discussion Tool (2.08)
• Changing icons (2.42)
• Add a mail tool (1.16)
• Add another organiser page (0.44)
• Add web links to the organiser page (2.11)
• Hiding and revealing links on the organiser page (0.59)
• Specify selective release (1.26)
• Moving links (0.36)
• Moving links between organiser pages (1.29)
• Adding text blocks (2.09)

Adding Files - 9 minutes

• File management (1.56)
• Uploading a file (1.12)
• Linking to a file (2.28)
• Using zip files to upload many files (0.21)
• Creating a zip file in windows XP (1.08)
• Unzipping a file in WebCT (0.43)
• Acceptable characters for file names (1.13)

Content Modules - 6 minutes

• Content Modules - What are they? (1.34)
• Creating a content module (2.57)
• Changing the order of files in a content module (0.36)
• Changing page titles in a content module (0.38)

Other Basic Options - 11 minutes

• Allowing students access (2.39)
• Expanding Control Panel (0.28)
• Control Panel Overview (1.26)
• Manage Course Column (3.57)
• Course Setup Column(2.15)

Please give us any feedback about this course by adding a comment. Thanks.

Computer Security Training

I was thinking that if Edge Hill is encouraging people to take part in online courses, we perhaps have some responsibility to make students aware about home computer security.

Not sure what people think about this... whether it is someone elses responsibility rather than ours?

I don't think that we provide anything at Edge Hill, but there are guides out there:

Bradford University's IT Services have guides for students.
James Madison University has comprehensive help.
Carnegie Mellon has home network security pages.
And Lynda.com have 8 hours of videos.

All of these have useful information, but might be on the techie side for many students. Might be another job for Camtasia, but is probably low on our list of priorities.

Accessibility Testing: Colour Blindness

The 'Colorblind Web Page Filter' allows you to enter a URL address, and view any Web Page as it would look to someone with various types of colour blindness.

For example Edge Hill's page looks different for those with red/green colour blindness (pronatopia).

This might be an interesting tool for learning about and raising awareness of accessibility issues in this area.

Using Online Audio in Education

If you are interested in using online audio in education, I've tried to collect a list of useful links.

The list covers free software, some videos showing how to subscribe to feeds, and links to sites that are focused on the use of audio in teaching and learning.

Online Skills Audit and Training

We've been looking at developing online training using screencasting software like Camtasia. We've also seen Howard Turpin's skills audit which was created for Faculty of Education students.

I'd like to see the students and staff who use our online training, having different ways to access the training videos that we create. Perhaps browsing the pages for the training they want, searching for the training using a search box, or going through a skills audit to help them understand better what they need to know.

I've started developing something that initially will just cover WebCT and online learning technologies, but may grow to include other aspects of Learning Services training (MS Office, basic IT skills, study skills, e-literacy, ect).

I'm developing a project blog that others who end up being involved in this can join, and would appreciate any feedback on the way it is going, and the scope of it - is this duplicating something else that is done already?

Magnatune and Music for Podcasting

If you are looking for free to use music to use in your (non-comerical) podcasts, Magnatune is a music download site that allows you to use its music in your podcasts for free.

Also look at opsound which distributes music under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence. You would just need to attribute the work to the creator and your work would have to be distributed using the same licence.

Using free software like Audacity you can easily edit and combine your recordings with music. To load music into an Audacity project you would select the 'Project' menu and then 'Import audio...'.

If you really wanted to create your own music, the GarageBand software on the Macs upstairs in the LINC building makes it very simple.