Competencies

After reading this document, you will be able to:

•  Establish a method and schedule for course announcements and calendar postings

Calendar Overview

Figure 1: The main Calendar screen

Calendar allows students, teaching assistants, and instructors to exchange information about class events quickly and effectively. Depending on the calendar settings chosen, both instructors and students can post public calendar entries (visible to everyone in the course) or private ones (visible only to the author). Entries can be simple text or HTML. Examples of calendar entries include links to course content or to relevant external websites, assignment due dates, or changes to instructor office hours.

Note Course calendars only enable you to create and view entries for the given course. To create and view entries across multiple courses, use the Global Calendar, accessible from myWebCT.

To access the course calendar

You can access the course calendar in several ways:

• Click the Calendar icon on the Homepage or an Organizer Page (if you choose to place a link in either place).

• Click View Designer Map in the Control Panel. Calendar can be accessed in the far right hand column of the Designer Map.

• Click Course Map and then Calendar.

Specifying Calendar Access Levels

You can specify whether students can add public and private entries to the calendar. You can also specify the default access setting for new entries posted by the instructor.

To specify student access

1 Navigate to the main Calendar screen and click Designer Options.

2 Under Settings, next to Student entries, check the checkbox(es) next to public and private entries as desired.

3 Click Update.

To specify the default access level for instructor entries

1 Navigate to the main Calendar screen and click Designer Options.

2 Under Settings, next to Default instructor access, select either public or private.

3 Click Update.

Calendar Views

The Calendar can be viewed in any of the following three ways.

• By day: You can access a single calendar day by clicking the appropriate date in either the Week or Month view. Once in the View Day screen, you can move between dates by clicking the Previous Day and Next Day links.

• By week: You can access the Week view by clicking the View Week link in one of the following places:
  
  • In the Month view, click the link to the left of the week you wish to view in the calendar.

  • In the Day view, click the link at the top of the View Day page.

You can navigate between weeks in the Calendar by using the Previous Week and Next Week links.

• By month: This is the default Calendar view; you can also access it by clicking the View Month link at the top of the View Week and View Day pages.

Adding and Deleting Calendar Entries

You can use the Calendar tool to add and remove both public and private calendar entries. Any public entries that you add will be posted in a popup window the next time that users access the calendar. This window allows users to access these entries immediately, without searching the calendar.

Adding Calendar Entries

This option allows you to add individual public or private calendar entries. When adding an entry, you can specify its date, a summary of the entry, a detail about the entry, and its duration.

To add a calendar entry

1 Navigate to the main Calendar screen.

2 Click on the hyperlinked number that corresponds to the day of the month for which you wish to add an entry. The View Day screen appears.

3 Click Add entry. The Add a Calendar Entry screen appears.

Figure 2: The Add a Calendar Entry screen

4 Select or type the appropriate information to describe your entry. Available choices include:

Date: preselected, but you can change it

Summary: brief description of the entry

URL: web address that the entry links to

Internal link: a list of course features that you can link to directly from the calendar

Detail: detail about the calendar entry

Start Time and End Time: duration of the entry

Access Level: public or private

Note Only the Date and Summary fields are required.

5 Click Add. The View Day screen appears, displaying the new entry.

Linking an Entry to a Website

By filling in the URL field for a Calendar entry, you can link it to a course Website, or any other site relevant to that date.

To link an entry to a Website

1 Navigate to the main Calendar screen.

2 Click the date of the entry for which you want to add a link. The View Day screen appears.

3 Click Add entry to link a new entry to a Website or Edit to link a previously created entry.

4 In the screen that displays, enter a description of the link in the Summary textbox.

5 Enter the URL for the appropriate Website in the designated textbox.

6 Click Add or Update. The View Day page redisplays, showing the link. Clicking the entry summary in the Calendar view will now activate the link.

Note  You can also link a calendar entry to a page in a content module by selecting in from the drop-down menu. In WebCT Version 4.x, when a content page is deleted from a content module, any internal links to that page from a Calendar entry are now also deleted.

Deleting Calendar Entries

The instructor can delete individual public or private calendar entries. In addition, instructors have the option of deleting a range of entries, or deleting all entries from the Calendar.

To delete individual calendar entries

1 Navigate to the Calendar screen.

2 Click on the hyperlinked number that corresponds to the day of the month to which you wish to add an entry. The View Day screen appears.

3 Select the entry you wish to delete.

4 Click Delete. WebCT presents you with a warning message.

5 Click OK to confirm the deletion. The revised View Day screen appears.

Tip  You can delete all entries for a given day by clicking Delete All.

To delete multiple calendar entries

1 Navigate to the Calendar screen and click Designer Options.

2 Under the Options heading, select Clear public calendar entries from a selected range of dates and click Go.

3 The Clear Calendar Entries section displays. From the drop-down list, select the range of dates you want to clear.

4 Click Clear. WebCT presents you with a warning message.

5 Click OK to confirm the deletion. WebCT clears the entries in the range specified.

To delete all calendar entries

1 Navigate to the Calendar screen and click Designer Options.

2 Under the Options heading, select Delete all calendar entries and click Go. WebCT presents you with a warning message.

3 Click OK to confirm the deletion. WebCT will delete all entries from your calendar.

Importing Entries from a File

This option allows you to import multiple entries to the Calendar at one time. Importing entries is a three-step process. First, you create a comma-delimited text file containing the calendar entries you want to import. Second, you upload it to the WebCT server. Finally, you import the file.

Creating a Comma-Delimited Text File

For the entries you wish to import to the Calendar, type information according to the following format:

:date,summary,URL, ,start time(hh:mm),end time(hh:mm),detail

Note  Begin each entry on its own line, starting the line with a colon. In the example above, the extra space between URL and start time denotes an important field required for internal links (such as page ID). It is recommended that only advanced users fill in this field.

To create a comma-delimited text file for use in your course

1 Enter the information for each entry, following the above format. Some guidelines to keep in mind:

Begin the event description with a colon.

Only the date and summary fields are required.

If fields are blank, leave no space between the commas.

The detail section can contain multiple lines.

2 Save the file in text format.

Uploading and Importing the Text File

Once you have created a properly-formatted text file, you can upload it to your WebCT My-Files folder on the server and import it into the Calendar.

To upload the text file

1 Navigate to the Upload File screen.

2 Click Browse to locate and select the file you want to upload.

3 Verify that My-Files is selected in the Destination folder drop-down list.

4 Click Upload. The text file you selected is now displayed in your My-Files folder on the WebCT server. You can now import it to the Calendar.

To import calendar entries from a file

1 In the header of the Calendar screen, select Designer Options. The Calendar Settings screen displays.

2 Under Options, select Import calendar entries from file and click Go.

3 The Import From File screen appears. Type the file path of the text file you want to import, or click Browse to select the file from within My-Files on the server.

4 Click Import. The Confirm Import screen appears. It shows how the imported entries will be displayed in the calendar.

5 Click Continue to complete the import and return to the main Calendar screen.

Compiling Calendar Entries

This option allows designers and students (if they are assigned the privilege by their instructor) to search all public calendar entries using specific criteria, and view the results as a list. You cannot compile private entries.

To compile calendar entries

1 In the header of the Calendar screen, select Designer Options. The Calendar Settings screen displays.

2 Under Options, select Compile or download calendar.

3 Click Go. The Compile or Download Calendar Entries screen appears.

Figure 3: The Compile or Download Calendar Entries screen

4 From the drop-down lists, specify the date range for your search.

5 If you want to limit the entries you compile, please do the following:

a From the Criteria drop-down list, select an appropriate filter or criteria for your search. Available filters include:

None: no limiting search criteria

Name: full name of the person who posted the entry

Summary: high-level contents of the actual calendar entry

Detail: detail about the actual calendar entry

URL: a URL associated with the calendar entry

Internal link: an internal link associated with the calendar entry

Start Time and End Time: duration of the event

b From the Comparison drop-down list, select Contains, Equals, Before, After, Starts with, or Ends with.

c In the Value text box, enter the text you want to base your search on.

6 Specify whether to include public entries only, private entries only, or both.

7 To display the list onscreen, click Display. You can then save the file using your browser's Save option.