Introduction

Although the interface of WebCT Version 4.x has changed significantly, not all of the tools have experienced substantial changes. This handout highlights the tools which have changed and is broken out into the following sections:

• Edit Page or Tool
• Control Panel
• Course Content
• Discussions and Mail
• My Grades and My Progress

Edit Page and Tool

WebCT has added the Edit Page and Tool feature to the Control Panel. Clicking the Edit Page or Tool link will cause a list of all of the tools added to the Course Menu and the Homepage to display.

Clicking any of the tool links on the Homepage or Course Menu section will take you directly to the tool itself; in order to edit the links as they appear on the Course Menu, you should click the words Course Menu. This will cause the Edit Course Menu screen to display. Likewise, in order to edit the links as the display on the Homepage, you should click the Homepage link. This will cause the designer view of the Homepage to display; from this view, you can select any of the current tools on the Homepage and edit them.

Control Panel

The Control Panel is now accessible via a button above the course menu. Clicking the Control Panel button will bring up either the Basic or Expanded Control Panel, depending on your settings.

The Basic Control Panel is similar to the Control Panel as experienced in WebCT Version 3.8, with the one exception being that it features Update Student View button below the Edit Page or Tool heading. Clicking any of the buttons in the Basic Control Panel will bring you to the appropriate items. The Expanded Control Panel is basically the old Designer Map in Version 3.8. It makes all of the designer options available from a single interface. If you like this Control Panel, you can click the Set as default view button on the upper right hand corner.

Course Content

There have been minor changes in the content module; however, knowing about these may affect the way which you use WebCT.

• With WebCT 4.x, a quiz or an HTML file can now be added to a content module multiple times. This means that you can now insert an important handout or quiz more than once; however, you also might need to be more careful that you do not do so unintentionally.

• When a content page is deleted from a content module, any internal links to that page from a Calendar entry are now also deleted. In previous versions of WebCT, if a content module was linked to a calendar entry and that page was subsequently deleted, the calendar entry links would be broken links. This change allows you to delete a content page without worrying about whether it was linked to the calendar or not.

Discussions and Mail

Similar to the content module, the changes in the Discussions and Mail tool are minor, but increase the functionality of WebCT.

• In the Mail tool, message attachments are now forwarded when you forward a message to your external email address. This allows you to forward attached student projects or other assignments.

The biggest change to take place in Discussions has been to the interface. Rather than having Manage Topics and Manage Messages buttons across the top, these functions have now been moved to the Actions menu, which appears on the right side of the screen. A new topic can be created by clicking Create Topic. Topics can be deleted or renamed directly from the Actions menu. All messages in a topic can be deleted and topics can be organized from this menu.

Figure 3: The Create Topic View

In order to perform the functions typical to Manage Messages, you need to view messages from within a topic. From beneath the Discussion Messages interface, you can now delete individual messages and move messages from one topic to another. In addition, the Compile, Mark as read, and Mark as unread functions have now been moved down to beneath the interface.

My Grades and My Progress

For designers, My Grades and My Progress now offer sample student views to demonstrate how this information is presented to students. When the designer now clicks My Grades or My Progress, information for a student named Lily Green now displays. The below screen capture shows Lily Green's information for My Grades.

Figure 5: My Progress Interface