WebCT Campus Edition Version 3.8

1. WebCT Campus Edition Version 3.8

2. WebCT (Web Course Tools) • WebCT is the e-Learning platform used by more than millions of students from over 2,500 universities in more than 80 countries • User institutions including Stanford, Cornell, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Brown, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue etc • over half of top 50 universities in USA are using WebCT

3. WebCT users in Hong Kong • All government funded universities in Hong Kong • The Open University of Hong Kong • Hong Kong CyberU • All institutions under Vocational Training Council - the Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) • The Caritas Institute for Further and Adult Education • Civil Services Training and Development Institution • Hong Kong Police • The Hospital Authority • The Housing Authority • Information Technology Services Department

4. Major Publishers and WebCT The following publishers are creating web sites to support users of their textbooks: Pearson Education, including its Addison Wesley Longman, Allyn & Bacon, Prentice Hall and Pearson Professional, Reference and Technology imprints; Thomson Learning, including its publishing companies Brooks/Cole, Course Technology, South-Western College Publishing, and Wadsworth Publishing; Archipelago; Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group; Cambridge Physics Outlet; Harcourt College; John Wiley & Sons; McGraw-Hill Ryerson and W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

5. Compliance with IMS Standard • WebCT provides support for compliance with IMS standards - the most popular industrial standard for e-Learning in higher education. • The IMS Content Migration Utility of WebCT allows importing or exporting of course content and assessment information in XML files using IMS Content Packaging 1.1 and Question & Test Interoperability 1.1 format. • It also gives institutions the flexibility of sharing industrial standard compliant courses created by publishers or sister institutions.

6. WebCT in PolyU • PolyU adopted WebCT as common e-Learning platform in summer 1999 • More than 1,200 colleagues had attended training workshops on WebCT • Over 4,000 web sites have been created on WebCT server to enhance quality of teaching for different subjects • SAO is also using WebCT for online counselling (weCARE net)

7. WebCT in PolyU(cont’d) Information Technology Services Office provides support in the following areas: • provision of training workshops for users • web site creation, fully functional but without content • account management • integration with administrative systems • technical support via email and hotline Email: “ITwebct” via Groupwise (or itwebct@inet.polyu.edu.hk) Tel: 2766 4948

8. One Stop Web Shop (MegaWeb) • A joint effort of ITS, EDC and MIC • with $4 million from UGC and $2.7 million from PolyU central funding for recruiting full-time staff and student helpers to provide multimedia production and instructional design services for e-Learning • Colleagues might contact the following EDC staff to acquire the service : Paula Hodgson (Ext: 6297)

9. On-line Programme Development Unit • PolyU has allocated 30 million to develop online version of academic subjects • The On-line Programme Development Unit has been established to coordinate this strategic plan initiative • 35 projects have received funding for development in the first round of invitation for proposals • Colleagues may contact Mr. Geoffrey Wong (OPD) for details

10. Campus Edition Version 3.8 One the server side, the new version supports: • Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) • Multiple servers clustering to balance loading for high performance • Auto failover for automatically switches to a standby server • Single sign-on from myPolyU portal • Unicode (UTF-8) to display multiple languages on a single page within a WebCT course

11. Campus Edition Version 3.8(con’t) Designer can now use Assignments Tool to do the following: • return corrected assignments • provide feedback to students • manually override the grades for assignments in Manage Students, even if the assignment has not been submitted. • For students, the process to submit assignments has been simplified

12. Campus Edition Version 3.8(con’t) Designers can now use the Quiz Tool to: • randomize the display of answers to multiple choice questions. • set the release of quiz answers to occur when a quiz's availability period expires. • manually override the grades for quizzes not submitted using WebCT Before students exit a quiz, they are now reminded about answers they have changed but not saved

13. Campus Edition Version 3.8(con’t) Designers can now use Student Presentation Tool to: • make presentations private, public, or available at a specified time and date. • set the default availability for all presentations.

14. Campus Edition Version 3.8(con’t) Support for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol: • Drag-and-drop upload and retrieval of WebCT course content using WEbDAV • WebDAV protocol allows designers to rapidly move content from their desktops into the WebCT environment. • Automatically update a web site by using Dreamweaver, the software from Macromedia

15. Tranfer a web site from 3.6 SE server • You may transfer the web site on the Standard Edition Version 3.6 server to the new Campus Edition server • 1. Backup the subject web site on Version 3.6 server into a "zip" file and download to your computer • 2. Upload the backup "zip" file to Campus Edition Version 3.8 server and restore it by the function "Restore but keep current student list"

16. Further information Please visit the following web sites for further information: http://www.polyu.edu.hk/elearning http://www.webct.com

17. Enquiry For enquiry, please contact WebCT Help Desk of Information Technology Services Office: Tel: 2766 4948 Email: “ITwebct” via Groupwise or itwebct@inet.polyu.edu.hk

18. Thank You We look forward to serving you in this academic year