WebCT news at SFU

The comments field in the grade book records comments in the audit trail log, so that TAs and instructor can track and share comments. Those comments are not visible to the student. Unfortunately you cannot make this comments box smaller - one work-around is to export the gradebook to Excel, where you will have a more efficient use of screen real estate.
If you want to give students comments, try creating a text column in the gradebook called something like “Midterm Comments” and put it next to the Midterm grade column. Then you can put the comments in and have them show up for the students.

The other option is to use a PeopleLink to send the student mail with the comment while you are grading the discussion posts.

Tutorial numbers are automatically added to the course grade book as of Spring 2008.  

In a large class, it becomes important to be able to sort and search for specific students or groups of students. This thread explains how to search and sort students according to a text column (ie, a column that indicates which tutorial a student is in).

There seem to be two main approaches.

1. Using a text column:
Create a text column that contains the student tutorial information. You could input this manually, or import it from SIMS. Once you have identified all the students’ tutorials you can sort the students according to that column. (ie, by clicking on the column title). This will not sort the students alphabetically within each tutorial, however.

You can also search for students under the Grade Book Options. Choose Find members from the drop-down menu, and then you can search by column.

2 Using Groups:
Create one group for each tutorial using the sign-up sheets in group manager. Have the students select the tutorial/group that they are currently registered in (you can move them to a different tutorial later on if they make a mistake). You then have individual groups that correspond with your tutorials. You can create tutorial based discussion topics, for example, or use selective release to share content with different tutorials.

To search for the students in each tutorial/group, open the grade book, and under the drop down menu in Grade Book Option, choose Find Members. From there you can search by group members.

There is a good explanation on how to use the Excel spreadsheet and grade book to track attendance.

I have access to many courses because of work. At the beginning of every semester, I edit my course list. I hide courses from previous semesters, and I rearrage the courses so that the ones I access most often are up top.

To do this: The header for your course list has the image of a small pencil on the right side. Click on that pencil, and you can choose to hide/show or reorder your courses.

It is relatively easy to create HTML pages within WebCT. Create HTML pages (web pages) loads content faster for students and elimintates the need for downloading. There are simply fewer variables if an HTML page (instead of a word document) is used to deliver content.

Unfortunately, the webpages created from within WebCT do not have any page margins, and so text aligns with the edge of the page, and so right up against the course tools menu.

To add margins to a page, you can simply cut and paste the following text at the top of your HTML page (make sure you have selected the option to “use HTML”). Add your own content below this code.

body {
margin-left: 32px;
width: 80%;
line-height: 150%;
}
li {
font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif;
}

In the gradebook, when you edit a column to add grades, you are only given the student WebCT ID, and not their student number. Some students write a different name on their exams than appears in WebCT, making it challenging to add the correct grade for the correct individual.

One solution is to export the gradebook (which does have the student numbers) to Excel. You can then enter all grades using the student number as a primary ID, and upload the completed file back into WebCT. This method is generally faster for entering grades, yet still provides students with secure access to their grades.