WebCT news at SFU

You can now download final grades from your WebCT gradebook into SIMS. If you are using the Gradebook in WebCT, the process described below will create a file that can be imported to SIMS without any formatting changes necessary.

1. in the gradebook, create a letter column and title it SIMS Grade (without this column you will not be able upload final grades into SIMS. The column name must exactly match SIMS Grade or it will not be recognized.)
2. go to http://www.sfu.ca/webctgradesdownload
3. login with your SFU ID.
4. choose to export the grades from your course
5. save to desktop, and it is ready to send to SIMS.

Consult the WebCT wiki for more instructions.
For information on loading grades into SIMS, please consult the SIMS site.

As the end of the semester approaches, final grades are coming.

The WebCT administrators at SFU have cooked up something to streamline moving final letter grades from WebCT to SIMS. It is not quite a one-click process, but it does all the formatting for you, creating a file that will not require any more edits and ready to import to SIMS.

If you are a current user of the WebCT gradebook, and you are comfortable with creating columns and entering grades, then this can streamline your end of term.

A .pdf file is below, outlining the requirements and steps.

Export final grades from WebCT ready for SIMS

I find the selection of icons that WebCT provides to be limiting. You can either find new icons or create your own icons.

1. find icons

Sets on the University of Edinburgh site (a variety of icons, some of them from older versions of WebCT)

City College of San Francisco (a crisp icon set, downloadable in a variety of colours).

When downloading icons from other locations, please be sure to give appropriate acknowledgement to the copyright owner.

2. resize existing photos or images

If you have photographs on your computer that would make suitable visual icons, you can resize them easily using this online software. Your icons should be 70 to 100 pixels in height and or width.

Try Resizr to modify your own images.

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;
}

I sometimes like to add images to WebCT, or use a photo of my own as an icon. It’s always been so much trouble though to open Photoshop (which I’m not very comfortable with) just to resize a photo. In my travels through other blogs, I found this nifty online application called ResizR that allows me to quickly upload a photo, resize it, and then save the new, smaller image on my desktop.

It’s a simple, quick application that does exactly what I need it to do, and nothing more.

The SFU Library is pleased to announce that its Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism tutorial is now available as a WebCT module for import into any existing WebCT course. This interactive tutorial is designed to help students understand what plagiarism is and how to avoid committing it. Working through the tutorial, students will learn to recognize different types of plagiarism and be introduced to various practical skills — citing, note-taking, quoting, and paraphrasing — that will assist them in the writing process. The tutorial takes about 30 minutes to complete and includes two interactive quizzes to test students’ comprehension. The tutorial has been set up to allow for easy tracking of student completion. By integrating Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism into your own WebCT course, you can emphasize the importance of these skills to your students.

If you’re interested in having this tutorial integrated into your WebCT course, please contact Trish Rosseel, Bennett Library Reference Division Head, at trosseel@sfu.ca