INSTRUCTOR HELP

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Instructor Help: Adding Materials

This page explains how you should prepare your materials for Ecampus and how to add them to your site. For more information about arranging these items, visit Organizing Materials and Icons; for more information on adding many files at a time, visit Uploading Materials / WebDAV.

1. Why would I want to post materials on my course site?
2. How should I prepare my documents or files for Ecampus?
3. Who can help me get my files into the correct format?
4. How do I add my syllabus to my course site?
5. How do I add a document or image to my course site?
6. How do I add audio or video files?
7. Is there a size limit on materials I can post?
8. My materials are not in English. Can I still post them legibly?
9. How can I get rid of the gibberish characters appearing on my webpage?

1. Why would I want to post materials on my course site?

Your class website provides a secure location where you can make materials available to a strictly limited group (your students). Only those who can log into your class site will have access to those materials. Thus, you can post items that you wish your students to see, but do not want to make available to the world at large. This is important when you wish to protect your intellectual property and respect the guidelines for fair use of copyrighted works.

You might post handouts so that students who were absent, or who may have lost the paper copy, can still get them easily. You can even post materials without having handed out the hardcopy in the first place, and your students can decide whether they wish to save the electronic copy or print it out. Syllabi, readings, assignments, lecture outlines, and sample exams are just a few of the items you might consider posting on Ecampus.

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2. How should I prepare my documents or files for Ecampus?

The materials you post on your class site should be in "web ready" formats, so that your students can easily view them. The following chart will help you decide what is the preferred format for your kind of document. You can use a different format than the preferred one, but be aware that some students may have difficulty accessing your materials.

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3. Who can help me get my files into the correct format?

Your ITC will gladly assist you with preparing your files for Ecampus. They can make the necessary conversions for you, or show you how to do it yourself. If you do not have the appropriate software on your own computer, you can use the software available in the ITC lab to process your files.

• Who is my ITC?

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4. How do I add my syllabus to my course site?

Most course sites have a default syllabus icon. Follow these instructions to add your syllabus in place of the default one. (if your site doesn't have a syllabus icon, follow the instructions for adding a document, described below in Question 5). You have the option of making your syllabus publically available or private (restricted to enrolled students).

1. Make sure that the Designer Options tab is selected.
   
   
   
   
2. Click on the Syllabus icon.
   
   
   
   
3. Click the Browse button next to the Page filename box (under Basic Settings).
   
   
   
   
4. Under Upload File, click Browse (on a Mac, click Choose file). Find the file on your computer and select it.
   • For PUBLIC access: choose the "public_syllabus" folder in the box next to Upload to: The syllabus will appear in your course site, and also from a link in the upper-left of your course welcome / info page that any visitor can access.
   • For PRIVATE access: choose the "My-Files" folder in the box next to Upload to:. The syllabus will only appear within your course site.
   Then click Upload to send the file to your course site.
   
   
   
   
5. Click the small round button next to your syllabus file, and click Add selected at the bottom (If you uploaded the file to the "public_syllabus" folder, you may need to click this folder first, then choose the file).
   
      
   
   
6. Click Update at the bottom.
   
   

Your syllabus is now added. To see what it looks like, first click View, then click on the Syllabus icon.

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5. How do I add a document or image to my course site?

Go to the the page where you want to add the item (Homepage, Course Materials, or another Organizer Page) and follow these steps:

1. Make sure that the Designer Options tab is selected.
   
   
   
   
2. Under Actions > Options: Links, click Add page or tool.
   
   
   
   
3. Under Pages, click Single Page.
   
   
   
   
4. Part 1: type the name of the item in the textbox. This is the title that will appear below the icon when the link is added to your page.
   
   
   
   
5. Part 2: select the document or image you want to add by clicking Browse.
   
   
   
   
   • In the new window, click Browse again under Upload File (a Mac user clicks Choose file). Find the file on your computer and select it. Then click Upload to send it to your course site.
     
     
     
     
   • Once it's there, click the round button to the left of it and click Add selected at the bottom.
     
        
     
     
   You will return to the "Add Single Page" screen. To finish Part 2, select whether you want the link to open in a new browser window or the same browser window by clicking the round button next to the appropriate choice. Choosing "new browser window" will cause a new window to open with the page contents, with your course site open in the background window. Choosing "same browser window" means the new page contents will replace the contents of your course site window.
   
   
   
   
6. Part 3: decide where you want this item to appear on your course site and check the appropriate box. You can add it to the Course Menu or to an Organizer Page, or to both. When you check "Organizer Page," you can choose which Organizer Page the item will appear on from the pull down menu. The default selection is shown. You can also control how the item will look by selecting/deselecting the options for showing the item title and showing the item icon. You can change the appearance of the link later if you don't like how it turns out.
   
   
   
   
7. Finally, click Add to add the item to your site.
   
   
   
   

IMPORTANT: To test the item, click View, then click on the icon.

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6. How do I add audio or video files?

You may post audio and video materials to your class site the same way as you add text and image files. The media files should be in "web ready" formats. You may contact your ITC for help with converting them to the proper format and compressing them to make it easier for your students to download and access. We also have a separate media server where we can store your audio and video files if they are very large or you plan to reuse them in subsequent quarters.

• Who is my ITC?

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7. Is there a size limit on materials I can post?

Not officially, at this time. But please consider your students when deciding on the size of the materials you post. Images, especially, can be bigger than you expect, and a minute spent waiting for an image to download is a long time. In general, try to keep the images you post around 50 Kb, up to a maximum of about 100 Kb for special items. Although DSL and cable modems are becoming more common, our usage logs show that many students are still accessing the internet using 56 Kbps and even 28.8 Kbps modems.

If you have any questions about the size of a file, or would like some help making your images small enough yet still clear, please contact your ITC for assistance.

• Who is my ITC?

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8. My materials are not in English. Can I still post them legibly?

Supporting different fonts and languages is not decided by Ecampus (or even WebCT, the software that most of Ecampus uses): it is an issue for the web browser you and your students use. Unfortunately, in spite of several years' work on this, there is still no standard for language support among the various browsers.

Most western European languages, such as French, Spanish, and German, are displayed by all browsers. If some characters (such as the cedilla or umlauts) are not displaying properly, your ITC will be able to help you resolve the problem.

Several languages have a specific font that must be installed on the viewer's computer to turn the text from gibberish to legible material. If you are aware of such a font, and wish to use it to support your non-English text, please contact your ITC.

The closest to a universal font standard for the web is Unicode, which provides encoding for many character sets (including Chinese, Cherokee, and Cyrillic). However, Unicode support is not complete across all browsers. Currently, Internet Explorer on the PC provides the best Unicode support, while Netscape Navigator on the Macintosh has the worst, with the other combinations falling between those limits. (The browser Opera does have full Unicode support; however, it is unfortunately incapable of working with Ecampus due to WebCT's peculiarities.) If your non-English page text is on an HTML page, you can use WebCT's convert character set tool to convert the HTML page to Unicode (these steps are described below, in Question 9).

You can avoid these font headaches by posting your documents as PDFs, making sure to embed the font when you create the PDF. Your ITC can help you with this.

If you only wish to include small amounts of non-English text, they can be converted to images to bypass the font problem as well. Please contact your ITC if you'd like to explore this possibility.

• Who is my ITC?

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9. How can I get rid of the gibberish characters appearing on my webpage?

If you are posting a webpage (HTML document) that is encoded in a character set other than Unicode, it may display strange characters or garbled text. This is because WebCT attempts to display every webpage in Unicode, regardless of whether it was encoded that way. Fortunately, WebCT includes a tool that helps you convert your HTML files to Unicode so that they will display correctly.

1. Determine the current character set of your HTML file. This information is often contained in the header section, and can be seen in code view. You will not be able to use this conversion tool if you don't know the original character set of your webpage.
   
   
2. Keep a backup copy of your HTML file, in case the conversion doesn't work correctly.
   
   
3. Make sure that the Designer Options tab is selected.
   
   
   
   
4. Click on Manage Files, under Course Menu > Designer Links.
   
   
   
   
5. Check the box next to the file you want to convert, and click Convert charset in the right-hand column (under Actions > Options: Files).
   
   
   
   
6. The Convert Character Set screen appears. From the pulldown box, choose the current character set of your HTML document. Click Preview and look below to see how the file will appear after conversion.
   
   
   
   
7. If the previewed file appears correctly, then click Convert to make the conversion. If not, click Cancel.
   
   
   
   

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