Boston University | CET | Using Technology

Using the Faculty Link
Courseware like WebCT and CourseInfo
People.bu.edu
Creating PDFs
Instant Messaging
Electronic Office Hours
Mailing Lists
Giving Teaching Fellows Access to Class Registration Lists
Threaded Discussions
Forums@BU
Blogs
External Webpages
Maintaining Online Material

The Faculty Link at Boston University is an Internet resource for faculty instructors and faculty advisors. The Faculty Link provides access to class schedules, class lists, final exam schedules, advisee lists, class photographs, textbook information, links to course websites, and an electronic Faculty Annual Report template. Access to these useful faculty resources requires a BU login name and valid Kerberos password, obtained through the Office of Information Technology, 111 Cummington Street, or on-line.

The functions relevant to management of your courses are listed on the Faculty Link under Instructor's Tools. By clicking on the different entries, faculty members may access information specific to managing their own classes. This section of the Link provides individual class lists, photo galleries of students enrolled in your classes, textbook adoption information, links to class management software ("courseware") , entry of grades, and other items relevant to course management.

Faculty members that serve as academic advisors can access information on individual students through the Faculty Link. Besides your Kerberos password (see above), you will need to have either an official designation as a student's advisor (arranged by either your department or college, or by the student) or a SecurID device. The latter can be obtained through your departmental administrator if there is a need for you to have broad access to student records, as determined by your department. The device displays a numerical passcode that changes with time, in an effort to provide special security to student records. In order to access student academic records in this way, you need to enter the Faculty/Staff Link. A prompt will then ask you to type in both your Kerberos password and the passcode displayed by the SecurID device.

Courseware like WebCT and CourseInfo

Both of the courseware packages available at BU, WebCT and CourseInfo, allow faculty to quickly and easily post materials online. Files of any format like documents, video, and audio can be posted online on a courseware site. However, be conscientious of the software students are most likely to have on their computers; files with the extension .doc, .xls, .pdf should be readable by most students. Because both courseware sites use password protection to give access only to students in the course, faculty can post material like journal articles or songs without copyright infringement.

Posting pages in courseware is similar to making a webpage: the file must first be uploaded to the appropriate courseware server folder, then the page must be made viewable by linking it within your courseware site. Both courseware packages utilize obvious buttons to significantly streamline this process.

A CET workshop held on 12/12/05 and led by Prof. Karen Jacobs of Sargent College, provided suggestions for using courseware - with CourseInfo as the model - effectively. A summary of the workshop is available.

A comparison of WebCT and CourseInfo is available from WebCentral.

People.bu.edu

BU faculty, staff, students, and organizations can create and publish webpages on people.bu.edu. An application must be completed after which a home page file named “index.html” will be put in your Web directory. In addition to creating personal webpages, instructors also can create interactive webpages for classes. Example course webpages might include a syllabus with links to online scholarly articles, streaming audio or video, or simulations.

Note that posting copyrighted material on a public website is copyright infringement. To properly post copyrighted material, instructors must use password protection for that material so that only students in the course may gain access. Courseware packages like WebCT and CourseInfo (both available at BU) make this very easy for the instructor; only students registered for the course can access the courseware site.

Most Web pages are formatted with HTML, a simple markup and formatting code that is easy to learn. However, casual web designers may find HTML Editors like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Contribute, or even Netscape Composer more helpful. These programs allow creation of webpages in WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") format instead of through composing HTML code. WebCentral offers tutorials in HTML, Dreamweaver, and Contribute.

Creating PDFs

Many file types can be converted to pdfs, including Word documents (.doc), spreadsheets (.xls), and slide presentations (.ppt). Converting documents to pdfs allows users to view the file exactly as you intended; formats will not be lost when the file is opened using software of different versions or with different default settings. Furthermore, pdf file sizes are smaller than the file in their original file formats. Because of these qualities, posting pdfs to Courseware sites and sending pdfs as attachments is a beneficial method of getting information to students. However, be aware that a pdf cannot be modified once it is created; the original file must be used to make changes. This is a serious concern when sending spreadsheet-style data to students.

In order to read a file, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, available free for download. In order to produce a pdf, a full version of Adobe Acrobat must be installed on your computer. Then, when you want to make a pdf, select "Print" and choose "Acrobat Distiller" as your printer. Adobe Acrobat is available for purchase from University Computers; BU also has an Adobe Campus License, so check with your department administrator about purchasing Adobe Acrobat.

Instant Messaging
Instant Messenger is a program that allows real time communication with other users. After a user signs up and obtains a user name or "screen name," he or she can converse with a single user in a normal window, or with many other users in a chat room. The communication is typically textual, but live video is also available. Because of the immense popularity of IMing among students, professors are advised to keep their academic screen name separate from any others they may have. There are several IM providers, but the most widely used is AOL. One drawback to using IM is that messages are not archived; thus, while you can converse with a student in real time, there is no way to capture the session (and post it later so other students can share your knowledge, for example).

Electronic office hours
Faculty may consider setting aside a subset of their office hours to electronic office hours. Faculty can use instant communication systems such as instant messaging from AOL or course management discussion boards/chat rooms from WebCT or CourseInfo to be available to students online for an hour each week. This is a useful way for faculty to use their time reaching students directly.

Mailing lists
The Registrar's Office offers a type of mailing list within the Class List of the Faculty Link in which faculty can send an email to one section of their course with one click. See the CET website section on e-mail. As an alternative, faculty can create their own mailing lists. A mailing list (also known as a listserv) has several benefits.

List creators determine who is on the mailing list. Therefore instructors can create a list for students in multiple sections, for course discussion topics, or for course TFs.
"To:" fields often limit the number of recipients, but mailing lists circumvent this problem because the recipient is just the list name. The list is expanded out to all recipients by the list manager software.
No address book is required for the participants in the mailing list. Messages written to the mailing list from any list member go to all of the list members facilitating asynchronous class discussions.

Mailing list management [e.g. subscribing and unsubscribing mailing list members] is accomplished by sending specially formatted commands, via e-mail, to the list manager software, called "Majordomo." View information regarding setting up and using a mailing list.

Giving TFs access to class registration lists
Giving Teaching Fellows access to course or section registration lists can have several pedagogical benefits to the students and several management benefits to the supervising faculty member. With access to a course registration list, a TF can:

check on the registration status of any student in the section. This can be useful for establishing whether a student has dropped the section or has failed to attend
obtain contact information for any student in the section, including telephone and email
see the photo gallery of the section, which is helpful for learning students' names quickly
send an email to the entire section with one click
enter midterm and final section grades. Final grades must still be submitted by the faculty member.

To give a Teaching Fellow access to a particular course or section, follow the directions below:

Go to the Faculty Link and log in with your BU Login name and Kerberos password
Under "Instructor's Tools", click on "Class Management"
Click on any class or section to add a TF
Enter the TF's Last Name and First Name or the BU ID
Confirm your TF selection
Select an end date for access to the class registration list
Choose the type of access for the TF: Class list, grading, or interim grade management
You can add as many TFs as you wish for a section, but you can only add them one-at-a-time
Note that a TF with access to the class list will be able to see a registered student's academic information (profile, transcript).

Threaded discussions
Threaded discussions can be used for a variety of purposes, but are useful in developing an online "community" promoting ongoing discussions throughout a semester for either online or face-to-face students. They can be graded or ungraded and tied to lectures, assignments or projects. They are also a good way for teachers to promote active learning and for students to get to know each other. Course management software like WebCT and CourseInfo as well as BU's Forums@BU allow for threaded discussions. A comparison of WebCT and CourseInfo is available from WebCentral.

Forums@BU
Forums@BU is an interactive web-based bulletin board available to all academic and administrative departments. A department can use forums to communicate with its students, faculty, staff, and others. Within its forum, a department can create an unlimited number of subforums. Departments can link to any forum or subforum directly from their websites. Try out the Practice Forum and if this new service can benefit your department and constituents, Request a Forum. You can also view the Teaching and Learning with Technology Forum.

Blogs
A blog, short for "weblog," is a website that displays one's entries in reverse chronological order like a journal. It can be used to post information from classes sequentially. Or students can keep individual blogs about class readings to facilitate discussion. To use a blog, one must download or buy a software package. There is a list of blog software. You can see sample blog assignments and blog grading rubrics.

Wikis
Wikis (WikiWiki is Hawaiian for "quick") are editable webpages that are very simple to design. The content is generally set to be editable by anyone in the world who views them, facilitating group projects and information sharing. See What is Wiki for a more complete description of a wiki. Seedwiki is a simple place to start making a wiki. See Wikipedia as an example of an extensive wiki.

External webpages
Although BU webpages are provided for faculty, staff, and students, one may want an external webpage if he or she needs more space, wants to post personal information that he or she does not want on people.bu.edu, wants to maintain the website after leaving BU, or wants to use resources that are not allowed on the BU network. Although the BU resources are more than adequate for nearly all purposes, due to security restrictions, individual or personal Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts are not permitted on people.bu.edu. Wikis, online databases, may run on CGI scripts. If one can only have a webpage on people.bu.edu and wants to run a Wiki, he or she should develop an external webpage.

Maintaining online material

There are a variety of ways that an instructor can use to post course material online. See the page Maintaining Material Online.

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