NOVEMBER
2006

New Web Site:

University
Newsletter
We are saving
trees AND
bringing you
the University
Newsletter
online! Visit the web site and watch
for an email
summarizing
important
campus news
every Monday!

Did You Know . . .
that you can
access your
Coastal
accounts by
signing in only once? Have you visited myCoastal lately?

Online Attendance Pilot

This semester several classes are participating in a pilot program involving taking student attendance online. ITS' Administrative Computing department wrote a custom application which uses a web page to interface with Datatel and collect course enrollment information. Faculty log through a secure screen and call up their class roster. Upon entering the classroom students swipe their CCU ID through a small device attached to the professor's PC and their attendance is recorded for that class session. Several reports have been written that allow the professor to view class attendance within a specific date range or for each individual student. Upon successful completion of the pilot program this convenient new roll-taking application will be available across campus. Faculty who are interested in using the online attendance application in their classes should contact Fadi Baroody, fadi@coastal.edu or extension 2058, for more information.

Ask Coastal

Ask Coastal will be available on the web in the month of December.

WebCT Campus Edition 6.0

This semester marked the full campus rollout of WebCT Campus Edition 6.0. We have been preparing for the campus wide use of this software for close to two years. As with any new program the rollout has not been without a few hiccups, however, the response from faculty and students alike has been generally favorable. This semester marks the highest use of WebCT ever with 590 course sections being offered by 215 faculty!

Just when we are all getting used to the new look and feel of WebCT 6.0 several other changes are in the works. As many of you may know WebCT was purchased approximately a year ago by their closest competitor, BlackBoard. As it might be expected with a merger of this sort the two product lines will eventually combine into one application comprised of the best parts of both WebCT and BlackBoard. There are no immediate announcements to this effect and we will continue to use the WebCT product that we have become accustomed two - with one small change - the NAME! Before the beginning of the spring semester plan on applying several upgrades to the software and one obvious result will be a change in the name of the product. The WebCT identity will go from:
TO

Along with the upgrade that will change the name will come enhancements with a strong focus on new student-centered features designed to promote active learning. Several of these features include blogging, peer review and grading forms (rubrics). The features will be included as part of Application Pack 1 and you are encouraged to read more about these features on the new Blackboard/WebCT site. Watch for these WebCT enhancements and changes in the new year.

Outlook Error Message

Many users have reported the following error message to their Information Resource Consultant. This window might appear at apparently random times during email sessions:

Although many error messages are cause for concern this particular one is more of an annoyance than a signal that there is something wrong with your system! The above message may appear if you are using Outlook or Outlook Express at the same time an email session is open in web mail. This might happen, for example, if you have your email account open at home and at work at the same time. Although the message indicates the connection has been closed this is not the case and you can continue using your email. To avoid seeing this message make sure you only have one instance of email open at one time.

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