WebCT Changes for Fall 2003

Faculty access to WebCT for fall course development will be at a different URL

• Until the beginning of fall term, faculty will use the following URL to access their fall term courses:
  http://webct.kennesaw.edu/
• At the beginning of fall term, both faculty and student access will change back to the current URL:
  http://courses.kennesaw.edu/
• This is necessary because the other changes below require a separate installation of WebCT.
• If you lose track of these, links to current term systems and archives are always at:
  http://online.kennesaw.edu/

WebCT Logins will use the KSU NetID system.

See: WebCT and KSU NetID.

The WebCT login page will use SSL (secure connection to the server).

This will encrypt your login information. There are two consequences:

• You may get a security warning when you first access the WebCT login. If so, you should select to "always accept" the identity of the site.
• When you leave the login page, you may get a warning that you are leaving a secure page. This is ok, we are not encrypting the other access to WebCT (just as it has been in the past).

The WebCT interface will have a different look and feel.

We are moving from WebCT 3.8 to WebCT 4.0. The interface has a different color scheme and layout, but the functions are the same.

Students will see few changes of substance, their interface is mostly determined by what faculty put into the course.

The most significant changes for faculty are:

• The designer control panel functions on the upper part of the left (navigation) menu are now called up by clicking on a "control panel" button in the same location.
• The "Designer Options" that were shown at the bottom of the page are now shown along the right side, with a different look and additional capabilities.

"Student" accounts for faculty access.

In the past, faculty have had a second WebCT account so that they could look at their courses as a student. Under the NetID system, faculty will have a secondary account that consists of their NetID with "_s" added to the end. This account will have the same password as the main account, and can be added or deleted in any course by the designer (instructor) of the course.

What about WebCT-Vista?

A major motivation for changing to WebCT 4.0 is that it will make the transfer of courses to WebCT-Vista much easier.

WebCT-Vista is the new WebCT system being adopted as a standard by the University System of Georgia. The tentative schedule for moving to Vista at KSU is:

• Workshops for faculty available Fall 2003
• Vista available at faculty option for Spring 2004
• Vista only available for Summer 2004