ARCHIVED: What is WebCT?

Overview

WebCT is a tool that IU instructors may use to facilitate the creation of sophisticated World Wide Web-based educational environments. WebCT advances the learning experience by providing:

• an interface that allows instructors to design the presentation of the course (e.g., color schemes or layout)
• a set of educational tools that facilitate learning, communication, and collaboration
• a set of administrative tools to assist instructors in the process of management and continuous improvement of the course

WebCT tools

Tools for the WebCT environment include:

• Course Calendar: The Course Calendar is a calendar for important dates in the course. Instructors may use this tool to post notes such as assignment due dates, class meeting times, or any other date-specific information relevant to the course. Instructors and students may view the calendar by month, giving a general list of events, or by day, giving access to more detailed information. Instructors and students may also post private entries to the calendar in order to manage their busy personal schedules.
• Course Content: Instructors may use the Course Content tool to present a variety of information to students. This can include general information about the course, the course syllabus, assignments, information about the instructors, articles, lists of resources, and lectures. This is one of the first places for students to look for information about the course.
• Bulletin Board: The Bulletin Board serves as the main form of group communication for the course. Instructors and students should use this tool to post messages for everyone in the course to read (or in some cases, for a group of students within the class to read).
• Private Mail: The Private Mail tool is useful for sending messages directly to instructors or other students in the course. Unlike messages created in the Bulletin Board, only the individuals to whom a Private Mail message was sent may read it.
• Online Chat: The Online Chat serves as a way of interacting within a course by requiring participants to respond at the same time. It is a tool for synchronous communication. The Bulletin Board and Private Mail are examples of asynchronous communication tools.
• Student Homepages: The Student Homepages tool allows students to create their own web page within the course. This page can include any information that students want others in the class to know about themselves. Only members of the course may view the web pages that students create with this tool. If students are taking more than one course that uses WebCT, they do not have to recreate their Student Homepage from scratch in each course. They can use the backup utility included with this tool to save their page from one course to their local computer, then upload it into another course.

For more student information, visit A Student's Guide to Using WebCT at:

  http://www.opd.iupui.edu/webct/tutorial.html