1. Introduction
WebCT is the electronic course management system maintained by Computer Centre to support academic departments to deliver their electronic courses
over the web. The latest WebCT Campus Edition (CE) 4.0 was released
in late April of 2003. This new release of WebCT brings in
an enhanced user interface and a number of useful new features. To
take advantage of these new provisions, Computer Centre has planned
to upgrade the current WebCT standard Edition to this latest version in
the summer of 2003. Here, we highlight some of new offerings excerpted
from the WebCT official web site.
2. New Features in WebCT Campus Edition 4.0
Updated Styling
In WebCT Campus Edition 4.0, the style has been updated throughout and
controls have been grouped and positioned to facilitate easier access and
more efficient course design. Additionally, the designer interface has
been divided into tabs that clearly separate the student and the designer
views, making it easier to design and preview courses. The following
two figures show the course preview and the designer view respectively.
Integrated
HTML Editor
WebCT Campus Edition 4.0 includes an HTML Editor (demo)
with spell-check, providing "What You See is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) content
creation and editing capabilities, making it easier to create and maintain
content within the WebCT course environment.
Equation Editor
In addition to the HTML editor, an equation editor is also included
so that teachers and students can now easily add equations to their contents
and discussions. The following two figures show the equation editor and
the resulting image on the course view respectively.
Multilingual
Support
Unicode (UTF-8) is supported to handle multilingual contents and discussions.
Other Highlights
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New course
design wizards provide step-by-step guides that walk teachers through
the completion of common course tasks, including setting up their course
Homepage, Syllabus, Organizer Pages, Content Modules, Discussions, Mail,
Calendar and Chat.
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Assignments can be submitted by students multiple times; teachers can return
corrected assignments.
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Teachers can control whether group projects are sharable by whole class
or just project group members.
More details about the WebCT Campus Edition 4.0 can be found
from the
WebCT web site.
3. Upgrade Schedule
Computer Centre will upgrade the WebCT server to WebCT Campus Edition
4.0 in the new academic year. Although the style of WebCT Campus Edition 4.0
is updated, navigation within a WebCT course should be quite similar to
that in our current WebCT Standard Edition. All existing functions
including the Automatic
Account Creation for student accounts and Email
to Class capabilities will be maintained. Therefore, current
users of WebCT should not have much difficulties in moving to the new release.
We have organized training courses for instructors in June. In
the new academic year, we shall organize similar courses again.
For any enquiries about this new release of WebCT, please contact the undersigned.
