|
Quick links to:
Standard Features
Our standard template for courses includes the following items:
- The Course Calendar is a place to post exam dates, due dates, and
other course events.
- The Course Materials folder is where students will normally
look for your syllabus, slides and other files that aren't in your
course pack or text book, although you're free to organize your content
using any folder structure you need.
- The Discussions area can save you time with student questions: answer a student's question
there, once, and all of them can read
your answer.
If you don't plan to answer student questions, the Discussion area
can still be used by the students themselves to help each other or
to continue class discussion.
- Project Folders gives
students a place to set up file-sharing areas for group or individual
projects,
along
with on-screen instructions
for doing so. Since Wharton has so many group project-oriented courses,
this feature has made webCafé Classic a popular
solution. You may remove this if your course does not have projects
(see Basic Procedures).
- The Links folder is a place to keep bookmarks
for other Web sites; we provide a few "default" links,
which you may add to or replace with your own links.
- The Instructor
Folder is a private folder for instructor documents and tools; anything
there is inaccessible to students. You can also
use this folder as a "staging area" for course materials
that you do not yet want students to see. You can also reach the
Wharton Online Roster from this folder.
- The Recycle Bin allows you
to restore a previously deleted item or to permanently remove deleted
items from the room.
Basic Procedures
Here are some of the basic steps for working with webCafé Classic
in a course.
Students especially appreciate having exam dates/times, assignment due
dates, review sessions, guest speaker events, and other milestones shown
in calendar format. Your webCafé Classic room includes a Course Calendar
for this purpose.
Use the Course Calendar's new event button
to fill out a simple form for posting each event.
In addition to major
events, you may optionally set up events for each course session (such
as the readings due for a class), although that is not required.
To add a noncopyrighted file--
such as your syllabus, or a presentation slide deck-- to your
webCafé Classic room, first go into the folder
(such as Course
Materials) in which you want the file to appear.
Then click the add
file button on the gray toolbar.
This will bring up a screen
on which you can click the Browse button to pick a file
from your hard drive.
Once you see the filename, highlight it and press
the Open button,
then press OK to transfer the file. If
you have installed the eRoom plug-in software, you can drag and drop
files from your computer to Course Materials or
other folders in the webCafé Classic
room.
Clicking
(with the left mouse button) on any icon or file will display it.
Right-clicking
on any icon or file will bring up a pop-up menu
of eRoom commands such as Edit, Delete, Access
Control, etc.
You can download a copy of a file in webCafé to your
computer by right-clicking its filename, then choosing "Save Target
As..." from
the pop-up menu and choosing to save to any folder on the computer. Note
for classroom use: You may want to download a copy of a presentation
file to the classroom computer; when doing that, use right-click and "Save
Target As.." then choose to save the file to the classroom computer's
public folder. Finally, open the public folder through the classroom
computer desktop to open the locally-saved file for use in your class.
You may delete any items or folders in the room that you do not wish
to use in your course. For example, if you do
not want to have a Discussions area (because students might post
questions and expect answers from you) or a Links folder, just delete
it.
To create a new folder, click the create button,
then choose
to create a Folder.
You'll be prompted to give the folder a name and
to choose other options, such as inclusion of an optional comments
area for the folder. (You will want to avoid the "View
and edit files in this folder as a single connected set" option--
that is primarily for technical work.)
You can create folders inside
the Course Materials folder, or anywhere in the room, to keep your
course content organized in whatever way that makes the most sense
for your needs. Also, many instructors create folders for students
to share finished versions of papers and assignments with the class
(if you need private assignment posting capability, please contact
us).
webCafé does not capture and store
e-mails you send to students. However, you may send an e-mail to students
related
to a webCafé posting
or other course-related matter in several ways.
One of the available options is to use
the alert button
(shown as a "paper airplane" icon  near
top right of the page), which brings
up a "Choose Members" list allowing you to select any combination of individual recipients
or course sections. To reach all students who currently have access
to your course's webCafé room, a Students group
is also provided in the "Choose Members" list (under "Groups
and Roles" for
rooms with fewer than 250 members, or shown after you click the Groups button
in rooms with more than 250 members.)
Once you have selected recipients,
a simple e-mail form will appear, which will include the Web address
(URL) of the webCafé Classic folder you were
viewing at the time you clicked alert.
This is a convenient way to send an immediate message drawing attention
to a particular file
or item in webCafé without
the need to attach it to the e-mail message.
Unfortunately, we can't
guarantee that your e-mail message will reach all students, in part
because students may go over their e-mail storage "quota" or
might mis-forward their mail to a problematic outside address. In practice,
you can expect your message to reach students who have Wharton accounts,
but not the ones who don't currently have Wharton accounts to access
the room. As a workaround for this issue, faculty may use the Wharton
Online Roster or Penn class e-mail lists. See our Sending
E-mail to Students guide page for more information.
Student and TA Access
Students typically locate rooms for courses using either
our home page ( http://webcafe.wharton.upenn.edu )
or a student information portal. Thus, there is no need to put the Web
address of your room on
a syllabus or other handout. In fact, we do not recommend publishing
webCafé URLs on paper at this time because of the
possibility of technical changes that may affect current Web addresses
of course sites.
Enrolled students with Wharton accounts will automatically be given
access to the room shortly before the course starts (or immediately if
it has already started). Additionally, you may give access to any other
user with a Wharton account-- such as a TA, an unregistered student,
or a grader or co-instructor-- to the room by clicking members on
the top-level folder to display the member list.
That list will have
an add
button;
after clicking add you can check off names of any Wharton
users that are not
shown as "deactivated". Once you have checked off the names
of users you wish to add, click the OK button, then choose
a role (e.g. "Teaching Assistants," "Staff," "Students")
for the members.
Our Tutorials section includes more detailed steps for using
the member list. If
you encounter difficulty, please reply with
the names and Wharton e-mail addresses of individuals for whom you would like
us to set up access.
Important Notes:
1) IF NON-WHARTON STUDENTS TAKE YOUR COURSE: Iitially,
your students who do not have Wharton accounts will not have access
to the course and will not be listed in the Members list. To access webCafé Classic,
non-Wharton students must first obtain a Wharton computing account.
Account application will be available online at http://accounts.wharton.upenn.edu starting on the first day of classes. The requirement to use a Wharton
account for webCafé Classic is the same as for
all other educational software licensed at the school level, rather
than at the University
level. Please let us know if you have any questions about non-Wharton
user access.
2) IF YOU PLAN TO USE webCafé IN CLASS: For your
first logon during a semester, you may be asked to select either "eRoom
plug-in software" or "Just the web browser." At this
time, the eRoom plug-in is unavailable in the classrooms as it is not
designed for use on a shared computer; however, the default on that
screen is "eRoom plug-in software." Please choose "Just
the web browser" and press OK if you are in the classroom. During
the semester you teach, that preference should be remembered in that
specific classroom, preventing future prompts in the same room that
term (unless there is an exigency requiring rebuilding of the classroom
PC).
While we make every effort to
keep webCafé Classic available during class times, there may be network
problems or other issues that
may make
webCafé temporarily
unreachable. Thus, you will always
want to have a "Plan B," such as a diskette or CD-R, for
access to any files
you wish to use while teaching in class. You can save a file in webCafé to the classroom computer by right-clicking its filename, then choosing Save Target As...
from the pop-up menu and choosing to save to the public folder on that
computer.
Finally, open the public folder through
the classroom computer desktop to open the locally-saved file for use
in your class.
Optional Features
If you would like to use any of these optional features that are
not included in the standard webCafé Classic
template, please e-mail
us or submit a Ticket at our Help
& Support/FAQs site.
- The Grade Book provides "columns" for graded items
-- exams, assignments and similar deliverables-- and "rows" containing
a student's score (numeric, letter grade, or text feedback) for
each item. The Grade Book is kept in your Instructor Folder;
a student may access her own grades using the "My Grades" link
provided elsewhere in the room. The Grade Book does not perform mathematical
calculations or submit final grades to your department; instead,
it's intended to save you time in compiling scores and communicating
results
to students securely. Scores entered into the Grade Book can be
downloaded to Excel for analysis or to aid in preparation of final
grades.
- For courses that need students to quickly form mutually
exclusive project
teams, the Project Folders area can be replaced with our Team
Signup system. Students can use Team Signup to join a team with
just a few mouse clicks; private folder access for each team is set
up automatically,
and "mailto" links in the Team Signup list make it easy to
send e-mail to team members. Team Signup is appropriate when the approximate
number of teams and maximum members per team are known in advance;
for more ad-hoc project group formation, it's better to use the standard
Project Folders. If you would like to use Team Signup, please send
the number of teams you want and maximum size per team in your e-mail
or Ticket request. (A variation, known
as Slot Signup, is available if you just need signups
for mutually exclusive options or slots -- e.g. faculty/student meals
-- but don't need corresponding group folders to be set up. For courses
that go by MBA learning team or MBA Exec first-year study group, ask
us about pre-built
learning team folders.)
- Once your course's enrollment has stabilized, you may request
creation of private Assignment Submission folders which allow
students to turn
in papers or projects without the ability to see others' work. You
can also privately give feedback, in the form of a comment or a revised
file, within each student's private folder. Instead of folders, you
can request setup of private Journals (personal discussion
areas) for each student. A timed take-home assignment option
is available with one week notice.
- Our new Assessments tool provides self-study
quizzes, online homework, surveys and similar outside-of-class-time "question
and answer" response assignments. Reports are available on assignments
performance, both for instructors and the students themselves. With
certain question types, automated grading is possible.
For Further Assistance
At the very top of most webCafé Classic
pages, you'll find several links, including these:
- Use the Home Page link
to leave the current room and return to our home page to find other
rooms or information.
- Click Contact Us to pre-address an
e-mail message to our support
e-mail address.
- The searchable Help & Support section of our web
site will pop up in a new
window after you click on Help & FAQs.
There, you may:
- Search for answers to frequently
asked questions (FAQs);
- Use the Self Service tab
to browse our help articles and downloads;
- Use the Troubleshooter to
identify problems by category, submitting a
help request (Ticket) if needed;
- Use the Ask the webCafé Team tab
to submit a Ticket requesting help, service
or information.
- Click Tutorials to find illustrated
step-by-step procedures (like this page).
- My
eRooms (shown underneath the webCafé logo)
brings you to a list showing all of the rooms in which you currently
have membership. This is another way to leave the current room and
find other rooms.
An additional resource for tips on using webCafé is
the online help for the eRoom software (on which webCafé is
largely based), available wherever a  button
appears. However, that online help may describe capabilities and features
that are not part of Wharton's webCafé Classic
service. Unlike the online help, our Help & Support/FAQs area
includes articles and troubleshooting resources applicable specifically
to the Wharton School.
For further assistance, please
feel free to e-mail
us or submit a Ticket at our Help & Support/FAQs site.
|
