mylangara Course Tools Quick Guide Rev 1.3 Sept. 2007
The mylangara portal includes a Course Tool that automatically links to Banner and creates a course homepage for your Banner courses. You can use the mylangara Course Tool to communicate and share information with your students. This guide will give you a quick intro to the Course Tool capabilities. Note: You can now copy your Course Tool information from one section to another. That is, roll information from a section in one term to a section in the next term. For information on how to do this, see http://my.langara.bc.ca/local/help/copycontent.html To access the Course Tool, click on the mycourses tab, then on the Course Tool link. Choose a course from the list of courses provided on the Course Tool list page. You can choose the term to show courses for. When a course homepage is first created in the Course Tool, there is no content and only a few of the applications are enabled. The first thing you will want to do is add content and enable applications. The tools or applications initially available to you and your students are Announcements, News, Photos, Links, Files, Message Board, Calendar, E-Mail and Members list. 13/09/2007 Page 2 of 7
This is how a course appears when it is first created: To enable more applications, click on the Applications link in the Configurations Tools section (see below). Select the applications you want to enable and click update. The applications will immediately appear in the Course Tools and Content Tools menus. 13/09/2007 Page 3 of 7
To change the course homepage, you can start by adding a photo, news items, web page links, and a Message Board topic. (Note: These tools must be active to use their content on the homepage.) Use the Manage Homepage link in Content Tools section to choose a picture and link to appear on the homepage. Other items will appear by default. Here is a sample course homepage. 13/09/2007 Page 4 of 7
Students see a limited menu: As an instructor, you have many options: As the Instructor: Use the Content Tools section to: setup the homepage add photos add news items add web page links upload files for sharing manage message board topics create and manage announcements approve items for general access Use the Configuration Tools section to: Decide which Applications you want to have available. Add Members to the group other than current students. Click on Members, then click on Add Members. Give members Permissions to manage certain applications. 13/09/2007 Page 5 of 7
How to use the Content Tools: Manage Homepage: Setup a homepage that students will see when they first access the course. You can choose a favourite picture and web page links to show. News items, Announcements and Message Board topics appear by default. Manage Message Board: Any member can create topics and respond to topics on the message board. Only the instructor or designate can delete topics and messages. Manage Calendar: The calendar for the course reflects the meeting times for the class as defined in the registration system. The instructor can edit this calendar, but you should do so with caution, as this calendar represents section meeting times as defined in Banner. Students cannot edit entries, but can view the calendar. Manage Announcements: Creates announcements that appear on the homepage, Announcements section, and in the Personal Announcements channel of the mylangara Home tab. Note: Announcements expire and are purged after 4 months. News items never expire, and must be removed by hand. Members submitting items. Any member can submit items for access by the entire course. The Instructor must approve these items before they are available to others in the course. The following Content Tools allow you to approve items that have been submitted or create items yourself. An item is available to the entire course only after you approve it. Manage News: Create or approve news items that appear on the home page and in the News tool section. Manage Photos: Add or approve photographs that appear in the Photo section. A photo can appear on the homepage. Photos are limited to 5 Meg in size. Manage Links: Add or approve web page links that appear in the Links section and can be used on the homepage. Manage Files: Upload or approve files that appear in the Files sections. Folders can be created to organize the files. Files are limited to 10 Meg in size. 13/09/2007 Page 6 of 7
Communication in the Course Tool. There are a number of ways to communicate in the course tool: Announcements News items Chat E-mail Announcements. Announcements not only appear on the course homepage and in the Announcements section, but also appear in the My Announcements channel on a users mylangara Home tab. This way course members can see announcements without opening the course tool application. In the My Announcements channel, users can delete an announcement after they have read it. This marks the announcement as having been read for that user, and it never appears again in their My Announcements channel. Announcements expire after 4 months. There is no way to control the expiry date individually. You can delete an announcement any time in Manage Announcements. Unfortunately, when an Announcement appears in the My Announcement channel, it doesn t tell the user which course the announcement is coming from. You should include this information in the announcement. News items. News items appear on the homepage and in the News tool. News items stay visible until the Instructor or designate either deletes them or makes them inactive. Chat. Course members can use the Chat tool to instantaneously communicate with other members. You can arrange certain times during the week as common chat room times. E-mail. The email tool allows you to send an email to any or all members of your class. All users can access their college email from mylangara. Note that the email tool sends mail to the students college provided account, not their personal email account. You should inform students of this before using the email tool. Students can choose to forward their college email to their personal email account. This is done from the Options menu in the webmail client. Click on the email Course Tool link, select the members you want to send an email to, or click Select All, and then click on Send E-mail. This brings up an email compose screen. You do not have to fill in the From: field. All the members you selected are sent an email via bcc (blind carbon copy). Write your message and click Send (Scroll down to find the Send button). 13/09/2007 Page 7 of 7