LHU eCampus
151 Susquehanna Ave.
Annex 310
Lock Haven, PA 17745
P: 570-484-2404
F: 570-484-2981
eCollege Tips
FAQs
Troubleshooting
Contacting the eCollege HelpDesk
Wireless Connections + eCollege Not a Supported Configuration!
Lag Time in Un-Hiding Exams!
Timeout errors in course
Documents Failing to Upload
Time Zones - why is everything in MST?
Tools & Features - How To
Course Checklist Feature
Managing Threaded Discussions
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Threaded Discussion Options
Threaded Discussions - getting students fully engaged
Operating Systems & Browsers
Microsoft Office 2007
ExamGuard Not Working
w/IE7
Course Design
Aligning Text Around Pictures
Images and Graphics
The Horizontal Rule - making your pages more readable
Page design - making your lecture materials visually appealing
Assessments & Exams
Exam Time Multiplier - 508 Accessibility Needs
Online Assessments - best practices
Exam Creation - copying and pasting from Word
ExamGuard Not Working
w/IE7
Exam Statistics
Exams - resetting a student's attempt and/or giving them more time
Exam Statistics
Test banks
- Respondus
Test Banks Feature - within author mode of exam
Wireless Connections + eCollege Not a Supported Configuration!
Please note that, as per eCollege's Technical Requirements page, Wireless Routers/Connections (as well as Satellite and Cellular internet connections) are *NOT* supported by eCollege. The issues with these types of connections have been far too sporadic and varied for eCollege to be able to build a usable issue history on and solve. One user may have a problem performing a certain task while another user has no problem with it, while the same user might have a problem one day and be able to perform the exact same task with no problem the next day. The only workaround is to always have a hard-wired internet connection readily available, and plan to use it anytime that stability is a must, such as while taking exams.
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Instructors please note that if you have exams set to be "hidden" from student view, when you do go in and select to UN-hide the exam, it could take anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes to appear for all students! The reason for the delay is that the left navigation in the courses is now cached in order to speed up load time for dial-up users.
Workaround #1: Instead of hiding the exam, schedule it to become available to students on a particular day for a certain time period. There are no issues with this type of scheduling--the exam will appear as scheduled. To do this, click on your exam, make sure you're in Author view, then click on Toolbox, then Edit Schedule. Note that if you set a start date and a later end date, and also schedule a specific access time, the exam will be available for the scheduled time period on each day of the time frame.
Workaround #2: If you want to be able to control the exam so that it becomes available to students as soon as you want it to, and not necessarily at any certain scheduled time, just follow the directions above to "schedule" your exam for a date and time which is farther in the future than you know you will need it to be. Then, the moment you're ready for students to access it, just go back into the scheduler and remove all of the settings and save the changes. The reason this works is that when an exam is scheduled in the future, it still appears in the left navigation. When students try to click on it they get a message that the exam is not yet available. This bypasses the caching issue which occurs because "hidden" exams do not even appear in the left navigation until they are un-hidden.
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Exams - resetting a student's attempt and/or giving them more time
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One key piece to keep in mind when either resetting the exam or granting additional minutes, is that the exam dates have to be current. If the end date of the exam has already passed the student will be unable to enter the exam.
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While working in the Calendar or other parts of the course, you will sometimes encounter Session Timeout errors. These are typically caused by a users' web browser not handling cookies correctly.
To correct this issue in Internet Explorer, follow these steps:
- Go to Tools
- Select Internet Options
- Next, select the Privacy tab
- Be sure the slide bar is set to low
- If there is no side bar, click the Default button and adjust the setting to Low
Page design - making your lecture materials visually appealing
Lecture material is often the nucleus of the course. It should be visually appealing, easily discernable, yet filled with the strongest content possible.
Scrolling: Studies show that students would rather scroll down a page of "thinner" text, than read shorter quantities of "thicker" text. As well, the end user (students) should never have to scroll left to right to read information!
Chunking: Students also need material to be "chunked " or separated into manageable sections.
Symbols: Bullets, tables, graphs, outlines, and icons can help direct students to specific information, making navigation much more user friendly.
Color: Pages should consist of 2-4 colors (including text) with one color being predominant. Too much color can be distracting, but not enough can be boring. TIP: A dark color on a light background is easier to read for long periods of time than black on white.
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You can now access both Respondus and StudyMate on the X: drive (staffapps on ‘lark’). You have access to this drive when logged in to the University network.
If you would like to install the programs on your home computer, you may either use a USB drive to take the files home, or you can set up a VPN connection to LHU from home. Instructions on setting up a VPN connection can be found at http://www.lhup.edu/computing_and_tech/faqdisp.php?faq_id=22. Once you set up a VPN connection to the LHU network, you will just need to map to \\lark.lhup.edu\staffapps.
After installing each product, you will be prompted to enter an Institution Name, Local Support Contact, and Installation Password upon opening them for the first time. This information can be found on the "ReadMe" document that you'll find in the Respondus_Studymate folder on the staffapps drive. Be sure to copy and paste the information exactly as it appears within the ReadMe file. If you have any trouble with this, please contact the Distanc Education office for help.
Many of you are already familiar with Respondus, the exam creation utility which allows you to create exams offline and then upload them to your eCollege course shell, but StudyMate is new for this semester! StudyMate lets you create ten Flash-based activities and games using four simple templates. The Flash activities can be published directly to your eCollege course shell. StudyMate will import items from MS Word files and publisher test banks, making it easy to create interesting, interactive activities from existing content. Best of all, you don’t have to know Flash programming or HTML to use StudyMate!|
Further details on each product can be found at http://www.respondus.com/products/respondus.shtml and http://www.respondus.com/products/studymate.shtml, but be sure not to sign up for the 30-day trial there, as you already have the products available to you for free through LHU.
User guides for both products can be downloaded from http://www.respondus.com/products/userguide.shtml.
Use the Course Checklist as another way for your students to keep track of activities and due dates in the course. The Course Checklist feature (found on the Course Homepage below What's New) shows students and instructors an outline of the course, arranged by unit and content item. If the instructor populates the Due Dates field in the Course Scheduler for items containing assignments, the Checklist will show this due date. This provides students with an additional overview of the deliverables for the course. In the Student view, the Checklist interface allowing students to check off items they have completed. If an item has a due date associated with it and this due date has passed, the student will get a visual reminder as the font for the missed date will turn red in the Checklist.
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McAfee Internet Security Suite - issues saving exam answers
Users entering exams may experience issues saving their answers if they are currently using the 2007 McAfee Internet Security Suite. Users that experience difficulties should contact the online helpdesk (570-484-3300 or helpdesk@lhup.net) for instructions on how to configure their security settings to allow for successful exam submissions.
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When set up well, with thought-provoking questions, threaded discussions can lead to rich, valuable conversations. But, particularly in large classes, managing Threaded Discussions can become time consuming and somewhat overwhelming for instructors. How can you minimize this strain and stress, while still maximizing the real value of this discussion tool? Here are some ideas:
- Set a maximum number of student postings per discussion topic (2-3). If discussions are getting too long you can create a new discussion, or even a chat.
- State clear expectations for student postings and responses at the beginning of the course, syllabus and announcement on the homepage. You can also repeat expectations on the discussion pages.
- Assign students to groups and ask each group to post one answer to the discussion topic.
- Designate an end time for posting comments and responses.
- Assign student facilitators on a rotating basis.
Your online course includes a powerful diagnostic tool called Exam Statistics . Accessed from the Exam Builder or from the Unit and Quick Grade views in the Gradebook, Exam Statistics provides both exam-level and question-level statistical analysis for the exam.
A few of the Exam-level calculations include:
- The number of respondents and number of questions on the exam
- High and low scores, as well as the range
- The mean, median, and mode
Question-level calculations include:
- The number of respondents and the frequency of each response
- The P-value (or difficulty level) of each question
- The Discrimination value for each question (the degree to which each question is separating the better students on the exam from the weaker students)
Test Banks Feature - within author mode of exam
The Test Banks feature (found within Author mode of an exam) displays all of the quiz/exam questions that currently reside in the course. This feature can be used to move or copy various questions from one exam to another. For instance, if you wish to make a cumulative midterm from exam questions in Units 1-5, instead of having to create the questions from scratch you can copy or move the questions into the midterm exam. Included below are the instructions on how to proceed:
The new questions will now be copied or moved to the specified content item.
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Microsoft Office 2007 - new file extensions
Microsoft Office 2007 has recently been released for purchase. The latest version of MS Office uses a different file extension than past versions of Office (.docx, .pptx, .xlsx, ...etc). While our system does allow these file types to be uploaded to the course pages, it is still recommend that users save their Office 2007 files in an older format by going to File>Save As>Save as type and selecting "Office 97-2003". This will ensure that users with older versions of office can edit and view the documents correctly.
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There is a new version of ExamGuard for 2007, and the older version does not work with Internet Explorer 7. If you are having difficulty opening an exam that is using ExamGuard and you suspect the problem may be that you're running an older version in conjunction with IE7, you will need to uninstall your current version of ExamGuard and download the new version at http://www.questionmark.com/secure/_ecollege.asp.
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Changes made in course not showing up later
Logging in to two separate courses through two separate browser windows at the same time may cause user activity in one of the courses not to be recorded. In order to avoid user activity discrepancies it is recommended that users access one course at a time through a single browser window.
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Including relevant images on the course and unit homepages will help your course to:
- achieve a higher level of student usability
- better meet the needs of multi-modal learners
- generally look richer
Keep in mind, though, that you don't want too many visuals to distract the student from the textual information on the page. For example, if you have an animated title you may want to omit the inclusion of a graphic.
Remember, the use of relevant graphics is not restricted to homepages. Appropriate graphics can illustrate content or stimulate thought when presented on text and discussion pages throughout your course.
The key here is relevant and appropriate graphics. Don't throw in graphics just for the sake of putting something on the page, even if it's eye-catching. It can distract rather than add to your course.
NOTE: We have a Course Developer here at LHU who can help you with adding images and graphics to your course.
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The purpose of the Dropbox is to provide a central location where you and your students can submit and retrieve assignments and graded activities. Think of the Dropbox as a virtual "Inbox" and "Outbox" for course assignments:
- You pick up or retrieve submitted assignments from your students in your Inbox.
- You return or send graded assignments back to your students in your Outbox.
Your Dropbox/Inbox is also linked directly to the Gradebook, which makes it easy to open an assignment, grade it, and then record the student's grade directly into the Gradebook--all from one place.
Students can open a graded item from either the Dropbox or from the Gradebook and see their grade for that item. You can also attach files and documents to assignments when you return them to students.
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Exam Time Multiplier - 508 Accessibility Needs
For many students with special needs, they require a longer time than other students to complete an assessment. In the past, in order to give a specific student extra time in an assessment they either had to be given a separate exam or given extra time after they started the exam. These processes were cumbersome for both the instructor and student.
eCollege is aware of the time and effort it can take to support 508 accessibility needs of students. In order to reduce this effort, we have introduced a process that allows an administrator to add time to all exams a student will take through an "Exam Time Multiplier". The Exam Time Multiplier will automatically recalculate a student's allowed exam time to assure them that they will be given the additional time they need to complete their exam. For example, if the multiplier for a student is 1.5, they will be given 50% more time on any assessment they take in the eCollege system.
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The Horizontal Rule - making your pages more readable
When we talk about good Web layout, and student usability of courses, one of the main factors is the readability of the textual content that they are expected to learn and/or interact with. Any number of factors can hinder this usability - which include, but are certainly not limited to, images that, rather than enhancing the learning, become distractions with movement or irrelevance to the topic at hand; difficult to read fonts. Likewise, serif-style fonts are generally more difficult to read on a computer screen than their sans-serif cousins, as well as too much text filling up the field of vision.
One basic, but effective way of breaking up pages and pages of text into those proverbial "small, digestible chunks" is by using the Horizontal Rule. The horizontal rule is basically a piece of HTML code <HR> that adds a horizontal line across the entire page, with a bit of space before and after it - which can be added to any "Text"-type content item in the HTML mode of the visual editor. The line nicely serves the purpose of breaking up paragraphs, or adding a good spacer after page titles or important information.
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As an instructor, you have a few options available with the Threaded Discussion Content Item.
- You can make threads read-only after a certain date . This allows students to go back and reference threaded discussions, but they can't add more posts after you 'lock' them.
- You can allow students to edit their posts . Sometimes students make grammatical errors--or perhaps they just change their minds about a statement made. Threaded Discussions default to not allowing students the ability to edit, but you can change that. Keep in mind that when students do edit a post, the system does not retain the original post(s). The system will note, though, that a post has been edited and the date.
These options can be found under Preferences within the Course Admin tab (located to the left of the Gradebook).
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If you are having a problem with a Microsoft document converting within the courseware this could be due to the formatting of the file you are attempting to convert.
There are some things to check before attempting to upload any Office Document into your course:
- If the file cannot be saved as a webpage on your local machine, it cannot be converted in our system.
- If documents are in Read-Only mode when the conversion attempt is made, the conversion may fail.
- If the Auto-SpellCheck is set on your document, the conversion tool will try to spellcheck when converting, which causes the conversion tool to fail.
- Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and Power Point presentations will fail if they contain macros. Files with macros cannot be uploaded to our system for security reasons.
- If Power Point presentations have animation in them, they will not upload/convert.
If none of these options apply to your specific document and you are still having a problem converting it, you can contact the helpdesk. Please include specific course information, as well as the unit and content item you are trying to upload to, and send a copy of the document.
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Threaded Discussions - getting students fully engaged
Have you ever wondered, "How can I get my students to participate more, as well as more effectively, in my threaded discussions?" Below are a few things to think about:
1) Clear Communication of Expectations . Going beyond a simple invitation to join in the discussions, most of the more successful instructors make it very clear as to what they consider to be appropriate performance. They describe how, as well as how often, students are to participate (e.g., "you are to log into each week's discussion at least twice a week, once before Wednesday, to respond to the initial question posted, and again later in the week, before Saturday at 6 p.m., to respond to at least two of your classmates' responses ").
2) Make It Count . Without exception, those instructors who appear to be getting the most effective results make it clear that participation counts in a variety of ways. They know that students tend to ignore that which does not get a grade. So, they let their students know that it is not optional and a significant portion of their grade will depend on the quantity and quality of participation.
3) Active, Supportive Mentoring . The most successful instructors are very active and supportive. They reach out to all students, particularly the most tentative. They actively find ways to comment positively or reinforce the contributions of students, and provide corrective feedback in sensibly sensitive ways.
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Online Assessments - best practices
When assessing your online student's learning, consider the following:
- Utilize all of the communication tools from the online course along with other activities you have established for your course.
- Use practice quizzes and self-assessment exercises.
- Ask students to recommend work they would like to have considered in your assessment of their learning.
- Where possible, use tasks that are authentic-- i.e. allowing students to explore, discover, discuss, and meaningfully use new learning in contexts that involve real-world problems and projects that are relevant and interesting to the learner.
- You can create exams that are "single-access exams" and exams that can be accessed many times by a single student, so that the exam becomes a self-learning tool. In designing your exams, you can also utilize them as important communication tools by putting in explanations for correct and incorrect answers in the available fields.
In ClassLive, each live session is automatically archived at its conclusion. In the ClassLive interface, an archive listing provides students and instructors the ability to view the Session date, time, length and leader. Upon clicking the archive link, students can view a recording that exactly duplicates the session - this is particularly useful for review or in case someone was unable to attend the original session.
With summertime and vacation time approaching, is it possible for an instructor to create session(s) that will be available to students while the instructor is away? The answer is Yes. Instructors have the ability to create and automatically archive as many sessions as needed. After a session is archived, the instructor should direct the students (via information in an announcement, lecture content item, an email, etc.), to the ClassLive button found within the Chat tab, where they will find the list of archives, and then specifically indicate which archive(s) to view for the material being covered.
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Exam Creation - copying and pasting from Word
Have you ever wondered why when text is copied and pasted into the Exam Builder from a Word document there are extra spaces between the questions and answers?
The reason for the extra spaces is because Word incorporates extra HTML into the code, so when the text is copied and pasted into the Visual Editor the extra HTML is embedded as well. Included are a few instructions on how to copy and paste the text without embedding the extra HTML code:
- Copy and paste the test questions into Notepad.
- Save the file as a .txt file (saving the file as a .txt file will strip the extra code from the document)
- Copy and paste directly from the .txt file into the Visual Editor. The text will be copied without the additional HTML code.
Tips for a Successful Online Environment
1. Introduce Yourself in the Syllabus. It's a good idea to provide an instructor biographical statement and photo in the syllabus.
2. Encourage Student Introductions. Under the Course Home, create an Introduction threaded discussion where students can introduce themselves to their classmates and the instructor.
3. Establish an Office. Under the Course Home, create an Office threaded discussion where students can post course-related questions and you can provide answers. Be sure to let students know how often you plan to check your office area and respond to student questions.
4. Provide Constructive Feedback. Research indicates that the online courses receiving the "best" student evaluations are those with strong instructor presence and constructive feedback provided in a timely fashion.
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Time Zones - why is everything in MST?
Since the eCollege servers are all located in Denver, CO, the time stamps on announcements, discussion posts and other submissions are marked in MST (2 hours behind us).
In the new .NExT version of eCollege, users will be able to specify their correct time zones.
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Support of Internet Explorer 8.0
Microsoft announced their release of Internet Explorer 8.0 on March 19, 2009. eCollege is in their final testing stages for support IE8, and they expect to be able to fully support IE8 by April 20, 2009. At that time, they will update the Technical Requirements page to reflect their support of IE8.
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What is the difference between eCourse and eCompanion?
An eCourse is a fully online distance education course. eCourse students are not required to come to campus at all, and the course is marked as a web-based course through CARS and on the Master Schedule. If you are requesting to teach an eCourse, you are required to first complete the "Application to Teach via Distance Learning" located at http://www.ecampus.lhup.edu/faculty.html.
An eCompanion is an online course shell that you can use to supplement your face-to-face instruction with some online materials. For instance, you can put your syllabus online for students to reference 24 hours per day, you can have your students log on to the course supplement to participate in threaded discussions, and you can have them hand in homework assignments and even take quizzes online. eCompanion students are still required to attend class in the classroom as scheduled. You are free to request an eCompanion shell for every course that you teach, if you so desire, with no special approval needed.
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What is the difference between eCollege and the eCampus?
eCollege is the Course Management System that we log in to, as well as the company who provides the system. The company eCollege is based in Denver, CO, and the eCollege Course Management System runs off of a very intricate system of servers there. This is how they can guarantee over 99.9% uptime for us.
Here at Lock Haven University, our Distance Education Department and the courses that we offer are now also known as Lock Haven University's eCampus.
To request a course shell, you will need to go to http://www.ecampus.lhup.edu/courseware.html. If you have never used eCollege for the course before, use the link "Request a course shell here." If you have used eCollege for the course in the past, you can use the link "Request course content duplication here" to have content moved from a previous semester. Course shell and content duplication requests are generally taken care of within 24 hours.
Contacting the eCollege HelpDesk
There are several ways to access technical assistance 24 hours per day! You can call the helpdesk any time or day of the week at 570-484-3300. You can also email them at helpdesk@lhup.net. You can also have a live online chat with a helpdesk technician by clicking on the Help tab within your course.
Lock Haven University is a proud member of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE)