WebVista Version 4 New Tools, Features, and Enhancements

Course Preview Area

This provides the flexibility to link to multiple Web pages, allowing faculty to provide a preview of their site(s) for public viewing.

Date Rollover

This enables instructors and designers to streamline term-to-term transition by automatically updating all dates for the items in their sites. All content and learning activities, such as assignments, discussion topics, and assessments, can be simultaneously set forward by a specified number of days. Instructors can then make date adjustments to individual items through a centralized screen.

Discussions: Class Blogs

Instructors now have the ability to create Class Blogs in the Discussions tool. Students can read their classmates’ entries or jump into the discussion by posting entries and comments of their own.

Discussions: Journals

Journals, in the Discussions tool, provide a private space where students can reflect on their experiences, chronicle their learning, or record their reactions to a class lecture or discussion. Journals are designed so that instructors can automatically assign a journal to each student and then efficiently review the entries made. By changing a setting, student journals can be shared with the rest of the class.

Discussions: Peer Review

The new Peer Review feature in the Discussions tool enables students to rate one another's posts based on criteria set by the instructor, promoting active engagement and quality interactions. Instructors can create custom linear rating scales for students to rate their peers’ posts. Alternatively, instructors can associate a Grading Form with the discussion topic that students can use to provide their peers with richer feedback. Instructors can choose to make ratings anonymous and control whether students see ratings for all posts or only their own posts.

Goals

The Goals tool enables designers to create, organize, and present the learning goals of the course to their students. Instructors can associate the goals with materials from the course site so that students can click any given goal to see a list of all site content and activities that will help students attain that goal. The Goals tool makes it easier for students to understand what’s expected of them and how individual activities contribute to achieving their competencies.

Grading Forms

With the new Grading Forms tool, instructors can specify multiple grading criteria for a learning activity and define performance levels for each element of the criteria. The instructor or designer can create one or more grading forms in a site and associate the form(s) with assignments, discussions, or grade book columns. Grading forms let instructor provide very clear performance expectations to students, as well as objective guidelines for any other graders in the course.

My Profile

This provides all users with the option to manage a personal profile that can be shared with other users. Once the administrator defines which information can be included in a profile, this tool lets users make edits to the information and decide which fields to make public (if the administrator enables it). Users can even upload a photo of themselves to add a personal touch. Students and instructors can view one another's personal profiles from the PeopleLinks and Roster tools in the site.

Quick Start Page for Course Set-up

This provides the option to show the Quick Start page upon first access to a site. enables faculty to rapidly set-up their sites by quickly adding tools to get courses prepped and ready to teach.

Roster

All users enrolled in a course can use the new Roster tool to view the personal profile (including an optional photo) of all instructors, teaching assistants, and students enrolled in their class. In addition, the Roster tool displays all study groups in the course so that everyone can quickly see who belongs to each group. Students and instructors can share their personal interests and extra-curricular activities with the class to foster community building and promote social networking.

Web Folder Functionality
(WebDAV)

This enables users to open any folder in the File Manager as a Web Folder. Web Folders leverage WebDAV technology, which lets users easily drag and drop files between their desktops and WebVista. Users can open Web Folders within the WebVista interface.

Assessment Presentation Choices

Designers can determine whether they want an assessment to appear in the same window or to open in a new window when it is started. Designers can also determine whether or not they want students to be able to view quiz statistics.

Assessments: Tailored Instructions and Self-Test Instant Feedback

Designers and instructors can add their own custom quiz instructions to the top of an assessment, providing students with unique and tailored directions. If the assessment is delivered one question at a time, the instructor can choose to display the instructions only for the first question or for all subsequent questions as students advance through the assessment. In addition, students taking a self-test can now receive immediate feedback after answering a question without having to first complete the entire self-test.

Back Up and Restore

These are new options for creating online backups, restoring from an online backup, and controlling the number of allowed online backups via quotas.

Calendar

The calendar now includes clearly marked tabs that make it easier to switch between day, week, or monthly view at any time. A mini-pick-me calendar appears on the right to facilitate navigation in the week and day view. In addition, instructors can now create links to learning modules directly inside the calendar.

Course Customization

Included is an extended color palette and streamlined process of customizing the look-and-feel of a site.

Discussion Management

Instructors can now change many of the discussion settings midstream. For example, an anonymous discussion can be changed to non-anonymous midway through the discussion, making all posts non-anonymous after the cutoff. Instructors can better moderate a discussion topic to restrict students from posting or replying to the specific topic. When creating a gradable discussion topic, instructors can now determine if they want to automatically release the grades to the student.

E-mail

Instructors may send mail to users by role or by group affiliation.

End-of-Term Processing

This provides the ability to reset sections, copy content from one section to another, and more easily assign templates to sections. These functions can be performed by the administrator or by the instructor.

E-Pack Adoption

Instructors can import e-Packs into their existing sites without overwriting their own content, giving them the flexibility to add publisher content to their sites at any stage of the course design process.

Grade Book: Retain Data for Un-Enrolled Users

Data can be retained in the Grade Book for un-enrolled users. Instructors can choose whether to hide or show that data.

Learning Module Editing

Designers can now quickly update all titles of the table of contents inside a learning module through a single screen where they can edit each title efficiently. Items in the table of contents can be expanded or collapsed for easier navigation.

Learning Module Options

Learning Modules used for presenting content in a pre-defined sequence can now be included on the course menu, making them accessible to students from anywhere in the site. If desired, the first page of a learning module can display the table of contents for that module. Designers have a choice of displaying elements within the module as numbered items or simply as a list.

Media Library: Students

This is an option to allow students to create Media Library entries.

My Grades Area

Instructors can now provide students with more information in the My Grades area. For example, they can release Grade Book column statistics to give students a better idea of their performance relative to the class. Instructors can also choose to have their comments on an assignment or assessment appear in the My Grades area.

URLs (Web Links): Students

This is an option to allow students to create Web links (URLs).

URLs: More Flexible Web Links

Previously called URLs, Web links are now easier to manage. Whenever a Web link is added to a site, it is automatically added to a comprehensive Web Links page, giving instructors and students a central place to easily access and review all Web links used within a site.

User Interface

This has changed considerably. It features consolidated toolbars and makes greater use of collapsible menus to improve navigation and increase the design space on the screen.

Accessible Error Messages in Forms

A more consistent and accessible approach is being used for displaying error messages on forms. Messages are consistently displayed at the top of the screen. The error message will include both a summary of how many errors have occurred and a listing of each error. Each item in the list of errors is a link that will take you to the area in the form where the error occurred.

Anchors

The addition of anchors in the application provides assistive technology users with improved navigation. When the screen refreshes, cursor focus will now always be placed in the main content frame instead of the top of the browser. In addition, access key shortcuts were added to allow the user to jump to main areas of the screen.

Course Title is More Prominent

The course title is now easier for students to see.

Manual "Go" Buttons

In order to comply with WAI Priority 2 guidelines, we have eliminated spawning new browser windows where possible. In the remaining locations where links still open a new browser window, we include a title attribute stating, This link opens a new browser window.

Support for W3C WCAG1.0 Guideline 1: Use of Alt Tags

This guideline states that applications should provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content. Some improvements were made to ensure we fully comply with this guideline, including the ability to:

• update alt tags for new item icons,
• add alt tag fields for question forms in assessments, and
• remove repeating alt tags for icon/link combinations.

Support for W3C WCAG1.0 Guideline 12: Descriptive Frame Titles and Descriptions

The frame titles are more descriptive and frame descriptions have been updated where necessary.

Support for W3C WCAG1.0 Guideline 13: Clear and Consistent Navigation

This guideline states that applications should provide clear and consistent navigation mechanisms and orientation information to increase the likelihood that a person will find what they are looking for within the application. Some improvements were made to ensure we comply with this guideline, including:

• an accessibility statement is included in the product,
• related links have been grouped better (this is done in the HTML and not visible using the interface normally), and
• title attributes are used to better describe links when necessary.

Support for W3C WCAG1.0 Guideline 3

This guideline states that applications should mark up documents with the proper structural elements and control presentation with style sheets rather than with presentation elements and attributes. Some improvements were made to ensure we comply with this guideline, including the:

• use of relative font sizing,
• implementation of the DTD on all pages, and
• appropriate use of header markup.

As a result of these changes, users can now easily increase the font size by using their browser controls or use CTRL+ on the keyboard in a Firefox browser.

Support for W3C WCAG1.0 Guideline 9

This guideline states that you should use features that enable activation of page elements via a variety of input devices and use device-independent script handlers. Review and updates to the product as needed have been done to ensure that the product can be fully used by users using a keyboard only.