WebCT Campus Edition™ 4.1 Release Notes

August 5, 2003

Contents

About WebCT Campus Edition 4.1
Supported Configurations
New Features and Enhancements
 Issues Resolved in WebCT Campus Edition 4.1

About WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 | Top

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 enhances WebCT's market-leading course management system allowing institutions to maximize their use of digital content and expand their e-learning environment with new options for interoperability and extensibility.

In this release, WebCT Campus Edition offers the following new features:

Installation

For complete installation instructions, see the Installation and Upgrade Guide: WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.

SCT®Users:
If you plan to install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 with SCT integration, see the appropriate version of the Guide to Integrating SCT with WebCT Campus Edition. Important: Be advised that integration of WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 with SCT requires a specific version and patch level for SCT Plus™ or Banner®. For more information, contact SCT Client Services.

Datatel®Users:
If you plan to install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 with Datatel integration, see the appropriate version of the Guide to Integrating Datatel with WebCT Campus Edition.

Supported Configurations | Top

Server Operating Systems

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 supports the following server operating systems:

Perl

Perl is the primary scripting/programming language for most of the programs and program modules in WebCT Campus Edition 4.1. Perl 5.6.1 is bundled with the WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 distribution file. Installing WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 also installs Perl within a WebCT directory. For information on Perl, visit the Perl web site at www.perl.com

Warning for Microsoft Windows users: Because WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 uses a newer version of Perl (version 5.6.1), do not install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 with WebCT 3.6.x or earlier on the same Microsoft Windows operating system. WebCT Campus Edition 3.7.x, 3.8.x, 4.0, and 4.1 use the same version of Perl and can be installed on the same Microsoft Windows operating system.

Apache™

The WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 distribution files include Apache 2.0.46 web server software. WebCT installs the Apache server within its own installation (<webct_install_directory>\webct\server\) and does not overwrite or modify any existing Apache server included with your operating system. Important: You must use the Apache web server software included in the WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 distribution files.

Client Operating Systems

Browsers

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 supports the following browsers:

Microsoft Windows 98, 2nd edition /2000/XP operating systems software:

Macintosh OS 9.x operating system software:

Macintosh OS X v.10.1.x operating system software:

Macintosh OS X v.10.2.x operating system software:

Note: For the most current information on supported browsers, see www.webct.com/tuneup

To optimize your browser for WebCT, we recommend the following browser settings:

Language Plug-Ins

All 4.0 localizations are compatible with WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 However, some minor changes to the interface were introduced in this release. New screen elements and phrasing will not be translated and will appear in English in all localizations. Note: WebCT CE 4.1 is not compatible with any Language Plug-in versions released prior to 4.0.

SCT and Campus Pipeline™

If you are upgrading to an SCT-WebCT integrated environment, you may be required to simultaneously upgrade SCT Banner® or SCT Plus and Mercury Message Broker, Mercury Message Gateway, and Campus Pipeline. Please verify the required versions and recommended patch levels of all components of the SCT/CP/WebCT Connected Learning Solution prior to upgrading any part of the Connected Learning Solution.

Failover

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 requires third-party software in conjunction with WebCT scripts to create a failover environment. For the Solaris operating system, we use Sun Microsystems Sun Cluster™. For the Windows and Linux operating systems, we use SteelEye Technology LifeKeeper®. These vendors are WebCT partners and they will provide support to ensure that you use the proper version of their software to configure WebCT for failover. To configure your system for failover, contact your account representative.

New Features and Enhancements | Top

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 provides the following new features and enhancements.

WebCT PowerLinks Network

The WebCT PowerLinks™ program drives innovation - giving higher education institutions the power to extend the WebCT platform by incorporating external campus systems, learning applications, and custom tools. With WebCT PowerLinks, institutions can customize their e-learning environment, integrate key campus technologies, and extend the WebCT platform to meet their specific needs. The following new WebCT PowerLinks are available for WebCT Campus Edition 4.1:

PowerLink Adapter for PeopleSoft®
Leveraging the WebCT PowerLinks technology, WebCT has productized the integration between WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 and the Peoplesoft 8 Student Information System and Portal. User, course, and enrollment data can be imported from PeopleSoft's student information system into WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 using this PowerLink Adapter. PeopleSoft users will also be automatically authenticated into WebCT eliminating the need for a separate login. (Note: PeopleSoft will be releasing an adapter for WebCT as part of their Student Information System maintenance process to complete the integration between the systems.)
Additional WebCT PowerLink Solutions
Using the WebCT PowerLinks framework, several Learning Application and Content Partners are developing solutions that extend and enhance the WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 environment. WebCT PowerLink solutions from HorizonLive® and Questionmark®, among others, will be available soon. For the latest information about WebCT PowerLinks, visit www.webct.com/powerlinks

More Flexible e-Pack Adoption for Faculty
With Campus Edition 4.1, instructors can import e-Packs into an existing course without overwriting the content that exists within the course, allowing for instructors to add publisher content to their courses at any stage of the course design process. Instructors can easily add e-Pack content to course shells automatically created via integration with a student information system. Rather than deleting the shell and starting from scratch, faculty can simply add the e-Pack content to an existing course that has been created for them.

15-day Trial e-Pack Access for Students
With Campus Edition 4.1, students can request temporary access to an e-Pack allowing them a 15-day window to engage with the course. This simplifies start-of-term administration by allowing students the ability to view course material prior to purchasing an Access Code for the course.

Integration of the WebCT IMS Content Migration Utility

With Campus Edition 4.1, the WebCT IMS Content Migration Utility is now part of the Campus Edition software and is included with the 4.1 installation; administrators do not have to install it separately. In addition, designers can now use this utility to import an entire WebCT course and merge it with an existing course without overwriting the existing content.

Note: For information on using the WebCT IMS Content Migration Utility, refer to the following documentation: the WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 online Help, the Guide to Using WebCT's IMS Content Migration Utility 1.2.2, available at http://download.webct.com/utility/ims.html, or the System Administrator's Guide: WebCT Campus Edition 4.1. The document type definitions (DTDs) and schemas for the WebCT IMS Content Migration Utility can be found at www.webct.com/ims

Administrator Enhancements

With Campus Edition 4.1, the following enhancements have been added:

Designer and Student Enhancements

With Campus Edition 4.1, the following enhancements have been added and apply to both designers and students:

The following enhancements apply to designers only:

Issues Resolved in WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 | Top 

TOOL/AREA
FIX DESCRIPTION
Accessibility
  • The Jaws® screen reader occasionally read WebCT Campus Edition (CE) screens incorrectly, jumping back and forth between frames. This has been corrected.
Administrator
  • When performing a First Name or Last Name Query in User Mgmt, the query results for some languages, such as Japanese and Korean, were inaccurate. This has been corrected.
  • When exporting Syllabus data using the command line, all referenced files are now also exported.
  • When exporting Discussion and Mail messages using the command line, all attachments are now also exported.
  • When exporting an entire course using the command line, all upper and lower textblock color settings associated with an Organizer Page are now also exported.
  • Previously, only the files that were linked directly to the core set of HTML pages were added to the export package. Now, the Content Migration Utility searches more thoroughly to add all referenced files.
API
  • Entering an API command, which contains a course ID that ends in an underscore, no longer generates an unnecessary error message.
Assignments
  • If an assignment contained ten or more files, only the first nine files listed in the Files table could be deleted. This has been corrected.
  • The current time is now displayed on the Assignments screen.
Calendar
  • When upgrading from WebCT CE 3.8 or earlier to 4.0, links from Calendar entries to Quizzes/Surveys did not work. This has been corrected.
Compile
  • The current mode, either Designer Options or View, is now maintained when a designer accesses a Content Module page from the Compile tool.
Content Module
  • Files without extensions (e.g. file instead of file.html) are now displayed in the Filenames selection box on the Add Files screen.
  • When a Content Module is set to display the first page of content rather than the Table of Contents, the setting now also applies in Designer Options view.
  • When upgrading from WebCT CE 3.8 or earlier to 4.0, Content Module pages containing titles that ended in a colon would not display properly in 4.0. This has been corrected.
Course Design Center
  • When the Homepage wizard was disabled, the Organizer Page wizard appeared on the Homepage. This has been corrected.
Discussions
  • On a Solaris™ operating system, clicking the next page icon did not take the user to the next page of messages. This has been corrected.
  • In Microsoft® Internet Explorer, on a Macintosh® operating system, message attachments could not be opened. The browser would keep trying to reload the window and would have to be shut down. This has been corrected.
e-Packs
  • When a student logs in to an e-Pack course and attempts to purchase an Access Code from the Enter Access Code screen, they are now, in all instances, linked to the Access Code purchase page that corresponds to their e-Pack, instead of the general Access Code purchase page.
Export and/or Import Content
  • File references that included spaces in the filename were sometimes not exported. This has been corrected.
  • When exporting a Content Module with multiple References to the same resource, only one Reference was retained upon export. This has been corrected.
  • The Private, Anonymous and Locked topic settings in Discussions are now retained upon export.
  • When a content package is imported, the resulting link is now added to the bottom of the Course Menu instead of the top. This is consistent with the way in which other pages/tools are added in WebCT CE.
  • When importing Calendar entries, all Internal links are now also imported successfully.
  • Question titles that contain diacritical characters from the ISO-8859-1 character set are now imported correctly.
  • Negative percentages used in multiple choice questions in Quizzes/Surveys were changed to zero upon import. This has been corrected.
  • When Matching questions are imported, the settings for Preview columns and Answer type are now also imported.
  • Action Menu items containing data with diacritical characters from the ISO-8859-1 character set are now imported correctly.
  • If the character set of a content package does not match the character set of the course, the user is now given the option to convert the package to the course's character set prior to import.
  • When importing a .zip file of course content, the Zip filename can now contain spaces.
General
  • Hidden links can now be moved up and down on the Course Menu.
  • When a link to a page or tool was added to both an Organizer Page and the Course Menu, and a custom icon was selected, the icon reverted to the default icon if the link was edited from the Course Menu. This has been corrected.
  • When the title of an Organizer Page exceeded 30 characters and contained HTML tags, it was not possible to move items to the page. This has been corrected.
HTML editor
  • On a Macintosh operating system, text entered using the HTML editor could only be saved in Text box view. This has been corrected, and content can now be saved directly from HTML editor view.
Index
  • The current mode, either Designer Options or View, is now maintained when a designer accesses a Content Module page from an Index entry.
Mail
  • When attempting to delete a collapsed thread, only the initial message in the thread was deleted. This has been corrected and now all messages in the thread are deleted.
Manage Files
  • Due to an issue with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 on a Macintosh operating system, when certain file formats such as .html and .txt were downloaded, Microsoft Internet Explorer always displayed the files in a new browser window instead of prompting the user to save the file to disk. This has been corrected.
Manage Students
  • For teaching assistants, clicking Submissions from the Edit Record screen to view an individual quiz submission did not display the submission. This has been corrected.
  • When grades were exported to SCT, the exported values were not saved correctly in WebCT CE making it appear that the grades had been changed after export. This has been corrected.
  • The Show decimals setting selected in Manage Columns now also applies to the Out of field for all column types.
Quizzes/Surveys
  • A grader can now submit a Not taken or In progress quiz on a student's behalf prior to the expiry of the availability period.
  • If the availability period had expired and a grader submitted a Not-taken quiz that contained question sets, no quiz questions were displayed on the View Submissions screen. This has been corrected.
  • If the availability period has expired and a grader submits a Not-taken quiz that contains question sets, the correct number of total questions is now used to calculate the student's percentage score on the Submissions screen.
  • The current time is now displayed on the Quizzes/Surveys screen.
  • On the Detail Summary screen for a Matching question, equations used in the question did not display. This has been corrected.
  • From the Quiz Editor screen, selecting a question and then clicking Add question alternates failed to add a question in some cases. This has been corrected.
  • Quizzes that contained Matching questions did not display quiz results correctly if any text boxes within the two columns of matching pairs were left blank, other than at the end of the column. This has been corrected.
  • Questions added to the Question Database that contained both HTML tags and the word "script", including words such as "description", could not be saved. This has been corrected.
  • For a multiple choice question, if the Setting for Answer order was set to Randomized, the indices would also be randomized when a designer previewed the quiz (Note: The quiz did display correctly in student view). This has been corrected.
Student Homepages
  • A student could not add a lower textblock to their homepage using the HTML editor. This has been corrected.
Track Students
  • When a student accesses a course from a link in the Course News area of myWebCT, data in Track Students is now updated.
WebDAV
  • Due to an issue with Netscape®, when a URL was copied from the WebDAV Info screen, extra characters were added to the URL which could be problematic when the URL was pasted to it's new location. We have found a workaround and the problem is resolved.
WebEQ Equation Editor
  • If the MathML used in an equation contained a carriage return or a new line, a JavaScript™ error was generated and the equation could not be edited. This has been corrected.