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As of August 1st, 2008, the Edutech web site will no longer be updated. Edutech was funded by the Swiss Virtual Campus programme, which ended on July 31st, 2008. Some activities will be taken over by the e-Learning Services group at the SWITCH foundation.

What is WebCT Vista

Introduction

This page provides you with a overview of the areas of usage that Vista belongs to.

Vista is:

• a Web Course Tool, allowing you to place learning material (exercises, tests, texts, multimedia docs, curricula, etc.) on-line.
• an Authoring system, that lets you edit and manage documents on-line, helped by glossaries, indexes and search tools. 
• a Communication tool, which provides different synchronous and asynchronous tools such as Mail, Discussion Forums, Chat or Whiteboard.
  
• a Groupware, which allows to communicate in a student group, to exchange documents and present results .
  
• a Course Management Tool, that facilitates the creation of sophisticated Web based educational environments.
• a hierarchically structured Enterprise LMS (Learning Management System, that allows to reproduce the different levels of the participating institutions in its Learning Context Manager.
  

There, therefore, is a large collection of tools, which provide course developers and course designer with a wide array of means to transport their teaching on-line.

All WebCT-Vista Users are linked to the Vista server via the Internet. Depending on their role in Vista each student, instructor, designer, support person, etc. has his special access to Vista and the courses to which she or he is enrolled to.

The hierarchically structured Enterprise LMS

The collaboration and sharing inside the Vista Learning Management System can be organized in 6 levels as seen in this illustration:

Main tools

List of some of the tools and functions in WebCT Vista. Please note, that the icons used to illustrate the tools are standard icons of WebCT. Course designer are free to choose other icons as they wish.

	Assessment (former Quiz and Self-test) Based on a question database this tool lets designer and teachers create tests, self-tests and surveys that can be placed any where in the course. Quite a variety of question-answer types are provided together with a flexible grading and a selected release.
	Assignments (former Assignment Dropbox, Video and Audio, Student Presentation and Student Homepage)   To give tasks and home work to students. Allows describing the tasks, to return the results, to explain the grades one can obtain. In replacement to the Student Presentation in Campus Edition the added functions allow students to "publish" their submission, that is, make it available for everyone in the class to open or view, which allow also showing homepages.
	Calendar offers an overview to the events planed by the instructor. A click on a date shows detailed descriptions. Course participants can add private entries and (if permitted) to enter public dates (visible to all participants).
	Chat and Whiteboard  (formerly separated) allow real-time verbal exchanges between the course participants while they dispose also of a shared whiteboard with the usual design tools. Several chats are possible for general discussion or in little groups. Individual conversation can be arranged in the new tool "Who is online".
	Discussions is a forum tool where a topic based exchange takes place. A number of parameters allow a variety of uses for limited groups, anonymous or as annex to a single page. Messages that one has read are indicated and a post-send correction is possible.
	Goals allows the designer to indicate the learning aims of a specific part in the course.
	Grade book is a central point in the course where students' grades and achievements are accessible in a very flexible way.
	Local Content (former CD ROM) lets students find content on a CD that has been provided by the course organizer. This solves the problem of the downloading of large media files.
	Media Library (former Video, Audio and Image Database as well as Glossary)& enables the course designer and instructor to enter definitions for important keywords in a glossary. These keywords will than be clickable in the course text. In a similar way students may also access directly in the text to pictures, videos or sound files stored in the media library.
	Mail allows the sending and receiving of messages inside the course for all participants.  A forwarding of internal mail to an external address can be activated.
	My Grades allows students to see their grades depending on the settings of the Grade Book-tool that is only accessible to the teacher.
	Note (former Annotations) allows the students to take their individual personal notes to a specific page in the course which are only visible to them selves.
	Printable Version (former Compile) enable students to compile one or several documents into a printable Web page that students can download or print for offline learning.
	Progress allows students to view detailed information concerning their use of the course and to what extend they have worked their way through parts of the course.
	Search allows looking for words in all documents and messages created with Vista or stored in your course in the HTML-format.
Selective Release Map	Selective Release Map allows releasing any tool or document in your course depending on a students' name, belonging to group, a time frame or archived grade which allows for a wide variety of different learning paths through one and the same course.
	URL allows your to compile a list of Internet addresses that can be added to the Home Page, other organizer pages, and learning modules.
Reset	Reset Resetting a course allows you to prepare a course for a new term by deleting its content, such as Discussion messages, Mail messages, Chat logs, Assignments, Assessments and Grade Book data.
Course Preview Page	Course Preview Page is a page (or several pages) shown outside the password protected area of Vista and allows Students to find out more about the course before they are enrolled.

Skype us: A. Röllinghoff  R. Brugger