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.
Giving your Students a Direct Access
Introduction
This page provides you with a step by step instruction for creating a link that let's your students directely access their Vista MyWebCT and bypass the long list of institutions in the site of athena.virtualcampus.ch, or even avoid the typing of the username and password. Note that this procedure does not bring an advantage if your University already povides an access by AAI.
Linking to a page giving access to the course list and login button of your institution
Direct user login with the
username and password encluded in the URL
It is possible to assemble a url that directly logs in a user and sends him or her to the personal mywebct page. The url already contains the username and password, so no other interaction is necessary to log in. Notice that the password is contained in the url in clear text, so no private password should be put in a publicly available url.
This method is particulary useful for demonstration courses, or for users who want to store a direct login link in their personal browser bookmarks. Here is an example.
Enabling user self-registration
Please keep in mind. What ever your access variant is, a student always has to be listed in two places:
- in the basic WebCT database which contains his or her Username, Password and other information.
- in a specific section to which he or she is enroled.
Preparing for self registration:
- The Institution administrator has to allow the auto inscription in the institution settings for User Manager (In Settings under Administration).
- You have to set the value for: "Allow anyone to create a user account" to true and also "Apply to child context". This creates another option on the login page of the institution. If you don't like that to be so visible you need to create a custom login page.
- Then go to the settings of the section to which you want to allow self registration.
- Chose User Manager under Administration.
- Set the value for "Allow users to register themselves as a Student in a section" to true.
How to transform long links into short ones
- Go to this service site: http://tinyurl.com/
- Enter your long list there and note down the short tinyurl or copy it directely into a web page.
Note: you best copy the url of a link above by hitting the right mouse button and choosing 'copy link location' or 'copy shortcut'.