As of August 1st, 2008, the Edutech web site will no longer be. 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.
User Enrollment in Vista Courses (Sections)
Enrollment at the Institutional Level
If you've worked with WebCT Campus Edition or similar LMS tools, you've had to manage not only course development but also course enrollment. WebCt Vista, however, is based on the idea that enrollment is done at the institutional level: course designers or teachers should not have to spend time managing enrollment. This is an advantage for designers and teachers.
Swiss Heterogeneity
Usually an LMS like WebCT Vista is fully integrated with an institution's student information system. The system can automatically enroll students in the courses. Unfortunately, the Swiss higher education infrastructure is too heterogeneous to take advantage of automatic enrollment at the institutional level. (Each institution would require it's own adapter; this would be quite expensive.)
The Switch AAI Option
There is, however, a very attractive alternative: enrollment management and user authentication (login) using Switch AAI. AAI means Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure, developed by Switch. The steps to enroll students using AAI are described in AAI Student Enrollment.
Options for Institutions that are not yet in the AAI Network: Create Local Accounts
For institutions that are not yet part of the Switch AAI network, edutech offers another alternative. You can
- send lists of students (text files or excel sheets) to Vista Support and we will enroll students for you. See Create Enrolement List with Student Data.
- if you are a Vista institution administrator and prefer to do it yourself, see the instructions on page Text File Import.
Please contact us if you'd like to integrate your institution with LDAP, PeopleSoft or Kerberos.