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IMS Import Help

Import and Enroll Students Through IMS XML Files

1st Step: Import Student Records

  1. Go to the IMS Enterprise Converter page
  2. Paste a list of student records in the text field "Student Data". The format is
    • one text line per student
    • for each student define the fields: family name, first name, email, userid, password
      mandatory fields: family name, userid
    • the fields are separated by commas

    Example:

    Potter, Harry, hpot@toto.net, hpotter, defpasswd
Einstein, Albert, albert@princeton.edu, aeinstein, defpasswd
Escher, Maurits Cornelis, , mcescher
Skywalker, Luke, , lskywalker
  3. Click "Transform to HTML Table" to check if your list was correctly interpreted by the converter
  4. Click "Transform to IMS-XML" to convert the student list to an IMS Enterprise compliant XML file
  5. The result is shown in the browser. Copy the result and paste it into a text editor like Notepad. Save the results in the editor to your local computer, i.e. importstud.xml (Text format: ANSI)
  6. Login to WebCT Vista as institutional administrator
  7. Go to Learning Context Manager > Imports
  8. Client key: leave blank
  9. As IMS Data File specify your local file importstud.xml (You can browse for the file and upload it in one step)
  10. Parent learning context of IMS group: choose the institution where the accounts are to be created (not the group or anything else). Example: choose UniZH, HSO, ETHZ, ...
  11. Click Import. This generates the user records.

Note: Special Characters

Users have reported problems, if text files with accented or other special characters are translated. If you carefully do step 5. with copy-pasting the results to Notepad, everything should work fine.

2nd Step: Enroll Students to Sections

  1. Go to the IMS Enterprise Converter page
  2. Enter the section source and id. You find these values in the section edit form. This value is "WebCT" if the section was created in Vista.
  3. Enter the student source. You find this value in the student edit form. If this
  4. Paste a list of student user names in the text field. The student ids can be separated by commas or any whitespace (space, tab, newline)

    Example: hpotter, aeinstein, mcescher, lskywalker

  5. Click "Transform to IMS-XML" to convert the student list to an IMS Enterprise compliant XML file
  6. The result is shown in the browser. Save the page to your local computer, i.e. enrollstud.xml
  7. Login to WebCT Vista as institutional administrator
  8. Go to Learning Context Manager > Imports
  9. As IMS Data File specify your local file importstud.xml (You can browse for the file and upload it in one step)
  10. Click Import. This enrolls the specified users into the specified section as students.

Un-Enroll Students from Sections

Note: Un-enrolling currently only works with students that were enrolled through upload IMS-Enterprise XML file.

  1. Proceed the same way as with enrolling students, but choose the option "user status" : "unenroll"