LC Academic Technology

As you may have noticed, CourseWork released their winter upgrade on Thursday, and opened up site creation for Winter 2009. There are quite a few changes, but I wanted to point out a few changes that language instructors might find useful. If you would like to see the full list of changes, you can look at the Release Notes.

Probably the most important change for us is the Remove link for audio recordings. For some reason, this link appeared this quarter and many students clicked it, thinking that they would get more attempts at recording. This link has now been removed. If students want more attempts at recording, they should make a new submission (if they are allowed to). Please note that this will NOT replace any previous submissions – instructors can always see ALL submissions if they choose to. If you have set your assignment so that submissions are limited, or if the deadline has passed for submission, you can go into Scores >> Submission Status and click Allow Retake. This means that instructors can address most submission problems WITHOUT creating new assignments, so please let your students know that they should contact you if they run into difficulties.

You will see another important change in creating assignments. They have added a new way to create new assignments quickly with simple markup text. If you want to create assignments in the same way that you have been doing so, you should leave the selection on the default “Create using assignment builder” but if you want to try the markup text, you should select “Create using markup text.” They have provided some examples and brief instructions once you get to the next step.

Another change is one that you will not see when you login to CourseWork. They have added a new Forums tool, but it is only being enabled by specific request. This threaded discussion tool will eventually replace the current CourseForum, which is not integrated into CourseWork and is somewhat, shall we say, challenging to use. At the moment, to get the new Forums tool you can’t get it by just going to SiteInfo >> Edit Tools - you have to submit a HelpSU requesting it (please include the exact site name). You should also note that from now on, this tool should take the place of most requests for course weblogs: I will request that you use the Forums tool rather than a weblog unless you have a compelling reason to create an interactive website that 1) must be public, 2) will extend at least three quarters and 3) will have less than 5 authors.

One change that we have been lobbying for is the ability to upload attachments for student feedback in the Scores page. Many instructors (myself included) have had to use the DropBox for this function, but now if students submit an MSWord document, you can correct and comment on it using MSWord’s reviewing functions, and then upload it as part of the students’ score on that assignment item.

They CW team has also been working on improving the warnings at various points, and has added a Submit for Grading confirmation page for students, which allows them to cancel the submission and return to the assignment.

Finally, for those of you who use the Gradebook, removing a published assignment in your list of assignments now also removes it from the Gradebook.

Once again, there are quite a few changes in this release, so if you are interested in seeing them all, please look at the Release Notes.

There have been quite a few questions about the Submissions settings and how to view what the students submit.

The first choice you have to make is the Number of Submissions. I recommend that the Unlimited option be used, but that is usually a departmental decision. If you allow unlimited submissions, then no matter how many times a student submits, you get to choose which one you grade. However, if you limit the number of submissions, then someone, somewhere, is going to run out of chances (with a good excuse) and you are going to have to find a way to get a submission from them.

If you do have multiple submissions set, keep in mind that instructors can always see all submissions, so you should look at them all and decide which one you want to take. The Scores interface, by default, is set to only view only the Highest Submission, so you have to click that dropdown menu and select All Submissions. Note that multiple submissions are very different from recording attempts in the recording applet: Instructors only ever see the last recording attempt, but they see all submissions.

The next setting is how you want to deal with late submissions, which most people leave on the default, which is to allow late submissions but mark them as late. The last setting is new for 2008, Auto Submission on the due date. The default for this is not checked, but I would recommend that you check it: somehow it seems logical that assignments that have been saved should be automatically submitted once the due date comes.

So what happens if you do limit the number of submissions, and someone uses up all of their submissions, but has a good excuse and needs to re-take the assignment? Go into the Scores interface and find Submission Status in the menu links near the top of the tool page. Click on that and you will see a list of the students, but below each name, you will see “Allow Retake?” Just click on this link and the student can re-take the assignment – no need to create a new version or anything. If this link is not active, it means that the student has not used up their submissions, and that you are still before the due date. In other words, the student can simply do the assignment again. Students should be aware that each time they start a new submission, the assignment is blank – previous answers do not carry over. Also, they should be aware that the instructor can see every submission, not just the last one.

A few days ago, Jason Cowart of ITS sent out the following notice:

1. The majority of the problems we've had reported with Sophos installations revolved around the installer's attempt to remove previous anti-malware software on the Windows platform. To help users resolve these issues we made some changes to the installer to do a couple of additional things:
• If there was a problem removing a previous software package the installer will indicate which software it detected and couldn't remove. It will instruct the user to try to remove this software from the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel and then to try running the installer again. It will also give them an easy shortcut to open that Control Panel.
• If the installer runs into any problems it will collect a variety of log files and place them together in a file named SophosLogs.txt that it will place on the desktop where the user can easily find it to email to a support representative.
2. A few weeks ago we made Sophos Anti-Virus available via Stanford Desktop Tools. This week we made it an "Urgent" update so SDT should prompt users more visibly about needing to install it (and remove Symantec/Norton in the process).
3. The campus-wide license of Symantec Antivirus expired at the end of September. While a limited number of licenses were obtained for certain departments who are using the Symantec server product and needed more time to transition, those running the standalone desktop version (the great majority) are now running an unlicensed version. Those with Symantec/Norton installed will continue to receive updates to virus definitions, but will not be able to get updates to the application itself. For this reason, departments and workgroups should be making plans to replace Symantec with Sophos as soon as possible.

If you have any questions about Sophos or the rollout effort please submit a HelpSU Request (http://helpsu.stanford.edu/?pcat=ESS).

I have an old Dell laptop (Inspirion 5150, P4, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD) at home for personal use that I also use to check email and even occasionally do some work. It used to live on campus, and it had the Stanford Norton Anti-virus, so I thought I would just install Sophos (on http://ess.stanford.edu).

However, while it did a good job of getting rid of Norton, I got an error saying that it was unable to install Sophos. This happened over and over, so I sent in a helpsu and eventually brought the machine in so that someone from Academic Computing could look at it. She ran through all the steps of re-installing Norton, changing the settings, then uninstalling and running CCcleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/), but nothing worked. In the end she said that, while they had encountered problems before, mine was the first case that they had where they were not able to install Sophos. She suggested that I go to see the folks at ITS, but I felt like I didn't want to invest any more time in the project, so I just downloaded Microsoft Live OneCare for a trial run. And it seems to be working very nicely - especially after getting the system cleaned out like that.

Instructors who have similar problems installing Sophos should submit a helpsu or contact the Language Center CRC representative directly.

The other day I was in late and a student knocked on my door asking how to recover a lost recording submission on CourseWork. Apparently she had used up her 2 or 3 attempts on the recording applet, but was still not satisfied, so she clicked the "Remove" link next to the file playback. As a result, not only did she not have any attempts left, she no longer had any audio file left in the assignment. Clicking the "Remove" link does exactly what it says: it removes the file, irrevocably.

I have had other students who somehow ended up with no file and no attempts, and I thought it was a bug in the recording applet, but now I am beginning to suspect otherwise. Instructors should do their best to convince students that the audio response items are not high stakes assignments and they should simply do their best and make a submission.

As we enter into the school year, there are a few changes and important points related to technology that LC instructors should be aware of. ITS has moved away from Symantec / Norton Anti-virus and Webroot SpySweeper in favor of Sophos, which does both. You can simply uninstall SpySweeper, and then go to Essential Stanford Software ( http://ess.stanford.edu) , download Sophos and install it. This installation will automatically uninstall Symantec / Norton Anti-virus. There are versions for both PC and Mac.

You now have 1GB of AFS space, up from 200MB, which, while you may use as you wish, could be used for securely storing restricted data, such as documents with student data. I would strongly suggest that you get as much student data off of your machines. While we are teachers and need to keep track of our students every quarter, there is no reason not to move data from previous quarters to more secure storage, like AFS, CD-ROMs or an outboard hard disk that is not usually connected. It is a tedious task to clean out your laptop, but it is a mobile device and therefore simply is not an appropriate place to keep student data. More information on AFS can be found at http://www.stanford.edu/services/afs/.

CourseWork has undergone some major changes since last fall. But first, a few reminders:

• When creating sites, set them up ONE AT A TIME (unless, of course, you want more than one class in a site).
• Don’t use the back button (ever).
• Save does not equal submit (unless you check the Auto-submission box in Settings)
• Post your syllabus by 9/20. The CW syllabus is now integrated with http://syllabus.stanford.edu and only accepts one document or set of text.

And my basic advice for CourseWork:

• Allow for student error (don’t set a Retract date, allow for multiple submissions, etc.)
• Set for Auto-submission.
• Check the settings.
• Preview every assignment.

The changes you should be aware of are:

• The recording applet has been greatly improved and now launches from a link, so you can put as many Audio Recording items on a page as you want. It will reliably submit recordings of up to 5 minutes.
• Auto-submission on the due date is now possible.
• It is now possible to edit a published assignment.

There are many more improvements – see the 2008 Improvements page on the LC Academic Technology Resource Website at http://lcatswiki.stanford.edu or the CW Release notes ( https://www.stanford.edu/group/coursework/cgi-bin/drupal/?q=node/123#f1)

For more details see my slides ( http://www.stanford.edu/dept/lc/ats/LCTech2008.ppt)from the LC General Meeting on 9/15/2008. Also, for more general help with CourseWork and all the technology available to the Language Center, please visit the LC Academic Technology Resource Website at http://lcatswiki.stanford.edu. If you are interested in a Workshop, please check the schedule on the Resource Website and RSVP to me (kenro at stanford dot edu).