Are your attachments failing to open?

Posted on October 21, 2009 by Adam Marshall

Attachments can be added to Announcements, Assignments and email messages.

Some people have been confused as to why some site participants are unable to open such attachments so the WebLearn team has been investigating.

In order for a user to see an attachment they must have access to the “root” folder of Resources.

In Resources, if you click on the ‘Permissions’ link near to the top of the main panel you will see a ‘permissions’ grid with roles down the LHS and permissions along the top.

In order to access an attachment, the relevant role must have “read” access.

To demonstrate, if you make an announcement to the whole site and then go into Resources and UN-TICK the ‘Read’ permission along side the ‘Access’ role then Access users WILL NOT be able to open the attachment. Ticking the “read” permission will remedy this situation.

By default all ‘access’ users will have the read permission so things should work fine out of the box.

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Innovating Teaching and Learning with Sakai

Posted on October 15, 2009 by Adam Marshall

This article by Josh Baron outlines the annual Sakai T&L awards. The article details this year’s winners and gives of examples of the kind of innovation that the courses offer. It’s well worth a quick read, see: http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2009/10/14/Innovating-Teaching-and-Learning-with-Sakai.aspx

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Displaying an Oxitems feed within a site

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Adam Marshall

Oxitems is Oxford’s institutional RSS / Newsfeed service and as such is available for free to every department and college. It really is quite brilliant.

It is NOT possible to position a WebLearn News tool in the RHS column of the front page so this effect must be achieved by other means.

If you want to display an Oxitems feed then you should use the Oxitems JavaScript library.

The following HTML code should ideally be placed in the <head> block of your page. If you are creating an HTML via the Resources tool then the code can be placed within the body of the page – it is good practice to paste this at the top of the page so it is easy to spot. Be sure to use the https protocol instead of http when specifying the location of the output_newsfeed function – this will prevent Internet Explorer issiung warnings about ‘secure and non-secure items’ appearing on the same page:

To insert this code onto you page you will have to switch to the Source view of the WYSIWYG HTML editor and paste the text onto the page.

Define the location of the JavaScript library: 

<script type="text/javascript" 
 src="https://rss.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxitems/output_newsfeed.js" 
  language="JavaScript"> 
</script>

And then, at each point in the web page where a newsfeed is to be displayed, include lines like the following, (remembering of course to use the identifier of your feed instead of oucs/weblearn-news): 

<script type="text/javascript"> 
   output_newsfeed("oucs/weblearn-news") 
</script> 
<noscript> 

   <p> 
      JavaScript is not enabled.  Either enable it or use this link: 
      <a href="http://rss.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oucs/weblearn-news/newsfeed.html">WebLearn news</a>. 
   </p> 
</noscript>

For more information on the above, visit the help page within the !Oxitems area of the OUCS website: https://rss.oucs.ox.ac.uk/oxonly/oxitems/output_newsfeed.php.

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Writing for the web – tips

Posted on October 6, 2009 by Adam Marshall

I attended Stephen Sangar’s excellent session at the recent UAS conference and made some notes. I thought it may be useful to post them here:

  • use a meaningful title in the page head
  • Begin with an introduction AND summary. Moreover, put the conclusion at the start of the document
  • use correctly nested h1 .. h6 headings; users of screen readers will jump from heading to heading to find what they are looking for.
  • use short paragraphs – they’re easier to read
  • if the document is split over multiple pages always put (say) page 3 of 5
  • use meaningful text for hyperlinks, never use “next”, “previous” or “click here”
  • use the title= attribute for hyperlinks
  • put links at the end of a paragraph (or even at the end of a document) otherwise people read a few words then click on a link and never return to your page.
  • identify keywords before you start hen use these words a few times, this will help with search engine ranking. Use these words in the title and h1 .. h6 headings
  • try to link to your page from many places. Concentrate especially on the most important pages in your site. This will also boost search engine rankings.

Links

See how I’ve followed the above advice and placed the links at the end!!

  1. UAS conference
  2. Writing for the web slides
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Use WebLearn with students before they arrive

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Adam Marshall

Now that students are supplied with their Oxford SSO credentials before they arrive at University they will be able to access WebLearn in advance of starting their studies. Reading lists and documents can be circulated and formative assessment carried out so that new students are able to ‘hit the ground running’ when they arrive.

A WebLearn site for pre-arrival students could contain the following:

  1. links to other University systems including the libraries
  2. an outline of basic skills that will be needed
  3. an electronic welcome pack containing:
    1. links to departmental resources
    2. link to the Student Union
    3. link to the Newcomer’s Club
    4. links to relevant societies
    5. things to do upon arrival
    6. catch up’ materials (for students who have taken a ‘gap year’)
    7. a link to admissions
    8. information about English language courses (often useful for graduate students)
    9. reading lists
    10. an electronic copy of the handbook
    11. a link to the skills portal
    12. information about tutorials
    13. maps and information about accommodation
  4. an area for new students to converse with their peers; (obviously suitable volunteers must be identified to act as mentors):
    1. a discussion Forum to discuss worries
    2. a wiki with useful info built up by existing students
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Subscribing to external calendars in WebLearn

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Adam Marshall

There is an external calendar subscription feature in WebLearn, but, unfortunately, it still has some limitations:
• doesn’t support full day events;
• doesn’t support events not defined with <event>;
• doesn’t support re-occurring events;
• doesn’t support events without end time
Most of these issues are limitations of the library used (ical4j) and the ical import feature from the Schedule tool.

Thanks to Nuno Fernandes for this useful information

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How to display a web page displaying ‘foreign characters’ in WebLearn

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Adam Marshall

Files containing non-standard characters must be encoded using UTF-8; ISO-8859 encoded files cannot be used. It is possible to convert between the formats using a program such as ‘iconv’.

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The recently updated WebLearn website

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Adam Marshall

In conjunction with the launch of the new WebLearn service, the WebLearn area of the OUCS website has been radically overhauled and moved to a new URL.

The website contains a lot of useful information about the service (as opposed to how to use the service) including: a new Service Level Description; a section on getting started; a description of available tools; details of all upcoming training courses; implications of recent system changes; answers to some frequently asked questions and a link to the brand new un-missable Adam’s WebLearn Blog.

The website also contains customisable resources for departments or colleges to download and modify – including copies of the new branding for use on websites, customisable posters, documentation, and flyers.

See: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/weblearn

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Recent Improvements to the New WebLearn Service

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Adam Marshall

The recent improvements to the functionality of new WebLearn include:
• the introduction of a comprehensive guidance site (see elsewhere in this issue);
• a new version of the (Tutorial) Sign-up tool with repeating events;
• integration of the Assignments tool with the Turnitin plagiarism detection service;
• a new tool to search site titles;
• integration with other student services (Oxam, GSS, OxCORT etc.);
• the ability for site owners to make their sites either public or available to all logged-in users.

In addition, there have been many smaller enhancements suggested by our growing user community.

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