Instructor FAQ's

The following are responses to general frequently asked questions. If you have a question regarding a specific tool, please go to the How-To page for more information.

WebCT is free and easy to get if you are teaching a class to students enrolled at NCSU. Just click the following link and fill out the form. You should receive email on getting started and your site should be up in two business days or less.

--> Request WebCT

You need two things:

1. A connection to the Internet.
2. An approved, properly-configured web browser.

To make sure the browser you are using works with the version of WebCT installed at NCSU (we are running version 3.8 Campus Edition), go to theWebCT Browser Tune-up page.

Go to the WebCT home page at NCSU and log in with your Unity ID and Password. Once logged in, you will be brought to a page that prompts you to log in as the instructor - identified with your Unity ID - or as a student - identified with your Unity ID and the suffix _student (for more information on the dual log-in option, see the question and response that follows). Clicking one of these links will bring you to your myWebCT page, which lists, beneath the Courses header, the links to the home pages of all the WebCT sites for which you have been providded access.

As you may have discovered, students have a slighlty different view of WebCT and have slightly different abilities. For example, instructors cannot click on the My Grades link, nor can they take quizzes. To get around this, a student identity has been added to your WebCT rolls that is available only to the course instructor (WebCT refers to instructors as Designers). After you log into WebCT, you should be brought to a page that allows you to enter as a student or as the Designer. Choose the option that ends with the suffix _student and you will be able to view and interact with your site with student privileges.

If you are not given the option to log in as a student, please email us at webct@help.ncsu.edu and let us know. Please include in the email your Unity ID and course + section number.

Exiting out of your browser will log you out of WebCT. You can do this by choosing File -> Close or clicking the X at the top-right corner of your browser. If you have more than one browser window open, you will need to close them all to log out. If you leave your browser open for longer than 12 hours, you will automatically be logged off.

Students who have registered for your class will automatically be given access to your site. The Registration and Records computer sends the WebCT computer course enrollment information on a daily basis and the WebCT computer programmatically updates your site. (Note: there is a lag of two days between the time a student registers and the time the WebCT gets their information.)

If you need the students to have access to your WebCT site immediately, you can add them yourself. Here's how:

1. From your site's home page, click on "Manage Course" on the left side of the page.
2. On the "Manage Course" page, click "Add student" link beneath the "Mnage Students" header.
3. Enter the unity id of the person you want to give student access into the "Import From Global Database" text field and click the "Add" button.

1. From your site's home page, click on "Manage Course" on the left side of the page.
2. On the "Manage Course" page, click "Share Designer Access" beneath the "Course Functions" header.
3. Enter the unity id of the person you want to have Designer access into the "Add Designer Shared Access" text field and click the "Add" button.
   
   That's it! They should now be able to log in to your course with the same access as you.
   

By default, posted grades can not be viewed by students until they are Released by the instructor. It is not intuitive how to do this in WebCT, so click on the following link for a quick how-to:

--> How to release grades

Your WebCT site will be up until a litle past the end of the semester, at which point it will be archived and taken offline (look for email announcing the roll-over date). If you need your site re-activeated as is, just fill out the form at the following at the Request WebCT page and specify that you want it to be created from a pre-existing site.

For information on getting data off your site before the roll-over date, vivst the End of Semester Cleaning page.

Your browser may not be suitable to access WebCT. Go to the WebCT Browser Tune-up page to see if you need to either update or configure your browser to work with the currently installed version of WebCT at NCSU (we are currently running WebCT version 3.8).

This error may occur when you are trying to upload a file into WebCT via the Manage Files tool, as an attachment to a Discsussions message, or as an attachment to a Mail message. This is almost always the result of including a blank space in the name of the file you are trying to get into WebCT.

For example, a file named my syllabus.html will not upload into WebCT because there is a blank space between the y and the s. Rename the file so that the blank space is omitted or substituted with an underscore - then try uploading or attaching again.

When you click on a Mail or Discsussion massage link, WebCT will open that message ina new pop-up window. If you have installed security or privacy software onto your computer (e.g. Norton Internet Security), it may be interpreting WebCT's request to open a new window as a threat. Disable the software fully, and try again. If you are able to successfully access the Mail or Discsusion message after disabling it, check the software's documentation for how to run it alongside WebCT - these software packages usually have a way to allow exceptions.