Homework Submission

The following assumes that you know both your user name and Password for this course. If you do not, please return to the home page for your course. There should be a link to the User Names and Passwords. If there is not, or, if your name is not on the listing, you need to check with your instructor to determine your User name and Password.

Table of Contents

Changing your password
Submitting homeworks
Creating a directory for a homework assignment
Uploading file(s) to the web site
Checking homework comments
Downloaind a file from the web site

The University supports, among other capabilities, a Web presence using the WebCT software package. We will be using only three of its capabilities:

1. Homework Submission;
2. Text File Access; and
3. Password Change

To start, you need to click on the course home page link for submitting hoomework and viewing comments. When you do so, you will be asked for both your User Name and your Password. If you canot provide them, then you will not be allowed to access the web pages you need to submit homework and review homework comments.

After identifying yourself, You will see a web page similar to Figure 1.

Figure 1 -- Initial Page

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Changing Your Password

Clicking the Change Password link will take you to the page shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 -- Changing Your Password

Type your desired password into the two text boxes and then click the Update button. Your password has now been changed. Should you forget your password, I can always reset it for you to the original default. But, it would be easier for you to remember the password, since I can't always be reached.

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Submitting Homeworks:

Submitting a homework is initiated by clicking on the Submit Homeworks/Review Comments link, which presents you with the page shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3 -- Submitting Homeworks, Step 1

The main portion of the page contains a table identifying the different groups associated with this course. These are in alphabetic order by group name. There is one group for each user name in the course. The vertical scroll bar on the righthand side of the page may be used to scroll through this table until you find the group corresponding to your User Name. One easy way to identify your Group is to look for the one with the [Edit Files] link. (gthomas has this link in Figure 3 and is, in fact, the logged on user.) Your next step is to click on the Edit Files link associated with your Group to move to a screen similar to Figure 4.

Figure 4 -- Your Web Course Files Directory

The page in Figure 4 is composed of two portions. The top portion provides with an interface to the page that is similar to that provided to your disk drives by Windows Explorer. Both WEBCT BUILT-IN FILES and COURSE FILES are directories. We will be using only COURSE FILES.

The left hand side of the page indicates that COURSE FILES contains two subdirectories hw01 and hw02 Of the three directories available to you, COURSE FILES is the currently selected directory. This is indicated by the fact that it is shown in a bold, italic font. Clicking a different directory, will make that directory the current directory. Figure 5 shows what you might see if the directory hw01 were selected.

Figure 5 -- The hw01 Directory

the right hand side of Figure 5 shows us that the directory hw01 contains the two files -- me.txt and comments.txt. Presumably, me.txt was the first homework assignment. While, comments.txt contains comments concerning that first homework assignment.

The bottom third of the pages in Figures 4 and 5 contains a number of buttons that allow you to manage your files on the Web server and to transfer files between the Web server and a local PC across the internet. The two you will need to use to submit homework assignments are Make Dir and Upload.

You're now going to submit your first homework. for this course. I suggest you open a new page in your Web browser so that you can reference this page as we proceed. In Microsoft's Internet Explorer click on File New Window to do this. In Netscape Navigator, it's File New Navigator Window. Log onto the WebCT server using your class id. Make certain the directory COURSE FILES is the default directory. (i.e., your page should resemble Figure 4. However, there will not be any subdirectories such as hw01 and hw02 because they have not been created.)

The first step is to make certain you have a directory for your homework. (For the first homework, this will be hw01, for the second it will be hw02, etc.)

This naming convention is extremely important. Homeworks that are not submitted in the correct directory will earn no credit.

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Creating a Directory:

If you have not created the needed directory, first make certain that COURSE FILES is the default directory. Then, click the

button in the bottom third of the screen. Your screen should now resemble Figure 6. Type the name of the directory into the TextBox at the bottom of the screen and click the Continue button. At the next web page, Click the Continue button to confirm that you want to create a new directory. Assuming you had named the new directory hw03, you should end with with a web page looking like Figure 7.

Figure 6 -- Defining the name of a New Directory

Figure 7 -- After Creating the Directory hw03

You've created the directory for Homework 3 if you followed the above instructions. Creating directories for other homeworks is done in the same manner. Just be certain that the directory COURSE FILES is the default directory whenever you click the Make Dir button.

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Uploading File(s)

Uploading files to a directory is fairly easy. You need to:

1. select the directory by clicking on it and

2. Then click the Upload button to upload one file.

(Note, if there is more than one file to be uploaded, you'll have to click the Upload button once for each file.) So let's upload the file C:\temp\customer.txt to the hw03 directory.

Click on the hw03 directory to select it. Then, click the Upload button. Your page should resemble Figure 8.

Figure 8 -- Uploading to the hw03 Directory

Click on the Browse button and then use the Upload Files window to locate and identify the file C:\temp\customer.txt for upload. You'll see C:\temp\customer.txt in the TextBox after doing this. Click continue twice, as prompted, the second time, and your web page should resemble Figure 9.

Figure 9 -- After Uploading C;\temp\customer.txt

And, that's all there is to it. However, remember that many assignments will involve more than one file. Each must be uploaded separately in order to complete the assignment. If one is missing, than it cannot be graded.

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Checking Homework Comments:

In most cases, comments will be returned to you after your homeworks have been graded. Usually, they will be returned in a file titled comments.txt. This file will be placed into the appropriate directory under your COURSE FILES directory.

Figure 5 shows that the directory hw01 has two files in it -- me.txt and comments.txt. By clicking the check box next to comments.txt and then the Edit button, you can view the file as shown in Figure 10. (Or, you could simply double click the link to comments.txt to get to Figure 10.)

Figure 10 -- Viewing comments.txt

When you are finished viewing the comments, click the Back button to return to Figure 9.

Summary

To Submit homeworks: First, create the necessary directory as a child of COURSE FILES. Then, use the Upload button to upload all the need files to this new directory.

To look at the homework comments from the grader: First, select the directory. Then, select the file and Edit it. Or, simply double click the file to enter the editor.

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Want to download a file?

Check the file you want to move to your PC and then Click the Download button. you should be prompted by your Web browser to determine the local directory to place the file into.

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