Spring 2006 Note to FacultyTo: All Vista Faculty I want to welcome you to the launch of NAU's Vista course management system. We learned a great deal in the pilot during Fall 2005 and have made significant improvements in the support and implementation processes. Over the break, working with ITS and many others, we have upgraded to the newest version (v4), and migrated your courses from either the old WebCT CE or Vista 3. There are several items I would like to go over, to offer our support in the ELC, and to wish you well for the Spring term. Please login to your course(s) early and often to insure all is as you expect it to be and let us know immediately if you perceive any problems. As you go through your course(s) please note any odd behaviors and let us know either using the ELC phone help or email support address. Faculty can contact E-Learning Center's Help Line at 928-523-5554 or 1-866-802-5256 (toll-free) for technical assistance during normal NAU hours, Monday – Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Faculty can also send email to elc-help@nau.edu. ELC Help Extended Hours On January 9-13 (Monday through Friday) and January 17-20 (Tuesday through Friday), the Help Line will be available from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. On January 14-15 (Saturday and Sunday), the Help Line will be available from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (Monday, January 16), the Help Line will be available from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. STUDENT ISSUES & HELP: Help: The ELC phone help and email support are not designed to support students, much as the ITS Solution Center is designed for faculty not for students. Please do not give the phone support nor the email address to students as we will simply route them to the Academic Computing Help Desk (ACHD) to solve their problems such as browser and java setup. The more we are sidetracked with student issues the less prompt and effective our support for you will be. Enrollments: We strongly recommend you check the enrollment in your course(s) and notify us if you feel there are errors. At this point, your currently enrolled students should show up on the roster in your course. However, the students should not be able to get into the course until the official Start-Date as recorded in PeopleSoft. As the drop-add churn occurs over the next few weeks, you should see new enrollments in Vista within a few hours of their official enrollment through LOUIE, and students who drop will remain on the Vista roster as "unenrolled." The "unenrolled" students should be hidden by default in the gradebook, and those students will no longer have access to the course. Please report any issues you find with this immediately. Familiarize Students: We strongly recommend you have all your students get in the course as soon as it is available, and that you ask that they try things immediately such as communicating with you via the email in Vista, that they use any tools you expect they will need in your course such as posting to discussions, or submitting assignments...and please please send them to the Academic Computing Help Desk (ACHD) to resolve any access, java, or performance issues sooner rather than later. Please send this link to your students to help them "get started with Vista" http://www.nau.edu/vista-students Academic Computing Help Desk Have a good semester! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |