Vista Update: Spring 2006 Term

To: All Vista Instructors and Designers
Re: End of Spring Term, Summer, and Bugs
Date: April 21, 2006

Dear Vista Faculty,

This is an update regarding courses and the policies and procedures for our near term events:

End of Spring 2006 Term: course access for students is determined by the course start and end dates as recorded in PeopleSoft. The following are the procedures approved and implemented for the current term.

Students will have access to Spring 2006 courses in Vista for 2 weeks after the course end date as recorded in PeopleSoft. This access allows students to check grades and receive instructor feedback on final assignments, not to continue doing course work. It is recommended that faculty inform students that no course work may be submitted after the official end date of the course. Faculty should also tell students whether or not they intend to respond to email within the course after the end date. Faculty who do not intend to check Vista course mail after the course end date can tell students to contact them via their regular NAU email addresses. By managing the students' expectations, instructors ensure that communication from students about grades or assignments does not go unread.
At an instructor's request, students who receive a grade of I (incomplete) can be given continued access to a Vista course for up to 12 months after the course end date. The instructor needs to contact the E-Learning Center's Vista administrator (vista-admin@nau.edu) to tell us which students need continued access to a Vista course. Alternatively, instructors can request that students who have incompletes be added to a future version of the course (for example, the next semester's version of the course).
Faculty will have access to Vista courses for 12 months after the end date.
Vista courses will be archived and removed from vista.nau.edu 12 months after the course end date.

REMINDER: Especially as the semester winds down, if students are having problems attaching assignments or taking quizzes and tests, be sure to direct them to the Academic Computing Help Desk (ACHD). Students' problems in Vista often stem from incorrect browser settings or incorrect Java installations. There are solutions to these issues and the help desk can and will assist students promptly.

Summer 2006: The following procedures will be followed for all Summer 2006 Vista courses. These will change somewhat for Fall 2006, and we will provide information about those changes nearer to the beginning of the Fall 2006 semester.

Unless earlier access is requested by the instructor, students will have access to Summer 2006 courses in Vista beginning on the course start date as recorded in Peoplesoft.ts can be allowed access to a course up to one week in advance of the official start date. Instructors who would like to request advance access for their students should contact the E-Learning Center's Vista administrator at vista-admin@nau.edu. Please be sure to indicate the course name, course number, the course Peoplesoft number, the session, and the date you would like student access to begin. Note: early access to course information will be handled differently for Fall 2006. Details will be forthcoming by mid summer.
Enrollment updates during the drop-add period will be sent to instructors.
All other procedures are the same as those noted above for Spring 2006

Fall 2006: The policies and procedures for fall will be as follows:

All courses will have public pages that anyone can view in advance of the course start date. These pages will contain basic course information such as course number, course title, description, and instructor of record. At the instructor's discretion, the public pages can also include information about textbook(s), readings, syllabus, and other relevant information for prospective students. More detailed information about these public pages will be available mid summer.
Students will have access to Vista courses on the course start date as recorded in Peoplesoft.
All e-Reserves provided by Cline Library will accessible only through the Vista shell for a course.
Enrollment updates during the drop-add period will be sent to instructors by email.
Students will have access for 2-weeks after the course end date as recorded in PeopleSoft. This access is intended to allow students to check assignments and grades, not to continue doing course work. It is recommended that faculty inform students of this and also clarify their policy for checking and responding to email within the course after the end date for the course. Managing the students' expectations is important so that communication from them on issues regarding grades or assignments does not go unread.
Students who receive a grade of I (incomplete), can be given further access for up to 12 months at the request of the course instructor. The instructor needs to contact ELC (vista-admin@nau.edu) to insure that access is extended or to let us know if there is a future (next semester course shell) that those students should have access to.
Faculty have access to courses for 12 months after the end date.
Courses will be archived and removed from the production system 12 months after the course end date.

VISTA BUGS & Design Issues:

This start-up semester with Vista 4 has had a few bumps and curves that all of you have assisted in negotiating. Special thanks go to those who have given us detailed descriptions of problems and suggestions for improvement. Many of the bugs are slated for fixes either in a service pack expected to be applied at the end of the Spring 2006 semester or in the promised June service pack from WebCT. Regarding new features design changes that some of you have requested, it is unclear how and when those will be addressed by WebCT. To see a description of the differences between "bugs" and "feature requests" please see http://www2.nau.edu/~d-elearn/faculty_support/knowledge_base/vista_issues/index.php . On this page is a link to an E-Learning Center database of known and reported Vista bugs. You can also get to the bug database directly from this link: http://134.114.200.50:591/vista_issues/FMPro?-db=vista_issues.fp5&-format=search_results.htm&-lay=web&-max=20&-findall =.

If you encounter other problems or bugs to report, please send information to elc-help@nau.edu.

Don Carter