Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: WebCT

  • A More Usable Usability

    Previously I have seen usability describing ease of using a web site. These four essences of usability are interesting. I believe that to satisfy customers, a Web site must fulfill four distinct needs: Availability: A site that’s unreachable, for any reason, is useless. Responsiveness: Having reached the site, pages that download slowly are likely to…

  • Its 10:34 Do You Know Where Your Tracking Files Are?

    One of my co-workers says about tracking, “One of the big selling points to [Blackboard] Vista is the wealth of tracking data for auditing, grade challenges, and catching cheaters.” Certainly, Reports and Tracking in Blackboard’s Vista 3 is one of the more favorite tools. So making sure the data gets there is critically important. The…

  • All Your Cache Are Belong to Us

    Interesting incident with Blackboard Vista last night. The user interface for the server “lost” the default icon sets for the organizer pages. Other icons were not affected so changing to another icon set did not help. A legendary Blackboard support guy happened to take our call. I understand why so many other Bb clients like…

  • links for 2007-07-25

    . Tennessee Baha’i­ School (tags: Bahá’í) WebServices – Axis (tags: webservices Apache xml java documentation programming reference webserver Blackboard_Vista) DevNet (tags: blackboard_vista development lms) WebCT – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (tags: Blackboard_patent wikipedia)

  • links for 2007-07-18

    . Innovation at Risk (tags: books economics copyright patents law intellectualproperty) A Patent Is Worth Having, Right? Well, Maybe Not – New York Times (tags: copyright economics law patents intellectual_property) Contents (tags: oracle oracle.features database) Vista Ate My Homework (tags: blackboard resources webctvista.support webctvista.howto WebCT_Vista Blackboard_Vista) Show and Tell: Tips for a Successful Implementatio n…

  • Cookbook

    I’ve been asked for a cookbook of SQL to deal with issues in [WebCT / Blackboard] Vista. This seems like a daunting task. Organizationally, I guess I lean towards “everything is miscellaneous”. Just about everything starts with a few SQL statements I’ve come to memorize. Outside of that, every request has a number of nuances…

  • Blue Chicago

    I am at the 2006 WebCT Users Conference. It has been a blast! Wow! I love Chicago. I should have arranged to stay a couple weeks. 🙁 Though, I understand the hotel is about $430 a night? A little too rich for me. I have pictures. Some semi-incriminating and most benign. I just need to…

  • Cheating in an Information Technology Era

    Some quotes from an article in the NYT on cheating. This recently came up on a WebCT Users list (usually at least once every year). Maybe the timing is right because the academic year at many schools just ended? Test administrators are usually one step behind the cheaters. There are lots of technologies that have…

  • WebCT DevNet

    I have not created any PowerLinks. However, maybe just maybe some of the needs we have could be made into a one? WebCT DevNet The WebCT Vista Developers Network is an online community of developers that are using the WebCT PowerLinks SDK to extend and integrate the WebCT Vista e-learning platform.The WebCT Vista Developers Network…