Course Administration Webtools

Introduction 

Course Administration Webtools (CAW) was built with the intention of providing Central Piedmont Community College faculty with a one-stop, web-accessible interface for all available course administration tools. As such, this application abstracts some of the different Brightspace utilities. This allows instructors to use an easier and less error-prone approach to course management.  However, this is not a full replacement for the course tools in Brightspace. These differences are not in the different sections and in the FAQ.

Video examples of the following actions

Table of Contents

1. CAW Organization
2. Create Personal Model
3. Delete Personal Model
4. Copy Courses in a Personal Model
5. Rename a Personal Model
6. Combine Courses
7. Uncombine Courses
8. Reset Courses
9. Course Information
10. FAQs
    1. Where are my Courses?
    2. Why are some courses grayed out?
    3. Where can I request batch copies?
    4. How can I enroll a user other than as a teaching assistant?
    5. How can I enroll a user into a course that does not belong to me?
    6. I am such and such and I think I need elevated permissions?

CAW Organization

All of the different figures of CAW are found in the sidebar of the application.

Create Personal Model 

1. Fill out the required fields.

2. A preview of the Personal Model Code is displayed.

3. Click Submit to create the Personal Model.

Delete Personal Model

1. In order to delete a master course, select the course or courses you wish to delete and then click the Trash button in the lower left-hand corner.

2. Once the icon has been clicked, a pop-up will appear asking the user to confirm their action. Click the Delete button to confirm the deletion. 

   

3. Once the page has refreshed, the Model is deleted.

Note: If a course has associated groups, the model cannot be deleted. In this situation, the groups must first be deleted in Brightspace before the model can be deleted. Follow the steps below to delete associated groups:

1. Go to the course in Brightspace and click Roster > Groups.

2. Select all groups and click Delete.

3. A confirmation pop-up will appear. Click Delete Groups to confirm.

4. Repeat these steps for all categories.

5. The model can now be deleted in CAW.

Copy Courses into a Personal Models 

1. In order to copy an existing course or use a shared model, a user must first create a new Personal Model. In this case, you will select the “Use content from live course” or "Use content from shared model" checkbox. 

2. This will create the personal model and bring you to the secondary page: “Select Course to Copy From”.  You will make your selection by checking the box. 

3. The user is able to search for a course to then copy into their selected shells. 

4. Once you click submit, it can take up to 24 hours for the copy to be complete.  

Rename a Personal Model

1. Click Rename Personal Model under Course Tools in the sidebar.

2. This page will show a list of your Personal Models. Select a model to rename and confirm your selection.

3. Enter the new name of your Personal Model and click Rename or press the Enter key on your keyboard.

Combine Courses

• The user can select as many courses as they wish to combine. Once they do that, they will be able to hit the button with the diagram, the pop up will appear and they can hit submit to process their request.

Uncombine Courses

• The user can select the courses they wish to uncombine and then hit the button with the stacked boxes. Once they do that a pop will appear asking them if they wish to submit their request.

Reset Courses

Course Reset returns a Brightspace course to an empty shell. This permanently deletes all course content and activity data and cannot be undone.

To reset a course, select Reset Courses under Course Tools in the sidebar. From there, you can select a course and follow the prompts to reset it.

• Courses can only be reset after they are created in Brightspace.
• Courses cannot be reset on or after the course start date.
• Only courses eligible for reset will appear on the Reset Courses page.

If you believe a course should appear but does not, try logging out and back in. If the issue persists, contact the ITS Service Desk.

Courses can also be reset from the course in Brightspace, under Course Tools → Course Admin → Course Reset.

Course Information

1. Course Information is retrieved by submitting the course prefix, number, and section.  All of these are required. 

2.  Once the user has filled out the information, they can click the submit button to find the information for the course.

3. If course information is found, they are notified by a message at the top of the page. By default, the current or upcoming course information will be shown. To see information from a prior term, select the desired term from the `Relevant Term` dropdown menu. At most, one would be able to select the previous 2 terms, for a total of 3 viewable terms.

For example, if it is currently the Spring term, they will be able to see Spring of the current year, Fall of the previous year and Summer of the previous year. If it is Summer, they will be able to see Summer of the current year, Spring of the current year and Fall of the previous year. 

If no course sections can be found, then the user will also be notified.

FAQ

• Where are my courses?

When a user login into course administration, all of their sections are fetched for them via a Hasura GraphQL query. It queries for all courses that are assigned to them within the instructor_assignment table. If there are sections, they feel like they are missing. It is important to find out if they are listed as an instructor for those sections. By default, when they are attempting to copy into sections, the sections listed are sections in which the start date has not passed 100 days. This was done in order to protect courses from accidentally being copied into long after the semester has started.

Unlike before, the combined courses will not gray out.  This is due to the different manner in which CAW combines and not to prevent further submissions and they will be notified that their request will be put in a queue. 

• Why are some courses grayed out?

This is no longer relevant to this application.  For example, during combining and uncombining, courses are no longer grayed out during the copy process.  This is due to the different manner in which CAW performs this action.  It only stores the sections of the courses that are to be combined in an array that is retrieved by the Brightspace provisioning script.

• Where can I request batch copies?

Batch copies are no longer available in this application.

• How can I enroll a user other than as a teaching assistant?

User enrollments are no longer available in this application.  However, one can enroll a user as a teaching assistant or library assistant using the enrollment feature found in Brightspace.

• How can I enroll a user into a course that does not belong to me?

Please also see the response for the previous question. By default, all instructors are able to enroll users into sections they teach. If the user urgently needs the ability to enroll users into courses that don’t belong to them, the Web Team should be notified by a ticket. While there is a page where any user is able to enroll any other user into any course, this page is hidden based on permissions.  Due to the possibility of a FERPA violation by handing out such an ability, requests for such access need to be granted exclusively by the Web Team. Let the user know their request will be reviewed by an internal team.

• Do I need to request elevated permissions for certain features in CAW?

CAW does not use a separate permission model. All actions in CAW run under the permissions associated with your Brightspace user account. If you are unable to complete a task in CAW, you do not need to request elevated CAW permissions. Instead, search the Service Catalog for the appropriate service and submit a ticket for assistance.