To:  All Learning System Instructors and Associates

In this issue
=========
1.  myLearningSystem Outage:  Thursday April 28th morning  
2.  Releasing final grades for half courses (and possibly exam grades) = Not in the learningSystem
3.  Enter Grades for 'Student, Demo' to test final grade calculations
4.  FINAL Call for Summer (2011S12, S61, S62) sites
5.  No "DELETING" or clean-up now, please, on fall/winter or winter sites...
6.  Fall/Winter and Winter courses to be hidden from students May 24, 2011
7.  Release of online evaluation results May 2, 2011
8.  EXPORT YOUR GRADEBOOKS!!


1.  myLearningSystem Outage:  Thursday April 28th morning  
========================
The LearningSystem/WebCT will be unavailable for a service pack installation on the morning of Thursday, April 28th, 2011 from 8:00am until approx. 9am.


2.  Releasing final grades for half courses (and possibly exam grades) = Not in the learningSystem
========

From the Office of the Registrar:
Course instructors are reminded that mid-term and final grades are to be submitted using the myAcademicRecord link on myTrent, not through the learningSystem/WebCT.  In addition, instructors should be careful not to provide all term work and exam grades to students via theLearningSystem which would allow students to calculate their final grade in a course.

Any questions about the grade submission process can be directed to Bruce Emmerton (Office of the Registrar) at ext 7562 or bemmerton@trentu.ca .


3.  Enter Grades for 'Student, Demo' to test final grade calculations
========================

There is a student in your gradebook that represents the 'student view' tab called 'Student, Demo'.   If you are using a calculated column to arrive at a final grade, it's a good idea to test your calculation by assigning the 'Student, Demo' perfect grades for everything.  The goal, of course, is for the 'Final' calculation to end up at 100%.  If it doesn't, you've missed something and all of your students' final grades will be incorrect. These 'Student, Demo' grades will not be counted in course statistics.

Whenever you are adding materials, posting/releasing new grades, posting announcements, etc., please remember to always consult the 'Student View' tab to ensure that your students are seeing what they should be seeing... 

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Even though you've entered/calculated grades in the learningSystem, you must still enter them into myAcademicRecord for the Registrar's Office to acces -- go to myAcademicRecord, Faculty to do so.


4.  FINAL Call for Summer (2011S12, S61, S62) learningSystem sites
=========================

Please note that this applies  to courses that are starting on May 2nd, May 9th, in June and in July.  The Official LearningSystem 2011 Summer Course List can be found at:  http://www2.trentu.ca/cgi-bin/mls-courses    (I expect about 75 more of these as I only have 1/2 of the sites that were used last year so far).

If you are not yet aware of your teaching duties, please do let us know as soon as that information is relayed to you.

Please do not reply to this email, but use our tracking form request to request a summer site because the form asks all of the right questions:

Link to Course Request Form:  http://www.trentu.ca/mls/instructors/course-request.shtml 

All requests send this way will be placed in a request queue in RequestTracker for either myself or Chris Boothroyd to process.

Student Load:  All students will be loaded into summer courses on the Wednesday of last full week before the session starts. This should avoid lots of "last minute" access issues of loading them on the first day of the class.  


5.  No "DELETING" or housecleaning now on Fall/Winter or Winter sites...  please...
=========================

If you are working in your gradebook at this time of year, please resist the urge to DELETE any columns that you don't think you are using.   The screen where the deleting is done does not have visibility into whether that column contains any grades, and you may delete a real column by mistake.  It's very easy to do.

Unless you have exported your gradebook for safe-keeping recently, that column would be lost FOREVER.  


6.  Fall/Winter and Winter courses to be hidden from students May 24, 2011
=========================

As of May 24th, 2011 (first day after the Victoria Day weekend), all 2010FW course sites and 2011WI course sites will be hidden from students.   They will not be hidden from instructors.  Your instructor/designer view of these sites will not change.

  If your 2009FW or 2010WI site should remain visible to your students past that date for incompletes or other reasons, please let us know.


7.  Release of online evaluation results
=========================

If your students completed an online evaluation for a 2010FW or 2011WI course, I will be releasing these evaluations back to their respective instructors on Monday, May 2nd.  Watch your myLearningSystem course list for these!   Full stats reports will be generated and sent shortly thereafter by either myself or your department secretary.

8.  EXPORT YOUR GRADEBOOKS!!
========================

Four mouse-clicks can save you from PERILOUS DOOM -- teach, gradebook, export to spreadsheet, (all members, all columns), EXPORT.  OK.  Maybe 5 mouseclicks...

I cannot guarantee that I will be able to retrieve this information months or years from now which is when you will ask me for it to defend a grade challenge...  Consider yourself warned!

Questions, comments?

mj

MJ Pilgrim/Chris Boothroyd/Lily Chumbley
LearningSystem Team

If you do not wish to be included in future mailings to this list, send an empty e-mail to:
and reply to the confirmation message.  Your e-mail address will then be automatically removed from the list.

Only list members are allowed to send to this address, and the list is moderated.

If one of your colleagues would like to be included in these mailings, they can be added to the list by sending an empty e-mail to