What If?

Following are some scenarios of what can happen in an online course and suggestions on how to handle the situation.

General Scenarios | Quiz Scenarios | Discussion & Chat Scenarios

Discussions/Chats

1. While in the Discussion area of the course, you find that you have accidentally entered your posting in the wrong discussion topic. What can you do?

   WebCT features Discussions, where both the instructor and learners can communicate asynchronously. Once the posting has been sent or posted, no one but the instructor may remove the message. As a result, look before you leap. Be sure to use the Preview function to check your writing for clarity, spelling and grammar. Most of the time, the instructor can offer an informal or casual discussion (Coffee Shop) topic where you can post an informal messages and interact with other course members.

2. As required by the instructor, you responded to three out of the 100 messages in Discussions. How do you know you have completed this assignment?

   It is tricky to do this, but this can help. You can utilize the Search feature in the Discussions area. You simply use your userid as the criteria in the Search tool. You will then be able to view all of the messages you have posted. This way you may be able to double-check the three required responses.

3. You have been required to post a message in a discussion topic. In order to have your message look organized and your spelling checked before posting, you type the message in a word processing program and copy and paste the text into the message box in WebCT. You want to make sure that your posted message appears correctly.
   
   WebCT uses HTML (hypertext mark-up language) code to display all postings. When you paste your message to the text box, you may lose some of the formatting (bullets, bold, paragraphs, etc.). To retain the formatting, you will either need to either enter your own HTML tags or save the word document as a web page and then copy and paste into the message box. It is always suggested to preview the text before posting.
4. In a synchronous chatroom, you and other team members are talking about a course project, which is due soon. You want to send another team member a private note without letting others read it. What can you do?

   Sending a private note in the chatroom is permitted in WebCT. While you are in the chatroom, you click on that particular person's name (or multiple names) showing up in the top right window. This will highlight their name. You then type and send a message in the normal way. He or she will be able to read this private note. Remember whatever message you write becomes private between just you and the individual. You then click on the name again to turn off the feature.