Passwords

This is a re-updated version of one of my early posts. I suspect I will end up posting a version of this at the beginning of each semester, since this is always confusing, and is especially confusing this year due to the password changes. Most of the updates are related to the MySCSU password changes that took effect earlier this month. Updates are in Red text.

There are 3 important ID's and 4 (possibly 5) important passwords that every distance student will have.

ID's
1) ID number--this is the 8 digit number beginning with 7 that is printed on your ID card (Hoot Loot card) if you have one. If you do not have a card, the number should have been sent to you with your registration materials. The Registrar's office or the Library Circulation department can provide you with this number if you do not have your registration materials. You will need this number in order to log on to the library databases, and to do certain network functions, such as resetting your network PIN. It is also called your Banner ID.

2) Network UserID/Username--this is the first part of your email address, usually your last name, first letter of your first name, and a number. My User ID is hedreenr1. Combine that with @southernct.edu and you have my email address. You will need this to log into My SCSU, which includes web access to your email, calendars, courses, and announcements. You can look up your User ID in the email lookup. (PS. You can set your campus email to forward to another email address in the Options tab of the My SCSU email.) Update: For campus WebCT classes (non-Online CSU and all hybrid classes), you now use your username to login.

3) Online CSU ID number--this is the number you use for logging into Online CSU. Because this is currently set up as a separate system from the campus systems, you have a completely separate number. This number usually starts with 00. If you are having trouble logging into Online CSU try the Online CSU Login help page.

Passwords/PINs
1) Banner PIN--this password is for connecting to the Banner registration and administration system. This used to be the same as your MySCSU PIN, and should still be the same as the one you used last semester if you are returning. You can reset your Banner PIN online.

2) MySCSU password--this used to be the same as your Banner PIN, but was updated to a more complex password system earlier this month. Ideally, you should be able to log in using your previous PIN and set a new one, following the instructions on the new, upgraded MySCSU page. If that doesn't work, you must call the HelpDesk at 203-392-5123 to have your password manually reset.

3) Online CSU password--this password is strictly for use in the Online CSU system. This password, and the related Online CSU ID, are created when you first use the Online CSU page. See the Online CSU page for more information. If you are having trouble logging into Online CSU try the Online CSU Login help page.

4) Library PIN--this password is strictly for library use. To set your Library PIN for the first time, go to CONSULS (Library Catalog). Click on Login to Your Library Record. Enter your ID number and leave the PIN box blank, then click Display Record. You will get a screen to select a PIN. If you get an error message of "Invalid PIN" you have a PIN on file. If you do have a PIN number on file and can't remember what it is, call the Circulation Desk (203-392-5756) and ask to have your PIN deleted. You will then be able to select a new PIN. The Library PIN is used to access your library circulation record, library online reserves, and the online databases, and to request books from other CSU libraries. If you get an error message of "Patron record cannot be located", contact the Circulation Desk to check the status of your record.

5) WebCT passwords may be the same as the new MySCSU passwords, but some people have not been able to login this way. Try your old MySCSU/Banner/email password if the new one doesn't work.

(Windows passwords were also reset this past month, so if you log in on campus to a Windows computer, you will have to reset your Windows password, as well.)

The IT HelpDesk web page is http://helpdesk.southernct.edu/. They can help with problems with your ID number, User ID, Banner PIN, MySCSU password, etc., if the online functions do not resolve your login problems.

We are all sort of fumbling around right now with all the password changes, so if you have problems please let me know. I can't necessarily solve the problem for you, but I can at least direct you to the most likely help, and let others know what problems are happening, what worked, and what didn't.

Orientation and teaching the basics

The Library was involved more heavily in New Student Orientation this year (incoming First-Years and Transfer Students). We had a longer session, 30 minutes, all to ourselves. Overall it was a great success, though we certainly had some mixups.

It always gets me thinking about better ways to teach things, and I thought up a good metaphor for explaining Boolean searching. This would come after the "technical" explanation of combining sets.

Three Boolean operators go into a restaurant (no, really, this isn't a joke), AND, OR, and NOT. They want to order dessert. Here is the desert menu:

• Strawberry shortcake (strawberries, cake, & whipped cream)
• Chocolate eclairs
• Chocolate covered strawberries
• Fruit tart with blueberries, strawberries, and blackberries
• Banana split with chocolate sauce and whipped cream
• Fresh sliced mango

AND is very precise and orders "Chocolate AND Strawberries". OR is a greedy-guts and wants everything with "Chocolate OR Strawberries". NOT is allergic to strawberries and so orders "Chocolate NOT Strawberries".

What does each one get? (Remember, this is a restaurant and two people can get the same thing, and each person can get more than one dish.)

Answers:

• AND gets Chocolate covered strawberries
• OR gets Strawberry shortcake, Chocolate eclairs, Chocolate covered strawberries, Fruit tart, and a Banana split
• NOT gets Chocolate eclairs, and a Banana split

Extra credit question: Can AND and NOT share a dessert?

What do you think? Does it help explain AND, OR and NOT? Or does it just make you hungry?

SummerTech--Friday and Summary

I've spent the weekend trying to wrap my mind around everything we did this week. Whew! First of all, we spent most of Friday "finishing" our sites for presentation Friday afternoon. I put "finishing" in quotes because no one really finished anything. We also got the conclusion of Dave's graphics talk that morning.

The presentations were very interesting. Most of us created course based sites in Dreamweaver. Several used MySCSU to add course resources for the fall. There are some problems, especially that everything is displayed in the order that it is loaded--there is no way to sort anything. So if you have a lot of files (like Art History photos), you get a very cluttered screen very quickly. There is also no sorting function in the course roster. Students are alphabetized by first name. Or I should really say first character--some people have titles (Mr., Ms., etc.) and they are in the M's!

A few people worked on non-course based sites relating to projects. Mine was a site for online faculty covering library services available. It still needs work, but I'll leave it up permanently as a resource.

One of the best things was meeting faculty that I wouldn't usually meet. I normally have contact only with the faculty teaching online and those in "my" departments (Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, & Physics). I really enjoyed seeing how faculty all over campus are using technology in classes. There is a very healthy concern over using technology appropriately for the course goals, not just using the technology because it's there.

After the presentations, a few of us talked for a bit. I really like the idea of having SummerTech II sessions that get beyond the coding, as it were. What are the advantages of using chat in class? What educational goals does discussion serve? How can faculty deal with the trend towards casual language and slang in online communications? Should they? Dan suggested having reunions, where we could discuss some of these issues.

Speaking of technology in the classroom, the Library will be running some discussion/demo sessions this year on various technologies (blogs, RSS, & lots more), under a Faculty Development Grant. More information coming as soon as we get it organized.

I think I'll volunteer my services to Dan as a teaching assistant next year. I really enjoy helping people figure this stuff out. And having librarian working with faculty in another setting certainly won't hurt the library any.

Here are the full series of posts for this week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday/Summary (this one).

Windows and MySCSU passwords change

Due to some security concerns, Windows passwords (for logging on to Windows computers on campus) and MySCSU passwords (for the MySCSU portal, southernct.edu, and some course access) are being reset this weekend. Windows passwords were supposed to be reset yesterday (Friday) and MySCSU passwords are being reset on Monday (8/22). According to the HelpDesk website, this will not affect your Banner password, but I think it affects WebCT.

The new passwords must conform to stricter guidelines than the old ones. The new passwords must be (as quoted from the HelpDesk website):

1. Not contain significant portions of the user’s account name, full name, or current password.
2. Be at least 8 characters in length.
3. Contain characters from three of the following four categories:
1. English uppercase characters (A through Z)
2. English lowercase characters (a through z)
3. Numeric characters (0 through 9)
4. Non-alphanumeric characters (!@#$%^&*-+?)

(Update 8/22: At least the MySCSU passwords seem to require letters, numbers, and symbols. Uppercase/lowercase doesn't seem to matter, since that makes the required 3 types.

Update 8/26: They are now instructing that Windows passwords that follow the same rules as MySCSU passwords: letters, numbers, and symbols. Passwords are case sensitive, but you don't have to use both upper and lower case letters. If you have already chosen a password, you may not have to reset, but follow these rules next time. Passwords also cannot use a part of your name or birthdate. Windows and Banner passwords can be reset from the HelpDesk page, but MySCSU require calling 203-392-5123 or visiting a campus computer lab, such as Buley 314.)

In other words, they must be longer (8 characters or more) and more complex. You will be forced to change passwords every 60 days and will not be able to repeat your last six passwords. So now is the time to come up with several to use when you are unexpectedly unable to get into your email 60 days from Monday.

For all the details, check IT's helpdesk website at http://helpdesk.southernct.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=200&Itemid=124

For those who hate choosing passwords, especially "weird" ones like these, here are a few suggestions:

• Use "l33t speak", the early hacker substitution of numbers for letters. l33t is 'leet or elite.
  
  • A=4 or @
    
  • E=3
  • I=1 or ! (also Y when used as a vowel with the long I sound)
    
  • O=0 (That's "Oh" equals "zero") or ()
    
  • T=7
  • S=$
  • So "stories" could be written "$70r13$" (This is an extreme example, it would be easier to replace only a few letters. By changing which letters you switch, you can have several passwords from the same word.)
  • You could use this the other way round if you want to use a password like the old default birthdate. Substitute some of the numbers with letters, some capitalized and some not, 1993=!99E.
    
  • There are more examples on the BBC page linked above.
    
    
• Text messaging has more common substitutions that work well for this sort of password:
• at=@
  
• to=2
• for=4
• you=U
• are=r (also used for any "er", "ar", "or", etc., sound within a word)
  
• "ate"=8 (used in any word that contains the sound "ate", like "l8tr" for "later"
  
• So the phrase, "my love to you" becomes "my luv 2 U". Combine this with l33t speak and you could use "m!luv2U" (it's only 7 characters, but it does use all 4 of the required types for the new passwords.)
  
• Transl8it! has a txt generator. Type your message in and get the txt translation. (It will also go the other way--handy for those who aren't up on their IM/chat slang.)
  
  
• If you really get stuck, there are online password generators that will help you. I can't recommend using this sort of thing for you actual password, because you can't necessarily tell who is legitimate and who is fishing (or phishing) for passwords, but you could use them to get some ideas. Of the ones that came up on the Google search linked above, I like the WebCog Semi-Pronounceable one best. You can just keep clicking the Refresh button until you see one you think you could remember. You will need to capitalize at least one letter or use a "special" symbol to make these work in our new system.
• If you do use one of these systems to figure out a new password, I would recommend writing down the password (even better, a variation on the password that was generated), closing your browser completely, opening a new browser window and then going to change your password. It may help break the trail between your use of the password generator and where you used the password. Identity theft is a big problem, and you don't want to make it any easier for them to get your information. You might also want to try the Firefox browser, which prevents some of the scripts from running when you visit a "bad" page, like downloading a tracking program so that they see where you go after visiting. (You should already be running a virus checker--students can download McAfee from the MySCSU site--and an adware/spyware remover like Ad-Aware, at least if you use Windows.)
  

It all sounds really scary now, I know, but by choosing good passwords you can actually lessen your anxiety over being online. If you think about it ahead of time, and have some secure passwords in mind, you won't end up using your dog's name on every website you come across. I have set of passwords that are variations on just a few words, using numbers and symbols to make them different (and I have a "throw away" password for things that don't need a really secure password, like newspaper websites). When I suddenly need a new password, I can use a variation, like changing an A to an @, and still have a chance of remembering it.

SummerTech--Thursday

Today was an intensive day of work on our "presentations" with a couple of breaks. Yes, indeed, you students out there can gloat a little, your professors are getting the same sort of presentation anxiety that they put you through.

We worked this morning on our sites, with special emphasis on styling, and making the final decisions on what exactly the presentations would encompass. The majority of us are designing web pages, either from scratch or based on one of the templates that Dan wrote up. With the new MySCSU available several people are planning to use that this fall and are loading syllabi, readings, and are trying to decide if they want to try the discussion boards and chat. We can't actually test the MySCSU/MyCourses discussion and chat, because they both only exist within a given course--and no one has access to more than one course at the moment, since they are all real courses.

We could try out the WebCT discussion and chat. After lunch we went to one of the new English Composition computer labs and, under Will Hochman's direction, tried the chat function in a dummy course set up for SummerTech. 15+ people trying to make substantive comments while working on a new interface is, um, challenging to follow. Several people commented on the difficulty of reading and typing at the same time. The messages were coming fast enough that if you tried to read everything as it came you couldn't type. Or at least most of us couldn't. Chat is not my favorite online communication, though it's not bad one-on-one. It's a little dizzying in a large group. I've never tried it with more than 4 or 5 people.

Something that came in the discussion that followed was the linearity of traditional text versus the non-linearity of hypertext. (Chat is sort of a non-linear discussion forced into a linear format--we are all responding to different messages, producing branches, but they appear in chronological order.) Hypertext allows branching, so that each person may approach a text from a different path. But the individual experience is still linear, in that you can only view one page at a time. (Books actually are more like this than we generally think--see Chapter 7 or the previous discussion in Chapter 2.) Similarly, if we have a threaded class discussion, I may choose to read and respond to one thread and you may choose another, but we each have a linear experience, just different ones. Hypertext just means that there is less likely to be a single path that most people will take.

Anyway, we also had the "bigwig" lunch. SummerTech participants from previous years, department chairs, deans, staff, admin...even Cheryl Norton managed to squeeze in a sandwich with us. We also found out that they decided that having laptops with software that you couldn't use off the network was as silly as we thought it was. So they will be working on getting Dreamweaver for all SummerTech participants. Too bad we couldn't have had it this week, but it's probably better not to have quite as much incentive to stay up until all hours!

SummerTech--Wednesday

I was so tired last night that I forgot to post a Wednesday summary. I'm used to being focused on my computer most of the day. I guess that being focused on the computer all day is not the same thing!

First thing we got Dreamweaver sites set up. Dreamweaver can do some great things if you set up a collection of web pages as a site, especially updating links if you change a file name. It doesn't affect the page once it's on the web, but it makes creating and maintaining easier.

Arlene Bielefield from Library Science gave us a talk on Copyright. She started by asking how many of us had copyrights. Only about half raised our hands. She pointed out that, since we all use email (and presumably we've all written dissertations, theses, or at least papers) we all have copyrights to our name. Just not registered. CT law endows faculty with full copyright to all instructional materials. Yay! In order to have something like the Kansas controversy, there would have to be a change in state law. Arlene is great, and, of course, copyright talk could last for hours before we even feel we've scatched the surface.

After lunch we worked on our sites for a while and then Dave Petroski from Communications gave us a talk on graphics. He started from the beginning (1 bit graphics = white/black), and ended up showing us how to use Fireworks to "optimize" our graphics for the web. The templates that Dan created for faculty homepages include a place for a picture. So the STARS students (Chad, Mike, and Harry) took pictures of all the participants who didn't already have their own. Then we got to play around with them, changing resolution, bit depth (number of colors), etc.

SummerTech--Tuesday

Today, Stan Walonoski of Academic Computing gave us an introduction to the new PDF creator system that Southern has put together for us poor Microsoft Office users who don't have built in PDF creation (lucky Mac users! The multi-platform Open Office also has PDF creation built in.) It's a nice little function available to faculty and staff (I'm not sure about student use, especially offsite), since the full Adobe Acrobat licenses are too expensive for everyone to get one on campus. The full Adobe is available in most of the computer labs on campus.

He also told us about the new MySCSU portal. There is a lot of great stuff in there. I've added a separate post on that.

Then we talked about WebCT. We tried some of the communication tools within WebCT, the discussion boards and chat. It was a new experience for most our faculty, with mixed results. The interfaces are not intuitive--you need to have used message boards and chat before, so you know what to look for.

After lunch we got a "tour" of a Smart Classroom in Engelman. Many of the new Smart Classroom are what Dan referred to as "bunker" style. A large desk with the built in computer technology occupies one corner of the room, and a screen in the other corner. There are some problems with the design: the separation between the instructor and students is emphasized, if the faculty member is sitting in the "bunker" and talking, the students are dividing their attention between the instructor in one corner and the screen in the other. All the chairs are packed into the back 2/3 of the classroom--very crowded.

Most of the Smart Classrooms don't have computers for students. The only department to specifically want all their technology rooms set up this way was the English department. So the "smart" is smart presentation, not interaction. Of course, most of Engelman is wireless, so a student with a wireless laptop can use it.

Dan is a real application wizard. He showed us a "virtual overhead" presentation application that he put together that allows you to use text, images, audio or video, all within the same program. Dan loads these on his USB drive, and walks into his Smart Classrooms to teach German without a audio player, video player, overhead projector, etc. All of this could be on his computer in native files, but then he'd be switching applications all the time. With his virtual overhead, he has all the players he needs.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in CSS practice. We completed Dan's tutorial, styling the page that we wrote in HTML yesterday. We found a couple of bugs in Dan's tutorial, but it's web-based, so he was able to run back to his office and fix them. Once we reloaded it worked just fine. Good work, Dan!

We have been plagued with technology problems. Several faculty are using borrowed laptops, and many of them are not set up for ideal use--very high resolution resulting in tiny text, limited permissions, etc. We also seem to have some connection problems, too, which is affecting our use of Dreamweaver since it's "key-served" from a network drive. (If I've got this straight, the key server has the permissions, registration, etc. for the software that is actually loaded locally. When you aren't connected, it acts like your software isn't registered.) This isn't a great set up for faculty who would like to develop their courses at home.

Technology: it's always an adventure.

A tour of MySCSU

Stan Walonoski of Academic Computing was instrumental in designing the new MySCSU interface. He gave the SummerTech faculty a brief demonstration of MySCSU.

The program is called Luminis, by Sungard, the same company that makes the Banner software. They bought the Pipeline company that made the previous MySCSU software. This means that Banner and MySCSU will be able to be more heavily linked.

The key service in Luminis is the Channel concept. If you've ever used MyYahoo, you have seen this sort of thing. Each box in MySCSU is a channel, and you can add, move, and delete channels. Right now everything is locked, but soon these will be modifiable. Eventually each department will have it's own channel, so you will be able to get special news/files/etc. from the Physics Department, Faculty Senate, and/or the Library, for example.

The main MySCSU page is the same for everyone. Information for specific statuses (faculty, staff, students) is accessible from the tabs at the top. Faculty and students have access to their course resources from the MyCourses link. All courses automatically get a Group, with calendar, messages, announcements, files, etc. (Eventually, WebCT will replace the MyCourses, but not until after the WebCT Vista upgrade in the 2006-2007 academic year.) Students can upload files to the Groups folders, which can be released to the rest of the class on the discretion of the instructor. Faculty who are not using WebCT may find the MyCourses to be a good substitute for the communications functions of WebCT (message boards, class email, file delivery, chat, calendars). The course access is controlled by Banner registration, so adds and drops should be reflected in MyCourses very quickly.

Speaking of calendars, students (and everyone else) can now combine all of their course calendars (and any other calendars that you create), and see all their appointments and due dates at once. Calendars can also be shared. Students could create calendars for study groups, and use the chat and/or email functions to communications. Calendars are supposed to be synchronizable with PDA's, at least on campus.

(Don't forget that if you don't use your Southern email, you can forward your Southern mail to your other email account. With the new features in MySCSU, professors may be using Southern email more, so if you haven't you should forward it right away. In MySCSU, click the Email link in the upper right--above the Inbox display in the center. Go to Options, then Autoforward. Fill in your other email address and click OK. That's it.

**We've were also informed that some email filters will block all southernct.edu emails if you block a single southernct.edu address. So be sure to check you're blocking settings if you aren't getting mail regularly forwarded from Southern. The campus announcement list sends messages at least once a week.)

After lunch, Dan showed us some examples of how to load files into MyCourses. It's really easy. This would make a great transitional application between a totally on-ground course, and really getting into WebCT.

SummerTech 2005--Monday

This week I am participating in the faculty training sessions called SummerTech. For several years now, faculty have the opportunity to spend one week in the summer learning about using technology in the classroom. We will be covering HTML, Dreamweaver, WebCT, PDF, images, copyright, and various technology services available for faculty at Southern. I'll be in the workshops all day everyday this week, so I won't be available much. I will try to keep the chat and IM functions up if you really need to get in touch, but even email seems to be tricky. I couldn't get in for more than a few minutes today--part of which may have been server trouble. Part was just being busy. I definitely won't be answering my office phone, though I will try and check the voice mail.

I'll be posting a commentary each day. Here is today's:

Today was the intro day. We had the usual welcome sort of things (speeches, bios, "introduce yourself" & "what I want out of SummerTech" exercises), including a bit of SummerTech history. Not too long ago they covered computer "basics" like email, and saving files. This week moves away from specifics of applications, though there are plenty of those, and into technology in the service of pedagogy. My interest in SummerTech is three-fold. I do want to learn whatever I can, though I suspect that a lot of it will be repetition for me. (Not that repetition is bad--we don't learn well without it.) I want to find out what the faculty, at least those who have been through SummerTech, are familiar with. That will make it easier for me to work with them. And I want to meet people and let them know who I am and what I do. Several people commented that SummerTech and similar campus-wide endeavors are the main reason that they know anyone outside of their own departments.

It is interesting that most of the people teaching and assisting are self taught, like me. There was no one to show us how to do things, so we picked up a little of this and a little of that, tried things out and learned from our mistakes. What we really share is a willingness to play with things and fail a lot. Now programs like this are organized for those who are less comfortable with experimentation (and less able and/or willing to take the time to play with something in order to learn it. There is probably a learning style factor in there somewhere, too.)

We had an introduction to WebCT--WebCT as a Content Distribution System. I think I see where we are headed in this one. While WebCT, and all course management systems, have built in organization systems, if we look at it as a content distribution system, then we focus on the content as we as teachers want to present the material. Prearranged content is all well and good, but if it doesn't fit with our content or teaching style, it should be thrown out, because we won't teach as well with a system that doesn't fit. Stretching ourselves is fine, but squeezing ourselves into a badly designed system (badly designed for us, anyway) isn't good.

Dan Sorenson is the primary instructor for SummerTech. He gave us the intro to WebCT (with others jumping in), and he designed the main feature of the day--a nifty little HTML tutorial. All self-contained, the tutorial walked us through basic HTML programming, with a built in text editor for creating an HTML file (and a CSS file for tomorrow). Very nice, and I hope Dan releases it for general use.

The idea of the intro/review of HTML was as a preface to our Dreamweaver exercises over the next few days. If you don't know the basics, then you can't understand what Dreamweaver is doing. Knowing the base coding not only lets you double check when things go wrong, but it helps you understand what is possible and what isn't. (Why can't I put regular text on the sam lin with a level 1 heading? Because h1 is a block tag whose influence extends from the left margin to the right.)

We got a little bit of Dreamweaver in at the very end of the day. Since we are showing off at the end of the week, I decided to do a little library marketing and do a page on "Library Services for Distance/Online Faculty". I can include basic services like suggesting resources for classwork, online-specific services like linking directly to full text articles, to advanced online services like "embedding" a librarian within a course. I'll also include links to the DE Library Newsletter (next issue will be out next week), and, of course, this blog.

More tomorrow!

MySCSU upgrade

The migration to a new campus portal system began last night (along with other related network stuff). As of last night, web access to email, network drives (U:), and campus WebCT was disrupted, and many students had trouble logging into the library computers at all. As of this morning access to email via email software like Eudora, and the network drives is restored, but the web email is still not working as of 9:30 this morning. (When I can get on at all, I get a "too many users" message--but I wouldn't take that literally right now.) The new system does not appear to like the Firefox browser, and requires pop-ups be allowed for myscsu.southernct.edu (instructions appear on the error message). I have not been able to test WebCT.

OnlineCSU WebCT and access to the library databases have not, and should not, be affected by this change, as both are controlled from separate servers.

Here is the official message from campus IT, sent Tuesday:

The Campus Pipeline to Luminis migration will begin at 5:30 PM on Wednesday, August 3.

Access to the MySCSU portal, email, WebCT, and personal web directories (U: drive) will not be available at that time. Access to all services, except the MySCSU portal, should be available by 12:00 midnight. The new MySCSU portal will be available by 12:00 noon on Thursday, August 4.

Thank you for your patience during this migration. We hope you will enjoy the look and feel of the new MySCSU campus portal, which will still be available at the URL myscsu.southernct.edu.

What do you need?

I am back from vacation, and have cleaned all the spam out of my email, and am faced with the question of what to write about next. I have a collection of possible topics, including:

• finding images for use in academic projects,
• the proliferation of open access journals/resources and what it means for distance learning,
• why I find Firefox to be the best browser (so far) for online research,
• essential technology skills for distance learning and teaching (and how to get them),
  
• a librarian's perspective on the Summer Tech faculty workshop later this month,
• any information I can find on the new Pipeline (MySCSU) replacement going in this week,
• any information I can find on WebCT Vista which will replace the current WebCT after the coming year,
• and, of course, any news or resources that strike me as being useful to the distance learning community here at Southern.
  

I'm especially interested to hear from SCSU faculty and students, but if you are a non-SCSU reader, please respond as well. What do you want to read? What frustrates you with online education? What information have you not be able to find? Are there topics you have left out of online courses or assignments because you didn't think there was anything available and accessible? How can I help you?

Please add a comment to this post, or contact me via any of the methods listed on the DE Library Home Page. Thanks!