End-of-Semester Checklist

This page contains steps to close your web site at the end of a semester and back up student data for your records to prepare the site for archiving. Note that while we keep backups and archives of data, the Office of Information Technology is not recognized as an official record-keeping unit of the University, so we recommend that you do the following steps for each course web site you have at the end of each semester.

Grade Book Task

Access the Grade Book

1. In your WebVista site click the Teach tab.
2. In the Course View sub tab, from the Course Management Tools toolbar, click the Grade Book button or in the Tool View sub tab, under the Course Management Tools column, click Grade Book.

Close the Site - Deny Student Access

This step may or may not be applicable to your site. It will depend on student activity and learning activities within your site. If applicable, determine a date to close the course site. Your course site will remain up at least three weeks into the start of a new semester. We will announce archiving via email. In most cases you will want to deny access to students well before the site is archived. Pick a date when the course site will be closed and let students know they have to complete all of their work in the course site before that date.

Deny student access to the site. Your course site will remain up for your own use until the archive date, but students will not be able to work in the site without your knowledge. You do not have to delete student records to deny access.

Find Just the Student Members of Your Site

Since you can deny access to other members of your site, you will want find just the student members.

1. Click the Find Members button above the member table.
2. On the page that comes up, make the following selections:
   • Click the checkbox for Roles.
   • Select the radio button for contain.
   • Select Student from the menu.
   • From the Column drop-down menu, select First Name.
   • From the Condition drop-down menu, select does not contain.
   • In the Value text box type demo.
3. Click the Run Query button.

Select and Deny Access to All Students

1. Click the checkbox in the upper left corner of the table to select all the visible members.
2. Below the member table, click on the Deny Access button.

Export the Grade Book

You can save your Vista grade book as a comma- or tab-delimited file on your computer, and open it within a spreadsheet program (see Compile and Download Discussion Postings below) like Microsoft Excel. We recommend that you download the Grade Book at the end of the semester and after any major exams or edits.

1. Below the member table click the Export to Spreadsheet button.
2. On the page that comes up, make the following selections:
   1. Members to Export: Selected members
   2. Columns to Export: Visible columns
   3. Select Export Format: Tab-delimited or Comma-delimited
   4. Select Character Set: Unicode (UTF-8)
3. Click the Export button.
4. When the browser asks, Save or Open? choose Save.
5. The Save dialog box appears with the default filename of exportedcourse.csv if you chose comma-delimited or exportedcourse.txt if you chose tab-delimited. Browse to the location where you want to save the file on your local machine.
6. Change the filename to something more recognizable if you like but do not change the .csv or .txt extension.
7. Click the Save button.

You can then open the saved grade book file in Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet program. The steps will be similar to those below (for Excel) with any spreadsheet program.

1. Open Microsoft Excel.
2. Choose File > Open from the menu bar.
3. Locate the grade book file you saved on your computer and click Open or OK.
4. A wizard will ask you to choose "delimited" or "fixed width". Choose "delimited" and select either Tab or Comma, depending on which one you chose above.
5. Click the Next button or the Finish button.
6. Your grade book data will then appear in a spreadsheet.

Print or Export the Audit Log
You can view the full history of any overrides made to any student's grades for any grade-related column in your section.

1. From the Grades, Members, View All or Custom View tabs, click View Audit History.
2. To print the list, use your web browser's print function.
3. To export the list as a comma or tab-delimited file:
   1. Click Export Log.
   2. Under Select Export Format, do one of the following:
      1. To create a text file where field information is separated by a comma, select Comma-delimited.
      2. To create a text file where field information is separated by a tab keystroke, select Tab-delimited.
   3. Click Export.
   4. Make your selections to download the file to the desired location.
   5. Click Done.
   6. Click Done.

Other Tool Tasks

Run Reports and Tracking

With the Reports and Tracking tool, you can run reports on various Student activities in your course during a specified date range. Tracking information is updated nightly. You can use the statistics provided by these reports to:

• determine the components, tools, and pages that are of most interest to students.
• determine each student's level of participation in various course activities.

For most Student Activity report types (excluding Summary of Activity and Student Tracking), you can graph the report statistics. For all Student Activity report types, you can export the statistics to your local computer.

To access Reports and Tracking

1. In the Teach Tab, from the Course Management toolbar, click Reports and Tracking.
   
2. Under Select a Report Type, locate and select the report type you want to run.
3. Under Select a Date Range for the Report, select a start and end date:
4. Click Run Report. The report appears in a new browser window with the statistics displayed.
5. Depending on the report type, you can now graph or export the report, or to return to the Reports and Tracking screen, click Close.

Compile and Download Discussion Postings

1. In the Discussion tool, click the title of the discussion topic for which you want to compile postings.
2. From the Messages screen, select the messages for which you want to create a printable view:
   • To create a printable view of one or more messages, next to each message for which you want to create a printable view, select the check box.
   • To create a printable view of all the messages in a thread, next to the first message in the thread, select the check box.
   • To create a printable view of all messages in the topic, in the table-heading row, select the check box.
3. Click the Create Printable View button. The Compile Messages pop-up window appears giving you the option of printing compiled postings or saving them to a file.
4. If you want to print the compiled messages:
   1. Click Print. (Mac users will have to use Command+p).
   2. In your browser's print dialog box, make your selections to print the compiled messages.
5. If you want to download the compiled messages:
   1. Click Save as File. (Mac users will have to use Command+s to save to a file).
   2. In your browser's save file dialog box, make your selections to save the compiled messages to the desired location on your local computer.
6. When you are finished viewing the compiled messages, click Close this window. The Messages screen appears. Note: Once you have compiled messages, they are marked as read.

Create a Printable View of Calendar Entries

If you want to back up all the public and calendar entries from a course site, you can use Printable View.

1. Below the calendar click on the Create Printable View button.
2. Select a date range for your class. The Time Range, by default covers 24 hours, so unless you want to limit the entries included, don't change the start and end time.
3. You can Filter results by selecting a particular type of entry.
4. Under Course Selection, select the radio button for either:
   1. Show entries from all my courses
   2. Only show entries from these courses
5. If you selected Only show entries from these courses, deselect the course you don't want to include.
6. Under Access Level select the radio button for one of the following:
   1. Private entries only
   2. Public entries only
   3. Both private and public entries (default).
7. Click Continue.
8. Click the Print button. (Mac users will be prompted to click Command+p.) If you want to save the entries to a file you will have to select the printable view and copy and paste it into a word processing document.
9. Click Cancel when finished.

WebVista Version 4

• Instructor Support
• About Version 4

WebVista Version 3

• Site Log In
• Browser Set Up
• Instructor Support
• Student Support
• About Version 3