E-TUTORIAL MMST 12016

GETTING STARTED

<about the etutes> <logging in> <uploading files><sharing your files> <naming files> <posting links>

ABOUT THE MMST12016 ETUTES

The Electronic Tutorials provide an opportunity for focused further individual study and, for sharing the learning experience: your ideas, your problems, your solutions, your work in progress and some of your finished artefacts with a group of peers; without the need to attend classes at a particular time. This makes the etutes a very flexible tutorial arrangement. As long as you follow the fortnightly schedule of tutorials, you may 'attend', or work in your own directory, with a frequency that suits you and your work habits.      

MAIN FEATURES OF ETUTES:

There are 5 main features of the etutes facility:

1/ Tutorial groups.
There are 5 tutorial groups. Each group consists of students studying this course who are enrolled via a common campus or mode of study:

• Group 1- Students at Bundaberg Campus
• Group 2- Students at various locations studying in Flex mode
• Group 3- Students at Melbourne International Campus
• Group 4- Students at Mackay Campus
• Group 5- Students at Rockhampton Campus.

2/ Student's etute Home Page.
Within each group there is a list of students by name. This is accessed by clicking the Group # hyperlink. Each student has their own directory within the etute site. Clicking on your own name from within the list enables you to access your personal etutes directory. The interface page for your etutes directory is called "Home Page for [Your First Name]". The direct URL for your home page will be something like:
http://infocom/Courses/2002/T3/MMST12016/Resources/etutes/your group # [the digit only]/your name [as it appears on the list]/ 

You use the etutes Home Page interface: 

• to upload files to an area generally accessible to your tutorial group, called a 'Work' area;
• to upload files to an area private to you and viewable only by the your lecturer/marker and the etutes moderator called the 'Assessment' area
• to access a special etute-group specific discussion forum.

3/ Work Area.
The Work area is used for work that will be shared with other students in your etute and the teaching staff. You are encouraged to use this area freely to upload files that you have made in response to exercise options that are set in the fortnightly tutorial schedule. You may upload text files, sound files, image files and other electronic documents as long as they conform to MS DOS naming convention, that is they have a recognisable .suffix, for example '.txt' or '.wav'. See the further notes below on uploading files, sharing files and naming conventions.

4/ Assessment Area.
The Assessment area can only be seen by you and teaching staff. It is where the items that you wish to be considered for the assessment of your tutorial participation should be placed. The items will only be counted and evaluated once for assessment- at the end of the term, after the deadline for submission of Assignment 3. Postings to the etutes Forum, and items uploaded to the Work Area, if you wish them to be considered as the assessment items, should be copied into this directory before that time. To be eligible to gain the 8 quantitative marks applicable to tutorial participation 4 items should be uploaded into the Assessment area. You must include printed documentation of the assessment submissions with Assignment 3 as specified in instructions on the Tutorial #1 page. To do this, simply print the web page displaying the assessment directory of your etute where the 4 items are listed. If the submissions are textual, include a printed copy of the content of the documents also. NOTE that this assessment area is for TUTORIALS ONLY and NOT to be used for submission of Assignments 1, 2 or, 3.  

5/ Etutes Forum.
The etutes forum is separate and unrelated to the General Forum and should be used for discussion of items relating to the tutorial discussion topics and focus questions that are to be found on the fortnightly tutorial pages. The etutes discussion forum is probably the easiest way to raise and discuss issues arising from the tutorial topics in a conversational manner (rather than using the Work area). If you prefer, you may prepare text for posting in advance using a text editor, and then copy and paste text into the message area for posting. If you do this, use 'Notepad' or make sure you save a 'Word' file in text-only format before copying the text.

PARTICIPATION   

You do not need to attend the etute any set time, but must visit and participate at least once a fortnight. While only 4 exercises are to be assessable, you are encouraged to do at least one exercise per fortnight in order to gain maximum benefit. The more people carry out the exercises and look at what one another are doing, the more each of you will learn. Please make the most of the etute. The onus is on you, as you do not have a tutor as such.

Moderator.
You will have support. An etute moderator will look at the tute once or twice a week, and will be able to answer straightforward questions. If you have any questions about the etutes, please contact a course coordinator.

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LOGGING IN

Access to etutes is restricted to staff and members of the etute. Please read the Logging In document before you try to log in to your etute. When you have read this document, enter your student number in the "student number" box on the etute page and hit the"go" button.

If you have followed the procedure outlined in the Logging In document and cannot get into your etute, please email infocom-webmaster@cqu.edu.au. State your name, your student number, the number of your etute if you know it, and the error message you see when you try to log in.

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UPLOADING FILES

To upload files to your Work or Assessment area, click on your name. The names of everyone in the tutorial is listed on the etute page. This will take you to you Etute Student Home Page. BOOKMARK THIS PAGE (Using the "bookmarks" menu in Netscape or the "favourites" menu in IE). This will save you a LOT of time.

You will notice that there are links to you Assessment and Work folders. Clicking on these links will show you what is currently in these folders. At the beginning of semester, nothing will be there.

There is also a link that allows you to upload files to each of these files. When you have a file you want to upload, click on this link. You will be taken to a web based file manager. To put a file into your folder (that is, to upload a file) click on "Upload File" button. That takes you to a page where you can select the file you want to upload, by clicking "browse".

Windows now opens a file selection dailog box. Say that I want to upload a file called test.doc that I created on my computer in the "my Documents" folder. I need to navigate through the file structure on my computer to find the files "test.doc" that I saved in "My Documents".

I highlight the chosen file, and click OPEN

Then, on the file management page, I click "UPLOAD FILE" and wait until the page tells me the file has been uploaded successfully.

Then click RETURN TO FILE MANAGER

When you return, you see the file is listed.

To get back to the etute student page, you can do two things.

1. Use the bookmark that you made earlier - If you book-marked the Etute Student Page as instructed earlier, selecting it now will take you directly back.

2 Look at the long address in the address bar of your browser. remove "fm/" For example, if I were Daniel Qwerty, from etute five, I would see the following (letters that need to be removed are highlighted)

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SHARING YOUR FILES

In the above example, Dan Qwerty uploaded a file called test.doc to his work folder.

If Dan wants anyone else to see this file, he needs to provide the following address:

http://www.infocom.cqu.edu.au/Courses/2002/T3/MMST11016/Resources/etutes/5/Dan_Qwerty/Work/test.doc

Note that the part of the address in blue is always the same for people in egroup 5. It is easy to see how the remainder of the address points to the file "test.doc" in the Work file in Dan Qwerty's file space in etute 5. This means that all anyone really needs to know is the file name, as any file that can be viewed by others must be in "Work",

NAMING FILES

In order to facilitate the marking of your work, please follow these procedures:

ANY file belonging to a set weekly exercise should begin with the letter W and the week. For example, if I had to create an image of a tree in JPG format for an exercise in week 4 I would need to call this W4tree.jpg. The file must begin with W4.

POSTING LINKS

You will notice that the discussion forum allows you to add links and pictures. By placing the URL (web address) of a link in the Optional Link URL field, a hyperlink will show up in your post.

This is the easiest way of showing others the work you have done in the exercises. When you have uploaded a file, place its URL in the Optional Link URL field, place the name of the file in the Optional Link Title field, and your post will contain a link to your file.

If you want to share a picture (.jpg or .gif file) simply upload it to your work area, and place the URL (its address) in the Optional Image URL field.

Perhaps a good way of testing out the system would be to upload a sound file introducing yourself?

While this is a new way of working and communicating, you'll soon find the system is quite easy and powerful.

All the best.

Martin Francis & Ashley Holmes