CHEMISTRY 1A03/1E03 Summer 2001

WebCT QUIZZES

INTRODUCTION

This year Chemistry 1A03/1E03 introduced a new on-line quiz component to the course to replace the traditional written assignments. These quizzes will be administered by a software package known as WebCT (The Chemistry1A03/1E03 WebCT web site is at http://webct.cis.mcmaster.ca:8900/public/chem1a03/).There will be a brief introduction to WebCT available in the BSB computer labs (BSB 244) following tutorial #2 (see info sheets).

There will be three quizzes over the course of the term, worth a total of 6% of your mark. All quizzes will be available online for at least a one-week period ending at 6:00 am on Saturdays. The first quiz will be due May 12th. (Note that elsewhere the deadline is listed as Friday May 11th, we anticipate that people will submit sometime on Friday, rather than first thing Saturday morning. This deadline is chosen to avoid server crashes when too many people log on at once.  We will not be sympathatic to failed attempts to submit after 5:00 pm on Friday.

There will be sample quizzes available starting in the first week of class so that you may familiarize yourself with the format. We suggest that you access each quiz as soon as possible after it becomes available. Submit your quiz when you have entered and saved all your answers, sometime before the deadline. You may access each quiz as often as you like, but you may submit it only once. After the deadline you will not be able to submit your quiz and you will receive no marks for unsubmitted quizzes. You will be able to check your results for each quiz on WebCT after the deadline.

We hope that most students will find navigating in WebCT to be fairly straightforward. The most likely problems you will encounter are:

  1. not being registered as a WebCT user for this course
  2. not having regular (daily) web access
If you attempt to login and find that you are not registered under the expected user name and password, please see Sheila Marston in BSB 129 as soon as possible. She will be able to get you registered in WebCT if you are registered for Chemistry 1A03/1E03 and you can produce your student ID card. This may require that you obtain a MUSS email account if you do not already have one.

If you do not have regular access to the internet (through a browser such as Netscape or Internet Explorer) at home, there is access to all McMaster websites, including WebCT, via the CIS labs on campus. Undergraduate computer labs (clusters) are located in BSB 241/242/244/245, JHE 233A/234, ABB 166, HSC 2B24C, KTH B110/B121/B123. Their current hours of operation are posted outside each computer lab. To get access to websites outside of McMaster, you might wish to obtain a proxy server account for the computer clusters. You can register for such an account online through MUGSI. If you do not have regular access to the internet and will not be on campus regularly, please contact your instructor immediately.

WebCT REGISRTATION AND LOGIN

We are using a CIS server with a newer version of WebCT this term, the login process should be extremely straight forward.  Simply go to the public page and click on the "Login" button.  Enter your student number as your userID and enter your student number as your passward (change your password at myWebCT).  If you have previously used WebCT for a non-chemistry course at McMaster, your userID and password are unchanged.  If you used WebCT for Chemistry 1A03/1E03/1AA3 in the past year, you will have a new "MyWebCT" page, with a separate password, on the CIS site, this is different from the chemistry site used last year.

INDIVIDUALIZED WebCT QUIZZES

You should have regular access to the internet so that you will be able to access your quiz as soon as possible and submit it after all material has been covered in lecture but before the due date. Each student is assigned a randomly generated subset of questions designed to give each student different questions covering the same material and at the same level of difficulty. Because each student's set of questions is individual, we cannot hand out hardcopies of a quiz nor can you obtain a copy from a classmate. You must login to WebCT to obtain your quiz. You can access your quiz as often as you wish. Each time you login you will receive the same set of questions. For sample quizzes you may be allowed to submit the quiz multiple times. In this case you could see different questions after each submission, but until you submit your set of questions remains constant.

ACCESSING QUIZZES

From the Chem 1A03/1E03 WebCT homepage select "Online Quizzes and Surveys". Note the displayed availability data. Click on the appropriate quiz. Only available quizzes will be hyperlinked. You will be taken to an instruction page, which you should read. When you have read the instructions, click the "Begin Quiz" button. Although WebCT will keep track of the time elapsed between your first access to the quiz and the time you submit, this information will not affect your grade in any way. The only time constraint you have for completing the quiz is that it be submitted before the deadline, which is displayed in the quiz menu.

TYPES OF QUIZ QUESTIONS

There are 4 kinds of questions that you may encounter in a WebCT quiz:

PRINTING QUIZZES

Though you may do the quizzes entirely online, you may prefer to have a hardcopy to work with off-line, especially if you are paying for connection time from a home computer. Here is how to print your quiz.
With your mouse pointer in the frame displaying the quiz: To print of course you need to be connected to a printer. If you are accessing WebCT from the on-campus clusters you will need a printer account. You can register for this on MUGSI (along with your MUSS and proxy accounts) and pay for it at the bookstore.

ESCAPING QUIZZES

For the assigned quizzes you will be allowed to submit only once. To escape the quiz without submitting simply close the window by clicking on the 'X' button in the top right corner of the window. Do not click the "Finish" button. You may then use the WebCT navigation or your own browser to move through the WebCT pages or to go off-line. Each time you return you will receive the same quiz questions in the same order and any saved answers will still be saved.

SUBMITTING QUIZZES

Once you have accessed the quiz you will see a table in the top right corner that indicates which answers have been saved. In order to receive credit for a question you must save the answer. You may change any answer at any time until you submit by clicking on a different radio button and clicking "Save Answer" again. Once you have saved an answer, it will still be there if you escape from the quiz and return.   When all the red dots in the table have changed to green stars you have saved answers to all the questions on the quiz. When you are satisfied that all your saved answers are correct, click the "Finish" button. WebCT will warn you if any answers have not been saved, at which point you may cancel and return to the quiz. WebCT will ask you to confirm that you wish to submit your quiz for grading. Once you have confirmed this, your quiz is submitted.

CHECKING RESULTS

You may check the results of quizzes after the due date by clicking on 'completed' under the attempts column for that quiz (on the main quizzes page). Clicking number "1" under the attempts section of the resulting table will display the marking scheme for the quiz, your responses and any feedback provided for the particular question. You may also see a summary of all your grades using the "my grades" feature from the Other Tools page. By clicking on a particular quiz or other evaluation in this screen you can see some class statistics such as mean and distribution.

SURVEYS

From time to time your instructor may ask you to complete a survey using WebCT, or you may notice that a new survey is available in the quiz menu. These surveys are entirely voluntary and mostly anonymous (we can tell who has submitted a reply and who has not, but not which reply came from whom). These surveys are for the purposes of assessing class needs or obtaining feedback on how the course is going and what should be improved. It is to your benefit to answer these surveys as honestly and as constructively as possible. We will make every effort to take your responses into account and implement reasonable suggestions. You may respond to each survey only once.

OTHER FEATURES

WebCT also includes many other features that we encourage you to explore. Along with our adoption of a new textbook (by Chang) there is online course content in the form of study guide pages, etc.

There are also communication tools such as

  1. bulletin boards (highly recommended)
  2. posting of marks
  3. a course calendar
  4. personal e-mail (not recommended)
The instructor will also add other material and links to supplement the Chang material.

BULLETIN BOARD FORUM

Instructors will not be answering direct e-mail inquiries about course content. If you wish to ask a question of your instructor about lecture or textbook material you should post it to the appropriate bulletin board forum; e.g. "Chapter 4". Your instructor will tell you how often she intends to check the bulletin boards and respond to them. Students are also encouraged to respond to postings by their fellow students.  This is an opportunity to help each other with difficult concepts, and possibly administrative details of the course.  By using the bulletin boards your fellow students benefit from your enquiries and you may find that the answer to your question has already been given. Students may also respond to each other's questions and discuss points of difficulty or interest in topic specific fora, such as "Chapter 4". Of course we must require that all postings maintain a respectful tone. The bulletin board replaces only questions by electronic mail, it does not replace office hours, which will be posted by the instructor. Your instructor might also use the bulletin board to post notices to the class.  If you have a personal question or need to request special consideration, please see Dr. Russer or the instructor in person, or send an e-mail.