WebCT Vista Polices and Procedures Guide
DRAFT
September 23, 2005
Table of Contents
About This Document ......................................................................................................... 4
Document Revision History............................................................................................ 4
WebCT Vista Course Management Overview ................................................................... 4
WebCT Vista Maintenance and Downtimes....................................................................... 5
Scheduled Maintenance Window ................................................................................... 5
Unscheduled Downtime .................................................................................................. 5
Support Resources .............................................................................................................. 6
Getting Started ................................................................................................................ 6
Faculty Support Resources ............................................................................................. 6
Student Support Resources ............................................................................................. 7
Support Call Escalation................................................................................................... 8
Documentation ................................................................................................................ 9
Training ........................................................................................................................... 9
System Administrator Resources .................................................................................... 9
Communication ................................................................................................................. 10
Listservs ........................................................................................................................ 10
Automatic Listservs ...................................................................................................... 11
Announcements............................................................................................................. 11
WebCT Vista Roles .......................................................................................................... 11
Server Administrator ..................................................................................................... 11
Domain Administrator .................................................................................................. 12
Domain Designer .......................................................................................................... 12
Institutional Administrator ............................................................................................ 12
Institutional Designer .................................................................................................... 13
Group Administrator ..................................................................................................... 14
Group Designer ............................................................................................................. 14
Course Instructor ........................................................................................................... 14
Course Designer ............................................................................................................ 15
Section Instructor .......................................................................................................... 15
Section Designer ........................................................................................................... 16
Student/Auditor ............................................................................................................. 16
Teaching Assistant ........................................................................................................ 16
Help Desk User ............................................................................................................. 16
WebCT Vista Account Management ................................................................................ 17
Manual Account Creation ............................................................................................. 17
Automatic Account Creation ........................................................................................ 18
Instructor Enrollment .................................................................................................... 18
Student Enrollment ....................................................................................................... 18
Access to Vista Courses ................................................................................................ 19
FERPA Restricted Account Names .............................................................................. 19
WebCT Vista Course Maintenance .................................................................................. 20
Beginning of Term Processing...................................................................................... 20
Archiving the WebCT Vista Section Grade Book ........................................................ 20
Archiving WebCT Vista Course Content ..................................................................... 20
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End of Term Processing ................................................................................................ 21
WebCT Vista Implementation Settings ............................................................................ 21
WebCT Vista Integrations ................................................................................................ 22
Central Authentication Service (CAS).......................................................................... 22
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) .......................................................... 22
uPortal ........................................................................................................................... 23
PeopleSoft Student Information System ....................................................................... 23
The Role of Authoritative Sources ............................................................................... 23
WebCT Vista PowerLinks ................................................................................................ 24
Frequently Asked Questions ............................................................................................. 25
Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 26
NAU Vista License ....................................................................................................... 26
WebCT Vista Data Center ............................................................................................ 27
WebCT Vista Backup Procedures ................................................................................ 27
NAU Vista Course Lifecycle ........................................................................................ 28
NAU Vista Account Life Cycle .................................................................................... 30
Roster Management ...................................................................................................... 32
FERPA Restricted E-mail to Students .......................................................................... 32
WebCT Vista Implementation Settings ........................................................................ 33
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About This Document
This policy and procedures guide describes details important to the implementation and
operation of WebCT Vista at Northern Arizona University. WebCT Vista is a
commercial course management system, which is to say that Northern Arizona University
purchases an annual subscription for a license to run WebCT Vista in order to locally
host web courses and to provide on-line services to other types of courses and activities.
The most recent version of this guide can be found on the Vista server under the File
Manager in the top level “Documents” folder.
Document Revision History
Date
Notes
September 2005 First release of this guide
WebCT Vista Course Management Overview
The current implementation of Vista builds on lessons learned from operating previous
web course and course management systems at Northern Arizona University as well as
internal discussions related to best practices based on papers, consultants, and
conferences. Vista is a major upgrade over past web environments. It takes its place
among other mission critical online services and is similarly subject to enterprise-level
administrative policies and procedures.
One of the changes from the past is the improvements Vista offers in integrating to other
campus data sources. The interface to the PeopleSoft sudent information system, for
example, is a critical piece of the Vista implementation. In fact, all official for-credit
classes taught in Vista are derived from the data interface to PeopleSoft; the data feed
from PeopleSoft runs at two hour intervals. This means that PeopleSoft schedule of class
data, including start dates, section numbers, and instructor(s), are initiated in PeopleSoft
and continuously fed to Vista. Class rosters are likewise managed as part of the ongoing
data feed from PeopleSoft to Vista.
Class rosters, in fact, may be worth discussing as an example of this improved data
interface. In the past, faculty had to manage and worry about matching PeopleSoft rosters
to their web courses. Now, with Vista, this is handled automatically. Adds and drops,
subject to a two hour delay, are continuously passed from PeopleSoft to Vista. Faculty no
longer have to worry about mismatches between the two systems. All changes, even
instructor initiated administrative drops, are handled through the Registrar’s office. An
administrative drop, for instance, will result in the student being denied access within two
hours of the registrar’s office processing the request.
This sort of tight integration eliminates duplication of data entry effort and reduces errors.
Of course, there may be rare cases where a problem arises. In such cases, faculty should
contact the E-Learning Center—and students should contact the Academic Computing
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Help Desk—to have the problem investigated and corrected. Problems, in these cases, are
fixed at the source (e.g. in PeopleSoft). In cases where the problem is time-critical, both
the E-Learning Center and the Academic Computing Help Desk have the skills and
escalation procedures in place to initiate an investigation to correct the problem as
quickly as possible.
Of course, there is more to Vista than just data interfaces. The remainder of this
document addresses a wide variety of policies and procedures which are necessary when
implementing and operating a sophisticated enterprise level course management system.
Topics addressed include system maintenance, support services, communication, account
management, and course maintenance. As befitting such a complex system, the reader is
encouraged to provide feedback regarding this document in order to point out
inconsistencies, problems, or lessons learned and assure this document, and the Vista
system, remains viable over its lifetime. Suggestions for improvement are welcome and
may be sent to the E-Learning Center (e.learning@nau.edu).
WebCT Vista Maintenance and Downtimes
The production Vista server is designed with “high availability” in mind. This means that
the server is, as much as possible, running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It also
means that many types of potential failures have been anticipated and, through redundant
hardware and special software, will likely be averted so that Vista services remain
uninterrupted. However, even with a high availability architecture, a system this complex
requires continual maintenance. At the same time, there are unforeseen events that can
cause unscheduled outages.
Scheduled Maintenance Window
Northern Arizona University technical support teams will perform weekly maintenance
on Vista every Thursday between 2am – 6am Mountain Standard (Arizona) time. This
scheduled outage is communicated to all faculty and students using the system.
Assignment due dates should be scheduled outside this reserved maintenance window.
Occassionally major upgrades may require more scheduled downtime than this window
allows. In such cases, every effort will be made to do this work during semester breaks
and to use Vista mailing lists to notify every account holder a week in advance of such a
major maintenance event.
A log of all maintenance work can be found on the Vista server under the File Manager
in the top level “Documents” folder.
Unscheduled Downtime
Unfortunately, events occur that can interrupt services even with high availablity disks
and servers. When unscheduled downtimes occur, Vista users will typically see a
message in their borwsers indicating there is an outage. This mechanism is not foolproof, but in most cases a “server down” message will appear if a severe outage occurs.
In all cases, calling the Solution Center (928-523-1511) or the Academic Computing
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Help Desk (928-523-9294 or 1-888-520-7215) will result in the most up-to-date status for
the outage.
The Vista servers are monitored continuously and calls to support staff are made
automatically if an outage is detected. WebCT system administrators are contacted
whenever an unscheduled outage occurs: Someone is on call every hour of the day, every
day of the week. Northern Arizona University also subscribes to WebCT premium
support services, which provides the most timely assistance possible in the event of an
unscheduled outage.
Support Resources
A number of services are available to support the Vista course management platform. The
ITS Solution Center (523-1511) will direct faculty and staff with questions about Vista to
the appropriate campus entity. The ITS Academic Computing Help Desk (523-9294 or 1888-520-7215) will assist students and statewide callers. In some cases, faculty will work
directly with E-Learning Center project managers; in other cases faculty can take
advantage of online tutorials, partner with resource specialists from the library to
integrate quality resources and services into their courses, or collaborate with Vista savvy
colleagues to develop course content and learn to manage Vista class activities.
Getting Started
Accounts for Vista are provided to every faculty, staff, and student at NAU. Perhaps the
best way to get started with Vista is to explore the actual Vista system at
http://vista.nau.edu. Everyone is enrolled in at least one non-credit course called “TIPS”
(Technology Information and Proficiency Skills). There is also a web site devoted to
Vista at http://www.nau.edu/vistainfo, which lists training schedules and other events and
resources related to Vista.
The E-Learning Center (ELC) has developed a “Getting Started with WebCT” web
tutorial for students. The first link in the Vista TIPS course accesses this tutorial. This
material will also be made available as shareable content within Vista. Designers
(instructors and/or ELC staff) can choose to insert this content as a Learning Module
within Vista courses. Plans are underway to also make this part of the basic NAU
template for new courses.
Faculty and motivated students are also welcome (and encouraged) to use the online help
available from within Vista, as well as the help resources and discussion groups available
at www.webct.com.
Faculty Support Resources
As with other on-line services, faculty may use the ITS Solution Center (523-1511) as an
initial starting point for assistance. When the call is related to login problems or
information about the status of the server or network, then the Solution Center will be
able to directly assist the caller; on the other hand, if the problem is related to using Vista
or requesting help with instructional design, the E-Learning Center is also available and
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more appropriate. The E-Learning Center can be contacted during business hours at 928523-5554 or via e-mail at elc-help@nau.edu. ELC phone support will be staffed during
business hours (8am – 5pm for the Fall and Spring semesters, 7:30am – 4:30pm during
the summer) at a minimum; hours are likely to be expanded in the future.
The Academic Computing Help Desk (ACHD) is available 24/7 during the Fall and
Spring semesters, and ACHD staff will attempt to resolve instructor questions
immediately. Those inquiries requiring additional expertise or access rights will be
escalated to ELC or Academic Computing, who will follow up the next business day.
Faculty are also likely to seek support from other NAU units, such as Cline Library and
statewide offices. ELC will continue to work with such units to ensure their staff have at
least a working knowledge of Vista so that they may provide an appropriate level of
support.
During the implementation phase, August 2005 through June 2006, stipends are available
for faculty who attend training and work with-Learning Center’s instructional designers
and program managers to migrate WebCT Campus Edition courses into the new Vista
environment. To find out more about these stipends, call the E-Learning Center (928523-1629), sending email to e.learning@nau.edu, or check the E-Learning website
(http://www.nau.edu/elearning), which has a wealth of information on online learning
strategies, related campus events, resources for teaching online, and mini-grant
opportunities.
Faculty can contact the E-Learning Center to learn what opportunities, initiatives, and
types of support are currently available to help bring an online presence into their
courses. Examples of initiatives and opportunities that faculty might access include the
following:
 the E-Student Assistant Program, where students trained by the E-Learning Center
work directly with faculty to develop online content;
 the E-Faculty Mentor Program, where experienced faculty help two or more other
faculty develop e-learning projects; and
 the E-Faculty Fellows Program, which offers release time for faculty to promote and
pursue e-learning initiatives.
More information on these initiatives can be found on the E-Learning Center web site:
http://www.nau.edu/elearning.
Student Support Resources
Student support for Vista is available through the Academic Computing Help Desk.
During fall and spring terms this is a 24-hour call center service available to all NAU
students. During winter and summer terms the hours are slightly reduced. The Academic
Computing Help Desk can help students configure their browsers so that they will work
with Vista, log in and find their classes, assist students who are having trouble submitting
assignments or taking quizzes, and provide general help using the tools and features
found in Vista.
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Some student problems require referral back to the instructor, to the library, or, in rare
cases, to the E-Learning Center or to Information Technology Services system
administrators. The Academic Computing Help Desk does not help students understand
an assignment or learn course material. However, students can make arrangements with
the Learning Assistance Center for tutoring, which is available for many of Northern
Arizona University’s courses. The Learning Assistance Center also offers on-line tutoring
for students at a distance. Problems requiring escalation will be referred to the
appropriate support area and generally resolved within one business day.
Contact information for each of the above services is as follows:
Student Support Contacts
Support Resource
Academic Computing Help Desk
Learning Assistance Center
Library
Phone Number
928-523-9294
or
888-520-7215
928-523-5524
928-523-6805
or
800-247-3380
Web Site
www.nau.edu/achd
www.nau.edu/lac
library.nau.edu/services/
request/askalibrarian.html
Support Call Escalation
Support call escalation is the effort to assure that a serious problem gets the appropriate
and serious attention. Student technical questions from other units (such as Cline Library
or a statewide office) should be escalated to the Academic Computing Help Desk, which
is considered the primary contact for all student technical issues. The Solution Center,
ELC, and the ACHD are considered primary support contacts for instructor and course
designer support.
The support staff at the E-Learning Center, Solution Center, and Academic Computing
Help Desk are fully prepared to escalate calls to other support staff whenever a serious
problem is detected. Examples might be a network outage or a Vista server problem. In
each case, these staff should alert the appropriate second-tier support areas for immediate
assistance. Problems which cannot be resolved by the second-tier support areas will be
escalated to WebCT Premium Support. All escalations to WebCT Premium Support will
be coordinated through the Academic Computing group or the ELC Vista Administrators.
An issue can arise, however, when the first contact support staff are either not available
or, in the hopefully rare case of a new student worker, not familiar with the call escalation
procedure. In that case, instructors or students may ask to speak with a supervisor. This is
a typical and well understood escalation procedure. If, however, it is after hours and a
supervisor is not on duty, then instructors may report an outage directly to the ITS
operations group at 928-523-6490. This is the primary path by which “on-call” staff are
alerted to a serious service interruption. Because Vista is a mission critical, 24x7 service,
calls to the operators regarding Vista problems are taken very seriously and will result in
a call to the appropriate technical staff member.
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Documentation
In addition to this policy and procedure manual, many documents can be found at the
http://www.nau.edu/vistainfo web site. Some documents are locally created and not
subject to license restrictions. Other documents are part of a license purchase agreement
with WebCT, which requires access to the document to be restricted to NAU faculty,
staff, students, and other approved Vista users. An example of this latter type of
document is the “Getting Started with WebCT Vista” that can be found inside the TIPS
course and may also be integrated into a number of Vista courses. NAU’s license allows
NAU to modify and localize these WebCT licensed materials (within certain limits).
Over time, most Vista documents will be placed in Vista’s content management system.
Faculty resources will not be limited solely to printed materials. There are also extensive
online help facilities inside WebCT as well as locally produced materials to help faculty
find answers to common Vista problems.
Training
ELC offers Vista training to instructors, designers, teaching assistants and support staff.
Among the components being taught are: Vista Basics, Instructional Design 101,
Organizing Content, Building Content, Communication, Assessments, Assignments and
Teaching in Vista. Vista Basics training is required for all Vista designers before a
section shell will be available, although this requirement is subject to change as usage
expands.
Self-registration will soon be available through ELC’s website. Until then, those
interested in training should contact Erin.Shelley@nau.edu (928-523-9285).
System Administrator Resources
Throughout the installation and configuration of Vista the System Administrators have
been keeping notes and recording lessons learned using a Wiki. As typical for a Wiki
environment, those with access to this site can edit and update all the pages. This tool
provides an easy way for the system administrators to keep technical notes in one
common location for future reference. The Wiki automatically categorizes and links
common pages creating a very dynamic living documentation process.
The Wiki also provides a gateway to other tools used by the System Administrators. The
following table lists some of the tools developed and used to support Vista.
System Administrators Tools
Tool
Nagios
Javadoc
CVS
Description
Nagios is a system and network monitoring application. It watches
hosts and services that you specify, alerting you when things need help
and when they improve.
Javadoc is a tool for generating API documentation in HTML format
from doc comments in source code.
CVS is a version control system. Using CVS developers can record the
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Important
Bookmarks
history of their source files and share work easily with others.
This tool lists standard sites, libraries and other important Vista related
reference locations.
Other tools are available on the Vista servers directly. Each instance has its own
Maintenance log. This log is accessible at the bottom of the initial Vista login page. This
is a public document stored within Vista and edited by the system administrators. It
provides a terse record of what has been done to the server since go-live including service
packs, hot fixes, and outages.
Another tool used within Vista is the Vista Tips and Tricks section on the Build instance.
This is an alternative place to store information learned about Vista. Vista Tips and
Tricks include walkthroughs, Q&A discussion boards, and other useful information
especially relevant to the E-Learning Center staff and support personnel.
For unexpected incidents, NAU has purchased WebCT Premium Support. This annual
maintenance plan provides coverage by the WebCT Support Team 24 hours per day
except on designated public Canadian holidays where technical support is limited to
regular business hours. Initial response time in most cases should be less then two hours
and issues should be resolved within twenty-four hours.
Communication
A number of communication channels are used to inform the campus about Vista events,
strategic plans, policies, opportunities, and other Vista related information. The Vista
information website at http://www.nau.edu/vistainfo provides access to historic
information. The announcements feature inside Vista provides important time-critical
information for Vista users. Articles are also submitted to various campus newsletters,
such as Inside NAU, when there is news of a general nature to release broadly. Electronic
mailing lists, however, play a very important role in getting critical information to
targeted Vista audiences.
Listservs
A total of ten electronic mailing lists have been created on the campus listserv. Seven are
automatically created and are described below. Two are open to the NAU community for
self-subscription: VISTA-INFO and VISTA-TECH. VISTA-INFO is a discussion list for
those involved in the daily operation, management, and implementation of the Vista
product. The list has a moderate amount of traffic related to evolving policy, business
practices, configurations, goals, and plans for Vista. Often these postings summarize a
meeting or state a position, sometimes in preparation for discussion with the Vista
Strategic Planning Committee. The VISTA-TECH list is a discussion list for those
involved with the Vista hardware and software installation, operation, and maintenance.
This list has a low-volume of postings and tends to focus on subsystem details and
coordination needed between subsystem administrators. The final list, VISTA-SPC, is a
moderated list to support the Vista Strategic Planning Committee. This list is open only
to members of the Vista Strategic Planning Committee.
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Automatic Listservs
The following e-mail lists are built on a nightly basis from data stored in the Vista
production or Vista build environments. Only members of these automatically generated
lists are authorized to use these lists. The actual list address is of the form VISTAID@lists.nau.edu.
Mailing Lists Built Nightly
List name
VISTA-ID
VISTA-INSTRUCTORS
VISTA-DESIGNERS
VISTA-STUDENTS
VISTA-ADMINISTRATORS
VISTA-BUILD-DESIGNERS
VISTA-BUILD-ADMINISTRATORS
Description
Instructors & designers on vista.nau.edu
Instructors on vista.nau.edu
Designers on vista.nau.edu
Students on vista.nau.edu (some not enrolled)
Administrators on vista.nau.edu
Designers on build.vista.nau.edu
Administrators on build.vista.nau.edu
These lists will be used to notify users of upcoming downtime (aside from the weekly
maintenance window), provide news about training opportunities and system updates,
etc. The student listserv will be used very sparingly, mainly for emergency contact
information should an extended, unexpected outage occur.
Announcements
The Announcements feature in Vista will be used to communicate scheduled outages
(including the weekly maintenance window) and other timely information of interest to
the general Vista population. Announcements should be used sparingly, and should
target specific populations (students, instructors, designers, etc.) if applicable.
WebCT Vista Roles
Roles are used in Vista to define a user’s access and permissions at different levels of the
learning context hierarchy. In general, administrators can access and manage the
application, users, settings and files in Vista; these exist at both the server level
(command-line interface) and within the Vista application itself (GUI, or Graphical User
Interface). Designers can build courses and sections, and instructors can administer and
teach courses and sections.
Server Administrator
Administrator accounts are the highest (thus most “powerful”) roles in the Vista learning
context hierarchy (LCH). Access to these roles is very limited and tightly controlled, as
administrators can change virtually any setting and control enrollment within his LCH
and below. The Server Administrator may:



rename the domain
manage server settings
manage server enrollment
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
configure server logging
The Server Administrator (serveradmin) is a command-line account; this administrator
account may log in and access server-side functions on the Vista servers. Access is
controlled by the Academic Computing Online Learning Environments (OLE) team.
Domain Administrator
Domain Admins are Graphical User Interface (GUI) accounts and are “local” on Vista
(i.e., WebCT login as opposed to CAS/LDAP login). This account may access
everything within its LCH and below (Institutional Admin/Designer, Group
Admin/Designer, etc.). This account is used to set (and lock, if necessary) Domain-level
settings, such as institutional branding (“NAU colors”), authentication, and PeopleSoft
integration settings.
Within the Institution (currently “Northern Arizona University”), Domain Administrators
may perform the following tasks within the following contexts:
Learning Context Manager
 create, edit and delete child institutions
 manage domain settings
 manage domain enrollment
 create, edit, and delete announcements
Template Manager
 browse & delete all domain templates
 set permissions on all domain templates
File Manager
 browse & delete all domain files
 set permissions on all domain files
Domain Designer
Domain Designers may perform the following tasks within the following contexts:
File Manager
 upload to, download from, create, edit, delete files in the domain
 view and copy other domain files
Template Manager
 create, edit, design, copy, move and delete domain templates
Institutional Administrator
Institutional Admins/Designers are GUI accounts and are “local” on Vista (i.e., WebCT
login as opposed to CAS/LDAP login). These accounts may access many of the Tools
and Administration settings on Vista, and may lock them from being changed at a lower
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LCH level. Examples of settings controlled by the Institutional Admin/Designer include
Tools settings (Discussion, Grade Book, HTML Creator, etc.) and Administration
(Backup & Restore, International, Teaching Assistant Settings, etc.).
At this writing the following are Institutional Admins/Designers:
 Chris Greenough, ITS: admin-cdg2
 Drew Ned, ELC: admin-ajn2
 Erin Shelley, ELC: admin-eks
 Ed Smith, ITS: admin-ejs
 Dan Stoffel, ELC: admin-dfs
 General (controlled by OLE): admin
Within the Institution (currently “Northern Arizona University”), Institutional
Administrators may perform the following tasks within the following contexts:
Learning Context Manager
 create, edit and delete child groups, courses, and sections
 configure settings
 enroll and unenroll users in applicable roles
 create, edit, and delete announcements
For child courses only, the Institutional Administrator may associate templates.
For child sections only, the Institutional Administrator may:


archive and restore sections
assign templates to sections
User Manager
 create, edit, delete users
File Manager
 browse & delete all public and private files
 set permissions on all public and private files
Template Manager (for the Institution, and each child group and course)
 browse & delete all public and private templates
 set permissions on all public and private templates
Institutional Designer
Within the Institution (currently “Northern Arizona University”), Institutional Designers
may perform the following tasks within the following contexts:
File Manager
 upload to, download from, create, edit, delete files in the institution
13

view and copy other files in the parent domain folder
Template Manager
 create, edit, design, copy, move and delete institution templates
Group Administrator
Within any Group (currently defined by discipline, such as “Biological Sciences” or
“Criminal Justice”), Group Administrators may perform the following tasks within the
following contexts:
Learning Context Manager
 create, edit and delete child courses and sections
For each group and its child courses and sections, the Group Administrator may:
 configure settings
 enroll and unenroll users in applicable roles
 create, edit, and delete announcements
For child courses only, the Group Administrator may associate templates. For child
sections only, it may assign templates to sections.
File Manager (for the group folder, and each child course and section folder)
 browse & delete all public and private files
 set permissions on all public and private files
Template Manager (for the group, and each child course)
 browse & delete all public and private templates
 set permissions on all public and private templates
Group Designer
Group Designers may perform the following tasks within the following contexts:
File Manager
 upload to, download from, create, edit, delete files in their group
 view and copy other files in the parent domain and institution folders
Template Manager
 create, edit, design, copy, move and delete group templates
Course Instructor
Within any Course (currently defined by NAU Course, such as “BIO-300” or “CJ-480”),
Course Instructors may perform the following tasks within the following contexts:
Learning Context Manager
 create, edit and delete child courses and sections
For the course and each child section, the Course Instructor may:
14



configure settings
enroll and unenroll users in applicable roles
create, edit, and delete announcements
For the course only, the Course Instructor may associate templates. For child sections
only, the Course Instructor may assign templates to sections.
File Manager
 browse & delete all public and private files
 set permissions on all public and private files
Course Designer
Course Designers may perform the following tasks within the following contexts:
File Manager
 upload to, download from, create, edit, delete files in the course
 view and copy other files in the parent domain, institution and group folders
Template Manager
 create, edit, design, copy, move and delete course templates
Section Instructor
Section Instructor roles exist only within sections; the primary purpose of the Section
Instructor is to deliver the course to learners. Instructors do not design the course; they
only manage already-created components and files. Sections are defined by term and by
enrollment section in PeopleSoft. Examples include the following: “(1057-5478)
HUMAN BIOLOGY (Fall 2005 M5C) SEC801” or “(1057-5767) CONTEMP ISSUES
IN CRIM JUSTICE (Fall 2005 M16) SEC801.”
Section Instructors may perform the following tasks within the following contexts:
File Manager
 upload to, download from, create, edit, delete files in the section
 view and copy other files in the parent domain, institution, group and course
folders
Course Tools
 instructor view of developed course components
Course Management Tools (used to manage the course)
 Grade Book
 Reports and Tracking
 Selective Release
 Settings
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Section Designer
Section Designers do not interact with students; they build sections by creating content
files and developing course components. Section Designers may perform the following
tasks within the following contexts:
File Manager
 upload to, download from, create, edit, delete files in the section
 view and copy other files in the parent domain, institution, group and course
folders
Course Tools
 full access to all course tools while designing a section
Student/Auditor
Students and Auditors are “learner roles;” they exist only within sections and have access
to the student version of whatever the designers have designed for the section plus some
of their own tools. The Auditor role differs from Student only in that Auditor does not
receive a Final grade. Students and Auditors have access to the following functions and
tools:
My Grades
File Manager
 upload and manage personal files only in their My Files folder
Course Tools
 student view of developed course components
Teaching Assistant
The Teaching Assistant has the same default access to the section as the Section
Instructor. However, the Section Instructor may selectively deny the Teaching Assistant
access to the following tools:
 Grade Book
 Selective Release Map
 Reports and Tracking
 Assessments
 Assignments
 SCORM Tool
 Grade Book Audit History
 Section Settings
Help Desk User
Help Desk roles have similar permissions as administrators within institutions and
groups, but permissions may be granted to specific areas:
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Institution Help Desk User
 Learning Context Manager: Same as Institution Administrator, but no
functionality to archive sections. Permissions to user are divided into two
functions:
o Context Management: all Learning Context Manager functionality
available to Institution Administrator, except Enrollment and Archiving
o Enrollment Management: all Learning Context Manager enrollment
functionality available to Institution Administrator
 User Manager: same as Institution Administrator
 File Manager: same as Institution Administrator
 Template Manager: same as Institution Administrator
Group Help Desk User
These Help Desk roles have the same permissions as their corresponding subtexts within
the Group Administrator role:
 Learning Context Manager
 Enrollment Management
 File Manager
 Template Manager
WebCT Vista Account Management
Accounts in Vista are created either “manually” by administrators and project managers,
or are created automatically based on establishing a new electronic identity at NAU.
Electronic identities are managed by our Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
server, which collects data through feeds from PeopleSoft, based on student and
instructor enrollment, and other sources.
Manual Account Creation
Manual accounts are created only in rare situations where the person does not already
have an electronic identity established at NAU or the account is necessary for some
maintenance or auxiliary support function. Normally accounts are created through the
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) interface.
Manual accounts may be created by anyone with access to the User Manager (Institution
Administrators) and/or the Vista Web Tools created by Academic Computing
(http://mindy.ucc.nau.edu:8080/VistaWebTools). Access to the Vista Web Tools is
reserved for ELC Administrators and Project Managers, and Academic Computing OLE
and Academic Computing Help Desk staff.
Account creation via the User Manager is restricted to administrative accounts which will
use WebCT authentication (not LDAP authentication). These account usernames should
begin with “admin-“ (e.g., admin-dfs or admin-tips), and are designed to be used as
separate accounts for administrative purposes only. These accounts will use the “Guest
Login” authentication page.
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All other manually-created accounts should be created using the Vista Web Tools, and
are designed for those who will have anything lower than Institutional Administrator
access (course and section designers, ELC Project Managers, ELC migration employees,
etc.). These accounts will be authenticated via LDAP, and will use the normal Central
Authentication Services (CAS) authentication module.
Automatic Account Creation
Beginning Spring 2006, all users identified in LDAP with the affiliation of “student,”
“faculty,” “instructor” or “staff” will have an account on Vista, and will be enrolled in the
TIPS (Technology and Information Proficiency Skills) non-credit course.
Instructor Enrollment
In the Build (development and training) environment, users will be enrolled by ELC
Vista Administrators in the role(s) appropriate to their situation. Course developers will,
in most cases, be enrolled as Section Designers and Section Instructors; trainees will be
enrolled as Section Designers, Section Instructors or Students, depending on the training.
ELC Project Managers will in most cases be enrolled as Section Designers and Section
Instructors. ELC migration employees will be enrolled as Section Designers.
In the Production environment, Courses and Sections are created automatically based on
the Peoplesoft feed, and instructors are enrolled automatically based on their roles. The
following table summarizes instructor roles in Vista based on information entered into the
Schedule of Classes:
Schedule of Classes
Primary Instructor
Secondary Instructor
Teaching Assistant
Grader
…becomes in Vista…
Vista
Section Instructor &
Section Designer
Section Instructor
Teaching Assistant
NO Access
In most cases, those who contact ELC to request additional Instructor, Designer or
Teaching Assistant enrollment in Vista will be directed to have the person(s) entered into
the appropriate role(s) in the Schedule of Classes. Exceptions may be made by Vista
Administrators depending on the specific situation.
Those who request Course Designer and/or Course Instructor access in Vista will be
enrolled appropriately by Vista Administrators. Such access is required in order to
modify course templates and course-level content.
Student Enrollment
Student enrollment in the Production Environment is based entirely on the feed from
Peoplesoft (LOUIE). A student must be enrolled in a section in Peoplesoft in order to be
enrolled in the corresponding section in Vista. Enrollment changes in Peoplesoft will
feed to Vista every two hours.
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A student who drops a course in Peoplesoft before the Start Date of the class will be
dropped (deleted) from its corresponding Vista section. A student who drops a course in
Peoplesoft after the Start Date will be denied access to the section in Vista. Once the
final add/drop deadline has passed, students who have officially dropped a course in
Peoplesoft will be removed (deleted) from its corresponding Vista section.
Vista instructors do not have the ability to deny or grant access to students, nor to add or
delete them.
Access to Vista Courses
Instructors and Designers will have access to their Vista sections as soon as Courses and
Sections are built on Vista by the appropriate feed from PeopleSoft. Students will not
have access to their sections in Vista until the Start Date of the section. This Start Date is
entered (and may be modified) using PeopleSoft’s Schedule of Classes process.
FERPA Restricted Account Names
There is a Family Education Right to Privacy Act (FERPA) related field in PeopleSoft
that indicates a student's request to suppress his or her name from public directories. To
honor this request, the Vista integration interface does not load the student’s name into
WebCT if the student elected to suppress the name. There are many legitimate reasons
for suppressing the name in today's world. In many cases these requests are related to
safety concerns: Women are especially in jeopardy if they are trying to leave an abusive
relationship or if they are victims of a stalker. In some cases there are real fears of
kidnapping, blackmail, rape, or even murder. Because names are visible to everyone in
certain Vista tools, and because the student may fear another individual who is also in a
course, we honor the suppressed name request in Vista.
Certainly not all students making this request are facing such dire circumstances and
many change their election after learning that this also impacts their personal name in
Vista. However, after a discussion with a number of campus administrators, the fact that
even a small minority of students may face these problems was considered enough reason
to warrant doing what we can in Vista to restrict the release of the student's name.
If there is no group work involved in the course, then the suppressed name should not be
much of a problem; the instructor works with the student's user id instead of an actual
name when doing grading by matching the name to a class roster that lists the user-id. If
there is group work in the course, the student may be comfortable using the user id as a
"name" for group work. Instructors and the student may also choose to work with ELC
administrators to substitute a pseudonym if that is acceptable to the student. We generally
have to handle these on a case by case basis since every situation is slightly different.
Typically only a small percentage of students fall into this situation and the impact on
faculty is small. Many faculty have supported this policy and have provided even more
examples and reasons why such an accommodation is necessary in today's society.
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See the appendix for an example of the automatic email sent to Vista students who have
elected a FERPA name restriction in PeopleSoft.
WebCT Vista Course Maintenance
Course maintenance, in this context, refers to setting up a teachable Vista sections.
Course maintenance involves associating the course content with the appropriate
template, establishing the instructor and student rosters, setting the start and end dates,
safeguarding class activities through automatic grade book and course archives, and
closing the course down at the end of term. These are critical and challenging activities
are expected to evolve as the Vista community gains more experience, especially given
the newly released Vista 4 product.
Beginning of Term Processing
At the start of each term there are some prerequisites that need to be met in order for
Vista to run successfully. The first is the accuracy and completeness of the data being
feed from PeopleSoft to Vista. Since PeopleSoft is the authority for access to courses,
initial schedule of class setups in PeopleSoft should take care to set the start dates
correctly for sections that have a Vista presence. If these data are inaccurate everyone,
from the students to the professors, is affected.
After a successful section has been created class content needs to be imported. This can
be accomplished three different ways. The first is to use the NAU-Blank template that
has some generic information and tools for use in any class. The second is to use a
template from a previous section. Some E-Learner Center (ELC) staff interaction is
currently needed to associate these templates with their appropriate sections. The third
method is to use a section developed on the build environment. ELC will need to move
the class content from build.vista.nau.edu to vista.nau.edu and then associate and assign
the template. Ways to automate these processes are being worked on to allow the section
designers to accomplish more of these actions without the need for direct ELC
intervention.
Archiving the WebCT Vista Section Grade Book
The Vista grade books for each section are copied each night to a server that is not part of
the Vista server environment. This is done to preserve these critical data in case of an
emergency situation where Vista itself becomes unavailable. If there is no emergency,
these data will never be used. In an emergency, however, instructors will be given access
to these offline grade books so that they can have a consistent and up to date record of
course activities in the event that they must arrange some alternative assignments or
processes for dealing with an extended outage.
Archiving WebCT Vista Course Content
During a normal semester, section archives are taken nightly. These nightly archives are
saved to disk for two weeks (and consequently backed-up to tape twice). After two weeks
the archives are removed from disk and remain on tape for six weeks. These section
archives are not intended to be used for disaster recovery but more for user error
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recovery. If a section instructor removes a discussion thread system administrators can
restore the section archive to another instance in order to let the section instructor recover
the necessary data.
End of Term Processing
End of term processing takes place after the PeopleSoft end date for the Vista course. At
this point students are denied access to the section using the end date restriction option.
At a minimum, a section archive will be taken for each course and saved for two years to
assist with grade change petition and other administrative uses. If there are incompletes
or requests by the instructor for continued access, access to the section will be granted by
the instructor working with ELC staff. Otherwise, the section will be removed from the
server but the appropriate templates, and hence course content, will remain for future use.
WebCT Vista Implementation Settings
Vista has well over 1,100 different configurable settings that are reviewed and set locally
as the product is installed. These settings control access to various tools and
administrative features of the course management system. The settings depend in large
part on the integrations and hardware capabilities of the implementation. Some of the
more important and more understandable settings are discussed in this section.
Certain settings have been locked, meaning that the setting cannot be overridden. The
following table lists settings that are locked and thus not allowed to change in this
implementation.
Locked Vista Settings
Tool/Feature
Grade Book
User Manager
Branding
Import
Settings
Description
Allow Section Instructors to grant or deny members access to
the section
Allow Section Instructors to add and remove Students
Allow Section Instructors to add and remove Auditors
Allow anyone to create a user account
Allow users to register themselves as a Student in a section
Allow users to register themselves as an Auditor in a section
Colors and logos on the main MyWebCT page
IMS Import settings
Setting
False
False
False
False
False
False
Custom
Custom
The Grade Book settings reflect the decision to have a tight integration with the
PeopleSoft student information system. Enrollment of students, teaching assistants, and
students auditing a class are managed through the PeopleSoft interface. The User
Manager settings reflect the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) interface
and the goal of giving every NAU community member a Vista account as well as the
reasonable business rule that a student must sign up for a course in the student system
before being allowed in a section in Vista. The Branding settings are locked to support a
common logo and color scheme on the first page. The Import Settings are locked to
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assure that the integrations will continue to work properly (see WebCT Vista Integrations
below).
Many other settings can be overridden in order to customize how a class operates. An
example is to change the default behavior for Teaching Assistants so that they can delete
discussion messages. By default the Teaching Assistant cannot delete such messages, but
the Instructor could change this setting for a specific section to allow the Teaching
Assistant to delete messages if desired. Conversely, by default Teaching Assistants can
grade discussion topic messages. An Instructor could change this setting to disallow
grading if desired. A detailed list of some other implementation settings can be found in
the appendix.
WebCT Vista Integrations
Integrations are an important component of the Vista implementation. Currently
integrations are in place for the following data sources: Central Authentication Service
(CAS), the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server, uPortal, and the
PeopleSoft student information system.
Central Authentication Service (CAS)
CAS is the preferred single sign-on method of accessing modern network services at
NAU. Vista supports a number of login options through an extensible authentication
module delivered as part of the Vista Software Developer Kit (SDK). As part of the
implementation of Vista, a locally developed CAS module was integrated into Vista to
enable CAS authentication. Practically, this means that Vista plays on par with other
campus services that use this preferred authentication mechanism and that Vista is
positioned to integrate well with NAU’s portal and other services that take advantage of
single sign-on access to services.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
CAS authentication actually uses the LDAP password. To use CAS authentication, the
user must have the same user identification (uid) and password as stored in the main
campus on-line directory system. The Vista interface with LDAP assures that the user ids
are the same as used by LDAP.
In fact, all student and faculty accounts are built from data stored in LDAP (see “The
Role of Authoritative Sources” below). This is one of only a few feeds to date where data
travel in both directions. Account information, including the uid (or username), is picked
up from LDAP and stored in Vista as soon as a person is admitted to the university or
processed as a new hire in PeopleSoft. This means we have accounts in place well before
class rosters are assigned. Each account holder is placed in the TIPS course so her class
list isn’t empty and to give her access to Vista and other relevant learning materials.
Additionally, data from Vista are fed back to LDAP to provide an accurate verification of
all Vista accounts. This bi-directional data feed helps with account management and
account purge system administration functions.
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uPortal
NAU’s web portal is built on the open community uPortal project. Vista provides a
PowerLink to interface with uPortal. A PowerLink is an enhancement to Vista that is
provided through a vendor or, as in this case, an open source community. Integrating
Vista with uPortal did, however, require an upgrade to the uPortal base system in addition
to installing and configuring the PowerLink.
The uPortal integration allows NAU to present Vista courses and key course activities
(e.g. assignment due notices) in a “channel” on the learning tab in the campus portal. The
effect is that students can log into their http://my.nau.edu web portal, go to their
“learning” tab and see that they have a quiz to take. With the aid of single sign-on,
clicking on the quiz will take the student directly into Vista without requiring another
login.
PeopleSoft Student Information System
The importance of the PeopleSoft interface was discussed briefly in the WebCT Vista
Course Management Overview. The PeopleSoft student information system interface is
based on the IMS Global Learning Consortium standard supported by both WebCT and
PeopleSoft (now Oracle). The standard specifies an Extensible Markup Language (XML)
data exchange format agreed to by both companies for passing data between the two
systems.
The Vista integration with PeopleSoft allows course setup and class roster information to
flow from PeopleSoft to Vista on a regular schedule. Currently, the data are sent from
PeopleSoft to Vista every two hours. Because of the critical need to have the two systems
in lock-step, Vista sections, instructor, and class roster information must first be
established in PeopleSoft before they can be made available in Vista (see “The Role of
Authoritative Sources” below).
The Role of Authoritative Sources
It is important to identify where the authoritative source is located for any of the data that
build course, group, or person records in Vista. Current authoritative sources are
PeopleSoft, LDAP, and Vista. Generally Vista is authoritative only when the data are not
available from another source.
PeopleSoft Authoritative
The following are data fields for which PeopleSoft is the authoritative source: Primary
Instructor, Secondary Instructor, Teaching Assistant, Student, Auditor (student auditing
class), Start Date, End Date, Term, Session, Class Number, Course Name, Section Name,
section rollup information, Course Title, Course Topic, Course Description, roster
information, Emplid.
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LDAP Authoritative
The following are data fields for which LDAP is the authoritative source: uid (username),
nauid, regid, display name, actual name (subject to FERPA), primary affiliation,
password.
Vista Authoritative
The following are data fields for which Vista is the authoritative source: Roles, non-PS
course information, grade book, administrative accounts, administrative account
passwords, templates, content management hierarchy.
Implications
Authoritative sources tend to drive business rules. For example, the following is a sample
of the type of interactions that should be resolved by setting up classes in the
authoritative PeopleSoft source rather than “fixing” things in Vista:
o assigning an instructor role and associating an instructor with a class implies the
instructor is on the PeopleSoft feed and any attempt to add instructors directly into
Vista should be discouraged;
o rolling sections up into a single teaching section can be accomplished with primary
and secondary section set ups in PeopleSoft;
o starting a class should be triggered by the start date in PeopleSoft;
o teaching in Vista must be done by assigning the class an IMS URL in PeopleSoft;
o naming for-credit courses involves taking pieces of names from the PeopleSoft feed;
o assigning auditors or teaching assistants to classes should be done by having these
roles reflected in PeopleSoft;
o assigning students to classes requires having the student on the roster for the course in
PeopleSoft.
WebCT Vista PowerLinks
WebCT PowerLinks are tools and plug-ins that work with Vista to support and enhance
system integration, course authoring, quizzing and assessment, synchronous
communication, and so on. Many are written and marketed by WebCT or other software
development companies, while others are written and distributed by individuals or
educational institutions.
PowerLinks which require installation and integration into Vista will be tested and
installed by ITS in conjunction with ELC.
NAU currently uses a Vista 3 PowerLink to integrate Elluminate synchronous
communication software, and Elluminate is working on a PowerLink which will work in
Vista 4. This PowerLink enables course designers to add an Elluminate link directly to
an organizer page or learning module; users need not re-authenticate when entering an
Elluminate session within Vista.
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Another example of a PowerLink which NAU is currently investigating is Turnitin.
Turnitin is a plagiarism prevention tool which allows instructors within Vista to submit
student work to Turnitin, which then checks that work for plagiarized content by
comparing it to a large database of properly cited sources.
Other PowerLinks require no installation or integration within Vista. One such example
is the Microsoft Office PowerLink, which allows users of Microsoft Word, Excel and
PowerPoint to publish work directly from those applications into Vista. ELC will test
such applications as time and staffing allow, but will not make recommendations for their
use nor officially support them until sufficient testing has been accomplished.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Appendix
NAU Vista License
WebCT Vista is purchased through an annual subscription license. The actual license
agreement is between the Arizona Board of Regents for and on behalf of Northern
Arizona University and WebCT, Inc. Northern Arizona University also purchases basic
and 24x7 premium annual support services from WebCT.
The actual license agreement is managed by the Purchasing Department, but the Director
of Academic Computing can help community members interested in reviewing a copy of
the actual license.
License Summary
Northern Arizona University holds a single institution license for WebCT Vista subject to
annual renewal. The first year of our Vista license agreement started on March 1, 2005.
The license authorizes Northern Arizona University to run a single production
environment (vista.nau.edu) to locally host classes and instructional activity (§1.2). Two
other non-production environments are permitted for training, testing, and updating the
production environment.
Authorized users of the software include Northern Arizona University students, faculty,
administrators, other employees, and/or contractors whose responsibilities require such
access” (§1.2). In addition, a separate section (§1.7) was negotiated in order to recognize
“Other Permitted Uses” that historically have been important at Northern Arizona
University:
§1.7 Other Permitted Uses. To the extent that the Software is used (i) only by Licensee’s Users (as defined
in the Agreement) or faculty from other institutions either in conjunction with or on behalf of Licensee’s
faculty and (ii) only for the purposes of developing, demonstrating or delivering courses to Licensee’s
students (both non-credit and for credit), other faculty (for training or professional development purposes)
or participants in Licensee-controlled and Licensee-delivered adult education or community outreach
programs, Licensee is authorized to use the Software for the following activities: (i) In-service teacher
training programs, public health seminars or courses, etc.; (ii) Licensee-hosted conferences using an online
bulletin board service; and (iii) demonstrating the use of the Software in a specific discipline or learning
activity.
The license also grants Northern Arizona University a special WebCT “Migration
Campus Edition” license, which allows NAU to continue using WebCT Campus Edition
“through the last day of the third year of the initial WebCT Vista Enterprise License
Term” (§1.2).
Finally, the license makes it clear that the software is the intellectual property of WebCT
and requires Northern Arizona University to protect the software, logos, and confidential
trade secrets from unauthorized use or infringement.
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WebCT Vista Data Center
The actual Vista server is housed in the Information Technology Services machine room,
which is a limited access area subject to humidity, temperature, and power controls. The
equipment is housed in modular rack mounted units allowing easy access and
maintenance to the physical layer. A schematic diagram of the Vista equipment follows.
WebCT Vista Backup Procedures
The Vista three-tier architecture involves a client web-browser, a Vista application layer,
and an Oracle database backend. Most of the critical course data reside in the Oracle
database on redundant disk arrays, but proper system administration procedures require
the ability to recover from failures in either the Vista application layer or the Oracle
database backend. Thus the Vista backup procedures involve regular disk-to-disk and
disk-to-tape system level archives. The backup procedures documented here are intended
for full system data recovery and not individual course or student work recovery. A
limitation of this sort of system is that it is difficult to apply system recovery methods to
restore individual course or student work.
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Vista Application Layer Backups
The goal of Vista application layer backups is to rapidly reconstruct the custom NAU
Vista application in the event of a major disk failure or system disaster. This is achieved
by having nightly jobs make disk to disk copies of the identified volatile areas on each of
the seven application servers and doing a weekly backup of all disk partitions. The daily
backup is achieved by exporting each of the middle-tier file areas to the “build”
application server. Changes in the designated file areas are picked up by running nightly
incremental backups. A full backup is run on Saturday.
The less volatile areas on each machine, consisting of the operating system and portions
of the Vista application itself, are backed up using the linux dump command to the same
disk archive area on the build machine. These disk copies are captured weekly on tape
using the normal Information Technology Services netback utility running against the
“build” application server. In this way, the production environment should have near
store disk copies of any files needed to recover the system and the data are also available
on tape if that is ever needed.
Vista Oracle Database Backups
The goal of a Vista Oracle database backup is to rapidly recover from a database server
failure. Currently, the Oracle RMAN tool performs hot backups directly to both disk and
tape for all the Vista Oracle databases (production, build, and sysprep environments). A
cumulative incremental backup is run nightly. Once a week, a full RMAN backup is done
to both disk and tape. When it completes successfully, the previous RMAN disk backups
are deleted. This means the last full backup and all incrementals are on disk.
At the same time, online redo logs have two redundant “mirror members,” and the
archived redo logs are backed up to both disk and tape. The production database has the
“archive_lag_target” parameter set to 1800 (seconds) which means that a disaster
scenario in which the database and its online redo logs were lost, but in which the
archived redo logs were not lost, would be recoverable from on-line resources and would
not lose more than half an hour of work.
The Oracle Database Administrators have set up two Oracle standby servers that, for
some failures, could recover data more quickly and with less potential data loss. These
are as follows: The production Vista-3 database on bryce.vista.nau.edu has a
corresponding standby database on chaco.vista.nau.edu, and the "sys-prep" Vista-4
database on acadia.vista.nau.edu has a corresponding standby database on
denali.vista.nau.edu.
NAU Vista Course Lifecycle
The “Vista Course Lifecycle” describes how courses come into being on Vista, how they
mature, and how they are removed from the Vista environment. A surprisingly important
element in establishing scalable course lifecycles is related to establishing a course
naming convention. This topic, along with some aspects of course creation and removal,
is covered below.
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Creating Courses
Catalog courses hosted in Vista are first created in PeopleSoft. Nightly snapshot feeds of
course information and enrollments come from the PeopleSoft system to the Vista servers
in the form of IMS-compliant XML files. Additional update feeds take place every two
hours to reflect changes in courses or enrollments.
Within the PeopleSoft system, courses destined for Vista are identified with a course
URL of “vista.nau.edu.” This convention only applies to the Phase I implementation – in
later phases, all courses will have a Vista component, subject to business rules that have
yet to be determined.
The PeopleSoft feed is the only path through which catalog courses are created. No
catalog courses will be created manually, and any changes in course information, such as
start and end dates or instructors must take place in PeopleSoft. These changes will be
reflected in the XML feeds, and updated in Vista.
Non-catalog courses such as the “Technology - Information and Proficiency Skills
(TIPS)” course are also hosted in Vista. At present, these are created by ELC staff or
Vista administrators on an individual basis, and enrollments are managed by hand.
Naming Convention
Catalog courses are named in PeopleSoft according to a standard convention that we have
also adopted for WebCT Vista course shells. Courses created in Vista are identified by
the following:
Term code
 Institution code
 Subject code
 Catalog number
 Section number
 Class number
For example, the Fall 2005 offering of ANT 330, section 1, would be titled
1057-NAU00-ANT-330-SEC01-4436.
For non-catalog courses we adopted a different convention. They are created under the
course hierarchy in a category named “Zero Credit.” These courses are identified by the
following:
 Usage (ORG or EDU)
 Department or academic unit
 Course title
For example, the TIPS course is represented with an internal ID of ORG-ITS-TIPS.
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Course Selection
Not all courses that exist in the PeopleSoft system are candidates for WebCT course
shells. Independent study courses, some Physical Education or Music Performance
classes, and some laboratory sections are examples of courses that would not normally
have a WebCT counterpart. We have not yet determined the business rules that will
identify these courses and exclude them from automated course shell building in our later
phases of Vista implementation.
Combining Courses
Certain courses are created in Peoplesoft with adminstrative sections. These are not
actual course sections, but are used to differentiate enrollment groups in a single course.
Distance learning courses may use administrative sections to identify students in different
geographical areas for statistical or other administrative purposes. However, the sections
all roll up to a single course offering.
These rolled up sections can be represented by a single course in Vista. Identifying
potential course rollups depends on their proper entry in Peoplesoft. The course data feed
includes a section number and a primary instruction section number. In parent, or master
sections, these numbers are the same. Child sections have their own section number, but
the primary instruction section identifies the parent. Only the parent sections should have
Vista course shells built, with students from all child sections included in the Vista course
roster.
Other courses are cross-listed in PeopleSoft. WebCT Vista has a way to represent crosslisted courses internally, which we will explore for our Spring 2006 semester.
Removing Courses
NAU business rules permit grade appeals for up to a year after completion of a course.
Students also have one year to complete work in a course for which they received a grade
of “Incomplete.” Any course lifecycle rules must take these factors into account.
Our recommendation is that courses remain on the Vista server for a two year period to
accommodate any grade appeals or ongoing coursework. Before removing courses, we
will check the access logs to confirm that there has been no recent activity in the course.
Courses will be archived prior to removing them from the production Vista server.
NAU Vista Account Life Cycle
Creating Accounts
WebCT Vista user accounts are created for students, instructors and staff based on
information that resides in LDAP. Student account creation is triggered by enrollment
feeds from Peoplesoft. When a student or instructor first appears as an enrollment entry
in a catalog course, a spool entry is created in the LDAP feed area. A process runs every
15 minutes to query the person’s information in LDAP, and create the appropriate
account in Vista.
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The LDAP service will only send information for users with the following affiliations:
 Applicant
 Admitted
 Student
 Recent student
 Former student
 Degree completed
We have also provided a tool that uses the same mechanism to create accounts on
demand for persons who do not appear in any Peoplesoft feeds. These accounts still
require that the person have an LDAP record.
For a later implementation phase, we will build user accounts for all eligible students,
faculty and staff in the LDAP directory.
In the special cases where a user has chosen to restrict personal information under
FERPA rules, the account is built with dummy values for the first and last name, and the
true entries are recorded in custom columns that are not visible to ordinary users.
It is possible to create local accounts in Vista that do not authenticate against LDAP, and
do not exist in any other NAU system. Since these accounts are difficult to manage, we
are limiting their use to administrative users. This is a change from our philosophy under
Campus Edition, where we used local accounts for guest access.
Updating Accounts
Any changes to a user’s LDAP record will trigger a feed to the process that maintains
user information in Vista. Vista accounts will be updated to reflect changes in name,
FERPA status, or affiliation.
Changes in FERPA status will cause the Vista record to be updated to show or hide the
affected information.
Changes in affiliation affect whether a person should have access to Vista. For example, a
prospective student who applies to NAU will cause his affiliation to change to that of an
admitted student, triggering a Vista account build.
A change in any of the following LDAP attributes will trigger an update feed to Vista:
 eduPersonAffiliation
 nauEduNAUID
 nauEduEmplid
 nauEduPSSISgivenName
 nauEduPSSISmiddleName
 nauEduPSSISsn
 nauEduFERPARestrictPrimaryName
 givenName
 middleName
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
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sn
nauEduFERPADerivedRestrictName
Deleting Accounts
User accounts in Vista will follow the same purge rules and timing adopted for Jan and
Dana accounts, with some variations. User accounts will not be deleted if they still show
enrollment in any courses except TIPS.
Roster Management
Roster management is the process assuring the grade book roster in Vista accurately
reflects the correct and intended population of students. For some “zero credit” courses,
these rosters are, in fact, administered by hand. For courses that are managed by the
PeopleSoft interface, however, roster management is managed through the interface and
no longer a task that instructors must attend to on a daily basis.
Importing Rosters
Under Campus Edition, instructors were required to import class rosters into their
WebCT courses to initiate the nightly roster updates. That is no longer an option in Vista,
as course rosters come directly from a PeopleSoft feed. Instructors are no longer able to
add or drop students, or mark them inactive in their courses.
Students who drop courses will show up on the PeopleSoft feed as inactive, and will be
denied access to the course in Vista. If this occurs before the listed start date of the
course, the student will be removed. Otherwise, the student will be denied access to the
course, preserving any work that may be in progress in case the student is later reinstated.
Under the newer version of Vista, students may be unenrolled. We have not yet explored
this option for managing class rosters.
Adding Individual Students
Instructors cannot add individual students to their courses. Only a Vista administrator has
that capability. The goal is to minimize faculty work-load as well as assure that rosters
are consistent with PeopleSoft.
Removing Individual Students
Instructors cannot remove individual students from their courses, or deny them access.
Only a Vista administrator has that capability. Instructors can, of course, initiative
administrative drop requests through the registrar’s office for non-participating students
or request intervention by a Vista administrator if there is a student disrupting a course.
FERPA Restricted E-mail to Students
The following e-mail is automatically generated on a nightly basis after a student has
selected the FERPA setting that restricts the release of the name in PeopleSoft. Another
message, also shown below, is sent if a student removes the FERPA restriction.
To: NAU Student
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Subject: Your name has been removed from Vista
An account has just been built for you on NAU's learning management system,
"Vista." However, your name has been withheld from Vista because you have
voluntarily requested it be withheld using FERPA guidelines. This means that
although your Vista account exists, your name will not appear on email lists, in chat
rooms, on class listings, etc. You should contact your Vista instructor(s) immediately
and inform them of the situation.
These restrictions are voluntary and have been selected by you. This setting can be
changed at any time through LOUIE. Simply log in at http://louie.nau.edu, select
"Personal Portfolio," then "FERPA/Directory Restrictions." Restrictions are set
separately on several personal data items such as: name, address, phone, major, email
address, etc.
If you have problems changing your restrictions, contact the Academic Computing
Help Desk at 928-523-9294 or toll-free at 1-888-520-7215. Changes will be reflected
in Vista within a few hours.
To: NAU Student
Subject line: Your name has been inserted into the online system Vista
Your name has been added back into the online course management system, Vista.
This reflects settings in the Student Information System and can be changed by you at
any time at "louie.nau.edu".
WebCT Vista Implementation Settings
The complete list of Vista implementation settings involves well over 1,100 entries. In
practice, the settings are hierarchical and involve server, domain, and institutional
hierarchies. This list is primarily derived from the institutional level settings, although it
is augmented occasionally with settings from a higher level when that is necessary to
clarify the actual cumulative effect of combining settings from all levels. This list, then,
can be thought of as a working sketch of the more complex, but less tractable, system
administrator installation guide.
Key
Y = Yes
N = No
T = True
F = False
Tools
Tool/Feature
Description
Setting
Assessments Tool
Assignments Tool
Enabled
Enabled
View Student name/User
T
T
Both
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Locked?
(Y/N)
N
N
N
Tool/Feature
Bookmarks
Calendar
Chat and Whiteboard
Compile Tool
Content File Tool
Course Toolbar
Discussion Tool
Goals Tool
Grade Book
Description
name/Both
Enabled
Public Inst. Entries in Section
Calendar?
Allow institution-level Calendar
public entries
Allow non-Section Instructors to
add public entries to the section
Calendar
Enabled
Allow Teaching Assistants to view
and clear chat logs
Logging is on by default in newly
created chat rooms
Allow Students to view chat logs
Allow Auditors to view chat logs
Allow Teaching Assistants to
create rooms
Enabled
Enabled
Labeling
First primary
Second primary
Third primary
Fourth primary
Enabled
Maximum # of Topics
Allow Teaching Assistants to
delete messages
Allow Teaching Assistants to
delete topics
Allow Teaching Assistants to
grade topics
Allow Students to edit their own
posts (default value)
Enabled
Allow Section Instructors to grant
or deny members access to the
section
Allow Section Instructors to add
and remove Students
Allow Section Instructors to add
and remove Auditors
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Setting
Locked?
(Y/N)
T
T
N
N
T
N
F
N
T
F
N
T
N
F
F
F
N
N
N
T
T
Image and Text
Announcements
Discussions
Mail
My Grades
-1 (unlimited)
F
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
F
N
T
N
F
N
T
F
N
Y
F
Y
F
Y
Tool/Feature
HTML Creator
Learning Module
Tool
Local Content Tool
Mail
Media Library Tool
My Computer Applet
My WebCT
Notes Tool
SCORM Module
Tool
Search Tool
Syllabus Tool
URL Tool
Description
Setting
Allow Section Instructors to add
and remove Teaching Assistants
Allow Section Instructors to add
and remove Section Designers
Allow Section Instructors to view
Grade Book audit history
Allow Designers, Instructors, and
Teaching Assistants to use the
HTML Creator
Allow Students and Auditors to
use the HTML Creator
Start the HTML Creator by default
Allow Students and Auditors to
use the spelling checker in the
HTML Creator
Enabled
F
Locked?
(Y/N)
N
F
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
F
T
N
N
T
N
Enabled
Enabled
Allow Mail messages to be
forwarded to an external e-mail
address
Maximum attachment size (KB)
Display User Names in Mail tool
and messages
Enabled
Max. files per upload
Max bytes per upload
Allow customization
Allow institution members to
customize My WebCT colors
My WebCT default background
color
My WebCT default channel color
MANY OTHER SETTINGS
Use Show New Items button to
indicate tool news
Enabled
Enabled
T
T
F
N
N
N
10000
T
N
N
T
10
5000
T
T
N
Y
Y
N
N
145
N
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Defaults
F
N
N
Y
T
T
N
N
Enabled
Enabled
Enabled
T
T
T
N
N
N
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Tool/Feature
Description
Setting
Who’s Online Tool
Enabled
Allow Students and Auditors to
use instant messaging
Allow Students and Auditors to
become invisible
T
T
Locked?
(Y/N)
N
N
T
N
Administration
Tool/Feature
Description
Setting
Backup & Restore
Allow section instructors to
backup sections
Allow section designers to
backup sections
Allow group admins to backup
& restore sections
Allow course instructors to
backup & restore sections
Top frame background color
T
Locked?
(Y/N)
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
#003399 (Other in
Prod)
#FFFFFF (Other in
Prod)
20883 (NAU logo)
www.nau.edu
Build.vista.nau.edu
(MyVista in
Prod?)
N
Y
20129
Y
Y
Y
Branding
Top frame text color
#FFFFFF
Top frame logo link
Home Area name
Browser Checker
Use WebCT Vista Institution
Entry Page
Custom Institution Entry Page
Using File Content ID
Use WebCT Vista Login Entry
Page
Custom Login Page Using File
Content ID
Use WebCT Vista Logout Page
Custom Logout Page Using File
Content ID
Use WebCT Vista Error Page
Custom Error Page Using File
Content ID
Enable Manual Browser Checker
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Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
Y
Y
N
Y
N
N
T
N
Tool/Feature
Description
Setting
Content Import &
Export
Allow designers to import
content as new template
Allow designers to import
content into existing template or
section
Allow designers to export
content from an existing
template or section
Allow Breaking Links
Private templates become public
when associated with courses
(For IMS Imports; no settings in
Build)
Default settings (English, etc.)
T
Locked?
(Y/N)
N
T
N
T
N
T
T
N
N
English; (need
Spanish option?)
T
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
Drop-down list
T
N
N
T
N
All
N
Image and text
Casual
T
N
N
N
Student Name and
Username
F
F
N
Content Sharing
Import Settings
International
Learning Context
Manager
PeopleLinks
Presentation
Reports and
Tracking
Enroll Section Instructor as
primary
Force archive before template
reassignment
Allow Section Instructors and
Teaching Assistants to use
PeopleLinks on user names
Allow Students and Auditors to
use PeopleLinks on user names
Allow Students to change the
format of the Course Menu
Default Course Menu format
Allow Section Instructors to edit
descriptions on Organizer Page
links
Allow Section Teaching
Assistants to edit descriptions on
Organizer Page links
Primary tools. Tools not selected
will appear under More Tools.
Labeling
Icon set
Enable export
Show tracking results
Security
Enable SSL for login page only
Enable SSL for entire institution
(REQUIRES SERVER
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N
N
Tool/Feature
Teaching Assistant
Settings
User Manager
Description
RESTART)
Allow applets to be downloaded
insecurely
Allow Teaching Assistants to
use Grade Book tool
Allow Teaching Assistants to
use Selective Release Map tool
Allow Teaching Assistants to
use Reports and Tracking tool
Allow Teaching Assistants to
use Assessments tool
Allow Teaching Assistants to
use Assignment Dropbox tool
Allow Teaching Assistants to
use SCORM tool
Allow Teaching Assistants to
view Grade Book audit history
Allow Teaching Assistants to
use Settings
Allow anyone to create a user
account
Allow users to register
themselves as a Student in a
section
Allow users to register
themselves as an Auditor in a
section
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Setting
Locked?
(Y/N)
F
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
T
N
F
Y
F
Y
F
Y