WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition

CIT :: WebCT :: WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition

WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition: Upgrade Information and Key Features

The latest version of WebCT -- WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition -- is now available.

Launch WebCT 4.1 Demo [Flash Player required]
View this narrated, short 4 minute demo of the restyled WebCT 4.1 interface.

Launch WebCT 4.1 Demo for Course Designers [Flash Player required]
This narrated, 5 minute demo shows the restyled WebCT 4.1 interface for Course Designers.

WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition incorporates a number of enhancements, including:

Updated Styling
WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition has a new look! The style of the application has been updated throughout and controls have been grouped and positioned to facilitate easier access and more efficient course design.
Course Design Wizards
These provide step-by-step guides that walk faculty and course designers through the completion of common course tasks.
Integrated HTML Editor
WebCT 4.1 Campus Edition includes an HTML Editor with spell-check, providing course designers with "What You See is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) content creation and editing capabilities. The HTML editor is also available in the Mail and Discussion tools.

View WebCT 4.0/4.1 Campus Edition -- Key Features

Important Information for WebCT Course Designers

As you may know, WebCT previously ran on port 8900. That was the "8900" part you may have noticed in the WebCT net address. As part of the upgrade, the CIT has moved WebCT to a new port on the server (port 80). This is the default web server port -- most web servers run on this port. They do not require any special port number in the address.

We made this port change so that users who need to access WebCT from behind corporate firewalls (e.g., hospitals, HMOs, city departments) will not be denied access if the firewall denies access to sites running on non-standard ports. A number of these corporate sites (e.g, CPMC, Kaiser) currently do not permit their network users to access web sites that run on non-standards ports, such as port 8900 -- the previous WebCT port. By moving WebCT to a new port, not only did we simplify the WebCT net address, we also made it possible for all UCSF users to access WebCT regardless of where they may be.

This really should not make any difference in how WebCT is accessed since users have always been instructed to access WebCT by going to http://cit.ucsf.edu/ and clicking on the "Log into WebCT" link. This is the way users should continue to access WebCT. The change is essentially invisible.

If this change is invisible, do course designer really need to worry about it? No, except in one important case. This change will affect course designers who have (previous to Aug. 22nd 2003) created links on their course pages to other course pages in a given course using absolute URLs (i.e., web addresses that include the "http://" part, such as http://webct.ucsf.edu:8900/mycourse/page.html). After Aug. 22nd, these links will no longer work and will need to be updated. The update is simple -- just remove the ":8900" part from the URLs. Course designers who never created these kinds of links do not have to update anything.