Hello Again.
Looks like its Two-fer Tuesday. Many thanks to PW Certificate class veteran Richard W., who politely inquired last night re: where the heck is the syllabus and raised a couple of other good questions, too.
Syllabus
You'll find the syllabus today in the Course Introduction module, right before the sections on "How the Modules Work" and "How to Submit Your Work." (If you looked for it yesterday, it was fully visible on my side, but kinda invisible on your side, which is not so helpful syllabus-wise.)
This helps highlight an important point. Web Campus has two graphical user interfaces, one for students and one for professors. I do all of my work on the professor side, then have to check using a function called "Student View." This process is about 99% effective, but that last 1% can cause problems. Especially during these first couple weeks, if you're looking for something and you can't find it (or you're expecting to see a type of content that doesn't appear to be there....like a syllabus....for a class), post a note immediately on the WC discussion board.
Quiz 1
Since the syllabus wasn't on display, and Quiz 1 covered the contents of the syllabus, some of you early birds who gamely tackled Quiz 1 may be less than satisfied with your score. If you took Quiz 1 yesterday, I'll happily reset the quiz for you so you can retake it after you've had a chance to review the syllabus.
PDFS
Is it okay to submit your assignments for this class in PDF form? Yes! And it's positively encouraged -- at least for the design-heavy assignments.
PDFs help eliminate the incompatibilities that occur between two different versions of Word, or Word and whatever people who don't use Word do use.
You can always go up to campus and convert a Word document to a .pdf on a campus computer using Adobe Acrobat. If you'd rather stay home in your inappropriate-for-campus but perfect-for-a-110-degree-day summer ensemble, but you don't own the kinda spendy Acrobat, try downloading the Open Office suite. It comes with free, open-source versions of many of the programs we'll be using this semester, including a nice little .pdf feature.
Thanks again to Richard for raising a red flag last night; if you have any challenges navigating the site or locating information today, don't hesitate to do the same. For fastest response, post a comment here (I'm about to enable the comment function for the blog), or post a question on the WC discussion board. You can also send me an email through WebCampus, but as the week wears on, you'll find you get faster answers from the discussion board (students who often know the answers are on pretty much all day, but I'm only on for a couple of hours.)
Now, go dive into that syllabus!
Dr. S.
