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Faculty Guide to myCOD Student Portal |
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The myCOD student portal provides more than just student e-mail. There are multiple tools available to students and faculty to assist them in their academic pursuits. This video gives an overview of what is available within the myCOD student portal. View the video: Overview of features available The most common questions asked by students involve how to find the myCOD student portal and what the log in id and password are. This quick video gives you the answers so you can answer your students questions. View the video: How students log in Faculty accounts use a different format than those of students. Faculty accounts are being set up so they match their Microsoft Exchange account names (this is the part before @cod.edu in your business e-mail account.) Your default password will be sent to you when the account is created. If a faculty member forgets their password, they should follow the online links for "forgot my password." If they still can't recover their password, FACULTY can call the IT help desk to have their passwords reset. (Students can only reset their password via the online student system as described in the "How students log in" video clip. View the video: How faculty log in In addition to the tutorials and frequently asked questions found on the welcome page, myCOD's student portal contains an extensive online help system. The help system can be found in the upper right hand corner of the screen. In the help you will find many handy "Quick Reference Guides" that you can print for your students to help them familiarize themselves with the available features. In addition, students can contact the Student E-mail Help Desk at 630-942-2999, via e-mail at studenthelp@dupage.edu, or in person in the Academic Computing Center for assistance with Campus Cruiser. The hours of the Student E-mail Help Desk are: Monday - Friday 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Saturday 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sunday 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. The Student Help Desk will only be able to assist with questions regarding use of the myCOD portal. For questions about homework, they will be referred to their instructor. As always, faculty and staff can get help with their work related technology questions from the IT Help Desk at 630-942-4357 or helpdesk@cod.edu. Forwarding your email by creating a forward filter If you'd like to forward your @dupage.edu email to another account, you should create a forward filter. This video demonstrates how to create (and remove) a forward filter. View the video: Creating a forward filter. Please note that the forward filter option is not available to students. Cruiser Alerts is a feature of the MyCOD student portal that allows the college to send out notices about emergencies, school closings, or other important information to the college community. There are three delivery options available within Cruiser Alerts:
Signing up for Cruiser Alerts is optional. Please be aware that depending on the service plan you have with your cell phone provider, you may be charged a fee for each text or voice message sent to your cell phone. This seven and a half minute video explains how to sign up for Cruiser Alerts. View the video: How to use Cruiser Alerts Please note that signing up to Cruiser Alerts is a two-step process: first, activate your Crusier Alert profile, and then select the channels to which you want to subscribe. Viewing your class roster on myCOD Student Portal Class rosters are downloaded starting 13 days prior to the first class meeting. For example, if your class is scheduled to meet for the first time on Monday, August 28, you will see you class roster starting Tuesday, August 15. After the roster starts downloading, it is updated each night. New students are added, while students who drop the class are left in the class, but marked as dropped students. To locate your class roster on myCOD student portal:
View the video: Viewing your class roster.
Downloading your roster to a spreadsheet If you'd like to download your class roster into a spreadsheet file that you can use in Microsoft Excel, follow these steps:.
View the video: Downloading your class roster to a spreadsheet. Electronic mail, or e-mail is one of the most important features found on the myCOD student portal. With it you can send and receive messages from students, fellow faculty members, or any other person with an email account. This video gives an overview of how to use the email feature on myCOD. View the video: Using email Faculty have two email accounts at College of DuPage. The first is the @cod.edu account which can be accessed via Microsoft Outlook (Microsoft Entourage on the Mac), Outlook web access (http://mail.cod.edu), or via the employee portal (http://my.cod.edu). (The access via the employee portal really just signs you on to Outlook Web Access.) You can choose to think of this @cod.edu account as your "employee" account. The second account is the @dupage.edu account that is provided by the MyCOD student portal (http://prod.campuscruiser.com/cod). You can think of this account as your "academic" account. Faculty can choose to set up this account to forward automatically to their @cod.edu account (or any other account) if they so choose. Others prefer to keep the accounts separate. The communication features in Blackboard are configured by default to send messages to students' @dupage.edu accounts and to faculty members' @cod.edu accounts. Faculty have the ability to have the Blackboard messages sent to another account if they wish. FYI, the Blackboard system does not provide faculty or students with an email account, it instead works by sending messages to email accounts provided outside of Blackboard (in this case @cod.edu or @dupage.edu accounts). The dashboard is a customizable access point to all of the features of your myCOD student portal account. It is the page you are taken to whenever you log into the myCOD student portal. This video gives an overview of the dashboard and explains how to customize it to best fit your personal habits and work preferences. View the video: Customizing the dashboard Creating and managing tasks using the tasks tool The tasks tool can be used to create and manage an online to-do list within your myCOD student portal account. This video walks your through creating and managing tasks. View the video: Creating and managing tasks. Each community on the portal has its own announcement board for quick communication to all of its members. Announcements can contain formatted text and attachments and be set to expire after the information is no longer relevant. The video clip takes you through the steps to post an announcement. View the video: Posting Announcements Exercise: Sign on to the system. Locate the class you just created. Now, using the "Edit Announcements" feature from the "Faculty Tools" menu, post an announcement expiring one week from today. See also: Campus-wide announcements Message boards exist for each community on the student portal and allow for two-way asynchronous communication. Messages can be sorted by date, subject, or discussion thread. Attachments can be added to any posting. This video clip demonstrates some of the features of the message boards. View the video: Message Boards Exercise: Sign on to the system and locate the "My Classes" tab. Select one of your classes. Select the message board option from the "Member Area" menu. Post a topic entitled "Favorite Restaurants" in the General Discussion forum. Then post a reply to that topic. The shared files tool allows members of a class to share, access, and store class related files. This is a good place for storing data files needed by a class and to store lecture notes and Power Point slides for review by your students. The video clip gives a brief introduction to uploading and deleting files and folders. View the video: Shared Files Exercise: Sign on to the system and locate the "My Classes" tab. Select one of your classes. Select the "shared files" feature. Create two folders, one called "Lecture notes," and the other "Data files." Upload a file into each of the folders. The class syllabus feature is a quick and organized way to get general class information out to your class members. You can post a syllabus using three different methods: uploading an existing syllabus, using an on-line form, or importing from another class. View this video clip for an overview of the Edit Syllabus feature. View the video: Class Syllabus Exercise: Sign on to the system and find the Syllabus page for your class. Notice how it appears when you haven't entered any data. Then choose the "Edit Syllabus" feature from the "Class Admin Tools" menu. Locate a file on your hard drive and upload it as your syllabus. Verify that the file has uploaded on the "Syllabus" page under "Member Area." The "Welcome Page" is the first page your students see when they select your class from their "My Classes" page. You can customize what content appears by using the "Customize Welcome" feature. View the vide clip to see how the Welcome page can be customized. View the video clip: Customizing Your Welcome Page Exercise: Customize the Welcome Page to your class using the "Customize Welcome" feature on the "Class Admin Tools" menu. Change to a two column layout. Add "Class Schedule" to the left column and "Announcements to the right column. Creating assignment categories Before using the assignment tool and grade book, you need to set up assignment categories and grade schemes. Assignment categories is where you give different types of assignments different weights. For example, you may have attendance, homework, quizzes, and a final exam with the final exam worth 40% of the grade, and each of the other categories counting as 20%. The next video clip walks you through creating assignment categories. View the video: Creating Assignment Categories Exercise: Create 4 categories of assignments, and assign weights to each. Make sure they total 100%. Grade schemes are used to translate numeric scores into letter grades. You need to set up a grading scheme before using the Assignment and Grade book tools. This video clip walks you through the steps of creating a grading scheme based on percentages. Video the video: Setting up Grading Schemes Exercise: Create a grading scheme based on percentages. Assign this grading scheme to the overall grade for the course. If you'd like an item to appear in the student's my assignment tool and/or in the grade book, you create an assignment using the assignment tool. (Remember to set up Assignment Categories and Grading Schemes before trying this step.) View the video: Creating Assignments Exercise: Create one type of assignment for each of the categories you have created. If time allows, you may also want to try out the assignment wizard to create a series of identical assignments. Once your students have completed their first assignment, you are ready to use the grade book tool. The video clip walks you through grading an assignment, saving the grades, viewing assignment statistics, and publishing the grades to students. View the video: Using the Grade book You can practice by assigning grades to yourself. You'll need to add students to your class using the "Add Members" feature to practice with multiple students the grade book. Locate the "Member Manager " feature on the "Class Admin Tools" menu and consider adding a few fellow faculty members to your class. Editing submission settings and collecting assignments You may wish to collect assignments from your students rather than having them sent to you via e-mail or handed in during class. You can do this by editing the submission settings for the assignment. This video walks you through editing the submission settings and collecting submitted assignments. View the video: Editing submission settings and collecting assignments The user directory allows signed on users to look up the email account name of other users on the system. This video shows you how to look up names in the user directory. View the video: User Directory The photo album tool allows you to upload, store, manage, and share photos. This video shows you how to use the photo album tool. View the video: Photo Albums |
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You can use the archive email feature to make an archive of older messages. View this video for the details. View the video: Archiving Email Changing your Bulk Mail Settings You can use the bulk mail settings to control the amount of SPAM recieved in your inbox. Follow these steps to change the settings. 1. Log on to the MyCOD student portal. Click the e-mail icon on the toolbar. 2. Click on the 'Filters' option in the tool menu.
3. Click on the "Bulk Mail Filter" tab.
4. Change the Personal Filter Level to "High."
5. Click the Save button to save your settings. Want to know more about the MyCOD student portal? Here is the documentation for the system. Faculty Tools Guide - Basic Features (7/2007) Faculty Tools Guide - Grade books and Assignments (7/2007) Academic Tools Guide for Student Members (4/2007) Campus/Content Tools Guide (4/2007) Guide to Community Tools for Hosts (7/2007) Each community has the following set of tools, and all of these tools are described in this document. For Guests (non-members) and Members:
For Members only:
For the community Host / Administrator:
Departments and Class communities have extra features not available to the other communities, and those features are discussed in the Academic Tools Guides. This document is intended only for Hosts / Administrators of a community. Guide to Community Tools for Students (4/2007) Each community has the following set of tools, and all of these tools are described in this document. For Guests (non-members) and Members:
For Members only:
Departments and Class communities have extra features not available to the other communities, and those features are discussed in the Academic Tools Guides. This document is intended for members in a community. Guide to Personal Tools (7/2007) This is the Personal Tools Guide, which provides instructions on using the following:
This guide is intended for all CampusCruiser users. See also: Managing Your Personal Photo Album Managing Your Personal Web Pages Managing Your Profile and Using Directories
You can't disable discussion boards, but if you close or delete the top level forums (i.e. General Discussion) from the message board, students will not be able to post messages. Students are allowed to create new topics, but are not allowed to create new forums. Since forums can only be created by faculty members, faculty can control whether or not a forum exists to which students can post. Faculty can forward their myCOD student portal email to another account using the "Forward Filter" feature. This feature was disabled for students as of January 11, 2006, but is still available to faculty. Follow the instructions in this online video to set up your forward filter. Auto-Reply allows you to specify a message to be sent to the sender when you receive a message. This is most useful when you plan to be offline for an extended period of time. This automated service will only attempt to notify senders who sent messages directly to you. If you're part of a mailing list, or you have been CC'ed, the Auto-Reply service will not be activated. Also, you can specify a list of e-mail addresses that the service should NOT reply to. You can enter the address list in the Do Not Reply Addresses area. Find the Auto-Reply feature by clicking on the email icon in the toolbar, then selecting "Settings" from the "Tools" menu on the left of the screen. The tab for "auto reply" appears in the center of the screen. Faculty accounts on Campus Cruiser are generated based on being entered in the Human Resources database. New full or part-time faculty should encourage their deans to submit their paperwork to Human Resources as soon as possible so that the account creation process can begin. Once the new faculty member is entered into the Human Resources database, the Campus Cruiser account will be created. The account name and password for Campus Cruiser will be sent to the faculty member's MS Outlook email account. The form for posting campus-wide announcements on the MyCOD student portal, as well as on the plasma displays and LCD signs, can be found at http://www2.cod.edu/announcements. Note that this website is only accessible from the College network (on campus) or when dialing in via the College's dial up phone numbers.
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