December Events, 2006

Paul Kates, Mathematics & Engineering Faculty LT3 Liaison

Events Summary

Term Dates

LT3 Events

Seeking Views on Classrooms

LT3 is gathering information on UW classrooms to assist in identifying locations and types of upgrades for future classroom improvements. If you would like to help by offering suggestions for alterations or appraisals of rooms, labs or other teaching areas, please send me your comments.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006, 2-3pm

Thursday, January 11, 2007, 2-3pm

Thursday, February 15, 2007, 12-12:30pm

WatITis 2006

Wednesday December 6, 2006, all day

WatITis is a one day conference for those involved in IT planning, support and decision making at the University of Waterloo. It is an opportunity to see what others are doing on campus in information technology, to exchange ideas, and make new contacts.

See the link above for session listings and registration.

Uploading Grades into Quest

Quest describes how to submit grade files online, including how to first download grades from UW-ACE. Follow the link to find

Grades can be re-submitted until the first day of W07 classes. After this date, only paper versions can be submitted (see page 1 of the "Quest Electronic Grades Submission - PC Users" mentioned above).

Quest won't release grades to students until the day after the end of exams, following university policy 19:

3. POSTING OF STUDENT GRADES

Provided the identity of individual students is protected, an instructor may convey information about student academic performance (e.g., grades on assignments, mid-term or final examinations) by posting results in a public place such as an office door, bulletin board or course website. Final examination and final course grades shall not be posted before the final examination period ends.

If modification of grades is needed due to missed exams, incomplete term work etc, a list of alternative grades is located in the Quest page about unofficial transcripts and in the university calendar. These non-numeric grades e.g. INC, can replace number grades in grade files submitted to Quest.

The required six columns of the grade text file submitted to Quest in .csv comma-separated-values format are

e.g. 22222795,1069,CS,401,001,75,pkates,"Kates, Paul Adam"

Extra columns submitted (like the name column in the example above) will be ignored by Quest. Partial class files will be accepted by Quest. A student grade won't be changed it is if not included in a partial class file.

UW-ACE Grades for Quest

When a course gradebook calculates a student's final grade then the grade file downloaded from UW-ACE can be uploaded into Quest. The file is created with a UW-ACE command in the Manage tab:

Manage > Quest_Gradebook_Export_Final_Marks (in Instructor Tools box)

The grade file contains a single mark column, not all the marks in the gradebook.

When a course gradebook does not calculate a student's final grade then final grades can be added to a .cvs spreadsheet classlist file available from

NOTE: Grades taken directly from the UW-ACE Gradebook (via Manage > Gradebook > Export Grades) don't include student numbers required by Quest. But, the student number column is in the file "Quest_Gradebook_Export_Final_Marks" under the Manage tab. Final student grades will have to be entered or merged into your copy of "Quest_Gradebook_Export_Final_Marks" before uploading marks into Quest. If this is unfamiliar territory, please get in touch with me.

Hiding grades in the UW-ACE Gradebook

When a course uses the Gradebook, students normally see their individual marks through the Report tab (and sometimes the Course tab). Gradebook settings control which marks are visible to students.

To hide UW-ACE gradebook final grades (until after the examination period), navigate in UW-ACE

Manage > Gradebook > Preferences

and uncheck the option box "Display Overall Average" and Save.

To hide a gradebook category average column number, edit the category:

Manage > Gradebook > Categories

To hide a gradebook category assignment column number, edit the assignment:

Manage > Gradebook > Assignments

Hidden assignments and categories are included in the overall percentage student grade. To remove category marks from the overall student average, change the category weight to 0.

To review which gradebook marks are visible, examine the results for selected students from each of

Manage > Report > Learner Profile > Gradebook Grades > View Table

Manage > Report > Grades > Student Grades

To hide category averages showing within the Course tab (recommended)

Course > Edit Page, and click X in the Grades component rectangle

UW-ACE news

UW-ACE Winter 2007 Course Requests

Request a UW-ACE course for the winter 2007 term by sending a note to Paul Kates (pkates@uwaterloo.ca) or to uwacehelp@ist.uwaterloo.ca. Please give the course abbreviation (e.g. MATH 199), your preference for a new, blank course or one copied from a previous term, and if known, the names of additional instructors and TAs.

Pre-scheduled UW-ACE sessions by IST are no longer being offered. Individuals, department and faculty groups can contact me to arrange times for sessions on their topics of interest, e.g. gradebook and Quest mark handling, communication via email, forums and calendar, and writing LaTeX-quality math in UW-ACE pages and quizzes without using postscript or PDF documents.

A 21 page pdf guide to the Gradebook is available in the Help area of UW-ACE.

IE7, FF2.0 and UW-ACE

UW-ACE now works with the new browser versions Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and FireFox 2. One remaining problem with using IE7 occurs in courses with more than 15 teams when trying to give team-only access to course content items like files, folders, quizzes etc. Steps are being taken to fix the problem and a workaround solution is available. Please contact me if this or other problems using IE7 arise in your course.

IST has not lifted their earlier recommendation that the installation of the Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 browser IE7 be delayed for the time being because Quest, Trellis and other software at UW still needs re-tuning to work with the much changed and improved browser.

More information about IE7 (installing, uninstalling and reviews) is available in last month's events listing under UW-ACE News.

Making UW-ACE courses part of the university community

As with earlier versions of UW-ACE, access to course content like the syllabus, assignments, FAQs, subject resources etc is controllable through settings made available to course instructors. Confidential information about names and grades is restricted and protected by default. Different access levels - instructor, student (in course), UW member, general public - can be assigned to each command tab and every individual item in the main Lessons folder. Instructors can thus share their course with potential students, other courses and faculty members or the general public.

UW-ACE course Lesson pages look like and act like Windows folders, but they are more than file directories. Each folder displays a name and a HTML web page when selected. Instructors/editors can add text, style, layout and colour HTML features. Even JavaScript can be used. (See, for example, jsMath, a JavaScript program that translates LaTeX math expressions into LaTeX-quality HTML mathematics.)

Public Access to UW-ACE Courses

By default, the Resources tab and the syllabus located within the Resources tab are set up for public access. Using the UW-ACE course search feature, students can read the syllabus of any UW-ACE course.

Unlike the Resources tab, the Lessons tab can contain a collection of files, folders and subfolders. Public access to one or more files and folders is simple to set up by changing the access settings on the folder, file, quiz, ...

Lessons > settings of folder,... > Access > Viewable by Everyone

and making the Lessons tab public

Manage > Tab Settings > Content/Lessons > Veiwable by Everyone

Lecture Podcasting

Read about how and why to podcast lectures.

Read about podcasting in the December 2006 LT3 Spotlight.

And more podcasting information will be appearing at UW WatITis 2006 - see above.

MathFrog and WiredMath

Two sites for playing and learning about mathematics, for grades 4 to 9. Very popular (10s of thousands of hits per month) with kids, parents and teachers.

Maple, MapleTA and On-line Quiz Systems

Read about teaching mathematics using the computer algebra system Maple and the computer algebra assignment and quiz system MapleTA.

In addition to MapleTA, June Lowe (x33888) in Engineering uses a quiz system based on Adobe's AuthorWare software to conduct CDTs - Computer Delivered Tutorials. Typically, students work in pairs on short problems based on the concepts and techniques discussed in class.

This quiz system is similar to the UW-ACE quiz system in question types, and doesn't incorporate a computer algebra engine like MapleTA, but unique among the three quiz systems is its flow-chart style construction method and its ability to include control logic (like a program) within a quiz. A demonstration can be arranged by calling June at x33888.

UW-ACE Updated

Starting in the fall of 2006, UW-ACE has been updated to version 7.1 of the ANGEL learning management system. Here's a list of the most obvious changes to UW-ACE brought by 7.1:

Supported browsers:

UW-ACE Documentation

Documentation about the new look of UW-ACE (ala ANGEL 7.1) is available from the UW-ACE Help page:

And more UW documentation is under preparation. Several ANGEL documents about version 7.1 are also available:

Past Events

November, 2006 December, 2005
October, 2006 November, 2005
September, 2006 October, 2005
August, 2006 September, 2005
July, 2006 August, 2005
May, 2006 July, 2005
April, 2006 June, 2005
March, 2006 May, 2005
February, 2006 April, 2005
January, 2006

Liaison Information

Paul Kates,
Mathematics & Engineering Faculty LT3 Liaison,
pkates@uwaterloo.ca, x37047

This page is located at www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~pkates/LT3/events.html.

More information about the services of the Centre for Learning and Teaching through Technology - LT3 is available at lt3.uwaterloo.ca/.

More information about learning and teaching Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering, plus a description of the services I provide as Mathematics & Engineering Faculty LT3 Liaison is available here.