WebCT Outage: July 14, 8am-6pm CST

The Information Resources department has just sent notification of a scheduled maintenance that will cause WebCT to be completely unavailable on Saturday, July 14th, from 8am to 6pm.

Please be sure to plan accordingly for this outage. During this time you will not be able to access WebCT for any purpose, including to take exams or turn in homework.

The electric power infrastructure for the Multipurpose/Administration Building will be upgraded on Saturday, July 14. The upgrade will begin at 8:00 AM and it is expected to be completed by approximately 6:00 PM. Electric power to the Multipurpose/Administration Building will be disrupted during this time. Many University computer systems will not be available to the user community.

The electric power infrastructure upgrade will result in a significant improvement in the electric power source reliability provided to the building and to computer systems. The upgrade will include a permanent generator set that will minimize future adverse impact of electric power disruption resulting from rolling brownouts, blackouts, and other causes of power disruption.

The timing of the upgrade is intended to minimize inconvenience to the various University constituencies due to loss of computer systems and services. The weekend of July 14-15 is the optimal remaining weekend in the summer when this upgrade can occur with minimal impact.

Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated as this important project is accomplished.

Issues with quizzes/exams in WebCT

Hi Folks. As you guys begin taking your first quizzes and exams in your online courses, I just want to remind you of a known glitch with WebCT. We’ve had students report that their exams or quizzes do not completely load. (I.e. you’ll see the first 35 out of 40 questions.) This problem occurs randomly — not everyone taking the same exam/quiz experiences the problem, and it occurs across courses.

WebCT is working on the issue, but they do not yet have a fix. The way that we’ve found that helps students in this situation is to save all the answers you have so far, completely close your browser (including all other instances of your browser you have open), reopen the brower and log back in to WebCT and continue your exam. Unfortunately, this process does count against your time during the exam, so keep that in mind.

This being said, however, please go ahead and report to us whenever you experience this problem. This will help us keep WebCT actively working on this. Thanks, and let us know if you have any questions.

Spring 2008 Semester Online Course Preview

Greetings! 

Spring 2008 online course offering list is now available. Please see this Spring 2008 preview page.

Please keep in mind that this is the tentative list for preview. There might be adjustments before the course schedule gets finalized for Spring 2008. Please email gmbaadvising@utdallas.edu if you have any questions.