Based on recent changes to campus power outage schedules:

Sunday, June 22nd: WebCT availability should not be affected by the limited power outage.

Sunday, June 29th: WebCT should be up and running with generator power during the campus wide power outage. However, network availability of WebCT, especially for users on campus or in Waterview Park/University Village, may be interrupted. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Just received this note from the WebCT folks on campus:

WebCT is on generator backup and expected to remain operational during the upcoming campus power outage this Sunday, June 22, 10am-2pm. However, due to potential network connectivity issues that are outside of our control, we cannot guarantee that WebCT will be accessible for the entirety of the power outage. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

If your course requires a proctored exam, and if your professor hasn’t already specified in the course syllabus, ask whether or not your proctored exam will require a Scantron. We (SOM eLearning) will not have that info until your prof sends us the exam, so the best place to find out is to go directly to the professor.

What is a Scantron, you ask? Below is a picture of the Scantron that professors have asked for most frequently. You can usually find them in at a university or community college bookstore. I’ve found them occasionally in grocery stores, but that’s hit or miss. My advice — don’t wait until the day before your exam to find one. Find them now, and maybe buy a pack of five or so (they’re not expensive at all) so that you’ll have them on hand for future proctored exams.

Thanks to everyone who joined us at the UTD SOM island in Second Life! Today’s Virtual Welcome Session was a success! Below are a few pictures from the event. To see the full set of pictures, click here.

Camtasia Studio Flash content (the format used for our streaming lectures in our online courses) playing on the latest release of the Flash Player may cause audio to sound garbled and/or contain a high pitched chirp, described as sounding like a chipmunk. Flash Players prior to 9.0.115.0 did not exhibit this problem. We contacted the Adobe Flash Player TechSupport team, who was very helpful and responsive. They confirmed the bug and escalated it to their engineering team. We’re hopeful that Adobe will be able to add a fix to a future version of the Flash Player.

To address this issue in the short term, here are some suggestions:

1. Do not update to the most current Flash Player
2. If you have the most recent version of Flash and you are encountering this problem, access the lectures via the “Optional Downloads” link in your course. This link contains downloadable versions (PowerPoint presentations and mp3 audio files) of the Flash lectures.

GMBA/AIM Virtual Welcome Session in Second Life

The SOM eLearning Team would like to invite you to our Fall 2008 Virtual Welcome Session on the UTD SOM virtual island in Second Life. Because many of you are spread out across the globe, we feel that Second Life will allow you to “meet” your fellow students, the SOM eLearning Team, and some of our GMBA/AIM faculty.

What is Second Life?

“Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents.” Second life has appeared prominently in the news recently as major corporations, media outlets, and academic institutions have set up virtual locations. The UT Dallas School of Management has set up its own island to be used for special events, recruiting and information dissemination, research, and student meetings and socialization.

To set up an account in Second Life, go to http://www.secondlife.com and click on the “Join Now” button. Membership is free. The registration process involves the following steps:

1. Create an account
2. Choose an avatar
3. Download/install the SL client.

We recommend that you take some time before our Virtual Welcome Session to become familiar with moving around within Second Life.

To visit our UTD SOM island, click on the link below, or while in Second Life, click on the [Map] button and search for “UTD SOM” then click [Teleport].

WHERE:
Second Life, UTD SOM Island
http://slurl.com/secondlife/UTD%20SOM/141/70/22/
(Please note, you must have Second Life installed for the above link to work.)

WHEN:
Friday, May 30, 12pm (noon) – 1pm CST

WHO:
Global MBA and Online AIM students

WHAT:

Participate in Q&A sessions, meet one-on-one with the SOM eLearning Team, meet some of our GMBA/AIM faculty, and network with fellow students.

For more information about the UTD SOM island in Second Life, please visit http://som.utdallas.edu/secondlife.

Hi folks. Just a reminder — Summer ‘08 will become available in your WebCT course list by 12am tomorrow (May 23rd), the first day of classes.

Currently Internet Explorer users are not able to login directly to WebCT through Galaxy. For direct WebCT login try one of the following solutions:

1. Change your browser to FireFox

2. Go directly to WebCT via http://webct6.utdallas.edu/

Hi everyone! Please check out the latest issue of the SOM eLearning Newsletter.

Tuition for Summer 2008 classes is due Wednesday, May 21, 2008. For more information on tuition fees visit http://www.utdallas.edu/finance/bursar/tuitionfees.html