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Welcome to the world of distance education (DE)! We're delighted that you're taking or thinking about taking a class using our UMUC WebTycho online classroom system. This introduction to the features that make our Internet system similar to the classroom you've known since you were a child will help ease your transition to learning via the World Wide Web.
After you sign up for a course, we put you on the class roster about three weeks prior to class start date. Then you'll want to check out the classroom. You can do this by starting your Internet browser. Whether your browser is Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera or Safari, you'll be able to get into your classroom and start your online college experience. There are two ways of accessing our WebTycho classroom:
| 1. | Go to our UMUC Asia DE Website and select the Class Login - WebTycho link. | |
 Figure 1 - UMUC Asia DE Website Screen |
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| 2. |
In your browser Address Bar, type the following address:
"http://tychousa.umuc.edu" and click on Go, or hit the keyboard Enter key. |
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 Figure 2 - Sample of Internet Explorer Address Bar |
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| Either method brings you to the WebTycho login screen. | ||
 Figure 3 - WebTycho Login Screen |
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| If you need more information about browsers, you can go to the WebTycho Help and Support site. Even after you log in, you'll also find a link to the same Help and Support site. It's on the Help menu that will be near the top right of the screen. | ||
| For the purpose of this introduction we ask that you login as UMUC's Guest. Please use the username - UMUC Guest (be careful of capital and small letters) and the password - umuc (be careful of capital and small letters). | ||
 Figure 4 - WebTycho Login Screen |
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| If you have logged in successfully, you should see the screen below: | ||
 Figure 5 - WebTycho Announcement and Class Listing Screen |
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| Now click on the class VLIB101 link circled in Figure 5 above. The "Section" and "Semester" numbers may be different depending on when you access the WebTycho system. | ||
 Figure 6 - WebTycho Classroom |
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| You've walked into lots of classrooms, and you know that they're not all the same. Some have chalkboards covering three whole walls; others have tiny whiteboards. Yesterday, you saw a TV and a VCR; today, you find an overhead projector; tomorrow, a laptop computer and projector. Students might have individual desks, or tables arranged in circles, or auditorium-style seating. And then there are labs... | ||
| WebTycho similarly gives professors some flexibility in arranging the classroom. They can put things into WebTycho or remove them to customize the space for the course they're teaching. So the menus you see in your classroom might be different from the ones that you see in this document. Don't worry! | ||
| Remember the teacher who always had an outline of today's class on the board? Before the class even started? WebTycho has a special feature for that. When you enter a class, the first thing that's in the Work Area (the largest part of the screen) is the Class Announcements. Profs use Class Announcements to tell you information like what's going on in the next few days, where we are in the term, what you should be working on, which parts of the WebTycho classroom have new information, and upcoming deadlines. As you click on various things, these announcements go away, but it's easy to get them back whenever you need them: just click on the Class Announcements link near the top left corner. | ||
 Figure 7 - WebTycho Class Menu and Class Announcement Screen |
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| Let's take a look at the Class Menu. It's located at the left of the screen, beneath the Course and Faculty Information area. | ||
| We'll go through the links one by one. | ||
| Syllabus: | ||
If you've taken college courses before, you know how important the syllabus is. Generations of profs have advised students to tape it inside the front cover of the textbook so it'll always be close at hand. Now, WebTycho has built it right into the classroom. Here's a syllabus you can't lose! Just click on Syllabus and you'll find all the major information about the organization of the course: a description and an introduction, academic goals and objectives, information on how you'll be graded and what you'll do --- and when. There's more too, even a link that makes it easy to print the syllabus. So you can still tape it inside the front cover of your textbook.
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| Course Content: | ||
When you click on it, you find a link to the Class Modules, which are exclusively for UMUC students. They take advantage of the special features of the Internet and might include animated graphics, motion video, sound, hyperlinks to other sites, on-line glossaries with definitions of terms, activities and much more. The same modules are available to all the students in the same course, around the world. Nearly every course has modules. In addition, your faculty member might also have some lectures in this Course Content area. These are only for the section you've enrolled in. So if you're taking HIST 156 from Professor Smith, students in Professor Johnson's HIST 156 won't see those. Some people like to lecture and others prefer group work or discussion, so you might find lectures in the Course Content area of Prof. Smith's class but not Prof. Johnson's.
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| Conferences: | ||
Here's where WebTycho is much more like a classroom than a correspondence course. In the Conferences area your prof will ask you questions, start some discussions, and get the students involved. You can post your answers here, and ask questions. It's a lot like raising your hand in class: everyone can hear you, and you can hear them. Not very private, so you don't want to discuss matters like your grade in the Conferences area. But it's a place where you'll spend lots of time, and do most of your learning.
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| Assignments Folder: | ||
This is one you'll want to check often. Your teacher will assign work, and some of it has to be "handed in" (submitted) through the Assignments Folder. When you submit it, though, it doesn't disappear. You'll be able to track it, see whether or not the prof has graded it, and then read the comments and view your grade. You don't have to collect your own papers in a folder; they're right in the WebTycho classroom all term long. Are you worried about privacy? You'll be happy to know that access to the Assignments Folder is controlled. You can see your own assignments, but not the other students'; they can't see yours either.
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| Portfolio: | ||
The Portfolio is a record of all the contributions you've made in the WebTycho classroom. Here, you'll find a list of topics you posted in Conferences and Study Groups (if there are Study Groups in your course). With a quick glance through your Portfolio, you can track your progress and make sure you've responded to all the topics the prof required.
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| Class Members: | ||
It's a handy roster of all the students and faculty members in this course. When you need to e-mail someone, you'll find the e-mail links here in one place. Want to read more about a fellow student? Click on a Bio link. You can also view your own Portfolio, but again you can't see anyone else's. And the other students can't see your Portfolio, either.
Your Class Menu can have some more links on it. We've already mentioned Study Groups. If you find this on the menu in your WebTycho classroom, check it out. You'll discover how you can exchange ideas with a few of your colleagues in a smaller, more focused (and intimate) Conferences area, or work together through several drafts of a Collaborative Document before presenting the finished product to the larger class. To help you cooperate, there's also a Members link to e-mail addresses and bios. Webliography is an optional area. You might find it in your classroom or you might not, depending on whether the faculty member has put it there. And it might come and go, just like the TV and VCR (except nobody steals the Webliography). Webliography is a place to post links to Internet sites that are relevant to the course. There's also a way to attach comments to the links. This makes the Webliography like an annotated bibliography-for Internet pages, instead of for printed books. Many profs put Reserved Readings on the Class Menu. This is really useful for supplementing the textbook and providing reference material for the whole class or groups with special interests. Is Workbooks on the menu in your class? This feature lets you submit drafts to your faculty member and get private feedback Finally, Chat Room and Classroom Awareness are two special links that work together to make it easier for you to collaborate with others in the course. |
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If you have already registered for a class you are now ready to go to your real classroom. This time you'll need your assigned User Name and Password. You should have received these in an e-mail when you were rostered into your class. If you didn't, please ask the DE Office for those two important pieces of information. Contact the WebTycho Administrator via email at tycho@asia.umuc.edu, or phone DSN 225-3696. The first time you log into WebTycho, you see a tutorial. It's called WebTycho Orientation (WEBT 101). This excellent on-screen tour will bring you to all the major parts of the WebTycho classroom and explain each in some detail. We recommend that you set aside about an hour to work through this. Take notes and think about how to make WebTycho work for you. When you're done, you'll be able to access your classes, and the Orientation won't pop up again. But it's always there, and you can get to it by selecting Options --> Orientation from the menu near the top right of the WebTycho screen. |
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 Figure 8 - WEBT 101 Orientation Screen |
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After you finish the WEBT 101 Orientation, you're in WebTycho, but you're not yet in a course. It's like being inside the college building, but not in a classroom. You'll see a Class List (see Figure 5, circled in red) that shows you the courses you've registered for. Registered classes normally go onto this list three weeks before the start of the DE term. If you register for a class during the three weeks prior to class start up, your class should appear within 48 hours of completing registration. If your class does not appear within these time frames, e-mail the WebTycho Administrator at tycho@asia.umuc.edu, or call DSN 225-3696 to get put on the roster for your course. But assuming the class is on your list, click on it. That's like opening the door and walking into your class. There you have it, all of the basic elements to allow you to enter your WebTycho classroom with eagerness and confidence. Now go find your favorite seat. Yes, over there by the window, in the front row. It has a good view of the whiteboard, and it's close to the TV screen. You can sit there all term long. And in WebTycho, we won't ask you to turn down the volume on your iPod. | ||
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Thank you for participating in our introduction to UMUC's WebTycho. We wish you the best in your Distance Education experience. | ||
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Best Regards, | ||
