Marist Language Center
teaching resources

POSTING YOUR INFORMATION ONLINE

 

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING

THE MLC COURSE SUPPORT SYSTEM

 

 

 

The Marist Language Center’s online environment provides a ready-made template to post all your course resources.  It is part of the E-learning environment of Marist College, and has been customized for the special needs of language courses.

 

 Each course page contains:

·        an upper horizontal information bar (course name, number, schedule, instructor).  The content of this bar is managed by the lab assistants.

·        a left vertical menu bar with personal faculty information (contact, office hours) and the following pedagogical “buttons:” SYLLABUS, AUDIO/VIDEO, LINKS, RESOURCES, and WORKPLAN, that will activate the desired content in the main central window. In the central window, the instructor can fill in all his/her course material just by creating and updating Microsoft Word documents. 

In addition, the Center supports a customized Voice Recorder system and a student accounts system on the MLC server, for course projects involving Web page development. 

 

Your students will access your course page through the Center’s Web page at : http://mlc.la.marist.edu, and by selecting the desired course in the “Learning Resources” area.

All departmental courses currently maintain a minimum presence on this page, with schedule information and a syllabus provided by the instructor. If your syllabus is missing or not updated, please post it, following the directions below, or contact the director immediately for assistance.

As you become more used to the system, you will be able to post information on line instead of relying on those panicky, last-minute runs to the copy machine!

 

 

 

GETTING STARTED

 

 

TO ASSIGN AND VIEW ORAL ASSIGNEMENTS  (VOICE RECORDER)

 

Simply give the assignment: a reading, a recitation, an improvisation, and instruct the students to go to the Language Center to learn how to use the Voice Recorder.

To view the assignments, click on the Voice Recorder area on the Center’s Homepage, and select the relevant link.

You can also access the files by going directly to the page:

http://mlc.la.marist.edu/admin

In both cases, you will be prompted to fill in a box:

 ID:  this is your last name, with a hyphen if you have a double last name.

Password: as given through departmental mail  (in lower case letters). Please do not modify this password for the time being.

When cleared, the next page will give you the option to view the oral assignments. The second button, “FTP accounts”, is active only in relevant courses.

Note that no assignment will show until some recordings have been sent by students.  You can listen to these assignments from any computer on or off campus, provided that there are speakers and appropriate sound software.  Currently, the standard application Real Player is needed, and most computers are equipped with it.  It can also be downloaded for free at www.real.com

 

 

TO ASSIGN AND MONITOR AUDIO LAB WORK FROM TEXTBOOK

 

Please familiarize yourself with the audio series by listening to it once, following the lab manual.  You can do this one chapter at a time, as you progress in the course.  At the Elementary and Intermediate level, please be sure to integrate this lab work into your tests and grading if you have not already done so.  This is required as per the course descriptions listed in the Marist catalog.

The audio files are available directly at:

http://mlc.la.marist.edu/av or on your own course page on the Center’s homepage.  Access to the audio/video resources is password protected due to copyright regulations.  Faculty access uses your faculty ID and password.  Student access is through a password assigned for the semester.  It will be given to you through departmental mail before classes begin.  Currently, only the textbooks VENTANAS(Spanish) and OGGI (Italian) package their audio files on a CD with all books. For other texts, please contact the director if you wish to obtain a CD version of the audio files for course preparation.

 

 

TO POST YOUR OWN CONTACT AND OFFICE HOURS INFORMATION

The top horizontal bar of your course page is automatically updated when the administrator or lab assistant updates the course information each semester. 

The vertical menu on the left is under your control.  To create or update your personal information please access the serve as follows. Go to:

http://mlc.la.marist.edu/admin  (as you do to listen to oral assignments)

You will be prompted to fill in a box:

 ID:  this is your last name, with a hyphen if you have a double last name.

Password: as given to you through departmental mail (in lower case letters).

A page will appear with the option “faculty” and “your account”

Click “Your Account”.  Please do not modify the ID or the password for the time being.  But you can enter the phone number(s), office location and hours and email address that you wish to appear on your course page.

 

 

 

MORE ADVANCED

 

 

TO POST COURSE MATERIAL

 

You will need to be proficient in using Microsoft Word. Please contact the Center director if you need assistance with this application.

 

First, please browse any current course page in the Learning Resources area of the MLC homepage (http://mlc.la.marist.edu).   You will note that the SYLLABUS window opens by default when the course number is clicked on the MLC Page .

 

A – To create or update files.

For buttons SYLLABUS, WORKPLAN, LINKS.

  • Create your document in Microsoft Word, then save it on the desktop as a webpage (Click “Save As” in the File menu) under the generic word matching the button (syllabus, workplan, etc) and select “Webpage”. The document will appear under an Explorer icon, and with an filename extension of htm. (Note: newer versions of Microsoft Word have multiple extension options for the webpage; be sure to select “htm” ot “html”.) If you want to create a list of links, just type the addresses within a Word document, and type Enter; you will see them become active links in your document, for your students to click.
  • Open the Web browser Explorer.  Do not use any other browser (such as Mozilla) for updating files on the server, since only Explorer permits the type of ftp access provided below.
  • Type and open ftp://yourname:yourpassword@mlc.la.marist.edu  (note the change from the familiar “http” to “ftp”.  The syntax change is essential.
  • If it is not already present, create a course folder with your course number (sample title: SPAN000 with no space between letters and number.) (to create a folder, right click on the screen, click New, then Folder, and name the folder)
  • Slide your html Word document into the course folder.  This will automatically activate the corresponding button.  If button is already active, you will be prompted to verify that you want to update the existing file.
  • To update material in these three buttons, always work on the desktop, outside of the server window: Access the server through the ftp address above, open your course folder, then slide the file out.  When the folder is on the desktop, right click on it to Open As, and select MS Word for Windows.  Do desired update, close the document, and slide it back into the server window.  Be sure to have closed the document before your do this, or the action will be refused.

Note: To permit the automatic activation of a given button in the course (leaving the non-used buttons “dormant”), it is necessary to keep the htm file names under their generic title syllabus, or workplan, or links. (a more specifically titled version can and should be archived on personal computer)  This demands a small discipline of working with no more than one given course on the desktop at a given time, and making sure not to override one “syllabus” with another.  This is rarely more than a passing inconvenience, especially when the document already exists on the server:  it cannot be inadvertently lost completely).

 

For button RESOURCES.

The RESOURCES area is not a single Word document like your syllabus or links page, but a folder that can hold many Word documents for viewing.  It can display any document in html text format (meaning: saved in Web format), but no pictures or PDF format at the moment, and it is typically the place in which to post your own instructor-created supplementary documents such as “How to type accents”, as well as articles downloaded from the Internet, etc. that are to be kept permanently in your own Marist virtual library.   For more complex documents with graphics, a Webpage can be created on the server and linked to the class materials in the Links section. To learn how to create a basic webpage, please attend one of the workshops offered by Academic Computing.

  • Open ftp://yourlastname:yourpassword@mlc.la.marist.edu and the relevant course folder. 
  • Create a Folder named Resources (or open existing one).
  • You can slide into in this folder any html’d text document (no picture or PDF) that you have either created, or downloaded from the Web.  On occasion, newspapers do not provide a downloadable print version: in that case, I create a Word doc and I cut and paste all text material.  Any title your give to the document will appear correspondingly as a clickable title in your list of Resources when students view your course page.

 

For Button AUDIO/VIDEO.

This button is active by default in all Elementary and Intermediate course pages.  It will link to the relevant textbook audio files. For other courses, the link will be activated by the server manager if you wish to have your own video or audio clips available for student language practice. Please submit your request to Claire.keith@marist.edu 

Such clips must be digitized and must respect copyright laws: very short excerpts of commercial films are OK (fair use), but anything else should be you own material.   Lab assistants are available on a limited basis to digitize such audio or video files and arrange to post them in your course page.

Please note that it is impractical, in the current state of technology, to post large amounts of video online (just try CNN news clips!).  Instead, use the more reliable methods for showing longer films, such as the VCR or a DVD player in multimedia classrooms.