Technical Support Guidelines for Program Directors and Instructors


CSI Staff
Staff Writer
Center for Support of Instruction
Published: 0 2003

Category: » Fac-resources » Faculty-support

The answers to many "how-to" questions are readily available on the WebTycho Help and Support Site.  If you are unable to locate the answer to your question there, please use the following guidelines for obtaining technical support.

WebTycho

WebTycho offers a vast collection of online support documentation. If you can find the answer to your questions in WebTycho Users Guide you can contact UMUC 360 for further assistance. They will be able to offere assistance with:

  • Access or Connectivity to WebTycho
  • Account Preferences in WebTycho
  • Synchronous communications tools in WebTycho, including the Chat Room and  Classroom Awareness
  • Read, Create, Submit, or Edit problems in the following WebTycho areas:  Announcements, Biography, Syllabus, Course Content, Conferences, Webliography, Study Groups, Workbooks, and Conferences.
  • Creating and editing of assignment pages, linking specific assignment pages to students' assignment folders, or entering grades in the Webtycho Gradebook. 
  1. When contacting WebTycho support via telephone or chat, always ask for a trouble-ticket number (this applies to everyone). Hold onto the number until you are absolutely certain the problem has been resolved to your satisfaction.  You may need to contact UMUC 360 again for follow-up assistance. Unless the support person can access your previous call information via a trouble ticket number, you will be starting over from scratch.

 

Center for Support of Instruction (CSI)

Please visit the CSI contacts page to obtain the name and contact information for your assigned Instructional Support Specialist.  Instructional Support Specialist can provide assistance with the following types of questions and/or problems:

  • Classroom setup requirements, best practices, and methodologies used by the other faculty members in your program area. Classroom setup checklists are also available on the DE Oracle.
  • Linked  learning objects.  These are items that you publish to your own Polaris account and then provide a URL in WebTycho.  Examples include Web pages (syllabus or content), Real Media Files, Graphics, or other file types that must be published to your own Polaris account prior to adding the URL in WebTycho.
  • Conversion of instructional materials you previously used in your Face-to-Face classrooms. The most common examples are files created with Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Word, Excel).
  • Structural issues in the WebTycho Gradebook.  Structural issues include: non-technical questions concerning how many different assignment pages you should create, the grading method you should use, and how to assign weights correctly based on the assignment information contained in the course syllabus.
  1. When contacting your Instructional Support Specialist, please provide the following information:
  • Course Number and Section Number
  • A specific description of the nature of the problem
    • Not specific  = I can't submit my announcement text.
    • Specific = When I click submit on the announcement screen, I receive the following error message.... (or the following happens...)
  • Trouble Ticket Number (if you have already contacted WebTycho Support).

If you have particular project that you would like for CSI to assist you with, please fill out our Request CSI Services/Reserve the Media Lab form.

UMUC 360 Technical Support

You can contact UMUC 360 Support 24/7. They can help with problems and questions related to:

  • Nova and Polaris server accounts, including telnet, e-mail, and personal web space
  • specific application software questions

Library Services

If you requested a reserved reading item through Library Services and the item does not appear in your classroom by the first day of class or your students report problems accessing the item, please contact Library Services using one of the methods described on their ILS website. 

Additional Considerations

  1. Students are responsible for contacting UMUC 360 for assistance with the technical/functional aspects of the WebTycho classroom.  If they report a technical problem to you, please refer them to UMUC 360.
  2. For problems related to course-specific software or software that came with a textbook, students and faculty should use the contact or support information provided with the software.  Program directors are responsible for obtaining technical support contact information from the publisher representative and providing it to the faculty members for any software that is bundled with the assigned textbooks for a course.  For all other third-party software not specifically required by your department, contact the software vendor for technical support.

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