Dear EDU 5383,

January 6, 2003

Dear EDU 5383 students,

We are in for a new adventure. I see that you have enrolled in the Online Curriculum Design and Implementation class. This letter is to give you the information needed to access the online course.

This class will be conducted entirely in cyberspace. All of my course instructions, class discussions, and student interactiona will take place within our Web site. We will not meet "face-to-face" at all unless you schedule an appointment and come to my office on the Tarleton Stephenville or Killeen campus. Of course, we will "meet" through email, Discussion Board posts, and even real-time chat or telephone conferences.

This course is delivered through an online courseware program called WebCT. It contains my lectures, assignments, exercises, quizzes, WebCT Discussion Board, WebCT email, and other features. To access the course, you must first claim and activate your Tarleton VMS (email) account. I know most of you already have email accounts (several of them perhaps), but you will need the User Name that the Tarleton account will assign you in order to access our course site. If you already have a Tarleton email account, you already have the User Name (that ST_WHATEVER name you were assigned) you will need for accessing WebCT.

If you do not have your Tarleton email account yet, you have already paid for it through your student services fees, and you can activate this account Online without having to come to the Stephenville campus. To activate your Tarleton student account,

first, go to the Tarleton home page at http://www.tarleton.edu
then click on the Current Students link
from the Current Students page, go to the Computing heading and click on the Help Desk link. This will take you to a Computer Services page
from the Computer Services page, under the Email heading, click on the Activate your Student Account link and follow the instructions there. This page will instruct you to change your Tarleton account password. Do it, but to access our course, you will already have a WebCT password assigned to use with your Tarleton account’s User Name.

To get into our course, go to this URL: http://online2.tarleton.edu You will be cued to enter your WebCT logon ID and Password.

Your WebCT logon ID is your Tarleton email User Name. That is why you must have this account active.
Your WebCT password is K plus the first seven digits of your Social Security number.
This is VERY IMPORTANT; PAY ATTENTION: Your logon ID and Password must be in ALL CAPS. WebCT is case-sensitive.

As soon as you can, logon to WebCT so I will know you have found and accessed our course. If you decide this course isn’t for you, please drop immediately because I have a waiting list of students who want in the course. You will not be able to actually access the course until Monday, January 13, 2003.

There are three required textbooks for this class that you will need to purchase.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Baltimore, Md: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. (ISBN 0-87120-313-8) Zemelman, S., Daniels, H., 7 Hyde, A. (1993). Second Edition. Best Practice New standards for teaching and learning in America's schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. (ISBN 0-325-00091-3) Uchida, D. (1996) Preparing Students for the 21st Century. Arlington, VA: American Association of School Administrators (ISBN 0-87652-193-6)

These books should be in both the Stephenville and Killeen campus bookstores, and they are, of course, available online through stores like Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble, etc.

Here is a site that you might find useful for helping you access our course:

http://blake.tarleton.edu/online_courses.html

Again, please try to logon to the course as soon as possible so I’ll know you’ve accessed the course and are ready to begin. Please contact me if you have any problems or questions. (acalahan@tarleton.edu or 254.968.9933).

Welcome to this cyberspace adventure,

Ann Calahan

Professor

Department of Curriculum & Instruction

*adapted from letter by Benedda Konvicka