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WebBoard Documentation:
Overview of WebBoard
Participating in WebBoard Conferences
Managing a WebBoard as the Course Moderator

Managing a WebBoard as a Course Moderator
WebBoard is copyright (c)1998 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.

Steps to Get a WebBoard

Contact Jim Marcum.

NOTE: Every WebBoard takes up space on the WebBoard server, particularly in boards that feature a lot of file attachments. Therefore, WebBoards will be routinely deleted at the end of a semester unless you specifically request otherwise.

Establishing Conferences

You should consult the other two pieces of WebBoard documentation, Overview of WebBoard and Participating in WebBoard Conferences for an overview of WebBoard from a user's standpoint. Much of what you will be doing as a Moderator can be answered by looking at those documents.

After your WebBoard is established, however, your first step as Moderator will be to establish conferences. Your users must have conferences established in order to post messages. Fortunately, this is a fairly easy process.

1. Take a look at the WebBoard menubar, and look for the button labeled MORE.

2. Click on MORE. This is very similar to what your students see when clicking on MORE, but your first link should be MANAGER.

3. Click on the MANAGER hyperlink, and you will go to the next screen.

4. The options are fairly self-explanatory. You will want to choose Add Conference. Doing so will bring you to a fairly long screen.


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Conference Name requires you to fill out a name for the new conference. This should be a fairly short name, as this is what will be displayed on your user's screens in the left frame when they first enter your WebBoard.
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The Description of the new conference is not a required field, but here you can be a bit more descriptive as to what the conference's intent is (such as "This Conference is for all questions regarding the first exam.") This is the field your users will see if they ever request a description of a conference.

The next part of the screen deals with setting email preferences and Moderators for your new conference.

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Mailing List enables you to set a mailing list for your WebBoard. Your users will have to set their own preferences in their User Profile edit screen as to how they want to receive them. A unique name must be entered for the list (WebBoard will alert you if it is not unique). This is a handy feature for students who may not have Web browsers at home, but it somewhat defeats the purpose of keeping on eye on conference threads in a Web browser.
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Moderators have the power to delete objectionable messages and other aspects of the conference. Add yourself as a Moderator. You can also specify any other person(s) you can trust with this task.

Next, the Add Conference screen gives you various archiving options. Unless you suspect your conference will generate messages numbering in the hundreds, it is probably not necessary to create an archive. Though creating an archive will keep the number of messages your users see manageable, it is also a fairly labor-intensive process to take message out of the archive when you want to. (They must be retrieved one-by-one in the Edit Conferences menu.)

The next options to set involve various conference settings.

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Automatically verify new posts should generally be left checked (the default), unless you plan on closely monitoring the conference. The user(s) you chose in the Moderators section will be have to check posts before they are allowed in the conference if you uncheck this option.
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Private (closed) conference can be checked if you want to restrict this conference to a certain group of users. This is handy for group project conferences where only a few users should have access, or even one-on-one conferences with individual students. If this is checked, you will later have to choose users to have access to this conference (discussed below).
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Read only conference should be checked if you do not want users to post new messages to this conference.
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Allow spell checking allows your users to use WebBoard's built-in spell checker. By default, it is on.

Finally, you will be asked to select various HTML and file settings. Generally, these should be left at the default settings.
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The two active links options allow your users to type in HTML addresses or graphics links in their messages and have them appear as active links or images--without any knowledge of HTML coding.
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The file attachments options allow users to add attachments to their messages, and allow you to set a limit by file size. (See the document Participating in WebBoard Conferences for an explanation of file attachments.) Unless you have reason to suspect your users may attach incredibly large graphic files to messages, it is generally safe to leave these at their default settings.

When finished, be sure to click the SAVE button at the bottom of the screen to save all of your conference settings. When this is finished, your conference is ready to having postings!

Private Conferences

As a WebBoard moderator, you may want certain conferences where some of your users/students have access to the conference, but not all. For example, you may have group projects where select groups of students work collaboratively. You can create a private conference for each student team, assigning each group of students access to the conference, but not your other students. You can also create private conferences for each individual student in your class. This option--though initially labor intensive--will allow your students to, for example, post drafts of papers as attachments or turn in tests to you without worrying about other students seeing their work in an otherwise public forum.

To make a conference private, click MORE from the WebBoard menubar, then click the MANAGER hyperlink, as was described at the beginning of this document.

Each conference has four possible actions at the left: Edit, Users, Delete, and Archive.

Delete is self-explanatory--and permanent once you confirm the deletion by answering Yes at the screen that follows!

Archive is when you want to retrieve any archived messages (as described above in the section on adding conferences).

To make a conference you have already created a private conference (or to change any other settings), click on the Edit hyperlink. You will then see the same screens described above in the section on establishing conferences. Scroll down to the section on SETTINGS (as shown on page 5, above) and click the Private (closed) conference box.

Designating Users in a Private Conference

After setting a conference as private, you next have to select which of your users will have access. Assuming all of the users for your WebBoard have logged in or created themselves as new users (see below), you can retrieve a list of all users for your conference by clicking on the Users hyperlink in the Manage Conferences. All you need to do is click on each user you want to have access to the conference (hold down the CTRL key (or Command key for MAC users) on your keyboard while clicking the names of individual users), and then click the Add button. You can always go back and add (or remove) users later. Just be sure to click the SAVE button at the bottom of the screen to keep your changes.



ADDING USERS TO YOUR WEBBOARD

You final step is getting users onto your WebBoard. Fortunately, WebBoard users can add themselves to a Board. If any of your students/users have already used WebBoard in another class, they should log in to your new WebBoard using the same Name and Password they already have. If not, they can click the New User button the first time they access WebBoard and establish their own account, as described in our documentation Overview of WebBoard.

Because your students may belong to more than one WebBoard, please do not delete any users. Doing so effectively deletes them from all WebBoards!

The only time you will have to intervene is if you have had Elmhurst's WebBoard Administrator CLOSE your entire WebBoard. Closing an entire Board can only be done by the Administrator. Closing a board means any user not already established in your WebBoard will not be able to gain access. This is different from making a conference private (which you can do as a WebBoard moderator), since users can still log into your Board--they just won't have access to specific conferences. If your entire Board is closed, you can still add a user on your own by clicking the Add User hyperlinks in the Manager's menu shown on page 2. This is a very easy process and just like editing a user's profile.

WebBoard is copyright (c)1998 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.

This documentation was prepared by Ken Black, Dominican University and adapted by Susan Swords Steffen and Charles Ophardt, Elmhurst College, May 1999.