My Courses - Course Homepages

The Course Studio application give students and faculty the ability to access and manage homepages. Course Studio provides homepages for all courses taught at Ramapo. Since managing course homepages involves many of the same tasks, much of functionality contained in the course studio is the same as groups.

My Courses Tab and Channel
When you click on the My Courses tab, you will see the My courses channel (pictured right) where students and faculty can access their course homepages. Faculty only see the courses they teach, and students only see the courses in which they are enrolled. Note: employees do not see this as it only applies to faculty and students.

Course Features

Course Studio provides functions that support homepages for students enrolled in courses. For the most part, the Course Studio provides the same features as Group Studio, with a few differences.

Unlike groups established for clubs and interests, students are automatically given access to course homepages when they enroll in a course. All courses have natural course leaders. Typically, a course leader is the course instructor and is designated at the time this course information is added to the Banner system. Course leaders use Course Studio to complete the following tasks:

Instructors can also group any number of courses into a single consolidated course, for which studio tools and content can be managed through a single access point.

The Course Studio application provides a set of tools that appear in a menu on the left-hand column of any page for which you are the course leader, which allow you to manage your homepage. The menu includes options that let you manage the content on the course homepage (see content tools below), and options that let you manage the configuration of the course (see configuration tools below). If responsibility for any course homepage management has been delegated to other members, they will also see a tools menu, but it will only contain options for any permissions that they have been assigned.

Course Homepage Tools

Depending on your role (member or leader), the homepage will provide access to a number of tools:

Course tools. These tools are provided to all course members (this is what students see).

– Homepage. Allows you to return to the group or course homepage from any subpage.

– Announcements. Allows you to view group or course announcements.

– News. Allows you to read all articles that have been written by other members and to submit articles for potential posting.

– Photos. Allows you to view all of the photos that have been posted and to submit photos for potential posting. The maximum file size that can be uploaded for photos is 2 MB.

– Links. Allows you to view all of the links that have been posted and to submit links for potential posting.

– Files. Allows you to view all of the files that have been posted and to submit files for potential posting. The maximum file size for upload to file sharing in course and group homepages is 40 MB. File sharing supports all file types.

– Message Board. Allows you to enter a dedicated message board where you can read and post messages and replies.

– Calendar. Allows you to access a course calendar. Your course meeting time is indicated on your calendar.

– E-mail. Allows you to send e-mail to course members.

– Chat. Allows you to enter a dedicated chat room where you can participate in real time discussions with other members.

– Members. Allows you to view a list of other group members and information about each, including any homepages that the member might have. You can also post your own homepage link.

Note: This is a comprehensive list of all tools and applications that are potentially available to courses. Depending on the rights and permissions granted to you by your system administrator, you may only see a limited set of these tools.

Content tools. These tools are only provided to course leaders/instructors, and to course members who have had responsibility for managing a homepage feature delegated to them.

– Manage Homepage. Allows you edit to the content that members see on the homepage, including featured photo, featured links, and top five links.

– Manage News. Allows you to edit articles that have been submitted for posting, and to post articles to, and delete articles from the homepage.

– Manage Photos. Allows you to post photos to and delete photos from the homepage. The maximum file size that can be uploaded for photos is 2 MB.

– Manage Links. Allows you to post links to and delete links from the homepage.

– Manage Files. Allows you to post files to and delete files from the homepage. The maximum file size for upload to file sharing in course and group homepages is 40 MB. File sharing supports all file types.

– Manage Message Boards. Allows you to post topics, edit descriptions for the course ’s message board forum, and to delete message board topics and replies.

– Manage Calendar. Allows you to add events and other important items to the course calendar. Your course meeting time is automatically indicated on your calendar.

– Manage Announcements. Allows to you to post new announcements to the homepage and delete existing announcements from the homepage.

Configuration tools. These tools are only provided to course leaders/instructors.

– Applications. Allows you to specify which of the possible system applications (like Chat or Files) are available to group or course members.

– Members. Allows you to add, remove, activate or inactivate course members. This is done dynamically when the student registers for the class or drops the class. However, after the 50% refund period, you need to remove those students manually because their records need to remain for Financial Aid records.

– Permissions. Allows you to review and edit the list of course members who have been given permission to manage a homepage feature.

Personal Tools.
These tools are provided to all course leaders and members:

– My Profile. Allows you to review your group membership information and to cancel your membership.

– My Courses. Allows you to navigate back to the full list of all your courses.

– My Consolidated Courses. Allows you to navigate back to the full list of all your consolidated courses.

Note: As with the overall tools and applications that are potentially available to a group or course, this list will vary depending on the rights and permissions granted to a group or course by the school’s system administrator.

As the course leader, you will work extensively with these tools to create and manage the pages, resources, and content members see, and to deactivate and reset the permissions associated with member profiles.

*Files Limits: The maximum file size for upload to file sharing in course and group homepages is 40 MB. File sharing supports all file types. The maximum file size that can be uploaded for photos is 2 MB. Supported files for photos are .jpg, .jpeg and .gif. There is a total of 250 MB of disk space available per group or course for storing photos and shared files.