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The UN Water Learning CentreThe UN Water Learning CentreFlexible Distance Learning for Integrated Water Resource ManagementFlexible Distance Learning for Integrated Water Resource Management

Background and Introduction to the WLCBackground and Introduction to the WLC

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Instruction Manual for Course ProductionInstruction Manual for Course Production

United Nations University – Institute for Water, Environment and HealthUnited Nations University – Institute for Water, Environment and Health175 Longwood Road South, Suite 204175 Longwood Road South, Suite 204Hamilton, OntarioHamilton, OntarioCanada L8P 0A1Canada L8P 0A1

Overview of WLC

Course Development Manual for the UN-Water Learning Centre

The UN Water Learning CentreThe UN Water Learning CentreFlexible Distance Learning for Integrated Water Resource

Management

Introduction:The broad goal of the United Nations “Water Learning Centre” is to enhance local, national and basin-scale capacities for sustainable water management in the developing world. The WLC represents a concrete and strategic response to recommendations from the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which called for strengthening of integrated water management through capacity building of national officials, water managers and their institutions. The United Nations University, International Network on Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), Division for Sustainable Development (DSD) have executed the project under the aegis of UN-Water, the inter-agency coordination mechanism of the UN. Cooperation is also sought with other UN training initiatives and with academic and NGO networks at the global and regional levels. Financial support was initially provided from the UN Development Account. Funding has also been received from AGFUND and the Arab Fund for establishment of Regional Centres and course development.

Programme Overview:The WLC programme offers broad-based coverage of the principles and practices of IWRM. The curriculum consists of 10 courses, totalling 250 learning hours, which provides students with core IWRM knowledge in the natural sciences, engineering, health, governance, public administration, social sciences, economics, resource conservation, strategic planning and program/project management. The program is intended as a specialized, undergraduate-level program for practising and new professionals in the water sector. Students will typically have undergraduate degrees, but little or no previous training in the IWRM-related aspects of environmental engineering and natural and social sciences. Other individuals may take the programme as part of a self-directed learning experience.

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UNU offers a formal Diploma to programme graduates, the first offered in the history of UNU. This “Diploma in Integrated Water Resources Management from the United Nations University” is awarded for the successful completion of the full programme (10 courses), while UNU Certificates can be given for satisfactory completion of each course. Several mechanisms for student testing and evaluation are used. These include computer-based quizzes for self-evaluation at appropriate intervals in each course, projects and assignments, and a final formal examination at the end of the programme.The curriculum is disseminated through a global network of Regional

Centres (RCs) established by UNU-INWEH. The RCs serve as teaching and resource centres for the program, relying primarily on the technical capacity of the regional host partner. They also function as examination centres and provide training on personal computer use. The program is directed to practicing professionals in the water sector wishing to upgrade their knowledge of modern water management concepts and practices. Students will progressively build their own example of an integrated water resource management plan from materials covered in each course. The plan will be based on data and information from their local region or watershed, which they will gather and analyze during each course. They will then integrate this knowledge during a final “hands-on” practicum at the conclusion of the program. The project was implemented in three phases:

Curriculum Design and Development, involving an initial global survey of available curricula in IWRM, expert Advisory Committee validation, acquisition of course content, and establishment of a Course Development Group;

Electronic Curriculum Transcription, to convert acquired materials into user-friendly electronic form, develop reference data bases and provide a CD-ROM based programme suitable for independent or Web-supported delivery

Programme Deployment and Delivery, during which RCs were established, the core server and Website installed and training for regional staff provided.

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The Core Curriculum:The essential background concepts and components of modern IWRM are covered in ten courses:

1. An Introduction to Integrated Water Resources Management: A broad examination of critical concepts and knowledge needs related to IWRM, including essential human and institutional capacities, with the course structure and content linked to, and driven by, the subsequent eight courses.

2. Water Transfer: The natural components and processes of the hydrologic cycle, temporal variance, global and regional processes and impacts of anthropogenic alterations on the water cycle.

3. The Terrestrial Ecosystem and Impacts of Land Use Changes: Changes and impacts that occur as a result of land use change and development.

4. The Aquatic Ecosystem: Concepts, processes, analytical approaches and procedures that relate to our understanding of the structure and function of the aquatic ecosystem.

5. Aquatic Ecosystem Health and Impact Assessment: Aspects of anthropogenic impact and change to the physical, chemical, biological and ecological components of the aquatic environment.

6. Water Use: The many human uses of water, both consumptive and non-consumptive, and their implications for the hydrologic cycle, ambient water quality and both ecosystem and human health.

7. Wastewater: The discharge of wastewater to natural and artificial catchments, potential impacts, methods of treatment and mitigation, the urban water cycle and methods to evaluate and choose appropriate technologies.

8. Governance and Community Based Approaches: Legislative, regulatory, legal, jurisdictional, community and individual responsibilities and arrangements of IWRM. Gender issues, the requirements and benefits of capacity building, public education and community involvement.

9. Organizational Infrastructure and Management: Building and maintaining water management infrastructure, various public and private-sector organizational models. Auditing, reporting and long-range planning.

10. Applying Integrated Water Resources Management: Customized case studies, practical illustrations of the concepts and procedures of IWRM, and investigative techniques for students to assess their own IWRM needs, conducted in tutorial format, usually in the RCs.

Regional Centres:Regional Centres have been established, in concert with regional partners, to serve as teaching and resource centres for the WLC programme. The RCs will also function as examination centres and provide training on personal computer use. The host institutions for the WLC Regional Training Centres were selected on the basis of several desirable attributes for effectiveness. These included: academic expertise for teaching and mentoring in IWRM and related or crossover disciplines; availability of instructional and tutorial space; information technology (IT) capability, including servers, Internet connectivity, and technical support; administrative, financial and quality management capacities; and institutional commitment and reputation.

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Technical support will be provided to RCs to service remote course participants through the Internet. Servers in the RCs will act as “WLC regional Web sites” and as “shadow” replicas of the core server at UNU-INWEH in Canada. As such, they will receive updates of course materials, serve as software repositories and provide conferencing, e-mail and “web-board” facilities for course participants and instructors. Depending on the capabilities and available technology in the RCs, video conferencing, "white-board" interaction and other on-line facilities can also be provided. The host institution’s involvement and interest in the development, delivery and continuation of the WLC programme is central to the success of the WLC.

The RCs are at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand, the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and The Caribbean (CATHALAC) in Panama City, Panama, and the Arabian Gulf University in Bahrain

Curriculum Development:The content of individual courses was developed in consultation with a large number of individuals from universities, private industry and government, working in various disciplines, with a common interest and experience in water resources management. This has ensured an interdisciplinary character and content for the curriculum, an aspect further strengthened by the RCs role in expanding and improving regional relevance. Such customization includes the provision of local, national and regional aquatic ecosystem knowledge and management case studies.Collaboration on curriculum development involved over 60 academics and professionals from a wide range of organizations worldwide, including: UN and international organizations (7), international, U.S. and Canadian universities and research institutes (13), Canadian and U.S. government agencies (10) and private companies and NGOs (5).Course content has been developed primarily from existing training and lecture materials released by the authors/owners for this express purpose and from additional copyright-free and public domain sources. Extensive searches were made of available materials from individual courses, from agencies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency, Environment Canada, the World Bank, UN agencies (such as the WMO, WHO, UNEP, UNESCO, FAO, UNU and the UN Regional Commissions), and from numerous other sources. The results were collected, analyzed, and classified by subject matter and potential relevance to a particular course. All materials were stored in a database on an FTP server and made available to WLC authors.

Software Environment:The course-delivery software, StudySpace™, was developed at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and customized specifically for use in the WLC. It has many features to help students navigate through the course materials and track their progress. It also permits regional customization and easy modification and improvement of courses.

StudySpace™ is inexpensive and suitable for course delivery by many different media, such as CDROM, over the Internet, as printed material, and in simple electronic format (e.g., Adobe Acrobat). It also allows students to track their learning progress, rate their understanding of course materials and do self-assessment quizzes and assignments. All essential communications tools, such as email contact, list servers, bulletin boards and database access,

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are provided, and the deployment, replication and updating of course materials is easy, efficient and mostly automatic, thereby minimizing the costs to the RCs. The delivery concept is simple: the CD-ROM that is delivered to the student installs the StudySpace™ software and the courses on his or her computer. Courses essentially run on a “mini-web server” installed with the initial software. In this way, all the functions possible from a web server over the internet are also available to the student from his own local computer. These include Internet access to WWW sites, ftp sites, data repositories, graphics, video, quizzes, tests and tracking programs, as well as password access and security, scripting, cookies, flash animations, Java-based applications, encryption, and many others. The Apache web server (http://www.apache.org) on the CD-ROM operates under the GNU licence system and is thus free of cost to the project, the regional centres and the student. The same CD-ROM–based StudySpace™ can be installed on a web server at the regional centers, so that the WLC can be provided over the Internet. This allows replicate copies of the courses to be stored and made available to all the RCs. Duplication of effort is thus minimized and local and regional contributions can be made to courses and automatically incorporated on the web server.In 2012, the StudySpace™ software was extensively revised to use newer technology and make better use of newer browser technology. The structure of the 10-course programme was left intact but revisions were made to the courses to add new materials.

The Learning Experience: The lecture outline in StudySpace™ is a traditional “slide plus discussion” analogy

The concepts are presented in an abbreviated form on a series of “slides” or Concept Pages; most of these have a Discussion Page that is immediately available from a tabbed index at the side of the page. The student can progress “back” to the previous page or “next” to the succeeding page. In a drop-down menu on the left-hand menu panel, the program keeps track of the student’s location. The student can go

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http://www.apache.org/


through all of the discussion pages one by one, or can move around at will throughout the course structure.

The program also tracks every page that the student accesses and keeps a record of which concept and discussion pages have been visited. The student can rate his or her “level of understanding” for each of the “Concept/Discussion” pairs of pages, highlight sections of any page (in yellow highlighter), or can make personal notes on the materials. The students can also print any or all of the course materials in the same format as the CDROM or web materials. A Course Map is available for an overview of each entire course; each of the listed topics and pages is linked back to the individual pages, so that they can be directly accessed. Upon request, the student can submit a Progress Report to the regional centre. This report includes their progress through the course and their level of understanding of each visited page. It can be submitted over the Internet, by sending a diskette, or by printing and mailing a hard copy. If performed at intervals, this will allow the regional centres to track full details of students’ progress, difficulties encountered, and course organization vs. use patterns.To support the curriculum, two large, teaching and learning databases have also been developed. The first contains data and information to be used by students as enrichment materials for the courses and as source materials for assignments. The second is a repository of references to additional potential course materials, which is available for use during course customization by the RCs.

Programme Deployment:History:The inaugural offering of the WLC began in the first quarter of 2005. During this pilot phase, work will continue on the establishment of examination processes, procedures and protocols; the establishment of procedures for curriculum quality-control and for database updating; and provision of support for regional customization. The pilot phase extended through 2005 into 2006, based on the assumption that the students will need up to 18 months to complete the programme on a part-time basis. The pilot offering involved an inaugural student group (about 10), chosen by each RC in consultation with UNU-INWEH. Students for the pilot met the key programme criteria – currently employed in some aspect of water resources management, with a first degree, and representing a cross-section of education, employment area, experience and gender.The pilot group was asked to provide ongoing feed-back while taking the 10-course programme, including a post-programme questionnaire 6 months after completion. A survey was conducted for the students’ employers, both before and after, to gauge their expectations and the impacts of the WLC training on their employees and institution.The pilot stage provided both UNU-INWEH and our partner Regional Centres with the opportunity to further develop and customize the programme, get significant feed-back from the students and the coordinator, increase the Regional Centres’ global networking and visibility, and further develop working relationships for the next phase.

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The United Nations Water The United Nations Water Learning CentreLearning Centre

Instruction Manual:Instruction Manual:

“Producing Courses for Distribution “Producing Courses for Distribution via CDROM and the Internet with via CDROM and the Internet with

StudySpace™ software”StudySpace™ software”

22 March 201322 March 2013

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INDEX

Course production and Design 10Introduction 10Overview 10Course structure 11Creating and Importing Course Materials: 13Sources for Course Materials 17Course Structure Page (XML) Page 23Course Map 25Summary of the Assembly and Editing Process 29Overview of the directory structure of courses 30Standards for Course Layout & Design 30Using the Course Development Tool 34Starting from PowerPoint slides 37Creating exercises 37StudySpace™ Design & Implementation Notes 40Creating a StudySpace™ CD 45Configuring StudySpace™ for IIS servers 46Readme.txt file from CD 48Setup.ini file from CD 51

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Course Production and DesignIntroductionThe StudySpace™ software is designed to provide the students with a familiar environment; it has a series of paired pages for each topic within a given lecture. The first page is the Concept Page – the equivalent of the lecturer’s PowerPoint or blackboard summary of the topic – and a Discussion Page – the equivalent of the material presented by the lecturer to expand on the various concepts.This has at least two advantages; the format is familiar to the student and it is easy to convert any lecture notes to the StudySpace™ format.The production of a course in StudySpace™ is best done in a simple HTML editor such as Dreamweaver by importing text and images into the Concept and Discussion pages as required. PowerPoint slides can be directly imported by StudySpace™, but the PowerPoint output in HTML format has some serious errors and “quirks” that do not allow direct import into an HTML editor. Microsoft Word documents can also be imported directly if they are output as HTML files but, again, Microsoft Word does not produce a “clean” HTML output; the HTML output from Word contains a lot of extraneous and useless formatting and other information. Macromedia Dreamweaver can “clean up” Microsoft Word files so that they are much closer to standard HTML. Since StudySpace™ uses standard HTML as the basis for the pages, any function that can be accessed through an HTML page can also be accessed in that page in StudySpace™. Images and videos can be inserted, animations in Macromedia Flash or other programs can be accessed, quizzes can be added using JQuiz or other quiz programs that work in an HTML page and links to URLs of any type can be used.

OverviewThis document is derived from the material on the Course Development CD. It is a tutorial and a user manual for the StudySpace™ Course Development Tools. It contains procedures on how to create a new course, how to update a course, how to convert a course from PowerPoint slides, and how to create exercises for a course.

A StudySpace™ course consists of a collection of HTML files. Students manipulate this collection of files through StudySpace™. StudySpace™ is a tool to assist the student in his/her studies. It allows the student to browse through the contents of a course, keep track of his progress, do exercises, add notes to course pages, highlight important text, and communicate with the tutor. StudySpace runs on the Microsoft Internet Explorer platform, versions 6.0 and above.

The StudySpace window is divided into three parts: a navigation frame, a toolbar, and a display frame. Using the buttons in the toolbar the student can access the commands that affect the page that is currently being shown in the display frame. To navigate through different pages, the student can click on the table of contents that is presented in the navigation frame.

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Display Frame

Navigation Frame

Toolbar


Figure 1: StudySpace window

The HTML files that form the course are always shown in the display frame. You can use the Course Development Tools to automatically generate the table of contents for the Navigation Frame. To create a new course, the developer provides a course structure file and a set of HTML files with the contents of the course. The Course Development Tools extract the necessary information from these files and generate the appropriate table of contents, and other facilities for the course. Thus, the input files need to contain special tags to identify the various parts of the course, as well as follow certain structure and naming conventions.

Course structure A StudySpace™ course is made up of sections. Each section is divided into topics organized in a hierarchical structure. Each topic consists of two HTML documents

o one with the main concepts introduced by the topic similar to the contents of an overhead in a class may contain

keywords bulleted items diagrams, pictures

o one with a detailed discussion of these concepts usually contains what the instructor would say about each overhead presented as a set of text paragraphs

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Table of contents:

This is a sample table of contents from a StudySpace™ course. It shows the hierarchical course structure. The section titles appear in blue. Each topic appears in gray. Some topics are indented to show that they are contained in other topics.

Sample course

The course structure file used to generate this course, devguide.xml, is included with the Course development tools. You can find it in directory development\sample under the StudySpace™ installation directory (by default C:\Program Files\StudySpace\).

You can examine the course structure provided by the course-structure.xml file as an example to help you learn how to create a course using the StudySpace™ Development Tools.

You can also use this file as input to the tools to generate a course, so you can learn how the tools work.

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Creating and Importing Course Materials:

Creating the course contentAnything that can be displayed in a web browser can be part of the content of a course. This includes, for example:

Text (html, pdf, xml, code) Graphics (gif, jpeg, bmp) Sound (wav, mp3) Animation (flash, avi, mpeg) Simulations (java applets) Interactive learning objects

In general, the content is organized or presented as HTML files. These files include links to material in different formats. However, to improve electronic learning using StudySpace™, it is important that certain rules be followed regarding the presentation of content and its organization in folders

HTML files

Any type of HTML code can be used to create course content. There are some issues to keep in mind, however:

Closing tags o All tags should be properly closed. For instance, if you center some text using <center>,

you should not forget to include a </center> closing tag. Most browsers are very forgiving and will display pages correctly even if tags are not closed. However, several StudySpace™ functions such as printing are sensitive to unmatched tags.

Absolute positioning o Do not use absolute positioning in your HTML code. Current HTML standards allow

elements to be positioned on a window by giving absolute coordinates. This works well for a single page but any page with absolute positioning will not print correctly from StudySpace™.

Style sheets o Use of style sheets for formatting your content is encouraged. However, try to use a

single style sheet file for all your content. If you do use more than one file, take care that the same name is not used for different styles in different files, or your course will not print properly.

Using a good HTML editor can help you make sure that you create proper HTML code. Commercial tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage can check HTML files to make sure that all tags are closed. Several freeware editors, such as HTML-kit, also provide this capability.

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http://www.chami.com/html-kit/


LinksLinks between pages in the courseYou can create hyperlinks between pages of your course. However, be very careful to include only relative links, like the following:

<a href="html_files.htm">

Avoid absolute links like this:

<a href="file://c:\my documents\html_files.htm">

Links to extra materials

Your course may contain additional material. You may include links to this material in the course pages. These links should begin with /local for customization material specific to the Regional Centre and /extra for material of more general interest. Images for each type of page (discussion, concepts, local, extra or exercises) should be stored in the appropriate subdirectory /images under the various directories

i.e. – Directory Structure;

/content/discussion

/local/extra/images

/concepts/local/extra/images

/exercises/local/extra/images

For example, suppose that you wish to include a link to the video file "movie.mpg" in the directory “/local” directly under the “/discussion” directory. The appropriate link to this material would be:

<a href="local/movie.mpg">

Customization of Materials

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To add local case studies, or materials of relevance to a particular RTC or region, add it to /local directories under both the /concepts and /discussion directories.For local exercises use the /exercises/local directory

i.e. – Directory Structure;

/content/discussion

/local

/concepts/local

External links

Links to pages found on the internet can be included using the standard HTML format: <a href="http://www.uwaterloo.ca/">

Images

You may include graphics in any format supported by Internet Explorer. However, you must place every image file in a directory called images under the same directory where the course file resides. This implies that every reference to an image in your course file should look something like this:

<img src="images/myimagefile.gif">

i.e. - Directory Structure;

/content/discussion

/images/concepts

/images/exercises

/images

The size of the image is important – The final size of the image depends on the monitor on which it is displayed. Usually GIF images are better for line art and JPEG (.jpg) images are better for photographic images.

Typically, you would create an image, save it as a gif or jpg file, change the monitor resolution to 800 x 600 and see if the image fits the page. Reduce size if it does not and enlarge it if it is too small. You can

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then use that image size for other images.

Sources for Course MaterialsMost of what is put into a StudySpace™ course will come from Microsoft Word files or other word processors. Starting off with the material in Word format seems to what works best. In theory, the material can also start out in Microsoft PowerPoint format, but in practice – that’s just not very effective. It doesn’t translate to HTML well and just ends up being more trouble than it’s worth.

So, now we’re going to walk through the process using Dreamweaver - starting with a Word file and ending up with an html page that we can put into a StudySpace™ Course.

1. Left click on “File”2. Left click on “Save as Webpage”. Save the file in a folder of your choice. I find it is easiest to save

it in the same folder that contains the concepts and discussion subfolders. Word will automatically name the file the first two or three words of the text, but you can name it something else if you wish..

3. Open up Macromedia Dreamweaver4. Left click on “File”, scroll down the menu to “Import”, slide the cursor right, and then down to

“Word HTML”. Left click.5. At this point, a window will pop up. At the top of it, it will say “Select Word HTML File to Import”. 6. Using the buttons in the window, navigate to the file. Left click on it, then left click “open”7. “Clean up Word HTML” window opens. Make sure each box has a checkmark in it.

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Note that we will normally use Adobe Dreamweaver since it produces clean HTML code, but any good HTML editor will work. Almost any good photo editing software can be used to process images including Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Photoshop and IrfanView (Freeware)


8. Click “OK”; click “OK” again.9. Go into Dreamweaver’s “Code View”. You should see a <div> tag fairly near the top.10. Left click just before the tag that immediately follows that one.11. Move the cursor (not holding down any of the mouse buttons), to just before the closing </div>

tag.12. Press the “Shift” key on the keyboard, and then left click with the mouse. This will select all the

text within the two <div></div> tags.

13. Right click anywhere in the highlighted section; left click “copy”14. Open up another Dreamweaver html page, in “code view” 15. Place the cursor between the opening and closing body tags (<body></body>)16. Right click, and then left click “paste”.17. Now we have a nice, very clean HTML page.

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Images and Tables:

When you save a word file as HTML, any images from that file will be put in a folder called “name_of _folder_ files”. You should double click on the folder to open it. Every second image (image002, image 004, image006, etc.) will be the files you’ll be concerned with. It is best that the images be, at most, 560 pixels across. If the image you are dealing with is 560 pixels or less, you can simply rename it to something that suggests which file it is to be put into, where it goes in that file, and the content of the picture.

For example: . d_c3_m1_01_biomes_intro_fig_001_hummingbird.jpg.

Now, click on the name of the file and drag it into the images folder, within either the /concepts or the /discussion folder. To insert the image, with its new name, into your HTML file, here are the steps.

1. Make sure you have saved your HTML document. This will ensure that the file path to the image will be relative, as opposed to absolute.

2. Left click “Insert” at the top of the Dreamweaver Screen, scroll down to “image” (2nd from top). Left click.

3. Navigate to the file name of the image you want to insert. After you do this once, the insert image screen will automatically take you back there every time you want to insert an image.

4. Double click on the filename. Now your image is inserted.

If you need to resize an image, there are a couple ways to do it. Often, what is quickest is to

1. Double click the image to select it. This will bring up its properties. The properties dialog box can be seen at the bottom of the image below.

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2. Click resize image. This will give you the information about its size.3. To resize the image properly, so it’s re-sampled nicely, it’s best to use Fireworks (or similar photo

editor)4. Click “Edit with Fireworks”. This is the button just to the left of the “Reset Size” button. The

window that pops up will ask you whether to use an existing Fireworks file as the source. Click no. Fireworks files tend to be quite big and we do not want that.

5. At the top of the screen, scroll over to “Modify”. Click on it and scroll down to “Document” then left to “Image Size”. Click.

6. Change the top number to 560. The bottom number will change accordingly. Take note of the dimensions.

7. Go back to Dreamweaver, and enter the new dimensions in the “Image Properties” dialog box.8. Click somewhere on the screen to set the new image size. Do not click “Reset Size” as this will

only set the size back to what it was originally.

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If an image does not come from your original Word file, the process is almost the same.

As far as tables go, it is best that they be, at most, 95% of the screen wide.

1. Click “Insert”, scroll down to “Table”. Click.2. Change the properties to reflect what you want, make sure the width is 95% or less.

\

3. Click “OK”4. Now you can input information, to the table.

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Fonts and Headings; Formatting

As far as the look of StudySpace™ goes, we like to make sure that the concepts pages are easily distinguishable from the discussion pages. To this end, we use larger fonts on the concepts pages. Specifically, Heading 1 is used for the title and Heading 3 is used for the body. Here is an example of what that looks like.

For the discussion pages, the title is in Heading 3, and the body is just in the default font. Subtitles are bolded. You can change text size to Heading 1, Heading 3, or any other Heading size by highlighting the text you wish to size and clicking the appropriate choice in the Format section of the Properties Dialog box at the bottom of the screen.

After some experimentation, we have found that it is usually best to center all the images, and have only one per “line” (unless they are quite small, in which case you can put them beside one another).

Images can be centred by Clicking on the image in Dreamweaver, which will bring up its properties at the bottom of the screen. Now you should click the middle button, under the “Resize Image” button. This will centre it.

To centre a table, select the table in Dreamweaver by clicking on it. Make sure you have selected the entire table. At the properties dialog box at the bottom of the screen, select “center” from the “Align” menu.

Folders

The main course directory structure is:

/content/discussion/concepts/exercises

Each of these main folders contains other subfolders called /images, /local and /extra.

If the same image is used, for example, in both a concepts and a discussion page, the image will go into both /images folders.

File Naming – Best Practices

All files should have lower case filenames o This allows for easier portability to different platforms

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1. Us


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1. Us

2. However, each of the different types of pages should be distinguished as such. For example, we used d for discussion pages and we suggest e for extra pages and l for local pages.

3. In the file name, there should also be an indication of the course #, the module #, and the page #. (Page # describes the place that the page will appear in the StudySpace course.)

Place zeros ahead of any numbers that you use so the files will display in the correct order.

4. Finally, include one or two words in the name of the file that correspond to the topic of the file.


Course Structure Page (XML) PageThe course_structure.xml page is absolutely necessary to get your course to appear in StudySpace™.

It will: create the hierarchy that you see in the table of contents, and make your pages appear in the order that you want them to.

There are two main tags that you will need to use:1) section – designates each new section 2) topic – designates each page within the section

Within each of these tags, you need to define two attributes:1) title – this is the title that will appear in the StudySpace™ table of contents2) id – this is the name of the concepts file

These attributes are absolutely required. There are two other attributes that are not mandatory, but are important to include if you want certain things to appear:

1) discussion - this is the name of the discussion file2) coursemap - by including the attribute coursemap=“yes” in the tag, the title of that tag will appear

in the map.Once you’ve created your course hierarchy by typing in sections and topics in the order you want them in, you need to save your course structure file outside of the concepts and discussion folders as: course_structure.xml

The “.xml” is absolutely necessary to make the course structure file work. Do not have opening and closing xml tags in the actual file or it will not work.

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tag attribute description mandatory

section

title title to appear in the table of contents yes

id name of the HTML file containing the concepts yes

discussion name of the HTML file containing the discussion no

topic

title title to appear in the table of contents yes

id name of the HTML file containing the concepts yes

discussion name of the HTML file containing the discussion no

coursemap "yes" indicates that the topic should appear in the course map no

exercise id name of the XML file that contains the exercises yes

In the early drafts of the course, you should concentrate on sections and topics. After you are satisfied with the results, you can add the exercises to the course structure.

Here is a sample XML course structure file that contains part of the structure of this course.

<course title="StudySpace Course Development Guide"><section title="Overview" id="overview.htm" discussion="course_description.htm"> <topic title="Course map" id="coursemap.html" /> <topic title="Structure of a course" id="course_structure.htm" coursemap="y" /> <topic title="Table of contents" id="toc.htm" discussion="tableofcontents.htm" coursemap="y" /> <topic title="Sample course" id="sample_course.htm" coursemap="y" /></section><section title="Creating the course content" id="creating_content.htm"> <topic title="Organizing files" id="organizing_files.htm"

discussion="organizing_files.htm" coursemap="y" /> <topic title="HTML files" id="html_files.htm"

discussion="html_files.htm" coursemap="y" /> <topic title="Links" id="links.htm" coursemap="y" /> <topic title="Images" id="images.htm" coursemap="y" > <topic title="Picture size" id="picture_size.htm" /> </topic></section></course>

Course Map

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Including these elements in your xml file will automatically create a course map in StudySpace.


Every StudySpace™ course can include a course map page that shows all sections in the course, and the major topics inside each section. Ideally, from 5 to 10 pages of each section should appear in the course map.

In order to signal that a page should appear in the course map, you should add an attribute to the topic tag of the form coursemap="yes". For example,

<topic title="Exporting PowerPoint" id="export_pp.htm" coursemap="yes"/>Every topic that contains this attribute will appear in the map. You must also determine where the course map should appear in the course structure. In order to do this, add the following topic to your course structure file inside a section, at the appropriate position:

<topic title="Course Map" id="coursemap.html"/>

The following shows a sample course map:

StudySpace™ Course Development Guide

OverviewCreating the

course content

Course structure file

Using the course development

tools

Starting from PowerPoint

slidesCreating exercises

Structure of a course

Table of contents

Sample course

Organizing files

HTML files

Links

Tags

Course map

Checking the file

Course development form

Course generation results

Exporting PowerPoint to

the web

Cleaning up HTML files

Multiple-choice

questions

Short-answer questions

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http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/exercises-saq.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/exercises-saq.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/exercises-mcq.htm



http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/cleaning_html.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/cleaning_html.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/exporting_pp.htm



http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/results.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/results.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/development_form.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/development_form.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/checking_structure.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/checking_structure.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/course_map.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/course_structure_tags.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/links.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/html_files.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/organizing_files.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/organizing_files.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/sample_course.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/toc.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/toc.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/course_structure.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/course_structure.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/exercises.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/exercises.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/starting_powerpoint.htm



http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/using_developer.htm



http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/structure_file.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/structure_file.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/creating_content.htm



http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/overview.htm


Images Fixing HTML files

Adding hierarchy to the course

structure

Sample exercise file

Checking the fileOnce the course structure file is created, you should check it to see whether it contains valid XML code.

Make sure that the file name has extension .xml Double-click the file on Windows Explorer. It should open in an Internet Explorer window. If the file contains valid XML, its contents will appear in the window. If the XML code is not valid, an error message will be displayed that will help you find the source

of the problem.

Once the file has been checked and contains proper XML, it is ready to be processed to generate a StudySpace™ course.

Checking the XML CodeTo check to see if the xml code in the file is valid before you create the StudySpace™ course, you can open it in Internet Explorer. Do this by:

1) placing your mouse over the unopened file,2) right-clicking on the mouse button,3) choosing “Open With”4) then “Internet Explorer”

If there are no problems with the xml code, the course development page will display exactly as you typed it in. If there is a problem with the code, an error message will be displayed, similar to the one shown below:

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http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/exercises-sample.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/exercises-sample.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/hierarchy.htm



http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/fixing_html.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/fixing_html.htm

http://colin.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/courses/devguide/content/concepts/images.htm


Common Problems Displayed in Internet ExplorerTag is not closed – all xml tags must be closed. Either with a “\” or a separate <\topic> <\section>

Course Development Form

Once you have created the course structure file without any XML errors it is time to compile the course in StudySpace™, using the course development form. You can find this form by going to the Windows “Start” Menu, then to “Programs,” then to “StudySpace™,” and then to “Course Development Form.”

Common Problems Found through the Course Development Form

Like Internet Explorer, the course development tool will tell you if there are any problems with your xml file. The most common problems are:

o “.htm” is missing from the file name in the xml page

o spelling mistakes, either in the actual file name or in the file name in the xml page

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This message tells you what line the problem can be found on.


If these problems are not fixed, the course will not display in StudySpace™.

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Description of the errors found by the StudySpace course development tool in the course structure (xml) file.


Summary of the StudySpace™ Assembling and Editing Process

1) Create or import the content of your course

2) Create the folders required by StudySpace™

3) Convert your course content to HTML

4) Make sure the content is separated into a concepts and discussion format

5) Place the HTML pages into the appropriate folders

6) Rename your files if necessary

7) Create a course structure (xml) file

8) Check the xml file for code errors in Internet Explorer

9) Use the course development form to compile the course

10) Fix any errors shown through the course development form

11) Repeat steps 9 and 10 until there are no errors

12) Press the “Open Course” button to view your course in StudySpace™

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Overview of the directory structure of coursesStudySpace™ will set up /discussion and /concepts directories under the /content directory. If you have local materials for customization of the courses, they should go into the /local directory located immediately below both the /discussion and /concepts or /exercises directories.

More general interest materials will be placed in the /extra directory below the main /discussion, /concepts and /exercises directories

For example:

/Program_Files/StudySpace

/courses/course1

/content/discussion

/images/local/extra

/concepts/images/local/extra

/exercises/images/local/extra

The difference between the materials in the /local and /extra directories is that the /local directory is intended for local or regional customization while the /extras directory is intended for additional or peripheral materials that will be available to everyone taking the course in all regions.

Standards for Course Layout & DesignNote that these are recommended standards for naming pages, sections and titles and for the general layout (fonts, image sizes, etc.) for StudySpace™. They are based on our findings during the preparation

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Of particular utility is the convention of naming files in sequential numerical order with preceding zeros – remembering that most operating systems will order files correctly in a directory if they find the files named 0001filename.extension through 9999filename.extension rather than 1filename.extension through 9999filename.extension.

Why? – the operating systems would put 1filename.extension next to 10filename.extension rather than in strict numerical order.

This strict numerical ordering is very useful when looking at and using directories containing large numbers of files that should be numbered in sequence


of the WLC core curriculum since they helped in maintaining a consistent and easily recognisable file structure and naming convention. This makes it easier to construct the course and edit it later. They are NOT required for the StudySpace™ software; it will work with any naming convention.

Note: If the same image is used in a concepts, a discussion, a local, an exercise or an extras page, that image will go into each of the /concepts/images folder, the /discussion/images folder, the /local/images, the /exercises/images or the /extras/images folders.

Concept Pages

File Name:

c##_s##_p##_[one word describing the name

of the section]_[one word describing the name

of the page].htm

Where: c## = course#; s## =section #; p## = page #

(example: c08_s05_p27_gender_whatis.htm)

Title: centered, font = <h1>, <hr> under title

Body Text: font = <h3>

Table: font = <h3> or smaller if there is lots of text

Discussion Pages

File Name:

The same as the corresponding concepts page, only with a “d_” at the beginning of the file name.

(example: d_c08_s05_p27_gender_whatis.htm)

Title:Title of Concept Page: Discussion

centered, font = <h3>, no <hr> under title(example:Plant Succession: Discussion)

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Subtitle: font = <h4>

Body Text:: font = <p> (no font face, such as “Arial”, – use the default style in the browser)

Images

File Name:

c##_s##_p##_##_[one word describing the

image].jpg or .gif

Where: c## = course#, s## = section#, p##

= page # of the file where the image is

displayed

And: ##=order of the image on the page

.gif (usually for line art) or .jpg (usually for

photos)

include “d_” at the beginning of the file

name if the image is found on a discussion

page

(example: c08_s05_p27_02_aquifer.htm)

Title:centered, directly above or below image,

font = bold, no Figure #

Border Size: depends on the look

Size: max width 560 pixels

Tables

centered, font = none, sometimes bold

no Table #

sized by % not by pixel, maximum size = 95%

Each Section Heading Page is a concept page only – no discussion page

Section # Title of Section

Centered, font = <h1>, <hr> under title

Example:

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Section 1

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Principles of Aquatic EcosystemUsing the Course Development ToolThis section explains how to use the StudySpace™ Course Development tool to create your own StudySpace™ course.

You can access the course development tool through the Windows Start Menu, under the group StudySpace.

Course development form

The StudySpace™ course development form is where you specify some facts about your course, and activate the course conversion process. Some of the fields are required, and some are optional.

Use the discussion button in the toolbar to see an explanation about what each of the fields and buttons mean.

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FieldsHere is what each field in the form means:

Field Explanation Required?

Course abbreviation

This is a single word or acronym that identifies your course. Choosing an abbreviation is important, because every course in a program must have a unique abbreviation. This will be the name of the directory under which the course content will reside. The abbreviation should have only letters and/or digits, with no spaces or special characters.

Y

Structure file This is the name of the XML file that contains the course structure. Y

Course title This is the full title of the course. Y

Author/Creator The author of the course N

Short course title

The short course title appears above the table of contents. If you leave this field blank, the full title will be used instead. N

Logo GIF file This is a graphic logo that appears over the table of contents. N

Exercises Check this box if your course includes exercises. N

Command buttons

Retrieve The Retrieve button can be used to recover the information about a course you have created previously. Enter the course abbreviation and click on the button. The other fields will be filled automatically with the information you entered.

Generate course

When you have filled out all the information, pressing the Generate course button will launch the StudySpace™ course generator.

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When you click the Generate course button on the course development form, the development tools will process your course files and attempt to create a new StudySpace™ course.

The results of the generation process are displayed in the browser window. If there were no errors or warnings, you will see the message Course created successfully. Otherwise, an error or warning message will be displayed.

The output from the course generation tools is also displayed in the window. If there were any errors or warnings, you can study this output to learn what the cause of the error was.

Once the course has been successfully created, you can click on the Open Course button to launch your course in StudySpace™.

Sample output from the course generation process:

Course created successfullyOpen Course

Filename: C:\My Documents\Work\Development Guide\devguide.xmlAbbreviation: devguide


Reading course information file... Done.Creating course devguide ("StudySpace Course Development Guide"):

Copying files... Done.Creating course map... Done.Checking existence of HTML files listed in structure file... Done.Checking discussion page consistency... Done.Generating menu... Done.Generating printing dialog box... Done.Generating 'visited' progress report... Done.Generating 'understanding' progress report... Done.Generating index.html file... Done.Generating toolbar.html file... Done.Copying initialize.html file to devguide directory... Copying toc.css file to devguide directory... Updating course index...Done

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Starting from PowerPoint slidesIf you already have the course content in PowerPoint format, it is possible to use your slides as a starting point to create a StudySpace™ course.

We have found that the process of “Exporting Powerpoint slides to the web” (an option in Powerpoint) causes more difficulties than simply copying and pasting the text materials and images to an editor like Dreamweaver. It is recommended that you follow this simple process to make StudySpace™ pages from PowerPoint slides.

Fixing HTML files

PowerPoint may not do a good job exporting slides that have:

diagrams pictures or math symbols and equations

These types of elements do not have a simple conversion to HTML. In this case, you have to fix the HTML files manually.

Creating exercisesExercises in StudySpace™:StudySpace™ supports exercises for self-assessment. A student can attempt to solve the exercises at any time. He can also clear his answers and attempt them more than once during his studies. Answering the exercises provides the student with some feedback on his progress through the course.

Currently two types of exercises are supported: multiple-choice questions, and short-answer questions.

Exercises always appear in an exercise page. Each exercise page can have any number of exercises, of any type. Exercise pages do not contain reading material, only exercises.

Each exercise page is described as an XML document. The top-level tag <exercise> delimits the exercises in an exercise page.

Every XML document containing an exercise page should be placed in a directory called exercises. This directory should be in the same location as your concepts and discussion directories.

Multiple-choice questions

Multiple-choice questions provide a stem, which is the question the student is expected to answer, and a number of options. The student must select the option that most appropriately answers the question posed in the stem. This option is the key. The other options are the distractors.

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The XML tag <multiple-choice-question> is used to delimit each question. Inside this section there should appear at least one <key> element and one or more <distractor> elements.

The following is a sample XML of a multiple-choice question:

<multiple-choice-question> <stem>What course pages appear in the course map?</stem> <distractor>All pages in the course</distractor> <distractor>Only the first page of each section</distractor> <key>All pages marked with the <i>coursemap="y"</i> option</key> <distractor>Section and topic pages, but not subtopics</distractor></multiple-choice-question>

The number of options can vary from question to question. In this example, we have four options and the third option is the correct answer

Short-answer questions

Short-answer questions are those that pose an open-ended question to the student. The student then writes his answer in a text box. When the student is finished, the correct answer is displayed and it is up to the student to check whether his answer is similar to the correct answer.

The XML tag <short-answer-question> is used to delimit each question. Inside this section, there should be two elements: a <question> element that contains the question, and an <answer> element that contains the correct answer.

The following is a sample XML of a short-answer question:

<short-answer-question><question>Why do the exercises files have to be written in XML?</question><answer>XML is a flexible way of describing structured information.Exercise descriptions written in XML can be easily modified or reordered without the need for specialized tools.</answer>

</short-answer-question>

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Sample exercises

The following is a sample XML file for an exercise page with two multiple-choice questions and one short-answer question. The resulting exercises are in the next page.

<exercise>

<multiple-choice-question> <stem>What course pages appear in the course map?</stem> <distractor>All pages in the course</distractor> <option> <distractor>Only the first page of each section</distractor> <feedback> The first page of each section always appears in the course map, but there are other pages that may also appear. </feedback> </option> <option> <key>All pages marked with the <i>coursemap="y"</i> option</key> <feedback> The coursemap attribute marks a page for inclusion in the course map. </feedback> </option> <distractor>Section and topic pages, but not subtopics</distractor> </multiple-choice-question>

<short-answer-question><question>Why do the exercises files have to be written in XML?</question><answer>XML is a flexible way of describing structured information.Exercise descriptions written in XML can be easily modified or reordered without the need for specialized tools.</answer>

</short-answer-question>

<multiple-choice-question><stem>What is the easiest way to test whether or not all tags areproperly closed in your XML files?</stem>

<distractor>Read them very carefully</distractor><distractor>Use a commercial XML editor</distractor><key>Open the file using Internet Explorer</key>

</multiple-choice-question>

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</exercise>

Exercises in JQUIZJQuiz is a program to generate quizzes for student self-assessment. It allows a large number of options to set up the quizzes. The quizzes after conversion to HTML for Microsoft Explorer 6.xx can be stored in and invoked from the /exercises directory with a simple URL referencing the initial JQuiz page. This URL should run JQuiz in a separate window (new window) See JQuiz for all of the available options.

StudySpace™ Design & Implementation NotesFor those of you who want to know how StudySpace™ “works”, this section is an overview of the design principles and implementation. You do not have to know these details to produce a course or to use the software.

The StudySpace™ implementation is divided into two distinct parts: the client side, written in JavaScript and XSLT, and the server side, written in Perl. The client programs were designed to run on the Internet Explorer browser. The XSLT transformations require either IE version 6 or IE version 5.01 plus Microsoft XML Core Services version 4.0. The server programs require Perl version 5 or above.

StudySpace™ Client (student’s client)

Client and server scriptsThe server side programs are necessary to handle functions that require modifying web pages, such as highlighting and margin notes, and web pages that have dynamically generated content, such as the progress reports.

The current trend is to replace as much functionality as possible that is currently is Javascript or Perl with XSLT or other XML-related languages.

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Client – Internet Explorer 6

Javascript:

Next/Previous

Concepts/Discussion

Level of Understanding

Exercises

Server – IndigoPerl (Apache + Perl)

Highlighting

Margin Notes

Progress Reports

Printing


Client side programs – JavaScript

The JavaScript programs are located in the “system\JavaScript” directory. There are a total of six programs. Each is used by one or more of the HMTL files found in the root directory of a course (e.g., “Courses\DS”).

JavaScript file Functions Used bylevelscripts.js Level of understanding toolbar.htmlmenuscripts.js Collapsible menus, browsing menu.html, toolbar.htmlexercisescripts.js Exercises exercises\*.htmprintscripts.js Show the “printable notes” dialog

boxmenu.html

submitscripts.js Progress report submission menu.htmltoolbarscripts.js Toolbar functions toolbar.htmlxmlscripts.js XML-related javascripts menu.htmlwmscripts.js Freeware low-level scripts from

www.webmonkey.commenu.html, toolbar.html, exercises\*.htm

sourcedrive.js Created during setup by “indigoperl/setup.bat”. Contains letter of CD drive from which StudySpace™TM was installed

menuscripts.js

contextmenu.js Show menu to switch from small icons to large icons in the toolbar

toolbar.html

keystrokes.js allows the “Page Up” and “Page Down” keys to be used for navigation

not used at present

Client side programs – XSLT

The XSL transformations found in "System/XSL" are used to generate the table of contents on-the-fly, expanding a section every time one of its topics is viewed.

XSL file Functions Works on XML file(s)

Used by JavaScript

generate-TOC.xsl Generate the HTML code for the table of contents

course_structure.xml, progress.xml, help.xml

xmlscripts.js

Generate-commands.xsl

Generate the menu items that appear at the bottom of the table of contents

commands.xml xmlscripts.js

generate-order.xsl Create a Javascript array containing the sequential order of the pages


xmlscripts.js

find-section.xsl Determine the id of the section to which a given topic belongs


xmlscripts.js

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http://www.webmonkey.com/


number-of-sections.xsl

Determine the number of sections in a course

course_structure.xml printscripts.js

These are the XML documents that the XSL transformations work on:

XML file Contents Locationcourse_structure.xml Course structure (sections, topics,

etc.)/courses/{course-abbreviation}/content

progress.xml Progress reports /system/xmlhelp.xml Help files /system/xmlcommands.xml Menu items (print notes, e-mail

tutor, etc.)/courses/{course-abbreviation}/

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Server side scripts – Perl

Server side scripts are necessary to:- modify the contents of web pages using margin notes or highlighting;- view the contents of modified pages;- store information for progress reports, like visited pages and exercise results- generating course files suitable for printing

Perl scripts are located in directory /perl-bin/StudySpace™ under the installation directory.

Perl script Functions Used byloadpage.pl Gets a requested page from the server and

sends it to the client. Deals with pages that have been modified by the user and with progress reports

menuscripts.txt

cookie.pl Saves information on the server – used for visited pages and level of understanding.

menuscripts.txt, levelscripts.txt

clear-cookie.pl Clears information stored on the server _SS_progress_visited.htmedit-margin-notes.pl

Gets margin notes that already exist in a page and displays them in a dialog box.

toolbarscripts.txt

margin-notes.pl Saves margin notes for a page. The modified page including notes is saved on the server.

edit-margin-notes.pl

highlight.pl Inserts tags in a page to highlight a section of text in yellow. Saves the modified page on the server.

toolbarscripts.txt

highlight-clear.pl Removes highlighting from a page toolbarscripts.txtinitialize-user-data.pl

Creates user directories on the server and reads existing "level of understanding" information

menu.html

print-course-notes.pl

Generates a single HTML page with page breaks, containing the entire course or a single section, suitable for printing

printing.html

progress-understanding.pl

subroutine to read "level of understanding" information and generate a progress report

loadpage.pl

progress-visited.pl subroutine to read "visited pages" information and generate a progress report

loadpage.pl

readpage.pm subroutines to read a requested page from the server, deciding whether to use an original file or a user-modified file.

*.pl

getusername.pm subroutine to retrieve the name of the user who is making a request

*.pl

SSvariables.pm Contains important global variables such as the base URL for the course and directories where courses and help pages are stored

*.pl

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Other files

A number of other important files that are not scripts are also part of the StudySpace™ system. This is a list of these files:

File: StudySpace.exe Location: /Description: executable file that starts the apache web server and launches the web browser with the initial StudySpace™ page; the source code for this file is in system/source/startup.c

File: index.html Location: /Description: html file that redirects to /courses/index.html; this is the root file of the system, which you reach through the URL http://localhost:4444/

File: index.html Location: /coursesDescription: contains the course index file; this file is updated whenever a new course is installed by the perl script “indigoperl/createcourseindex.pl”.

File: initialize.html Location: /coursesShows the message “initializing system, please wait” while redirecting to

File: toc.css Location: /coursesDescription: style sheet for the table of contents

File: url.js Location: /coursesDescription: javascript file containing the root URL for StudySpace™ (for local installs, this is “http://localhost:4444/”)

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http://localhost:4444/

http://localhost:4444/


Creating a StudySpace™ CD

The following items should be in every CD that contains StudySpace™:

1. setup.exeThe setup program that installs StudySpace™ and any courses.

2. setup.confA text file that contains one line per item that is to be installed. The first line is always StudySpace. The following lines contain the names of the directories where the course setup files are found. For example, if I want to create a CD that installs MPM and DB, the file would contain:

StudySpaceMPMDB

3. Autorun.infThis file is used by Windows to run the "setup.exe" program automatically when the CD is

inserted in the drive.

4. Readme.txt

You can find the latest Readme.txt file in the "System/Install" directory of the StudySpace™ system. Depending on the course, the Readme file may contain additional information. So far, the courses that need additional information are MPM, OOPD and DB (information about the Watcom compiler) and DS (information about Java). The Readme files for these courses are in the same directory ("System/Install"). Always install the latest StudySpace™ to find the newest Readme file.

5. System and course installation directoriesEach item to be installed should be in its own directory, as listed in the file setup.conf. The directory should contain the setup files generated using Installshield.

6. Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6.0The setup files for Internet Explorer 5.5 should be placed in a directory called "ie55" and Explorer 6.0 in a directory ie6. You can find these setup files in any StudySpace™ CD. Internet Explorer 7 and 8 also work correctly when downloaded from Microsoft.

7. Windows 95 patch (Windows 95 is not a recommended operating system for StudySpace™ software since it is no longer supported by Microsoft)

A patch for Windows 95 systems (W95ws2setup.exe) should be placed in a directory called "Win95 patch". You can download this file from Microsoft at the following URL, or get it from a StudySpace™ CD at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/WUAdminTools/S_WUNetworkingTools/W95Sockets2/Default.asp

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Configuring StudySpace™ for IIS serversInstallation

1. Install StudySpace™ normally from a CD to the server's hard disk.2. Make a note of the folder where StudySpace™ is installed. By default, this is "C:\Program Files\

StudySpace\"

Create Virtual Directory3. Open the Internet Services Manager (ISM)4. In the ISM, create a virtual directory called "StudySpace" in the desired website. The virtual directory

should point to the folder noted in step 2. Permissions to read, execute scripts, and execute CGI should be given to the virtual directory.

Permissions5. Configure the access permissions for the folder where StudySpace™ is installed (see step 2). To do

this, click the right mouse button over the folder, select "Security", then add all users who should have access to StudySpace™. All users should have read and execute permissions, at least.

6. Configure the access permissions for the folder "courses/feedback/userdata" in the same way as described in step 5, but giving write, read and execute permissions to all desired users.

7. It is important that each user identify himself to access the system, since StudySpace™ stores individual information for each user according to his login name. To disallow anonymous access, it is necessary to remove access permissions from the StudySpace folder for use IUSR_<machine name>.

8. Create an empty file called “progress_reports.data” in the root StudySpace™ folder. This file must have modify and write permissions for all StudySpace™ users.

Perl If the server is already configured to execute Perl Scripts, skip to step 9.

9. The site http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q245225 contains detailed information about how to configure IIS for Perl. The steps are summarized below for the Windows 2000 IIS.

9.1. Open the Internet Services Manager (ISM) under the "Administrative Tools" menu9.2. Click the right mouse button on the web site where StudySpace™ was installed and select

"Properties"9.3. Select the "Home Directory" tab9.4. Click on the "Configuration" button9.5. Click "Add"9.6. Enter the following text in the "Executable" text field:

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http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q245225


"<StudySpace folder>\indigoperl\bin\perl.exe" "-I<StudySpace folder>\perl-bin\StudySpace\" "%s" "%s"The %s must be lower case and the double quotes must be input as shown. For example, if StudySpace™ was installed in directory "c:\websites\StudySpace", the text field must read:"C:\websites\StudySpace\indigoperl\bin\perl.exe" "-IC:\websites\StudySpace™\perl-bin\StudySpace\" "%s" "%s"

9.7. Enter the following text in the "Extension" text field:.pl

9.8. Make sure that the "All Verbs" option is set.9.9. Click "OK" until you return to the Internet Services Manager

Configuring StudySpace™

10. Edit the file called "SSvariables.pm" in the "perl-bin/StudySpace" folder, in the installation directory. Modify the value of the webInstallation variable so that it is equal to 1:

$webInstallation = 1; Modify the value of the baseURL variable so that it contains the appropriate string. For instance, if

the server has the URL "http://aserver.uwaterloo.ca" and the virtual directory is "StudySpace", the value of baseURL should be: $baseURL = "http://aserver.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/";

11. Edit the file "courses/url.js" in the installation directory. Modify the value of the baseURL variable in the same way as in the previous step.

12. To start StudySpace™, simply open the above URL (the same one configured for baseURL) using Internet Explorer version 6 or above.

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http://aserver.uwaterloo.ca/StudySpace/

http://aserver.uwaterloo.ca/


Readme.txt file from CDStudySpace™ version 3.00-----------------------

System Requirements-------------------Internet Explorer 6.0 or above (IE 6.0 is included in CD - see below)486 66Mhz or higher (Pentium processor recommended)Windows XP, Vista or Win 7 (Win 8 has not been verified)32 Mb RAM (64 Mb for Windows 2000 or XP)13 Mb hard disk space

Installation instructions-------------------------Before installing the StudySpace™ system,uninstall any previous installation. If youhave courses installed, do not uninstall them;they will work with the new system.

Run SETUP.EXE from the root directory of your CD,and follow the installation prompts.

There is a separate setup for the StudySpace™ System andfor the course contents. The SETUP.EXE program will runboth installations. If you wish to install either ofthese components separately, go to the appropriatedirectory of the CD and run the Setup file found there.

Windows /XP/Vista/Win7 Administrator privileges are required to install StudySpace™.

Maintenance instructionsA maintenance window will appear in the following two situations: when you run the setup.exe program for the system or any of the courses when they are already installed; or when you try to remove the software using "Add/Remove Programs".

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From the maintenance window you may choose to reinstall (second option) or uninstall (third option). The first option does not apply to this software.

If the setup.exe program belongs to a version of the software that is newer than the one you have installed, the maintenance window will not appear and instead the new version of the system or course will be automatically installed over the old version. You will not lose any information you have added to the course.

Uninstallation instructions

To uninstall StudySpace™, activate the Windows Start Menu, then choose "Settings", "Control Panel", "Add/Remove Programs". Find the StudySpace™ entry in the list and click on "Add/Remove". In the list, the entry labeled "StudySpace" refers to the StudySpace™ system, while other entries refer to courses. For instance, "StudySpace Distributed Systems" refers to the Distributed Systems course. You will have to repeat this process for each of the courses that you wish to uninstall.When you click on "Add/Remove", the maintenance window will appear.Select the last option in the window to uninstall the software

Troubleshooting- Internet Explorer opens with the message "The page cannot be displayed"

Open Internet Explorer and go to Tools->Internet Options. Click on the "Connections" tab. Click the "LAN Settings" button. Now,make sure the "Automatically Detect Settings" box is NOT checked. If you are using Rogers cable as an internet provider, you must also make sure that the "Automatic configuration script" box is NOT checked so you are not using their proxy server, because the proxy configuration will prevent you from running a server on your computer, even in local mode, and StudySpace™ requires this. Rogers recommends turning off this option if you are having problems.

- "Try again/Work Offline"

Internet Explorer version 5.00 has a bug where you may get a dialog box when starting StudySpace™, with the message "Web page not available when offline", together with the options to "Try again" or "Work Offline". Clicking on "Try again" should make StudySpace™ work normally. If you click on "Work Offline", StudySpace™ will not work. This dialog box does not appear in Internet Explorer 5.5.The best way to solve this problem is to upgrade to Internet Explorer version 5.5 (included in the StudySpace™ CD) or move to a later Internet Explorer (8 or 9)- A dialog box may appear every time you start StudySpace™, asking whether you would like to connect to the internet. You can eliminate this dialog box by selecting "Internet Options" from the "Tools" menu in Internet Explorer, then clicking on the "Connections" tab and selecting the option "Never dial a connection".- If you are running a personal web server such as Microsoft Peer Web Services (older) or Microsoft Web Matrix (new), this may interfere with StudySpace™. If you experience problems running StudySpace™,

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we suggest that you stop the server. This applies to any web server software that might be on your computer. These web servers do NOT cooperate well with other web servers. Skype has also caused problems and if the StudySpace software fails, shut down Skype and try again.- When you quit StudySpace™, the system takes several seconds to shut down. If you receive the message "Unable to start system. It is possible that a previous execution has not yet shut down", try waiting a little longer before attempting to run the system. If for some reason this problem persists for a long time, it is likely that the previous execution of StudySpace™ did not shut down properly. In this case, call up the task manager using Ctrl-Alt-Del and kill any processes called "Apache" and "StudySpace", or reboot the machine.

- If during installation a dialog box appears with the title "Component Transfer Error" or "Error removing support files", and the message "Unspecified Error", the problem is the incompatibility between the version of InstallShield we use and other versions. You probably installed some other software that used another version of InstallShield, and the two versions are incompatible.

To solve this, perform the following steps: 1. Move the following two folders to some temporary folder: c:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Engine c:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\IScript 2. Run the "setup.exe" program from the StudySpace™ CD 3. After installation, move the folders back to the original folder

StudySpace™ conflicts with some internet connection sharing software such as Wingate. If you experience problems running StudySpace™, we recommend that you disable Wingate while using StudySpace™. No-one is likely to be running these programs today – they are effectively obsolete

Some firewall software such as ZoneAlarm, ZoneAlarm Pro, the Microsoft firewall and probably others, will prevent StudySpace™ from operating correctly unless you specify that the Apache server or Local port 4444 can be enabled. It differs with each firewall, but basically you need to enter the StudySpace™ port (127.0.0.1:4444) or the server name (Apache) as a “trusted program” before the firewall will allow your computer to access your own computer! Zonealarm can also be disabled for the period of your session.

This problem with ZoneAlarm or similar firewalls does not seem to be a problem with more recent (after 2010) version of the firewall software – it may ask if you want to allow StudySpace™ to run, and answering yes usually works OK.

Microsoft Explorer VersionsInternet Explorer 7 and 8 and 9

Download from the Microsoft website and install.

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Setup.ini file from CD

[Info]Name=INTLVersion=1.00.000DiskSpace=8000 ;DiskSpace requirement in KB

[Startup]CmdLine=SuppressWrongOS=YScriptDriven=0ScriptVer=1.0.0.1DotNetOptionalInstallIfSilent=NOnUpgrade=1RequireExactLangMatch=0404,0804Product=StudySpace™PackageName=StudySpace.msiMsiVersion=2.0.2600.0EnableLangDlg=NDoMaintenance=YProductCode={9AB577FF-0E9B-47B4-AE64-0699D1C19857}SuppressReboot=YPackageCode={387B7514-7568-465B-AD07-DAFD92A17F7B}

[SupportOS]Win95=1Win98=1WinME=1WinNT4=1Win2K=1

[Win95]MajorVer=4MinorVer=0MinorVerMax=1BuildNo=950PlatformId=1

[Win98]

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MajorVer=4MinorVer=10MinorVerMax=11BuildNo=1998PlatformId=1

[WinME]MajorVer=4MinorVer=90MinorVerMax=91BuildNo=3000PlatformId=1

[WinNT4]MajorVer=4MinorVer=0MinorVerMax=1BuildNo=1381PlatformId=2ServicePack=1536

[Win2K]MajorVer=5MinorVer=0MinorVerMax=1BuildNo=2195PlatformId=2

[Languages]count=1default=409key0=409[StudySpace.msi]Type=0Location=StudySpace.msi[Setup.bmp]Type=0[instmsiw.exe]Type=0Location=instmsiw.exe[instmsia.exe]Type=0

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Location=instmsia.exe

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