Selective Release - Overview

Overview of Selective Release

The Selective Release feature allows you to set a time and date for the appearance of an icon on your student homepage, or on a toolpage. This icon can be linked to a content path which you want to release to students at a given time, such as after a mid-term exam. This discussion of Selective Release is restricted to illustrating how you control the release of a course path. It is important to remember, however, that the Selective Release feature can also be used to control the distribution of URLs, individual WebCT tools, toolpages, single pages of content, quizzes, and calendars.

Note: You can also Hide or Reveal icons by clicking on Organize Icons in your Homepage toolbar. For an explanation of the Hide and Reveal features see Organizing Icons - Hiding/Revealing an Icon

You can also use Selective Release to convey course material to selected students. This feature is useful when you want to post references to books or articles for a group of students collaborating on a project.

To use Selective Release you first create the material whose distribution you want to control. To accomplish this you create a new path and add course notes, references, or whatever material you wish to make available to your students. The next step is to link the new path you have created to your student homepage. This is a two-step process which requires you to first create an icon, then link the icon to the new course material using the Path Editor feature. To add the icon, begin at your homepage and click Organize Icons Add Path. The Add Link to Path screen will appear (see Figure 1 below).

Type a title for the new link in the text box. Then click Browse... to select an icon to represent the new link.

Press Add to complete the addition of the new path link, or Cancel to stop without making any changes. Once a new path link has been created, the icon and its hyperlinked title will appear on your homepage. Go to your homepage and click on the hyperlink to open the Path Editor and link your course content to the new icon. This is discussed in the Online Help section titled Adding Content to a Path.

Once you have added the new path, and have placed its icon on the homepage, you are ready to use the selective release feature. To do so, click Organize Icons on the homepage. Next, select the radio button associated with the icon that represents the path whose distribution you want to control with the Selective Release feature. Now click Edit on the Organize toolbar. The Update Link to Path screen will appear (see Figure 2 below).

Clicking Select in the Selective Release area of the Update Link to Path screen will display the Member Selection screen (see Figure 3 below). If you wish to give access to the material to a limited number of students, this screen lets you choose who will receive it. To do so, select the check boxes next to the appropriate student names and click Update at the bottom of the screen.

Selective Release of Course Material

The Selective Release option allows you to make an icon visible to students based on one or more criteria. The conditions upon which you allow the icon to be released are set in the Release based on fields in the Selective Release area of the Update Link to Path screen. This Selective Release area contains drop-down menus as shown in Figure 4 below.

Note that if you leave the Selective Release fields in the default state (as shown in Figure 2 above), the icon is released to all students, unless you have hidden it.

If you make an icon accessible with the Selective Release feature, it can be seen only when all of the requirements you have specified in the fields are met by your students. For example, if you fill out only the Release After field, the icon will be released to everyone after the date specified. If you then fill out the Release Until field, the icon will not be available to anyone after that date. The release period would therefore extend from the Release After date to the Release Until date, and all students would have access to the icon during this period. If you then fill out the Release To field, you would further restrict the icon, allowing it to be used only by those students listed in the Release To field.

The icon would then be available only during the period extending from the Release After date to the Release Until date, and only to those students listed in the Release To field.

You could further limit the release of the icon by filling in the Release based on field. For example, with this field you can release an icon based on a student's midterm mark being greater than 70. The application of all the fields just discussed would create the following conditions: the icon would be released only during the period between the Release After date and the Release Until date to those students who are listed in the Release To field who have achieved a midterm grade greater than 70.

You could also choose to release the icon to students based on the student's first name, last name, User ID, student number, or any other column in the student database. Note that the drop-down menu shown in the diagram below is updated to reflect changes to the the columns in the student database (see Student Management - Columns).

The second drop-down menu (see Figure 5 below) lists ways of specifying who can view the icon. Combinations of choices from the two drop-down menus give you control over selecting subsets of students to which the icon will be released.

As mentioned above, the selective release option can also be used to specify a date and time when the icon will be released. The date and time of the release may be set using the Release After and/or Release Until boxes as shown in Figure 6 below.

When an icon has been configured to be selectively released, you will see the word Conditional next to the icon in the designer view of the homepage.

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