www.sfu.ca is the official website of the Simon Fraser University. It was established in the year 1965. SFU is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The motto of the Simon Fraser University is Nous sommes prêts which means “We are ready”. Simon Fraser University operates year-round tri-semester schedule for Undergraduate and graduate programs.

Screenshot of SFU WebCT Vista Login page

Blackboard owns WebCT (Course Tools) or Blackboard Learning System which is an online proprietary virtual learning environment system that is used in many campuses, colleges and other institutions for e-learning. WebCT courses contain tools as discussion boards, mail systems and live chat, along with content including documents and web pages. Nowadays, the newest versions of this software are called Web courses. For higher education, WebCT is the world’s first widely successful course management system. Blackboard Inc. runs and develops teaching and learning enterprise software called WebCT Vista. Universities and other education institutions use WebCT Vista as classroom management software, and as a distance education service. WebCT Vista consists class notes, audio streaming of the classes, quizzes and forums.

For any purpose, you have to make login in your account on this website https://cas.sfu.ca by entering SFU Computing ID and password, and then click on ‘login’ button. If you have forgotten your SFU Computing ID or password, then click on their respective option. When you login in your account, it will open “My WebCT” page which contain universal mail, provides calendar feeds from all your courses, and has links to some SFU resources. You have to click on particular course name to check the list of current course. You can also see your grades by click on the link to MY GRADES. You can view only that grades which your instructor has added for screening. You can only view your own grades. Your instructor may choose to release class statistics. If you do not have MY GRADES icons in you tools, it seems that your instructor is not using WebCT.

Students can store course-related files in the My Files which is an area in WebCT. They can only access that files which are stored in the MyFiles area. No one can access your private WebCT file storage area except you. It has a storage capacity of 20MG and accessible from the MyWebCT page (when you log-in), in the tab called content manager. If you want to change your preferred name, for that you have to login in https://go.sfu.ca/. Then, scroll down to the header, you will find personal information option, click on the names and click Edit beside the Preferred Name. Lastly, click on the save option and wait overnight for the change to show up in WebCT and the SFU Email Directory.

Collaboration, content and assessment in WebCT:

Different access roles in WebCT include administrator, designer, instructor, teaching assistant, student or auditor. It plans your course delivery; manage your WebCT course container; request, reuse or backup course containers. It also navigates and customizes your new or old course container. It communicates with the students or provides a communications forum using the mail, discussions and announcements tools. It also creates groups and manages group work and student presentations using the group manager tool. Add content option load and display content in WebCT efficiently. In Assess learning, WebCT manage as well as display student grades using the grade book. It also delivers quizzes, self-tests and surveys to students by using the assessment tool. By using the assignment tool and drop box, it creates and downloads grade assignments.

For more information, visit www.sfu.ca.