"Ghost" courses in Campus Edition and Vista.

Dear Faculty:

This semester CCCOnline will be delivering some of our courses in the Vista Learning Management System (LMS) and some in Campus Edition LMS. Students may have courses in both LMS. All students will be directed first to Campus Edition, even when the course they have registered for is delivered in Vista.

Inside Campus Edition the student will find links to all of their Campus Edition courses and links to course shells for the courses the student may be taking via Vista. These shells contain information about the two delivery methods and links to the Vista courses. The student can then bookmark the Vista site for future use.

Inside Vista, the student will see shells for their Campus Edition courses as well as their Vista courses. These shell for CE courses will give them instructions about the CE course and also provide a link back to CE. So, whether in CE or Vista, the student will have a link to either put them inside the course or take them to their course in the other LMS.

The purpose of the dual shell system is to make sure students can access all of their courses from both CE and Vista, so no one forgets they have a course in Vista and only goes to CE.

You will probably see these "ghost" courses in either CE or Vista. You may feel like you need to update these shells and/or change the information included in them. Please don't do that. Academic Technology (that's David, Frank, and Rick) will provide any set-up needed. Our goal is to keep the extra shells consistent and you definitely don't want students doing work in the wrong place. Student services (Judy, Roxanne, John, and Deb) are also communicating with students about the extra shells and their purpose.

The Academic Technology folks are working on a script that will unenroll you (faculty) from all of the extra shells, but we don't expect that script to be complete before the fall term begins.

I should probably mention that students will also see course shells for all of their face-to-face courses in Vista. If the instructor is not using the course shell at all, clicking on the link gives students a pop-up window which recommends that they call their instructor for more information. You may receive questions about those shells also -- just let students know that that probably means their instuctor isn't using the shell, but that they should ask during the next class period.

Thanks for your help.

Lisa