Pitt to give CourseWeb a makeover

After this weekend, students will no longer see dropped and withdrawn courses still haunting their CourseWeb profiles.

Pitt will upgrade multiple components of CourseWeb from Thursday, April 30 to Sunday May 3, according to Pitt spokesman John Fedele. Besides removing dropped courses, the update will also allow instructors to upload videos to their class pages, grade students’ assignments anonymously and delegate groups of students to their teaching assistants.

CourseWeb will be unavailable during the upgrade, but Pitt will restore CourseWeb for students and faculty on Monday, May 4, according to Fedele.

The Student Technology Focus Group, a group of Pitt students that proposed changes to Pitt’s technology systems, recommended the removal of dropped courses during the spring semester.

Pitt’s Computing Services and Systems Development (CSSD) and Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education (CIDDE) will remove the dropped courses by setting up CourseWeb to communicate with the student center to reflect class changes.

CSSD and CIDDE are also integrating CourseWeb with Blackboard’s Grader mobile app, which will let users view a mobile-friendly version of CourseWeb’s content.

With the upgrade, instructors will be able to link videos from Lynda.com, a web service that hosts educational videos, directly to their CourseWeb class pages. Instructors teaching large classes can delegate tasks to their teaching assistants through CourseWeb.

After the upgrade, instructors can also anonymously grade assignments students submit through CourseWeb, meaning they can grade an assignment without seeing a student’s name.