WSU Vancouver Help
(This help documentation has been adapted from documentation written by the rSmart company for Kapi'olani Community College.)
Table of Contents
How do I Log in to ePortfolio?
How do I Log out of ePortfolio?
What is a Common Interest Group (CIG)?
How do I Join a Common Interest Group (CIG)?
How do I Remove myself from a CIG?
How do I change my Preferences for email notification?
How do I change my Email address?
What is the ePortfolio Navigation Bar?
What are the ePortfolio Tools?
What is the Campus Schedule of Events?
How do I Create items in my private Schedule of Events?
How do I Add a folder to the Repository?
How do I Upload a file to the Repository?
How do I Remove an item from the Repository?
How do I Move items in the Repository?
How do I Create an item in the Repository using a form?
How do I Create a Presentation?
What is the General Ed Learning Goal Matrix?
Go to the ePortfolio Gateway Page at http://wsu.van.rsmart.com
You will be using your Network ID (NID) and password to access this system. Fill in your NID and password, and click on the login button. You will see your personal welcome page. Be sure to logout when you are finished.
To logout of the portfolio, simply click the logout button located in the top right-hand corner of any portfolio page. The screen will refresh and you will once again be on the Gateway page.
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Each portfolio user may be a member of any number of common interest groups (CIGs). You will be automatically assigned to some CIGs. CIGs may represent courses, programs, institutional goals, co-curricular activities, or student-created groups. CIGs are also known as sites or worksites.
Users enter and exit CIG environments through the tabs across the top of the ePortfolio environment. The first tab is labeled My Workspace. Tabs represent sites for common interest groups that the individual user has joined or has been given access to. To navigate between CIGs, click on the tab for the site you wish to enter.
Each CIG has a Home page which may display information explaining the purpose and/or activities of the CIG and listing recent announcements and discussion items.
Once you've logged into the portfolio environment, you will automatically open My Workspace. My Workspace is intended as a private area, accessible only to the individual user. Within this space you may do a variety of different things, using the tools provided.
In My Workspace, you can:
* Note: The items you add to this schedule are private. See page 5 for a discussion of the Campus Schedule of Events.
To create an item in your Schedule of Events, follow these steps:
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The Membership tool (in the grey menubar along the vertical, left-hand frame of the ePortfolio environment), displays a list of sites to which you have access (top portion of the screen) and a list of sites that you may join (lower portion of the screen). To remove yourself from a site of which you are a member, select the box next to the site and click the Unjoin option. The site will disappear from the list and the tab for the site will no longer be visible along the top of the ePortfolio window. To join a site that's been made Joinable, select the box next to the site and click the Join option. The new site will appear in the top portion of the screen and a tab for the site will be displayed along the top of your portfolio window. (Caution: If you remove yourself from a CIG that is no longer joinable, you will need to contact your CIG Coordinator in order to rejoin the CIG.)
The Preferences tool allows you to specify how you would like to receive email notification from the system. Email notification may be sent to you when items are posted in certain tools. (Announcements, Resources, Email Archive) When sending an email notification to CIG members, a CIG Coordinator may choose to make the message High priority, Low priority, or choose not to send any notification at all. (No notification is the default.) If the CIG Coordinator selects High, all CIG members will receive this notification. If the CIG Coordinator selects Low, only CIG members who have specified that they'd like to receive notification will receive this notification. The default settings for all users in Preferences are to block notification from the announcements and resources tools, but to receive notifications from the email archive tool.
The ePortfolio retrieves your email address from the WSU system. So, in order to change your email address in the ePortfolio, you need to change it in myWSU.
1. Go to: http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu
2. Click on "myWSU" (top of page).
3. Enter your NID and password.
4. Click on "my Profile" in the left navigation bar.
5. Click on "Specify delivery destination" in the middle of the screen.
6. Select "Change your email destination address" and follow directions.
Along the vertical, left-hand frame of the ePortfolio environment (in the gray menubar), there are a series of buttons with labels such as Home, Announcements, Repository, etc. These buttons represent tools. Each tool has a given set of functionalities associated with it. To move from one tool to another, click the desired tool button. The screen will refresh to reveal the interface for the tool selected.
Tools may vary from CIG to CIG.
Please use the navigation options within the ePortfolio system rather than relying on your browser's Back and Forward buttons. Using the browser's navigation can result in unexpected errors. Navigation options within tools are provided at the bottom of most tool pages.
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The first tool on the menubar for any common interest group is the Home page. The CIG Coordinator can use Home to post information about the CIG in the area labeled Worksite Information. Information displayed in this area may be in the form of text or a web page.
When you are in a CIG other than MyWorkspace, you cannot alter the Schedule of Events. When you are in MyWorkspace, the Schedule of Events tool allows you to make and save changes to your own private schedule.
To see a list of all the activities on a calendar, select List of events from the drop-down box to the right of View.
You can print an Adobe PDF file of any view of a Schedule by clicking the Print PDF button while in the desired view.
To view the details of an activity on your schedule, follow these steps:
The announcements tool informs CIG members of current items of interest such as important changes in deadlines, meeting times, or meeting locations. Announcements can have multiple attachments, such as documents or URLs. CIG Coordinators can also choose to have an announcement automatically emailed to all CIG members. To view the Announcements from all CIGs to which you belong, go to My Workspace, and click Announcements.
When you click Announcements on the tool menubar, you will see a list. To rearrange the list:
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The Repository invites you to create and store items to be used in Matrices and Presentations as uploaded files and Forms. Your Repository is the same regardless of which CIG you access it from. The first folder in your Repository is your username folder, a private folder labeled with your User ID. Place your personal work for all common interest groups in your username folder. This folder is not viewable by any other user.
When you enter the Repository, you will also see folders labeled with the names of each of the common interest groups of which you are a member. The content of these CIG folders is visible to all participants of the specific CIG.
You may organize your username folder with nested folders of your own creation. To add a subfolder to your username folder, follow these steps:
There are two ways to open a folder. Click on the symbol immediately in front of the folder to expand the folder or click on the name of the folder to provide a view of only that folder's contents. To return to the complete list of folders, click on the folder level you want to access in the pathway labeled Location that appears at the top of the folders.
Your Repository will let you know how much of your available space has been used. WSU Vancouver has provided 100 MB of space for each user.
To upload a file to the Repository, follow these steps:
To create a new Form in the Repository using a Form, follow these steps:
To remove an Item from the Repository:
To remove an uploaded file or a Form (that you have created) from the Repository, follow these steps:
To move a folder or an item to another folder in your Repository:
1. Locate the item in the Repository.
2. Click Move in the line below the item.
3. Select the new folder in which you want the item to appear.
To associate metadata (additional identifying information) with an uploaded file in your Repository:
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Blank forms are found in your repository (click on "create item"). Forms are combinations of one or more fields that invite you to enter information to be saved for multiple purposes. Forms are customized by the institution or the common interest group for specific purposes.
To create an item in the Repository using a Form, you must use the Repository tool. Each Form can be filled in any number of times and stored in the Repository for subsequent use and reuse. Forms have a display name that allows you to label the specific information in that particular copy of the Form for future retrieval and use. For example, the Contact Information Form allows you to save multiple variations of how others may reach them (home, school, work, summer residence, parents, research projects, etc.).
Forms can be used to populate Matrices and Presentations. Most Presentations depend almost exclusively on Forms that the user has already filled out and saved. For example, the Resume Presentation is created from forms such as "Experience", "References", etc.
To create an item in the Repository using a Form, follow these steps:
The Presentation tool allows you to use a subset of material in your Repository to create a variety of Presentations for different audiences. To create a Presentation, you will use a Presentation Template that has been customized by the institution or CIG for a specific purpose. The Presentation tool allows you to create new Presentations, view Presentations that have been shared by others, and keep track of comments on Presentations that you have made on any Presentation (including your own) and that others have made on your Presentations.
WSU Vancouver has 3 templates for users to create Presentations.
Presentations draw upon work stored in the Repository and, in some cases, a specific Matrix. Below are the steps for creating a new presentation.
a. Select the Presentation tool in the appropriate CIG.
b. Click New.
c. Specify a title for your presentation.
d. Type in a brief description of your presentation.
e. Set an expiry date if desired.
f. Select the Presentation Template you wish to use from the drop down menu.
g. Click Continue.
a. Use the menus provided to choose available items (uploaded files and Forms) for each of the categories requested.
Note: You must have added items to your Repository in order to have options in each of the menus.
a. Select viewers for your Presentation by role (maintain, access, reviewer) or as individual CIG participants or as external email addresses.
b. Alternatively, choose to make your Presentation public with a unique URL.
c. Click Add to grant viewing privileges to your portfolio to each viewer.
d. Click Remove to revoke viewing privileges to your portfolio for a particular viewer.
e. Choose to make the share public or leave it private. Capture the resulting URL to share the presentation as a public website.
f. Save the Presentation or Save and Notify designated viewers via email.
To view a Presentation:
To comment upon a Presentation you have viewed:
To view Comments:
The functionality of the Resources tool overlaps with the Repository tool by mirroring the CIG folders in the Repository in making many kinds of material available online for CIG members. There are three types of resources: documents (e.g., word processing documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, plain text), links to other websites, and simple text documents that display right on the page. You can post up to 10 resources at a time, post items outside of folders, create folders inside other folders, and create HTML documents.
Once you click Resources in the menubar, you will see a list of the resources and/or folders containing resources. Click a resource's title to open it, or click the folder icon next to the folder name or the name itself to open a folder. You can sort the resources by title (click Title), size (click Size), the resource creator (click Created by), and when the resources were last modified (click Last modified). To reverse the order, click any of these links again.
You can navigate between resources and folders using the breadcrumbs above the resource list; simply click a folder name in the breadcrumb line. You can also click the icon of a folder with an arrow in it to go up one level.
For information about a resource, click the "i" icon next to the resource. This shows you the size of the file, who posted it and when, and the date it was last modified. It also provides a direct link to the resource.
To create a resource to be shared with others in the CIG, open the folder in which you want it to appear and then follow these steps:
To upload a document from your computer, follow these steps:
To create a new empty folder:
To add a URL resource:
To add a simple text document:
To add an HTML document:
The revise option only allows you to revise the information about the resource (e.g., the description or copyright information), not the resource's contents (with the exception of simple text and HTML document resources). To revise a resource:
You cannot replace folders, URLs, or text documents that you wrote from within the Resources field. You can only replace resources that you uploaded as separate files. To make changes to resources you created within the application, click Revise.
To replace an uploaded document resource with another resource:
Instead of creating a new resource and moving it to a specific folder, you can open a folder (click the folder's name) and create the resource from within the folder. To move an existing resource, follow these steps:
You can delete one or more resources at a time. To do so, follow these steps:
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Discussion allows structured conversations that are organized into categories. CIG members can post replies to a topic (a "flat" discussion) or to other replies (a "threaded" discussion). The CIG coordinator can also choose whether or not to allow CIG members to post their own discussion topics. You may choose to view Discussion replies in a row or a column layout. This is a personal preference and changes only your view of the Discussion.
When you click Discussion in the menubar, you will see a list. Under each category, you'll see any topics and responses that have been added. To view just the categories, click Collapse All. To view the categories and all the topics and responses, click Expand All. The small paper stack icon will expand the view so that a top-level item and all the responses below it are visible.
The Discussion tool uses two frames to display discussion topics and replies. The layout can be changed to a vertical (two-column) or horizontal (two-row) layout by using the View drop-down menu. In the vertical layout (the two-column layout), the left frame shows the hierarchy of categories, topics, and replies.
Clicking a topic or reply shows the content of the message in the right frame. To respond to a topic or reply, click the Reply button at the bottom of the content window. The content window is the right frame in the two-column layout, and the bottom frame in the two row layout.
When posting a topic in the Discussion area, CIG coordinators specify CIG members are to respond to that topic or to any topic posted. If postings are only allowed to specified topics, the result is a "flat" discussion. If replies are allowed to any posting, the result is a "threaded" discussion.
To reply to a discussion item, follow these steps:
The Glossary tool defines terms used in the Gen Ed Learning Goal Matrix within the General Education CIG.
The Matrix allows general education students to present goals, standards, or other criteria to you in a format structured by time or specific activities. Your task is to supply authentic evidence of having met the goals, standards, or other criteria at each level of the Matrix and reflect upon that evidence through the use of the reflection process within each cell of the Matrix.
If you would like assistance in using the ePortfolio for the General Education Program or for your purposes, please send an e-mail to eportfoliohelp@vancouver.wsu.edu, or you can contact us via telephone. For classroom application questions contact Sue Phelps at 6-9178. For technical issues contact Chris Rhoads at 6-9044.
For Tri-Cities faculty and students contact Joe Judy (jjudy@tricity.wsu.edu, 509 372-7449).