Group Administrator FAQ

(For user information, please read the Help page in your Control Panel)

This FAQ contains these sections:

Dealing with Members
Managing Content
Preparing for Next Term

If your question is not answered, please email your site administrator.

Dealing with Members

Q. Who will have access to my dotlrn class?
A. The default enrollment policy setting for new classes is "open" and any registered user can join the class. If you are concerned about who is accessing your class, you have a couple of options: 1) "close" your enrollment policy and manually add only officially registered students to the class; 2) set the enrollment policy to "needs approval" so that any user can request membership. You can then approve or deny access through the Manage Membership page (off the Control Panel). All class administrators will also receive an email notification every time a user requests to join the class.

Q: I am a TA and there are several cross-registered students in my class. How can they get access to the materials in dotlrn?
A: Non-institution students cannot have full access to dotlrn, but they can have access to the class materials. However, non-Sloan students should not self-register for an account. You can create Limited Access user accounts for cross-registered students through the "Create a Limited Access user" link in the Control Panel. If someone already has an account in the system, you will receive a message that they are already in the system when you try to create an account for them. In that case, add them to the class or community through the "Manage Membership" page link.

Q. How do institution students get access to dotlrn?
A. Any current institution member can self-register for an account. Please tell your students to register at the login page by entering their current email address and a password of their choice. After they submit the login and complete the registration page, their account will be approved within one business day.

Q: How can I keep unregistered students or non-members from getting in the class or community?
A: Go to the Control Panel page for the class or community and change the Enrollment Policy to "closed" or "needs approval." Closed makes the group invisible to all but its members -- it will no longer be listed on the Join a Group page. "Needs Approval" means that users can request membership from the Join a Group page. You will receive an email from the user asking for approval.

Q: How do students and members join if the group enrollment is closed?
A: The only way to add users to a closed group is to add their names one at a time. Go to the group's Control Panel page and go to the Manage Membership link. Click the Add a Student link, type in their email name or last name, select the user from the list of names returned and confirm the choice. If they are not already registered in the system, you can't add them to the group until they register, but if they are cross-registered students or non-MIT people, you should create Limited Access users accounts for them (through the Control Panel).

Q: How can I let non-institution people have access to my community?
A: You can add them as Limited Access users or guests. Limited Access users have full access to the group, but cannot join other dotlrn groups; Limited Access Guests have limited access to your group (they do not see other users' personal information) and cannot join other groups. Assign non-institution students Limited Access accounts and non-institution people (speakers, guest lecturers, colleagues) Limited Access Guest accounts.

Q. I am managing a community and some of our members are from outside my institution, so they cannot see information about other members, or participate in forums or surveys. We want them to have full access to just our community. What can we do?
A. This is happening because the default privacy setting for groups does not allow Guests to see information about other students. If you need this setting changed for your group, send email to your site administrator. Include the name of your community and ask that your Guests be allowed to read personal information. Also, please let us know if you have any subgroups that also need to be set up this way. Each time a new subgroup is created, you will (unfortunately) need to email us to change the default privacy setting.

Q: How do users change their passwords?
A: Full access users (current students, faculty, staff and alumni) can change their passwords through their Control Panel page in their personal portal. Limited Access users and Limited Access Guests (cross-registered students and non-institution people) can access their Control Panel page through the Help icon in the page banner.

Managing Content

Q. Do all the administrators of the class have the same privileges?
A. Yes, all administrator roles have full control over the content and membership of the community.

Q. I don't see survey listed on the Control Panel? What do I do?
A. Survey is not added by default to classes, communities and subgroups. Go to the Control Panel page, and on the left hand column, click on "Manage Applets" and Add the survey package. Then, return to the Control Panel and you will see Survey Administration > New Survey listed as an option.

Q. I created a subgroup, but no one can see it. What do I do?
A. It may be that the subgroup has a closed enrollment policy, so you can either add the members yourself or open the enrollment policy and allow members of the "parent" group to self-join.

Q. How do I delete a subgroup?
A. Subgroups cannot be deleted, but you can "hide"them by closing the enrollment policy and removing any existing members. You can archive the subgroup, but if you do, it cannot be unarchived.

Q: I created a forum and it sends email alerts to all group members. How do I shut this off? How can an individual user shut them off?
A: Each user must manage forum alerts through the "Edit My Notifications" page on the user Control Panel. Users can also subscribe to/unsubscribe from forum alerts at the top level page of an individual forum.

Q: Note about Forums and email away messages.
A: If a user activates an automated vacation/away message, all their forums will get caught in a loop of emails. To prevent this, advise students to cancel all their forum email alerts before going away. If this happens while they are away, you will have to remove the user from your group to stop the looping.

Preparing for Next Term

Q. What happens to my class at the end of the semester?
A. At the end of the semester, all classes are closed to further enrollment, but the student and administrator members are left in place. Because you are not removed from the class, you will see it listed in your Groups portlet (on your My Space page), but it is closed and cannot be accessed by non-members. If you wish to have all student members removed, please request this by sending an email to your site administrator.

Q. How do I request a class site for next term?
A. In preparing for next term, there are two choices: 1) to copy a class from a previous term or 2) start with an empty class shell. Copying carries over customization - portlets and layout - and file storage content, and removes all previous class members. To request a new shell or a copies class, send email to your site administrator explaining what you want. If copying, please specify the term of the previous class. Also, please include the names and emails of the class administrators, so that they can be added to the new class.

Q. How do I request a new community?
A. Send email to your site administrator. Please include the name of the community and the names and emails of administrators.

Q: Is there any documentation for class and community administrators?
A: Please contact your site administrators for access to documentation and other training materials and for information about training sessions.

Q: How do I use the "Add to Outlook" feature for a calendar event?
A: Both one-time and recurring events can be added to a user's Outlook calendar. On each event description is a link to "synch with Outlook: single event". If it is a recurring event, there will also be a second link, "all events". In Internet Explorer, clicking this link brings up an Outlook New Appointment window to save the item. In Netscape, clicking the link brings up a window to choose whether to "Open" or "Save" the file. Select "Open" and then the Outlook New Appointment window will open. The first time this is executed in a Netscape browser session, the user may see an "Unknown File Type" window. Choose "Pick App" and click "OK" when the "Configure External Viewer" window appears. The user is then prompted to "Open" or "Save" the file. Outlook does not need to be open before these steps are executed.