ella Access for Fall 2008

How do you grant access to your ella course site?
A Summary for Faculty

Registered Students	Unregistered MHC Students	5 College Students
Waitlisted Students	Auditors	External Guests
Publishing your site	Students who drop	Questions

I. Students Registered for Credit –
Students who are registered for your course via ISIS will automatically be added with the role of “Student” in your ella course site. ella course sites will be updated every 2 hours from ISIS registration data.

Please note: ISIS continues to be the authority for registration purposes.  If you or your students have any question about their credit-bearing registration status, the ISIS system is the authority of record.  

II. Students Who are Waitlisted –
Students who are waitlisted in ISIS will be added with the role of “Waitlist” in your ella course site. If the status of waitlisted students in your course is changed to “Student” because you authorized their move from the ISIS waitlist into the course, their roles in ella will be changed to "Student" at the next update. At the end of Add/Drop period, waitlisted students who have not registered will be made “Inactive” in your course site so that they will no longer see your site when logging into ella.  At this point, after Add/Drop, should you choose, you may manually remove/delete these student usernames from your ella course site; doing so any earlier will be ineffective as waitlist names will automatically reappear with the data updates.

III. MHC Students Who Intend to Register for Credit but Need Immediate Access to Your ella Site-  
In general, it is best to wait for students to be added to your ella course site via the automatic process of updating from ISIS registration data (every 2 hours). However, if you have MHC students who are in the process of registering and require immediate access to your ella course site, you may manually add their MHC usernames to your course site with the role of “Student, Unregistered.” The “Student, Unregistered” role will give your students access to all of the course site resources and will signify that registration has not been completed on ISIS. When students are registered for credit, their roles will automatically switch to a “Student” role at the next update with ISIS registration data.

Important: Please remember that adding student usernames to an ella course site does NOT register students in the class.  Students must register for your course via ISIS if they want to take the course for credit. 

Also note: Student usernames that are manually added as “Student” (as opposed to “Student, Unregistered”) and are not registered in ISIS will be changed automatically in ella to “Student, Unregistered”.   We are adding this procedure in response to feedback from faculty, students, and deans that students who are registered should be readily distinguishable in ella.

IV. 5 College  and other registered students-
5 College students  and other students who are registered to take your course for credit need to request an MHC account, so that they then can be entered into ella with an MHC username. These students should complete a brief online form.  These form takes a few minutes to complete and will be processed within 24 hours (Monday-Friday): http://www.mtholyoke.edu/go/guest

Please alert students to watch their home email inboxes carefully for MHC account notification.   Some students have deleted their new MHC account information because they mistook it for spam.  Once students have MHC accounts you may add them to ella using the MHC username with the role of “Student, Unregistered”. When their home campuses and then the MHC Registrar complete the registration process, their status in ella will automatically be changed to “Student”.

In previous semesters, some faculty have added 5 College students with ella-specific “guest accounts” using students’ home institution email addresses. This has created problems in tracking student registration and work and should no longer be done.   

V. Auditors-
Auditors can’t automatically be added to ella since no central records (in ISIS or elsewhere) are maintained about auditor registration. You should enter persons who are auditing your course into ella using their MHC account with the role of “Auditor”.  If  auditors subsequently register to take the course for credit, their roles will be changed automatically to “Student” at the next update with ISIS registration data.

VI. Students Who Drop-
Students who drop your course via ISIS or, later in the semester, withdraw from the course by submitting the approved form to the Registrar’s Office, will be changed in the ella course site to “Inactive” so that they will no longer see your site when logging into ella.  Their usernames will continue to appear in your course site participant list should you ever need to retrieve a record of their ella participation. Official drops from the ISIS registration data will be updated every 2 hours.

VII. Speakers and Other Guests-
If you have guest speakers or collaborators who do not have Mount Holyoke accounts, you may manually add them to your ella site using the “guest account” feature.  You will enter their  complete email addresses (ex: marylyon@yahoo.com) and the ella system will subsequently notify users with login information (including a password) via email.  

PUBLISHING OR “TURNING ON” YOUR ella SITES:  Just a reminder that ella course sites will not be visible to anyone but you until you choose to “Publish” the site.  In other words, even with all of the automated ways that participants may be added to your ella course site, no one will be able to see this site until you "Publish" it.  To publish your site, go into your ella course site and on the left side, click on Site Info then Manage Access at the top and then check off Publish Site and Update. Check our handout for information.

Questions? Please contact your LITS Liaison or email: ris-d@mtholyoke.edu