| Users and Groups |    |
Users and groups need to be created whenever an instructor wants to use Wimba's Oral Assessment feature because before an assessment can be assigned, there must first be a group to assign it to.
Faculty members who are Wimba Administrators can create users and groups. If you want students to log into Wimba to access their audio resources or if you intend to create an Oral Assessment, you will need to create users and at least one group.
To create users, you will need a list of your students' email addresses, along with their first names and their last names. These three fields are the minimum fields you need to create a "student user record" within Wimba. It is recommended to have this information in electronic format and copy/paste it into Wimba.
Note: if you only plan on using Wimba's Voice Communication tools (Voice Direct, Voice Board, Voice Authoring and Voice Email) AND you will be creating links to those Voice Communication tools from within Blackboard or from within a course web site, then you do not need to create users and groups. Users and groups are only required when you want your students to log into Wimba to access audio resources or if you plan on creating Oral Assessments.
To establish new Users and Groups do the following:
1. Log in to Wimba.
2. Select the Administration Tab at the top right portion of the screen.
3. Select Users and Groups.
4. Click on New (below the Groups section--three people icon).
5. Enter the name of your New Group in the text box displayed on the screen. It is recommended that you use a unique group name for each course you teach and the semester and year the course is being offered (i.e. ENGL1431-SP06)
If you choose to Batch import your students, select Batch Import located below the Users area .
If you plan on Entering Users Individually, see the section below.
Entering Users Individually
6. Now you are ready to assign New Users to the group. There are two ways to add new users: (1) Enter them one at a time, (2) Batch upload the entire class at one time.
An advantage to entering the students one at a time is each student will receive an email confirmation once that student has been added to the group. With batch processing, individual students will NOT receive notification when they have been added to a Wimba group.
From the Users and Groups Screen, select New in the Users section located in the upper left of the screen .
7. Enter the students' email address in the Email field
8. Initially, to create the student's user account, enter their email or the first part of their email for the password.
9. Enter the student's first and last name.
10. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen to the "Group Inclusion" section, select the group(s) you want to assign the student to.
11. Click on the >>> right arrow icons. This moves the highlighted group into the User's Group window. Note: You can assign a user to multiple groups. The student is now assigned to that group.
Note: Make sure the System Group the student is assigned to is set to Users (default) . The Power Users and Administrators settings are reserved for ACC faculty and staff.
If you get a "User already exists message" it means that the student is already listed on Wimba's system. To add the user to your group, return to the main Users and Groups page, scroll down the list of users until you find the student (note: you can sort the list alphabetically by clicking on the Last Name field .
Check the box to the left of the student's name and select the edit tab. When that student's information is displayed, select your group from the Group Inclusion portion of the screen. This will add the student to your group.
Batch Importing Students
1. You can also Batch Import several students at once onto the Wimba system. To do this, select the Batch Import icon in the upper left portion of the Users and Groups screen (in the Users section).
2. To successfully upload a batch file, you need to make sure that your coma delimited (.CSV) text file is formatted correctly. There can be no spaces separating the fields, only commas. The minimum header fields the file must begin with are: email,firstname,lastname. The column headings (email,firstname,lastname) MUST BE ON THE FIRST ROW OF THE FILE exactly as they appear or the batch processing will not work.
If no password field is provided (after the email field and before the firstname field), the system will use the student's email address as the password.
3. From Wimba's Batch Import screen, click BROWSE in the first upper left section of the Create column.
4. Find the .CSV text file you created and select it.
5. Click the button to the right of the Comma file type indicator.
6. Click Submit to upload the file to Wimba for batch processing
If you would like additional information on how to add users and groups, review the on-line tutorial .
Note: You will need a Flash player to review the tutorial. You can download a free flash player at: www.macromedia.com