Getting Started with myWPI Organizations

For student organizations, myWPI is a useful tool for sharing information between officers, sharing copies of important club documents (like a constitution or bylaws,) or for discussing organization business online using the discussion features.

For faculty and staff workgroups and committees, it is a useful way to share documents and information online without clogging up e-mail or creating a network share, and has the added benefit of discussion and collaboration features.

Using myWPI for your organization is optional and does not replace an existing organization website on the WPI web.

Requesting a myWPI Organization Site

To request an organization in myWPI, fill in the online organization request form.

When creating an organization site in myWPI, there are three types of access: closed, registration with password, and open registration.

Closed registration means that you must supply a list of members for the system administrators to add to the site. Future members can only be added by system administrators.
Registration with password means that anyone with a certain password can register for access to the site. If you choose this option, you must specify a password on the request form.
Open registration allows anyone in the myWPI system to register for access to the site.
Guest access can be enabled or disabled for open registration and refers to people outside of the WPI community. Guest access is limited to reading content areas available to guests. Guests cannot access the discussion board or collaboration tools.

Groups may also be created within an organization, such as subcommittees or groups of officers.

Uploading Content and using myWPI features

Content in an organization is uploaded in the same way as for myWPI course websites. The same features are also available. No web programming or knowledge of HTML is required to upload content or use the communication tools.

All features and content are managed using the Control Panel. There are different levels of system access for uploading content. Most organizations will only have Managers, Assistants and Participants.

Manager

Managers are the owners of an organization site and maintain the membership list. Managers have access to all features of an organization website. Organizations may have up to 4 managers for each organization site. (Example: For a club, the Managers could be the officers)

Assistant

Assistants also have access to manage all features of an organization website. This level of access is typically used for remaining organization officers or others who need read/write access. (In our example, the Vice President and Treasurer would be Assistants.)

Participant

A Participant is similar to the student role in a myWPI course website. Participants can read content, post to discussion boards, participate in collaboration sessions (Chat/Whiteboard), take surveys, etc., but cannot modify the menu or overall settings.

Setting up Organization Features and Menu Items

For more help with setting up your organization in myWPI, consult the myWPI Site Maintainer Help Pages or the Blackboard Instructor Manual. The online help often refers to "courses", but the instructions for setting up the menu and features such as the Discussion Board, Digital Drop Box, and Collaboration tools work the same way in both organizations and courses.

If you need more help or have questions about using myWPI for organizations, e-mail the help team at myhelp@wpi.edu.

Maintained by itweb@wpi.edu
Last modified: Jul 25, 2007, 12:51 EDT