Help:Hosting courses

< Help

This is a help page for hosting a course on OpenWetWare.

See also the FAQ on hosting a course on OpenWetWare.

Get an account
You'll need a user account on OWW to edit pages. Register for an account here.

Learn the basics of wiki editing
If you've never used a wiki before, it is helpful to learn some basics of wiki editing via the OpenWetWare introductory tutorial.

In particular, it is helpful if you put at least a couple lines about yourself on your user page.

Once you're comfortable with the basics of wiki's, continue with these directions.

Set up your course template
Once you've registered for an OWW account, start by making your course banner. Your course banner will be used on every course page to help identify it as belonging to your course and to enable students to navigate through the course wiki pages.
 * 1) First, go to the OWW.101 template page (open this in a new browser window if you want to keep reading this text).
 * 2) Click [[Image:EditButton.jpg]] and copy all the wiki markup on that page.
 * 3) In the search box on the lefthand side navigation bar, type  (be sure and replace   with your course's number like   or  .  [[Image:Searchbox.png|right]]
 * 4) You should see a page come up with a message saying "You searched for Template:" where "Template:" is in red.  If you don't see this message then that means a page with that name already exists.  You'll need to choose a different course name.  [[Image:NoPage.png|450px|left]] 
 * 5) Click on the red link "Template:".
 * 6) Paste the code from the OWW.101 template onto this page.
 * 7) Replace every instance of  with your course number.
 * 8) Finally, check your work by clicking the [[Image:ShowPreviewButton.jpg]] button.
 * 9) Save the changes by clicking [[Image:SavePageButton.jpg]] ... and you're off.

Next you'll probably want to replace the default course image with your own.


 * 1) Click on upload file link on the left side of the screen (under toolbox).
 * 2) Follow the directions from there to upload the file. In general it is best if your course image is wider than it is tall and if it is in PNG format.
 * 3) After the picture has been uploaded, you will be taken to the Image page for your course image.
 * 4) Copy the page title (i.e. Image:.png).
 * 5) Return to your course template. You can do this quickly by typing   in the search box on the left.
 * 6) Click [[Image:EditButton.jpg]] and replace  with
 * 7) Check your work by clicking the [[Image:ShowPreviewButton.jpg]] button.
 * 8) Save the changes by clicking [[Image:SavePageButton.jpg]].

Set up your course homepage

 * 1) First, go to the OWW.101 course homepage (again, open this in a new browser window if you want to keep reading this text).
 * 2) Click [[Image:EditButton.jpg]] and copy all the wiki markup on that page.
 * 3) [[Image:Searchbox.png|right]] In the search box on the lefthand side navigation bar, type  (be sure and replace   with your course's number like   or.
 * 4) You should see a page come up with a message saying "You searched for " where "" is in red. If you don't see this message then that means a page with that name already exists.  You'll need to choose a different course name (and rename your course template).
 * 5) Click on the red link "".
 * 6) Paste the code from the OWW.101 course homepage onto this page.
 * 7) Replace every instance of  with  .  This line is responsible for including the course banner on the page.
 * 8) Check your work by clicking the [[Image:ShowPreviewButton.jpg]] button.
 * 9) Save the changes by clicking [[Image:SavePageButton.jpg]].

Next you can customize the rest of the content on your course's homepage.


 * 1) Click [[Image:EditButton.jpg]] on your course's homepage.
 * 2) Between the line that starts  and the line , feel free to put any information you want ... like a course description, an announcements section or anything else that might be helpful there.

Set up your people page
Every new wiki page that you create for your course should be named.

So much in the same way you created your course homepage, you can copy the OWW.101 sample course's people page (OWW.101:People) to a new page titled  to list all the folks involved in the course.

Set up your course schedule
Again, create a page as before titled  and copy the OWW.101 sample schedule page (OWW.101:Schedule) to this new page.

Within the page's code, you'll see comments of the form. These are comments which do not show up on the actual wiki page but only on the edit version. These comments explain how to edit the schedule table (like adding and deleting rows and columns).

Make wiki help pages for your students
To help familiarize students with OpenWetWare, we've created a set of generic help pages for students. Feel free to use these for your own course. You can of course customize them for your own course's needs. See OWW.101:Help for various generic help pages for students. Again, be sure and create your own course's help page and copy material from OWW.101.

How do I upload my lecture slides?
PDFs, word docs, powerpoint files or keynote files can all be uploaded to OpenWetWare.


 * 1) Click on upload file link on the left side of the screen (under toolbox).
 * 2) Follow the directions from there to upload the file.
 * 3) OpenWetWare doesn't explicitly support PDF, powerpoint or keynote filetypes. Therefore these files are treated as images and an image page is generated upon upload.  To include a link directly to the PDF from your course page, you'll have to use the   prefix in your link.

For instance, here is a link to the image page of a PDF that has been uploaded to OpenWetWare:

Here is a link to the corresponding PDF file itself: [[Media:Msb4100025.pdf]] 

Note that if your files are in latex, you can actually post the latex source itself and autogenerate the corresponding PDF file via the wiki. Thus, you can collaboratively work via the wiki on latex docs! See Feature test/LatexDoc for a sample latex document.

How do I upload papers?
If you both own the copyright to the paper and are willing to license it under the terms listed at Copyrights, then follow the directions listed above under How do I upload my lecture slides?. Also, any paper published in an open access journal (like one of the PLoS journals) can be freely uploaded to OpenWetWare. Consult the particular journal's copyright policies for details.

Remember, all materials posted or uploaded to OpenWetWare are automatically licensed under the terms at Copyrights. Do not post or upload materials to which you do not hold the copyright (like some papers) or don't want licensed under these terms. If you do need to make papers to which you don't own the copyright (or don't have a license) available to your students, you can do one of the following...
 * 1) Link to the publisher's version (for instance, if your institution has a site license then your students will still be able to access the paper).
 * 2) Link to the author's version. (Some journals allow authors to post preprints on their own website, so you can link to that version.)
 * 3) Post them in a password protected directory elsewhere and link to them from OpenWetWare.

How do I include references to published materials?
Referencing published books and papers is easy in OpenWetWare. See Biblio for instructions on how to automatically generate formatted citations from just the ISBN for books and the PMID for papers.

How can I check for the changes to my course wiki?
If you've named all your pages as explained above (i.e. in the form, then it is quite easy to check the recent changes to your course website.  Just go to Special:Recentchanges/OWW.101 (except replace the   with your course's number/course year like Special:Recentchanges/Harvard:Biophysics 101/2007).

Oh no ... someone made an incorrect edit on one of my course pages. How do I undo it?
Occasionally, edits to pages in OpenWetWare are made which are incorrect or should not have been done. Fortunately, undoing edits is simple in a wiki. Here are some simple instructions on how to undo edits (also called reverting to a previous version of the page).


 * 1) Go to the page whose edit you would like to undo.
 * 2) Click on the [[Image:Historytab.png]] tab at the top of the page.
 * 3) You'll now be viewing the revision history of the page.
 * 4) Click the circle next to the version of the page that you wish to revert back to.
 * 5) Click the [[Image:Compareselectedversionsbutton.png]] button.
 * 6) You will see the difference between the current version and the selected older version.
 * 7) Click the [[Image:Rollbacklink.png]] link on the current version column to rollback to the older version.

How do I format a picture?
Wikipedia has various examples for formatting pictures.

How do I edit a table?
Again, Wikipedia has a pretty thorough page on editing tables.

How do my students get OpenWetWare accounts?
Students can go through the same process that you did to get an account. Fill out the form at How to join.

Help! My question isn't answered here.
Check out the help pages or else post your question at wiki questions forum.