Topics Map > Website Services
Course Website Options
Overview
Campus offers several options for instructors who want to provide websites for their courses.
For additional information or assistance, please contact Engineering IT at engrit-help@illinois.edu.
Course Website Options
| Type of Website | Grainger College of Engineering Courses Website | Canvas @ Illinois | publish.illinois.edu (PIE) Website |
| Features |
Engineering IT hosts course websites for instructors and course staff who want to use HTML and simple ASP or PHP scripts. Website directories along with term subfolders are automatically created for each course being taught as soon as they appear in the course catalog. Each term folder has a subfolder named "private", that is accessible only by the course staff for that term. There is also a subfolder named "secure" that is readable by currently enrolled students for that term, and is writable by the course staff for that term. The groups of currently enrolled students and current course staff are both capable of being augmented by the course staff. For example, the instructor for abc123 (as well as any identified course staff) is able to add students to the currently enrolled students group, abc-123-stu, as well as add her/his teaching assistants to the course staff group, abc-123-stf. |
While not an Engineering IT service, Canvas (https://canvas.illinois.edu/) is the campus provided Learning Management System (LMS) which is available to all faculty and instructors. Canvas simplifies the process of creating and editing courses, facilitates classroom collaboration, makes grading easier, streamlines the notification system of course updates, and allows you to customize the course to meet your needs. If you need the services of a full course management suite, use Canvas. |
publish.illinois.edu (aka PIE) is a WordPress multisite network of over 6000 individual WordPress web sites. Publish is meant to be an easy-to-use, self-service system for creating web sites and pages. It is an excellent web hosting choice if:
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| Getting Started |
All Engineering courses being offered for a given term will have a corresponding directory created on https://courses.grainger.illinois.edu/ within 2 business days of when the course is added to the course catalog. The course directory will have an associated URL created for it that takes the form of http://courses.grainger.illinois.edu/XXX### where "XXX" is the course subject code and "###" is the course number. Previous semester courses can be accessed by adding the 2 letter semester (sp, su, fa) and 4 digit year to the URL. Previous semester courses can be accessed by adding the 2 letter semester (sp, su, fa) and 4 digit year to the URL. For example: cs173 Spring 2012 can be seen at http://courses.grainger.illinois.edu/cs173/sp2012. |
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| Support Contacts |
Grainger College of Engineering Marketing & Communications |
Technology Services |
Technology Services |
Redirected Course Website
If you choose to host your website somewhere other than on courses.grainger.illinois.edu, you can still use that URL to refer to your course if you use a redirect.
To redirect a course URL from http://courses.grainger.illinois.edu, a member of the course staff needs to use the tool at http://my.engr.illinois.edu/webedit to enter the location of the course website for that term. Engineering IT does not recommend redirecting a course website to an off campus resource. There are issues with Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), as well as potential support issues with hosting course data on resources not controlled by University of Illinois employees.
If an instructor chooses to have a Canvas course website for their class, then redirecting the http://courses.grainger.illinois.edu website for that class and term to the Canvas site is an appropriate use of the redirect feature. Similarly, when an Engineering Wiki space is requested, redirect of the http://courses.grainger.illinois.edu will be placed for the appropriate class and term to the wiki space.