Electronic formats are confusing for people unfamiliar with the Internet and e-mail. Most of it is far less mysterious than it appears at first. The first thing to remember is save your work in the appropriate format to a disk (floppy or hard drive), and create a back-up in a separate place such as another disk. Read your manuals, practice a bit, and become familiar with your system.
You should be able to attach files (such as assignments) to your messages in WebCT. However, make sure they are readable by the instructor! Formatting, colors, columns, and tables may look good on your machine with your software, but they can be impossible to open up on our end, depending upon the format. I use MS Word running on Windows XP. MS word can open most common word processing files, but has trouble with some Mac "Apple Works" and "Microsoft Works" formats.
The safest and easiest is the text, ".txt" ("dot - t - x - t") file extension, the plain vanilla format understood by most every computer and word processing program. You cannot do fancy formatting (bold, color, italics and so on) with plain text format, but your files can be understood by all. If you want to preserve the formatting, save as the ".rtf" extension (rich text format). Investigate your word processing software to see if it will write and save files in .html or .htm (hypertext markup language) format, the common language of browsers. This will preserve all of your fancy formatting, colors, hyperlinks, and graphics (but using this format will require you to attach all graphic files separately). Generally, files saved in txt, rtf, and html (or htm) on any system can be attached and transferred without problem to any other system.
Common graphic formats include .jpg, .tif, and .gif. There are dozens of others, but these three can be opened and viewed by most all operating systems, including Mac and PC. Others are problematical, so when saving graphics to share, use one of these. The .pct extension used in many Mac systems is not one easily read by PC systems. Nearly all graphics programs will give you the option of saving your picture as .gif, .tif, or .jpg.
Keep in mind that some systems (at your end, my end, or in-between) may strip away long file names, leaving anything over 8 characters represented by a tilde (~). Windows 98 and newer, and all Macintosh systems will allow long file names and/or periods in the file name, but please don't do this! If two of you send me assignments as attachments such as:
"my_first_assignment_smith" and "my_first_assignment_jones"they may both download to my hard drive as "my_firs~", a total of 8 characters each, and impossible to distinguish from each other. Instead, use "smith1" or some such designation for assignment one.
Some operating systems and word processing software will also allow the use of spaces in file names - again, don't do this! WebCT hates spaces in file names, as do some word processors and operating systems. Just to be on the safe side, don't use spaces; if you must separate two or more words, use a dash ("-") or an underscore ("_") character.
Long or vague file names become a major problem if you send several html files that are hot linked together. For example, if you send two files, one the written portion and one a graphic file named "mypictureproject2.pct" which has been hot linked in your written portion, it may transfer as "mypictu~". The hot link will not work because it is calling for "mypictureproject2.pct" which no longer exists because it has been shortened to "mypictu~". In these cases I have to go through your document manually and change all of your links. It is best to use something like "smith1.html" for the text, then "smith1a.jpg, smith1b.gif, smith1c.jpg etc. for the graphics.
The biggest problem students have had in the past is in attaching a file that is in some format unreadable by the instructor, in other words, none of the above file formats. Remember to specify the file format when you save your work and again when you attach it. Become very familiar with your system and don't hesitate to send me practice files.
A very helpful hint for sending short papers is to just include them in the body of an E-mail. You can write the short paper in your word processor, check it over for spelling errors, then copy and paste it into the E-mail. A shortcut for doing this works with all Windows-based programs, even if they do not have copy and paste commands showing on the tool bar. First, highlight the material you want to copy, then simultaneously press the control key "Ctrl" and the "c" key; this will place the highlighted material onto your clipboard. Then open your mail program and put the cursor in the message space, and then simultaneously press the control key "Ctrl" and the "v" key - this will paste the highlighted material into the body of the mail message. There may be a similar convention for MAC systems.