Welcome to the English Department Knowledge Base

The English Department Knowledge Base is designed to assist both new and seasoned instructors with developing and implementing successful course plans.

The site is organized in the following manner:

Course Materials - Instructional materials such as syllabi, lesson plans, lectures, etc. for specific courses at UCSB organized by course number and name.

EDKB VOS - The English Department Knowledge Base's Voice of the Shuttle component, containing primary source material, instructional resources organized by topic, and links to external resources.

Instructional Guides - Contains practical guides to general issues such as lesson planning, essay writing, and teaching with technology.

Administrative Resources - Contains guides to grievance procedures and other administrative resources for instructors.

Campus Teaching Resources - A collection of teaching resources available to the students and faculty of UCSB.

English Department TA Handbook - The collected wisdom of generations of TA training sessions.

First Qualifying Exam Reading Materials - Online versions of readings for the first qualifying exams that are taken from the readings packets available for sale from the Staff Graduate Advisor as well as other texts not collected in the Norton Anthology.

CourseBuilder - A link to the home of the English Department's web site development application.

Index of Course Websites - An listing of course websites in the UCSB English department. A rich resource with additional syllabi and lesson plans.

Developmental Resources - Home to the EDKB users' and developers' guides as well as the site's history.

Locking Structure Explained

The EDKB has a tripartite locking structure in order to address wide audience and provide instructors with some security in sharing their educational materials.

The locking structure is represented by the following graphics:

Unlocked Resources: Open to All, No Password Required

Locked Resources: Open to Members of the UCSB Community through the "scribe" account.

Instructors' Locked Resources: Open to UCSB English Department Faculty, Staff, and Graduate Students Only through the "edkb" account.

Please contact Brian Reynolds or the current Transcriptions RA for the passwords you require.

An EDKB Guide for Future Developers

The EDKB should be relatively easy to develop as departmental interest grows. Developers need a basic understanding of html and web design.

To Add Course Specific Materials

1. Transform the New Material into HTML

New course material needs to be converted to html format before it can be added to the knowledge base.

Material may be received in digital form or scanned in from paper sources and converted into word documents.

In Word save the document as a website and close it.

Your document is now an HTML webpage.

2. Make the New Material into a Dreamweaver Page

Open Dreamweaver

Select File - Open and open your saved web page through Dreamweaver. You will now have a document in code containing most of the formatting of the original document. You should look through the document and make any code or appearance changes you feel necessary.

3. Transforming the Document into a Templated EDKB Page

Leaving this document, open a new document in Dreamweaver by selecting "New" or "New from Template" (depending on your version of Dreamweaver). Select the template tag (if necessary) and create a new webpage from the "dept_edkb" template.

Copy the course material page and paste it into the content section of the new templated page (it often works better to copy and paste from code to code rather than from display to display). Add a title to the new page, and fill out the attributions form at the bottom of the page.

4. Saving and Locking The New Resource

The locking system depends upon files being placed in the appropriate locked folder. The following guide should clarify how to incorporate this structure into further development.

If the page is to be unlocked: Save your website to the appropriate course folder under teaching>resources>unlocked>coursematerials. If there is not already a course folder for your new material add a new course folder using the following naming protocol "english_coursenumberandletter". If you create a new folder, keep in mind that you will need to create an index for this folder (see below).

If the page is to be locked: Save your website to the appropriate course folder under teaching>resources>locked>coursematerials. If there is not already a course folder for your new material add a new course folder using the following naming protocol "english_coursenumberandletter". If you create a new folder, keep in mind that you will need to create an index for this folder (see below).

If the page is to be locked for instructors only: Save your website to the appropriate course folder under teaching>resources>locked_instructors>coursematerials. If there is not already a course folder for your new material add a new course folder using the following naming protocol "english_coursenumberandletter". If you create a new folder, keep in mind that you will need to create an index for this folder (see below).

5. Create an Index Reference to Your New Material

All course indexes are unlocked. Proceed to the index for your materials particular course under teaching>resources>unlocked>coursematerials. If there is not already a course folder for your new material add a new course folder using the following naming protocol "english_coursenumberandletter". If you create a new folder, keep in mind that you will need to create an index for this folder (see below).

Open the index.asp for your particular course and add a linked reference to your new website.

The reference should be in this format: <Locking Image> Linked Description (Author, Quarter of Creation)

example: What Gets Lost In Translation (Alexandra Cook, Summer 1999)

You can copy the locking image from the bottom of any index page or you can insert it from the resource folder.

6. Upload Your Work

Once you have finished with the above steps you can upload your changes and additions to the website.

Take care to upload both your new resources AND their index pages.

Visit the site before you shut down the computer to make sure your changes have been implemented.

Congratulations you have uploaded a new resource to
the English Department Knowledge Base!

Un less...
You Have to Add a New Folder

If your resource is the first for this particular class you will need to add a new folder to the website in BOTH the location of the resources and in the unlocked folder (if different).

Add a new course folder using the following naming protocol "english_course number and letter". Example "english_192" or "english_105b"..

You will have to add an index for the course in the unlocked folder.

You can do this by opening another course index (file titled index.asp in the unlocked course folder), changing the relevant information, and using the "save as" option.

You can then add a reference to your new course material to this index page as above in 5.

You will also need to add a reference to the new index to the main course materials page.

Add your course to the general list and link it to your new index.

Now continue as above in 6.