A: Go to http://portal.utoronto.ca. You will be required to enter your UTORid and password. The UTORid is printed on your TCard. UTORid is not your student number. It starts with your lastname. If you forget your password, go to Help Desk at Information Commons, First Floor, Robarts Library or email help.desk@utoronto.ca. For more help information , refer to http://www.portalinfo.utoronto.ca/Student_Help.htm. If you are sure that you have the correct UTORid and password, but still unable to log in, try on another computer. In most cases it's just a problem of your web browser setting. You can also reset it to default setting and try again.

Once you login portal, click the course title 'Winter-2008-AST201H1...' to access the quiz page. If you login but can not find the course , it's likely that you haven't registered in this course in ROSI. Usually it takes 48 hours for your registration to take effect. If you are sure that you have been registered for more than 48 hours, but still can not find the course, it might be a temporary problem of Blackboard system itself (see portal-down page). If for hours the problem persists, you can check the course website, usually there will be an annoucement telling you what to do.

When you enter the quiz page, click the link 'weekly quiz' on the left panel to access the quizzes. When you are done, click the 'submit' button at the bottom, you should be able to see a summary indicating how much you get for this attempt.

A simple demo is available here. If you can not see the link of weekly quiz in the left panel, try 'course map'. If 'course map' does not work neither, or you can not even see the 'course map' item in the left panel. You may need to upgrade your browser. (You can get a free firefox at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.htmli)

A: Click the 'Logout' icon (in the middle of the top blue bar on the page). Exit the browser. The cookie is automatically deleted when you exit the browser. A technical problem is that many browsers do not delete the cookie if a window's parent window (or child window) is still running. If you open portal in a new window from a link (on UofT home page, for example), you need to exit the parent window as well (i.e. you need to close both the portal window and UofT home page).

Remember to log out if you are not using your own computer. If you don't, the system will automatically log you out in 10 hours. But before that anyone on that computer will be using your account. You may believe that anyone who wants to take a quiz should login using his own UTORid and password. Yes, you are probably right. But blackboard does not update the cookie in such case. Whoever login portal on that computer would be happily and unawarely doing the quiz for you.

A: There will be totally 11 or 12 online quizzes, of which the 9 best grades are counted toward your final grade. For each quiz, we allow UP TO 3 attempts (except for the first weekly quiz , where you are allowed unlimited attempts). Only your last attempt counts toward your grade. DO NOT start a new attempt if you think the mark is sufficiently good for you.

The weight of online quizzes is 10%.

A: Each quiz will be up every Thursday afternoon after the class, and due midnight (11:55pm) the next Tuesday.

A: It is usual that portal website is temporarily unavailable. Wait for a few minutes and try again. If for hours it is unavailable. You may need to checkout the portal-down page.

A: First you need to chek the setting of your browser. Make sure that javascript and cookie are enabled (for most kind of browsers you just need to use the default setting). If that does not work, and you still see errors such as 'Interner Error 500' (Error 500=a server excution error), you may need to upgrade your browser to a later version or use another computer (I know someone are using computers from last century...). If all attempts fail, send an email to ast201quiz@astro.utoronto.ca with the error information and the time it happens.

However if it is close to the due time, you might be hopeless to get help from TA through email. In such case, you can copy the quiz together with your answer to a file and save it. Send the file to ast201quiz@astro.utoronto.ca before the due time.

A: No. Something unexpected might happen. But that's why we allow you to drop some of your quizzes. We try to but can not be absolutely fair, since it is not possible for us to verify what happened when you were doing the quizzes.

A: Click the link 'My Grades' in the left panel. When you see 'My Grade' in the right panel, cllick it again. Then you should be able to see your grades of each quiz. Click the grade of one quiz. You should be able to see grade of each attempt. Again click the grade of one attempt. You will see all the details of the attempt that you clicked.

Note: The answers to past quizzes can also be found at 'past quizzes' section.

A: Click the '!' symbol to see your grade. It happens when you have some attempts 'in progress', but these attempts are not the last one which is counted toward your mark (see FAQ #11 to understand how this could happen). If you find your grade is just what you expected to see, please ignore the little BUG. But if you see something unexpected (get zero for instance), please email ast201quiz@astro.utoronto.ca.

Note: TAs can not see the '!' symbol in the gradebook. What we see is a normal grade, i.e. the one that you can see by clicking the '!' symbol. Don't worry about your grade. The '!' only has to do with a locked attempt that is not the last attempt, hence has nothing to do with your grade. The game rule is that we only take the grade of your last attempt, even if your last attempt is a 4th attempt (this could happen, see FAQ #11 ). Email us ONLY WHEN you think the grade 'hiding behind !' is incorrect.

A: This happens when you didn't submit your last attempt before the due date. Remember that whenever you click on the quiz, you are starting a new attempt. If you see the padlock symbol before the due date, in general you should be able to resume and submit it (in some special cases you may not be able to resume it, see next question). To resume the quiz, just go to 'weekly quiz' section and click the quiz as you usually do. If you see the padlock symbol after the due date, the solution becomes complicated. For quiz #1, you can email us if you have a good excuse. We might manually remove the locked attempts for you. For the rest quizzes, do not emails us, because we shall remove all the locked attempts with a program at the end of semester (due to technical probelm, we are not able to do this for quiz #1). When the locked (i.e. unsubmitted) attempts are removed, the mark of your last submitted attempt will be counted towards your grade.

A: This is due to the time delay of database response. (Normally you resume attempt #1 instead of starting a new attempt.) If this really happens to you, send ast201quiz@astro.utoronto.ca an email, we shall remove the locked attempt for you.

Note: Similarly, it is also possible that you find that you have started a 4th attempt, with the 3rd attempt locked. (Weird huh? We only allowed 3 attempts but you started your 4th!) In such case, simply submit the 4th attempt. If submitted successfully, its grade will be counted toward your mark. You should see an '!' symbol when you go to 'My Grades' section to check your grades. But you don't have to worry about anything. Your mark is already there (see FAQ #9).

A: In principle we trust portal, and do not accept such claims. At least it is beyond my understanding of Blackboard BUGs. Of course, we shall be convinced if you can show us how to make the grades disappear.