Archive for October, 2009

Don’t panic too much if you have logged in to My Timetable after following “How do I check My Timetable” and you’ve got an error message saying:

“You do not have a personal timetable for this period. Please contact your Course Administrator.”

Most likely, this has been caused by one of two things. Perhaps you’ve logged in using capitals in your username. For example if you log in with ABC99 instead of abc99, then there will not be a timetable record for you. Try logging out and logging back in with your username in lowercase to see if fixes the issue.

If  your timetable still fails to appear, contact your course administrator. It might simply be that your course has yet to be uploaded.

Blackboard is Imperial’s ‘virtual learning environment’, used to deliver online courses, set and receive assignments etc.

Not all departments within Imperial use Blackboard at the moment, so if you try and log on and do not find any of your courses listed, this may be the reason. Please speak to your course tutor or your programme administrator for more details.

If you are unable to log in to the Blackboard E-Learning service (previously known as webct), please check the following:

• Are you fully enrolled / registered with college, with a CID number and college username? If not, please ensure you have completed this process before trying to access Blackboard
• Have you activated your college username? Are you able to log on to other networked resources, such as email? If yes, you may have a £ pound sign in your password. If not, try going to the Blackboard browser tune-up site for further advice. If you are still unable to log on, contact the Service Desk
• If you are not a full-time member of the College (e.g. a contractor or consultant) who has a Blackboard login, but not a full college username, please contact the Service Desk for assistance
• If you are a full-time member of college but do not know your username or password, please contact the Service Desk
• If you do need to contact the Service Desk, please ensure you have the following information to hand: exact nature of the problem, your username, which version of Blackboard you are trying to access, whether you are trying to access the service on or off campus
• If you are experiencing difficulties in accessing Blackboard via My Imperial, you can also go direct to learn.imperial.ac.uk

There are several reasons why you may be unable to see all your courses in Blackboard.

• Not all departments use Blackboard, so even though you may be logging on to the service, your course may not have been entered on to the system. Speak to your course tutor or programme administrator for further assistance
• Other queries on the content of Blackboard – and enrolment for the Blackboard service – would also be managed by your departmental administrator or course tutor

If this has not helped you, feel free to look at other FAQs within this site, or contact the ICT Service Desk. If contacting us, we will ask you for the exact nature of the problem, your full name and login ID, your course of study and where you are connecting from (i.e. on or off campus).

Using your own laptop:

We have a vast network across all of our campuses, the wireless network covers all of the South Kensington campus and most of those at the medical sites.  Connecting to the wireless network is a quick and easy way to use your own laptop.

Using College computers:

If you want to use a College desktop computer, there are plenty available across the campus.  The Central Library at South Kensington has plenty of ‘Public Cluster PCs’ where anyone with an Imperial College username can logon and make use of.  All of these computers have the standard, commonly used software and printing facilities already installed.

You will also find many Public PCs in your department where you’ll find software and applications installed that are tailored to your department.  The exact services available vary from department to department – for more details you should contact your tutor.

Across each campus you will see large printers with card readers on them. These are ICT Print Service printers and you can print to any of these from any computer in the College. When you print to them it stores the information on your account and then any printer you swipe your card on will let you print out the document using the touch screen menu.

To find out where you can add money to your account: How to Add Credit

For costs, broken down by each department: Departmental Charges

To use your own computer for printing on campus, go to the ICTprintservice website and select “print from this PC”.

You may hear about something called VPN, which stands for Virtual Private Network. Use this service to connect to the college network when off-campus.

You can use VPN from home, private accommodation, work placement or even abroad.This is useful if you need to access your home drive, remotely connect to your college computer, access some of the library resources or print to a college printer.

It will not work in Halls or on the college wireless service as these are already connected to the college network.

To set up VPN on your computer, we have some handy guides for you:

VPN for XP

VPN for Vista

VPN for Mac

ICT support almost all ISP’s but for a list Click Here

Please note that there are issues with Windows 7 connecting to VPN. To fix the connection issue, do the following:

1. Go to Control Panel
2. Click on Network and Internet
3. Click “View network status and tasks” in “Network and Sharing Center”
4. Click “Change adapter settings” on the left panel
5. Right click on the VPN connection and click Properties
6. Select the “Security” tab at the top
7. From “Type of VPN:” select “Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP)” and click “OK”
8. Reconnect to VPN.

The Exchange email system has a size limit of 25Mb on attachments, so if you have larger files to send to someone you may wish to use the File Exchange service.

Although not a traditional FTP (file transfer protocol) service, File Exchange is  very simple to use and allows you to send files of a considerably larger size than possible via the email service. However, you may encounter difficulties if you or the person you are sending to is on a network inferior to the College’s.

There are step-by-step instructions on the service’s web page but if you have any problems give the Service Desk a call on (020 759) 49000.

If you forget the password to your college user name, you can reset it yourself using the Password Reset Page

If you are still having problems, you can alternatively have your password reset;

• By visiting the ICT Service Desk, 4th floor, Sherfield Building, South Kensington. (Make sure you bring your CID card so that we can confirm your identity.)
• By phoning the ICT Service Desk on 020 7594 9000. Please make sure that you have your CID number ready as we will ask for this, along with carrying out other security checks.

As a reminder – passwords much meet the following criteria:

• be at least 8 characters
• have 3 of the following 4 conditions:
  • a capital letter
  • a lowercase letter
  • a number
  • a symbol (e.g. ?!@*&)

In most cases, a person’s username is created before they join the college. When you “activate” your college account you will get your username and set your password. This is the username and password to log in to all college services, such as email, computers, ICIS and the student e-service.

If you haven’t yet activated your account you can do so here: Account Activation Page

Just a reminder that your password will expire after one year and you will be asked to set a new password.