• News and Announcements
• Clinical Pearls
• About the Program
• Program Description
• Program Outcomes
• Didactic Curriculum
• Experiential Training
• Tuition and Fees
• Computer Requirements
• FAQs
• Admissions and Orientation
• Admissions Process
• Non-Degree Admissions
• New Student Orientation
• Registration
• Registration for New Students
• Registration Tools
• Tuition, Fees, and Refunds
• Books and Software
• Troubleshooting Problems
• eCollege Info and Login
• Student Resources
• Academic Calendar
• Schedule of Courses
• Course Descriptions
• Scholarships and Financial Aid
• Continuing Education Credit
• Accessing Library Materials
• Accessing E-Mail
• Tips For Success
• Experiential Training
• Planning for Rotations
• Rotation Requirements
• Registration for Rotations
• Students
• Preceptors
• Credit by Challenge Process
• Graduation
• Graduation Eligibility
• Contact Us

Some Tips to Make Your Life As a Student Simpler

We would like to pass on a few hints that will make things a little easier for you as a Nontraditional PharmD student. Do not worry if some of these do notmake much sense right now; hang on to this information and you will soon find a use for these tips and tricks.

Composing work offline:

Many weekly units in your courses have professional skill development activities that require submitting assignments such as case write-ups or making contributions to online discussions ("threaded discussions"). When you are typing up assignments or discussion contributions online, be aware that the eCollege software may "time-out" on you and your work-in-progress may be lost. To avoid this unpleasant experience, type your work first into a Word document, saving it regularly to your desktop (or a file created for each course). When you are ready to post your work into the online course, save it, then highlight the whole document. You can do this by choosing Select All under the Edit menu, by typing CTRL+A, or by dragging the cursor over the whole document while holding down the shift key. Once you have highlighted the whole document, type CTRL+C to make a copy of the text, or use the Copy option under the Edit menu. Open up the function within the online course in which you want to post your material (say, the student dropbox or threaded discussion). Type CTRL+V or select Paste from the Edit menu, and your work will be copied into the online course. You can still edit your work online if you want to make a few changes.

Printing slides as handouts:

Many online lectures are accompanied by PowerPoint slide shows. You can print out the PowerPoint slides as handouts with two, three or six slides per page. This will save you a tremendous amount of paper every semester. You can also elect to print the slides in black and white rather than color (a huge cartridge savings over color printing) and to have lines outlining each slide. Once you have opened the slide show, or downloaded the file (saved it to your computer), click on File, then Print. Once you're in the print menu, find "Print what" in the lower left-hand corner. Select Handout from the drop-down menu choices. Next to this is a drop down menu arrow for number of slides per page. Clicking on the arrow will reveal choices such as 2, 3, 4 or 6 slides per page. Selecting 2 or 3 slides per page will print the slides on the left side of the page and print lines for note-taking on the right side. This is a very convenient format for taking notes while listening to the audio lectures. Selecting 4 or 6 slides per page prints the slides only. You will also want to select "grayscale" and "frame slides" at the bottom of the page to print in black and white and gray tones.

Saving files to your computer:

When you see a link to a file in an online course, left click on the highlighted link to view. You can also right click on the link to see a list of choices, which include downloading / saving the file (this is called "save target as . . ."). You may want to save certain files on your own computer and listen to them or print them later. This is useful for students who do not have a fast Internet connection and find that connecting to audio files online can be a slow process or have frequent distracting pauses.

Getting assistance:

When you are e-mailing course-related questions to NTPD staff members, please include the course number, and unit number to which you are referring. It will save us time having to look through each course to figure out which class you are talking about. Be sure to sign your e-mails. Many e-mails come to us displaying only the sender's e-mail address. Many of these are very cryptic or express personal interests. Unless your actual name is part of your e-mail address, please let us know who you are! We also appreciate if you include your student ID number as part of the address.

All technical problems should be referred to the eCollege help desk, which is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The eCollege helpdesk phone number is 303-873-0005; their e-mail is helpdesk@cuonline.edu. They are good about getting back to you if you have to leave them a phone message.

Good luck! Our best wishes for an enjoyable and successful experience in the NTPD program!

Last updated: 8/27/08