Orientation: Activate OU Web Space

As a student at OU, you have university webspace that is available to you where you can publish your schoolwork online. You can use your OU web space for publishing webpages, and you can also use it for hosting image files. Even if you are not going to publish your web pages for this class in your OU web space, you still need to activate the web space now so that you will have it ready for use later on in the semester. You never know when a little free web space will come in handy!

This assignment has three steps that you need to complete before you do the Gradebook Declaration. If you have already activated your OU webspace, you can skip to STEP TWO.

STEP ONE: Activate your web account. To activate your web account, go to account.ou.edu and follow the instructions provided there. You will need to go to the section labeled OUNet Account Information.  Then, within that section scroll down to the bottom of the box where it says URL. Follow the instructions there to activate your OU webspace. (While you are there, you might also check on your email spam filter settings; you will see those directly above the area for activating your OU webspace URL.)

Already activated your webspace? If you already activated your webspace previously, you will see this message displayed.

If this is the message you see, you are good to go - you can skip Step Two of this assignment and go directly to Step Three, checking to make sure the address you see here is correct.

STEP TWO: Look yourself up at search.ou.edu. After you have activated your account, your web address (URL) will be listed at the search.ou.edu site. So, to find the address you should look yourself up at the People Search:

When you see your name listed, click on the link, and you will see your webpage address displayed where it says URL. If you do not see yourself listed, skip down to the note below about Directory Holds.

STEP THREE: Go to your web space. To make sure your web space is activated, you should copy-and-paste the address into a separate browser window and make sure it works (for some reason, OU IT does not make it a clickable link; go figure!). As you can see, the address is based on your dotted name identity, which makes it awkward and difficult to type. So, after you check the address and make sure it works, you should bookmark that address for future reference! That way, you won't have to look up the address again or type it manually.

When you go to the address, you will see a default page displayed automatically. This page is automatically created for you when your webspace is activated:

Please do not complete the Gradebook Declaration until you have clicked on the link and confirmed that your web address is functioning properly. About 10% of the time the system does not work properly (the OU web is absolutely ancient, running on very very old equipment with very very old software).

If you run into trouble... If for some reason your account does not activate properly, contact the IT Helpdesk at 325-HELP and tell them to activate your webspace for you. This is most common for people who have changed their name since they first enrolled at OU; so, if you got married or divorced and have changed your name, you may need IT to help you activate your account. Don't worry: if it takes some extra time to get your webspace activated because of a problem with OU IT, I'll record the points for you manually in lieu of the Declaration. Do NOT do the Declaration until you have clicked on your webspace link and verified that it is working - just make sure you write to me before the deadline to let me know that something has gone wrong with your activation, and then let me know when IT has fixed the problem for you.

NOTE: Directory Hold. If you have a Directory Hold on your information, you will not be listed in the search.ou.edu directory. That is not a problem. Just do the activation as shown above, and then send me an email explaining that you have a Directory Hold. You can complete the Gradebook Declaration, but make sure you send me an email first so that I can then send you the address of your OU webspace.

Gradebook Declaration:

Please do not complete the Gradebook Declaration until you have successfully completed all the steps of this assignment.