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Many students using AOL as their Internet Service Provider (ISP) have had some technical difficulties accessing online courses, including time limits for browsing, discussion forum errors, and file attachment problems. See below for important information related to these problems.

	Part 1 of 3 :

While Blackboard, our online course management software, generally works well with AOL, students connecting with AOL should follow these instructions:

1.	Connect to the Internet using AOL.
2.	Once connected, open Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator as your web browser. You MUST use one of these two web browsers. To determine which browser you have and start the application, click on the Start button on your screen, click on Programs, and view the list of programs on your computer. Select the browser by clicking on it (you may have to click on it again if a submenu pops up). Note: check your desktop - you may have an icon for the browser setup as a shortcut already.
3.	Once the browser window is open, type in the web address for your online course (example: http://de.rowancabarrus.edu/) and login.

If you are using AOL for your ISP and email provider, you may continue to do so. However, if you begin to experience trouble sending or receiving email and attachments you will probably want to setup another email account with a free provider, such as email (www.email.com), yahoo (www.yahoo.com) or hotmail (www.hotmail.com). RCCC does not guarantee nor endorse these providers, nor do we provide technical support for them.

Having an alternative ISP may be wise during your enrollment as an online student. Free commercial ISP's are available. For assistance with selecting an Internet Service Provider, you can visit http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/features/webportals/choose.html ("How to Choose and ISP") or http://www.barkers.org/online/index.html ("Online Connection").

Acknowledgment:
The material in "Part 1 of 3" includes information from Fayetteville Technical Community College (FTCC) and the Blackboard Online Orientation at FTCC.

	Part 2 of 3 :

America Online (AOL), Prodigy, and CompuServe are Internet Service Providers (ISPs). As part of their software they each provide an internal web browser that allows users to browse the web. Often, these web browsers are either customized and/or are older versions of IE (Internet Explorer). We do not recommend using these browsers with Blackboard software.

CAUTION: Using these particular internal browsers may cause sporadic problems with your online course. To minimize the possibility of browser related problems, we strongly recommend using an external browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape when accessing your online courses. Most computers have an updated version of an external browser such as Internet Explorer pre-installed.

Please follow the instructions below if you are using AOL;

OPENING ANOTHER BROWSER (while using AOL as your default Internet connection/browser):

	Sign on through AOL (access the internet)
	Locate the "keyword" button to the immediate top right, click on it
	Type in "smile4u" in the search field, click on "GO"(submit)
	A yellow smiley face should appear; minimize your AOL browser
	Double click on the Internet Explorer [IE] or Netscape Communicator (Netscape) icon on your desktop.

NOTE: These steps should allow you to work on IE or Netscape without AOL timing out and removing you from the Internet because of inactivity; this workaround has not been verified using AOL 5.0 or 6.0.

Acknowledgment:
The material in "Part 2 of 3" includes information from Blackboard, Inc.

	Part 3 of 3 :

	Email MIME

	You may have heard the word MIME thrown around amongst your Internet friends or you may even have gotten an e-mail on AOL with a "MIME attachment." You were pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with a guy trapped inside an invisible box, but you weren't sure what it meant. Well, here's an end to the mystery. In compu-speak, MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (now you know why most people just say MIME). It's a specification that different e-mail programs use in order to work with other each other. When you send an e-mail with a file attached to someone over the Internet, MIME helps ensure that the recipient gets your attachment in a readable format -- whether it's graphics, sounds, whatever. Just think of MIME as being like a decoder ring. If both you and your friend have a Batman decoder ring you can decipher each other's messages, but if you have a Batman ring and your friend has a Spiderman ring, you won't be able to understand the messages (unless "iuobt rwe oih" means something to you). MIME is the standard decoder ring that most e-mail programs use. Sound complicated? Don't worry: AOL does MIME automatically. All you do is click the Attach (or Attach Files or Attachments) button on your e-mail form, and AOL does the rest. You don't even have to think about it. When you receive an attachment, AOL will also automatically translate most of the popular formats. If you ever run into a MIME file that AOL won't automatically decode, visit Keyword: MIME for details on cracking the code yourself.

	Email Attachments

	When sending file attachments to other America Online members, the maximum file size is 16 megabytes. When sending file attachments to the Internet, America Online's Internet e-mail servers can transfer file attachments of 2 MB or less in size. If the file you are trying to transfer is exceeds 2 MB, you will need to either compress the file or split it into smaller parts. You can download PKZIP v2.04g by doing a filesearch for PKZ204G.EXE (Use keyword FILESEARCH, then make sure that no categories are selected and type in PKZ204G.EXE for the search string). The instructions for using this file are in the File Description. Please take the time to read this very important document. The file is called a "self extracting file". When you download this file, run it. It will make a few files, one of which is pkunzip.exe. This is what you will use to uncompress files you download. There is also a manual that comes with PKZIP, that you should read. You can get help by typing: pkunzip -? (it will ask you to press a number at that point for which help screen you desire). The general format of pkunzip is: pkunzip [compressed file] [destination directory] You don't need to add the .ZIP extension, and you don't need to specify a destination directory if you want to uncompress the files to the current directory. So if you are in the directory C:\ and you want to uncompress the file C:\TEST.ZIP into the directory C:\TEMP, you would type: pkunzip test temp If you wanted to uncompress the file to the current directory, you would just type: pkunzip test To use pkzip, to make your own compressed files, follow the following format: pkzip [name of compressed file to create] [files to include] Examples: pkzip test . (will store all files in the current directory into a file called TEST.ZIP) or pkzip test *.wav (will store all files in the current directory with the extension .WAV into the file TEST.ZIP) PKZIP/PKUNZIP are handy utilities, and you will learn a lot more by reading the included manual and by typing "pkzip -? " and "pkunzip -?".

	Acknowledgment: The information in "Part 3 of 3" was sourced from "The College Without Walls", Distance Learning at Central Piedmont Community College.