How to use Virtual Office Hours

What is VOH

VOH (Virtual Office Hours) is a web based bulletin board developed at UCLA. The basic features available include:

Announcements. This is where you view announcements posted by the instructor.
Submit a question. This form allows you to submit a question, either publicly or confidentially. Public questions go to the unanswered questions area until the instructor answers the questions and then they go to the answered questions area. This lets other students see both your question and the answer. Confidential questions are sent by e-mail to the course instructor, who can then respond privately to your question. VOH is for instructional use only. Any inappropriate questions will be deleted and disciplinary action will be taken.
View answered questions. This allows access to questions the instructor has answered.
View unanswered questions. View questions posted, but not yet answered. Before submitting a question, check here to see if anyone has already asked your question.

How to submit questions.

Just fill out your name, your e-mail address, select public or confidential submission, type your question, and press the send button.

If you do not fill in all parts of the form, an error message is returned. Your question can not be submitted until the form is complete.

You can add HTML tags to format your question. These give special instructions to the browser. This is like adding bold and italic with a word processor. You do not have to do this, but it may help you phrase your question.

What is an HTML tag

HTML is a "markup" language that tells a browser what to do. Tags are placed within less than (<) and greater than (>) signs. The browser uses these "tags" as instructions. Most tags include two parts. For example BOLD is displayed by a browser as BOLD. The first tag begins the bold and the tag with the slash [/] is the end of the bold.

How to Add HTML to a VOH Question

HTML tags are entered directly into the question submission form. After the form is submitted the document is displayed with the tags. Below are a few basic HTML tags.

>Break . This tag forces a carriage return in the browser. This helps layout because regular line feeds are ignored by Netscape (like pressing enter for a hard return in a word processor). The tag is equivalent to a hard return and it forces a new line.

For example if you type the following in a submission form
A set of lines in the form
that look like they are divided into two lines of text.
Will be displayed in the questions section as:
A set of lines in the form that look like they are divided into two lines of text.
To avoid this add the tag to force a hard return. The form should look like this:
A set of lines in the form 
that look like they are divided into two lines of text
Will be displayed in the question area as:
A set of lines in the form
that look like they are divided into two lines of text.

Paragraph . This tag is for the end of a paragraph. It causes a double return. Place the tag at the end of a paragraph like this.

and the next line will show up like this.

Tags for Text.

Function What to Type in the Form Displayed in the Question

Bold This is Bold This is Bold

Italic This is italic This is italic

Superscript This is superscript This is^superscript

Subscript This is subscript This is _subscript

Function	What to Type in the Form	Displayed in the Question
Bold	<B>This is Bold</B>	This is Bold
Italic	<I>This is italic</I>	This is italic
Superscript	This is <SUP>superscript</SUP>	This is^superscript
Subscript	This is <SUB>subscript</SUB>	This is _subscript

This document was prepared by
Scott Van Bramer
Widener University
Department of Chemistry
Please send any comments or suggestions to svanbram@science.widener.edu
Last Updated: Saturday, June 15, 1996 8:37:15 PM