Technical support is available to all Sinclair Online students with computing, portal login, eLearn access, and other system-related questions. For class-specific academic support (such as with course content), please contact your instructor directly.
Phone: 937-512-4357 or toll-free at 866-781-4357
E-mail: helpdesk@sinclair.edu
Helpdesk Website: http://it.sinclair.edu/help-support
Online Helpdesk Ticket: http://hdto.sinclair.edu (24 hour response time)
Hours of Operation: Monday–Sunday: 6:00 a.m.–midnight (EST)
When contacting the helpdesk, please be prepared to provide the following information:
The information on this page is provided to help you get ready to complete courses with respect to their resources and technology.
*not all courses require all materials; this list is the more common items needed in eLearning courses. Your syllabus will contain specific technical requirements outside of this list.
There are certain expectations for computer skills and digital literacy in eLearning courses. This list covers the more common skills. Ask your instructor if others are needed.
You might want to know if your computer is capable of doing all you’ll need it to do while you complete your degree online. Here are some of the advanced system requirements needed for some online courses:
Some courses may require audio/video equipment to participate in web conferencing meetings or assignments:
*Some of our applications still utilize Adobe Flash and we are aware of Flash's current instability. We are taking measures to mitigate the use of Flash player in future development and converting past applications.
**Applies to Windows users only: Use VLC player in place of QuickTime due to Apple's discontinued support for the program for Windows devices.
VMWare is a fairly intensive software application and will not run on all home systems. Please be sure that your home computer has the hardware requirements mentioned above. Also, remember that these specs can vary by system; a laptop computer with these specifications can be much slower than a desktop with the same hardware rating. In general, Intel Celeron and AMD Sempron systems will not run VMWare well. Slower systems may work, but will be difficult to use and could experience lag, crashes, or extremely slow performance.
When you are downloading software, you may be asked to burn a DVD. If you do not have a DVD burner or do not want to burn a DVD, you may save ISO files to your hard drive. ISO files can be installed to a virtual machine by mounting them as a virtual DVD in the vm settings.
Resources in courses consist of many items provided by both Sinclair and third party vendors. Privacy and Accessibility policies are usually located on the homepage of a website including third party tools. Many sites and tools do not have a policy for either. Below are common tools used in Sinclair eLearning courses such as websites and other platforms. Consult your course for specific links or consult the homepages of websites and products used in the course.
Adobe Products (Acrobat Reader, Presenter, etc.)
Apple Products (Safari)
D2L/Brightspace
Google Products (Google, Google Drive, YouTube, Chrome Browser, etc.)
Microsoft Products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, etc.)
Mozilla Firefox
Rise/Articulate 360 (Media tools)
Study Mates (includes Respondus Lockdown Browser)
Zoom
Sinclair Website (and all sub-domains)