Dear All,
Please can you help me with what is a very simple query and yet I cannot find a simple answer to the problem. The closest I got to an answer was a post in 2005 which managed to illicit the dreaded "you can't do it" answer. I am hoping some kind soul has changed the code since then?
One of my Science Colleagues has set up each unit of her senior Biology course as separate Moodle courses. She has also set up a separate area called Toolkits where she has a glossary. Now what she wants to do is have direct access to the glossary in every course, but naturally only update it once with new changes. I thought I was being very smart (after the usual hours of trying to figure it out) by having the Sharing Cart installed. It works like a dream, its seamless!!! HOWEVER, when you make changes to the original glossary the copied glossary does not reflect the changes i.e. the glossaries are not linked.
I did see a very early post by Martin suggesting that one puts a glossary on the front page, but this is just for the Biology category so that wont work.
I might be missing something simple and if I am I assure you it is not from the want of trying and looking for the answer.
Please help........or at least tell me that its absolutley not possible and maybe it might come in Moodle 2???
Thank you as always
Clare
Clare > "HOWEVER, when you make changes to the original glossary the copied glossary does not reflect the changes i.e. the glossaries are not linked."
Clare, you are not alone. The impossibility to share glossaries (and other resources) between courses is in my opinion one of the main weak points of Moodle. I'm afraid the answer to your query is - as it was back in 2005 - "You can't do it".
There have been in the past years a fair number of ventures to make Moodle resources shareable between courses, but those ventures often involve complicated workarounds and I have found none to be fully satisfactory. What is needed is a strong body of moodle users who do need this feature, are are vocal enough to make their voices heard, plus an institution (or group of institutions) with the manpower or money to contribute to the necessary development to make it happen. Maybe in moodle version 3.0...
Joseph
Dear Joseph
Thank you for your quick and straightforward answer. Not the one I wanted
but I appreciate your understanding. It is indeed most frustrating. When I win the lottery it can be on my list of moodle contributions!! In the meantime I will just keep plugging away.
Thank you for keeping this forum going as well. Its one of the quieter ones - which is a shame because the glossary module when combined with the game module is very powerful
Kindest regards
Clare
Thank you for your quick and straightforward answer. Not the one I wanted
Thank you for keeping this forum going as well. Its one of the quieter ones - which is a shame because the glossary module when combined with the game module is very powerful
Kindest regards
Clare
Clare,
I have 2 separate courses -- Algebra & Geometry. I created a glossary (several, really) of witty sayings (jpegs), as well as one of texts, and another of images in the Algebra course. I exported it and then imported it into Geometry course.
Every now and then, after I've added to the original glossary, I just export and import again. The import flags that there are repeats and then just adds the new items to the second glossary.
Hope this helps . . .
Len Kamiensky
I have 2 separate courses -- Algebra & Geometry. I created a glossary (several, really) of witty sayings (jpegs), as well as one of texts, and another of images in the Algebra course. I exported it and then imported it into Geometry course.
Every now and then, after I've added to the original glossary, I just export and import again. The import flags that there are repeats and then just adds the new items to the second glossary.
Hope this helps . . .
Len Kamiensky
Hi Clare,
Just browsing through interesting Glossary forum topics and found this year-old thread. I think you could do this using Meta courses. Put the glossary into the meta course and make all the other courses child to it. Links to the glossary in the meta course should allow editing/adding, but I don't know if the gloassry autolinking works down from the meta course to its child courses. I might give it a go to see.
Cheers,
Mike Smith
Brisbane, Australia
If the student is enroled in the other courses (maybe using child/meta courses), it is possible to create a hard-coded hyper link in an html block and create it in each course. The link opens the glossary in a new window.
All still looking for a neater solution,
I think there is a solution that can give you all you need in Moodle 1.9 or 2.0.
Essentially, if the 'global' nature of glossaries is fixed first, then you could use the Random Glossary entry block as your connection to the glossary.
Firstly you actually have to make global glossaries 'global' and Anthony Burrow created a patch for 1.9 for this at MDL-20131, and I've attempted to modify this for 2.0.1 see discussion http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=89732
Once done, you can create a global glossary in a common resources course, likely using meta / child enrolments to keep the users the same in this donor course as in all its recipient courses, e.g. so that all the Biology students can see it (as suggested above).
Now you add the Random Glossary Entry block to all those recipient courses, you rename the block and probably remove the randomness with the 'Last modified entry' setting.
Now all your course participants can see the latest entry and click once to jump to the glossary itself, where they can add or view according to the permssions you've set for them.
Very simple. Regards, John
I might be missing what you're asking here, but we have several courses, all accessing the same glossary which is on the front page in the 'Summary of the site' section above everything else.
Thanks for the tip. I created a Glossary on the Front Page, in fact it can be anywhere. Then in each course I added a 'Resource' URL and specified the URL of the front page glossary. No matter which course you are in, when you click on the resource it takes you to the one glossary.