How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Tan M -
Number of replies: 11

Hello Everyone!

I am currently struggling with the thought of how to make my course "automatically reset itself every month."  Specifics:

I have just spent the last few weeks building a course: adding lectures, assignments, quizzes, journals, the whole works.  I have the course looking exactly how I like it.

I want this course to function so that the official start date of the course is the first day of the month and the official end date is the last day of the month.  I want this to be true for every month of the year.

What I don't understand is that if on October 1st, the beautiful course I have worked so hard to create goes into action and has students, activity, etc., how can I have the same beautiful course that I had on October 1st (before anyone enrolled) appear again on November 1st? (brand new - fresh and clean).

I obviously don't want to delete the October 1st course, since it just ended on the 31st and there is still grading to do.  So the November 1st course has to be another instance of the same course.  The November course does, however, have to "take the place" of the October course because there will be external links and stuff leading students to the course.  Can anyone tell me how that can be accomplished?  If anyone is into fulfilling dreams, here is my dream:

1) "Course ABC" automatically creates itself on the first of every month.  It moves itself somewhere at the end of the month (and closes access to students) so that a new instance of "Course ABC" can take its place.

2) The new instance of "Course ABC" will always need the same instructor, 3 dummy students, 2 calendar entries, and 3 news forum postings.  It should have these already populated.

I assume that I could rebuild the course every month manually, but it would take quite a bit of time and, since it happens on the last day of every month, what if I'm sick?  On vacation?  It won't get done.  I am hoping that someone is undergoing the same kind of monthly renewal and will have some ideas on how this can all be done automatically?

Thanks in advance!

Tan

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In reply to Tan M

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Przemyslaw Stencel -
The only way I can think of would be to keep the backup file of the course you've created as a template and restore this backup (as a new course) each month. Not automatic, I know, but it doesn't involve much work.
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In reply to Przemyslaw Stencel

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Tan M -

So are you recommending that I make "clones" of my course?  So I have my template and I save it (using the "backup" link on my course page, right?)

Then I create a new course (using admin) and then once in there, use the "restore" link to restore my template into that new course?  Is that how it would work?  I can do that?

I suppose then that to accomplish what I want, I could just do this three times (one for october, november, and december) and have them all running concurrently?

I would have to name each course something different, right?  And wouldn't my students see 3 courses when they come to the site instead of just one?

Tan

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In reply to Tan M

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Marc Dastous -

Tan;

To answer your questions in order:

1) Yes you are, to use your term, "Cloning" your course.

2) And that backup will be saved within the original course as a backup.  I would suggest moving this file into the main file folder to make the backup easier to find.

3) Then to "restore" the backup you would login, navigate to the FILES and click restore. 

4) Yes you would do this three times and they could all be running concurrently, but would have to be named differently (BUS101, BUS102, etc.)

5) If you are enrolling the students, they will only be able to see their course.  If they enroll themselves they will be able to "see" the course descriptions, but will not be able to access the materials unless they have the enrollment key for their course.  Each course should have a different enrollment key and the students will enter the key for access to the class (Unless they are paying for the course via PayPal).

I hope this helps, but let us know if we can provide more information.

Marc

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In reply to Marc Dastous

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Tan M -
Hi Marc!

Thank you so much for your guidance.  It is much
appreciated!  I have a few questions on the directions
you sent me.  I hope you don't mind taking a look at
them!  I'll use the same numbering:

1) Okay, I'm cool with cloning the course.  Let's call
the template T1 and then the clones C1 (october) C2
(november) and C3 (december).

2) Are you saying here that there is a separate
"FILES" link for each course that is created?  This
means that when I hit the "backup" link for course T1
it will put it in the "files" for T1.  You recommend
that I take this backup file and move it out to the
files folder of the whole site.  Is this correct?

3) Now this is where I get confused.  If I navigate to
"files" (even if it's the whole site's "files") and
push the "restore" link, then won't it just overwrite
the currently existing T1 with this restoration?

4) So based on the way I'm thinking for #3, I don't
quite get how C1, C2, and C3 would be created.  Nor
can I fathom how I could rename them.

5) I just upgraded to 1.4.1+ today so I could try
using the paypal.  So what I'm thinking now, based on
your advice, is to create C1, C2, and C3 all in one
shot and then somehow have it so that they only go
live in the month they are supposed to.  I don't quite
know yet if this is possible cuz I haven't played with
the new features yet, but that is how I'm guessing it
will have to work.

6) Additional question: If I still have T1 on there
(for me to keep modifying and enhancing throughout the
days), then will students be able to see it?  Can I
hide it so only I can see it?

7) Additional question: If I want 2 calendar items, 3
news forum posts, 1 instructor, and 3 students to be a
part of T1 (and, therefore, be already there when I
create C1, C2, and C3) is that possible?  If I take
the backup when all of this is in place, will it
create C1 with these in place also?

8) Additional question: If you say YES to #7, then
will the existence of those 4 users conflict in any
way with enrolling people via paypal?  These 4 will
kinda be in "for free" while others will have to pay
and get a key...

Sorry for so many questions!  I've just spent so much
time creating this course that I'm scared to do
anything that would mess it all up!

I can't thank you enough for your assistance!

Tan
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In reply to Tan M

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Penny Leach -
Sorry I've come in to this conversation so late, but I wrote some code that may help you, I posted a patch a while ago.

Basically, if you create an empty course, there is a new link by backup and restore, to "import course data". You then choose a previous course which you want to import FROM and choose the modules that you want.

It doesn't import user data, because it was designed to create a copy of a course from a previous semester, so you wouldn't want previous user data.

So all the student enrolments would be gone. This is based on the backup and restore code though so it would be relatively trivial to import user data.

Anyway, the thread about my patch is here:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=10472

I imagine you'd run your first course and then create an empty course and import the data from the old course into it.. and then hide the first one.. and then again next month.

It's not automated though.

Hope that helps!

Penny
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In reply to Penny Leach

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Patrik Olterman -
What version is this available in ?

I am using moodle 1.4.1 and do not seem to have that option or am I simply looking in the wrong place ?
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In reply to Penny Leach

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Tan M -

Hi Penny,

A special thanks for your assistance!

Tan

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Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
What you really have here are cohorts going through the same course.

Have you looked at setting up groups in a single course in "separate" mode, with one group per cohort?  In forced separate mode (set in course settings) the groups can't see each other at all, and if you, as the teacher, start looking at one of the groups then you stay in that "mode" as you move around the course.

Could be a solution.  Make sure you have 1.4 or later, because some groups stuff was fixed from 1.3.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Tan M -

Martin and Penny!

Thanks so much for your assistance.  I am going to play with both ideas and see which one works best for the setup I'm tying to achieve.  I'm trying the duplicating approach first and I've found a slight problem:

Duplicating a course: I have tried duplicating a course but when I go to rename the course, it tells me that I cannot reuse the same SHORT NAME.  This is a big problem because it is the shortname that appears on the navigation and everything and I want it to be the same for every instance of the course!

Is it true?  Is there no way for me to reuse the short name for my multiple courses?

Tan

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In reply to Tan M

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses

by Tan M -

Hi Martin,

While I cross my fingers and hope that the short name can be reused, I have been playing with the groups feature.

Your recommendation is a good one and I see that the different groups methodology would be useful for a variety of different classroom scenarios.  Unfortunately, I don't think it will work for mine! 

Since I am looking to have the same class repeat every month, I would naturally need to name my groups October 2004, November 2004, etc.  This poses a problem, however, because:

1) There is no way for students to enroll directly INTO a group.  Depending on what month they sign up in, they would need to, by default, be in that month's group.  Otherwise they will just be confused while they wait for me to manually move them into a group.

2) I'm wanting to start a paid course using the same monthly methodology, meaning that students pay for a month (they are activated the first day of the month and then are deactivated on the last day).  Groups won't really work then because the start date for the course will be the same for all groups, thus unallowing me from restricting start and end dates of each user's course.

By the way, I'm just assuming that the new paypal feature works in the way I demonstrated above.  I've posted to see if I can get confirmation:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=13247#63750

Hopefully my comments make sense.  If you have any of your usual moments of brilliance, I'd be happy to hear about them!

Thanks so much for spending this time with me!

Tan

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In reply to Tan M

Re: How to Accomplish Recurring Courses - "Time Zone" for groups

by Timothy Takemoto -

Dear Tan,

Bernard Boucher has created a way of changing the timing of events using an extension of the calendar. I am not sure if that is the way to go or not. What do you think?
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=12511

First of all I think that you can not resuse the short names. If you try and give the same short name then I think that it would come up with a warning saying that it is already used. Yes. I checked. The shortnames have to be unique.

1) Group Time Zone
Regarding your point 2, as you point out, the first major stumbling block with groups is that the timing is the same for all groups. We need groups to be timed in order for their to be independent cohorts/classes. 

I think that two things are needed to allow groups to be used for multiple courses - A setting a on a group administration page which would alow for a sort of "Group Time Zone" so that a group could be set "plus one week" "plus one month" "minus three days" from the "Greenwich Mean Time" of the mother course itself. 

I have courses that start on Monday period 4 and Wednesday period one, so I would have to make complicated calculations but if as well as allowing one to add a Time Zone, the group page showed a "The time now in this time zone is" or a "The course start time in this groups time zone is" then one could check that one had set the group time zone correctly.

2) The ability to skip weeks in group clones
Adding a group time zone would leave the problem of things like national holidays and typhoons which introduce changes to the Time Zone of the group.  Following the time zone analogy, this could be understood to add the complexity of "summer time"  (or multiple summer times) switching in an out at different times of course "year". 

But rather than change the time zone, I think that for most purposes the ability to skipp weeks is all that is needed. If there were a list of the weeks in the group with check boxes showing each week of the mother course, then checks might be added on the groups set up page to indicate which of these are skipped in that particular course view. The mother course would then only include the weeks determined by the material, the clone/baby courses would be longer, depending how many national holidays/typhoons they contained.

Regarding your point 1, I have never used groups, so I am not sure of how students enroll on them. Can't they be given an enrolment key like that which enables them to enroll on courses, and then enrol in the same way?

By the way, I strongly recommend "Moodle for Windows" if you are managing multiple courses. You are going to be faced with a lot of clicking in any event, so creating the mother courses on a home machine using Moodle for Windows is going to ease that process.

Timothy
takemoto

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