Hey all
I am SUPER new to Moodle and I'm having a hard time deciding how to best use it... Here's what I've done so far, I'm looking for some tips or maybe a 'that isn't how to do that!' or something!
I created a course and set it to 'Topic format' with four topics as I have 4 (massive) sub categories. I then added the headings for the topics and started adding resources and activites to make up each subsection, but it seems to me that this is going to be a very long list and I don't see any easy way to navigate around like a nex/prev button or a table of contents block or something... Am I approaching this totally wrong? I swear I've been reading the help files, but I'm seriously at a loss.
Any insights greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Hi Ryan,
I think you're trying to avoid the 'scroll of death' and rightly so too.
How about creating a meta course and making the subsections their own course within the meta course? That way students would only have to see one subsection at a time.
Alternatively, use 'web page' resources and have several activities linked to from that web page. The real link for the activities can be hidden out of the way somewhere. The student would click on one link and a page would pop up containing perhaps 5 or 6 icons, linked to hidden activities. Do that for everything and your course would intially look 20% of its real size to the students. To you it would be the same length, but a lot of it would be hidden and only seen by you.
Paul
I think you're trying to avoid the 'scroll of death' and rightly so too.
How about creating a meta course and making the subsections their own course within the meta course? That way students would only have to see one subsection at a time.
Alternatively, use 'web page' resources and have several activities linked to from that web page. The real link for the activities can be hidden out of the way somewhere. The student would click on one link and a page would pop up containing perhaps 5 or 6 icons, linked to hidden activities. Do that for everything and your course would intially look 20% of its real size to the students. To you it would be the same length, but a lot of it would be hidden and only seen by you.
Paul
Hi Mary,
I'm just about to try for the first time to "Make my course look like a regular webpage", I've read the bit in Moodledocs, I've watched your video and I've got your book Moodle 1.9 for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds open beside me at page 204, but I still have a question:
I wanted to create the course locally and upload it to the online site, but I'll have to redo all those links, won't I? They'll all be absolute links. Is there any work around?
Cheers,
Glenys
I'm just about to try for the first time to "Make my course look like a regular webpage", I've read the bit in Moodledocs, I've watched your video and I've got your book Moodle 1.9 for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds open beside me at page 204, but I still have a question:
I wanted to create the course locally and upload it to the online site, but I'll have to redo all those links, won't I? They'll all be absolute links. Is there any work around?
Cheers,
Glenys
Hi again Mary,
(Oh, I didn't intend to make your video actually appear on the page, I just wanted to provide a link.)
Aie ! I didn't realise that this elegant trick only works with Resources, it doesn't work for Hot Pot exercises, QuizPorts, Forums and, I imagine, other Activities.
I'll have to go back to the old way. Sigh!
But still cheerful,
Glenys
(Oh, I didn't intend to make your video actually appear on the page, I just wanted to provide a link.)
Aie ! I didn't realise that this elegant trick only works with Resources, it doesn't work for Hot Pot exercises, QuizPorts, Forums and, I imagine, other Activities.
I'll have to go back to the old way. Sigh!
But still cheerful,
Glenys
Hi Glenys,
it does work for Activities. I am currently just finishing off a course where students click on an animated gif image and that opens up a Database where they record their exercise activities.
The animated gif is in a label in topic 2. The database is in topic 3. I got the url of the link to the databse in topic 3 and hyper-linked the image in topic 2 to the database in topic 3.
The final trick is to go to the course settings and set the 'number of weeks/topics' to only show 2 topics. The database is still there and working, just no one can see it.
All the student (and anyone else for that matter) sees is the animated image. When the click on it the database appears.
Paul
it does work for Activities. I am currently just finishing off a course where students click on an animated gif image and that opens up a Database where they record their exercise activities.
The animated gif is in a label in topic 2. The database is in topic 3. I got the url of the link to the databse in topic 3 and hyper-linked the image in topic 2 to the database in topic 3.
The final trick is to go to the course settings and set the 'number of weeks/topics' to only show 2 topics. The database is still there and working, just no one can see it.
All the student (and anyone else for that matter) sees is the animated image. When the click on it the database appears.
Paul
It seems to me that the only reason to think that the topic outline is not like a regular webpage is its coded default as expended topics. If the default is set to "collapsed" or rather single topic view you have in effect a quite elegant "like_a_regular_webpage" behavior. Topic 0 is always visible so you can have there those lovely icons, each of which is a link to a particular topic in the single topic view. You can disable the exploded view by removing the right side of the topics. This method is also more convenient for editing the course resources and activities as you don't have to change settings (although you can merely hide the repository topic instead of changing settings back and forth) or deal with a long list of items in that repository.
Thanks to both of you! This info should provide me with a great place to start. ;)
In reply to Ryan Thomson
Re: Organizing a course with very large sub-sections?
by Nadav Kavalerchik -
There is a very useful "Flexible web page" course format
that helps you organize your course topics in tabs.
that helps you organize your course topics in tabs.
Hi Gleny - yes; what Paul says - about it working for any type of activity as long as you have its URL. In the video (which is our school options page) the third image links to a Questionnaire that the pupils use to select their options. Nadav - I like the look of the flexible webpage format although at my school the webhosting doesn't allow us to have non-standard formats so we have to workaround.
Hi Mary and Paul,
Oh, and Activities do work on my online course but they didn't locally - I don't know why. (It's much faster for me to experiment locally than online). My local version of Moodle is 1.9.7 + (Build 20100127). Could that be the problem? It's not really an antiquity, is it? My online course is Moodle 1.9.7+ (Build: 20100303)
(By the way, I really resent the fact that now only admins can see the Moodle version and teacher and student users can't.)
Yes, I'm feeling a bit grumpy, but not with you Mary and Paul, I'm really grateful.
Cheers,
Glenys
Oh, and Activities do work on my online course but they didn't locally - I don't know why. (It's much faster for me to experiment locally than online). My local version of Moodle is 1.9.7 + (Build 20100127). Could that be the problem? It's not really an antiquity, is it? My online course is Moodle 1.9.7+ (Build: 20100303)
(By the way, I really resent the fact that now only admins can see the Moodle version and teacher and student users can't.)
Yes, I'm feeling a bit grumpy, but not with you Mary and Paul, I'm really grateful.
Cheers,
Glenys
You may also want to check out the Timeline course format by José Cedeño which sounds like it was designed to handle a large number of sub-sections and to avoid the long scrolls. Peace - Anthony