Moodle 2.2.3 (Build: 20120514); hosted by MoodleRooms.
I'm attempting to copy about 150 courses from our summer term to be used in the fall term. I've tried a number of different options, but it looks like this is going to take several weeks to complete the way I'm doing it now. I've got to believe that admins at other schools have already figured this out and I'm hoping that someone can give me a simpler (and faster) way to work.
1. I created empty course shells for the fall semester via a batch job. Easy to do, no problem.
2. My first attempt to copy a class was "almost" right, but no banana (as they say). I opened the new course (say, ENG101_Fall2012), clicked "import" in the setting block, found the old course (ENG101_Sum2012), and imported it. It looked like it worked just fine. It was quick and easy to do. Unfortunately, every topic was named "Orphaned Activities" and the topic text was not there and could not be edited; though the activities seemed to make it OK:
3. I then decided to backup/restore the class. That was OK, I guess, but the first class I tried created a backup file more than 750MB big and Moodle wouldn't let me restore it into the new course ("file too big" error). All of that backup, downloading the file, and restoring the file (as much as I could get done) cost me about an hour and is not very efficient. Of course, it didn't even work, so efficiency doesn't matter.
4. I turned on Automatic Backup so I can make a backup of all our classes. This is "best practice" anyway; and I can then use some sort of FTP program to pull the backup files onto my hard drive for offsite storage. This is nice, but doesn't really solve my problem of copying classes.
5. I tried "restoring" a summer class into the fall class (ENG101_Fall2012) that is empty; but when I click "Restore" Moodle only lets me choose files from the backup directories for the Fall class; I cannot pick a file from some other class (like the summer class) to restore into the Fall class (at least, not that I can see). Can I upload the summer backups into some directory so I can pick them to restore into the fall class?
6. This is becoming such a huge ball of wax that I'm wondering how I would ever teach our faculty to copy their own courses. Import seemed perfect and is easy to use, but it does not copy some of the essential information from the old class. Backup/Restore is more complex and if the files are as large as 750MB they couldn't do it anyway.
I would appreciate any tips on restoring old courses into new courses for this fall. I would also appreciate any thoughts on how to get faculty to copy their own courses in the future. Thanks for traveling this way before me and helping me avoid potholes.
--George Self
Cochise College, Arizona, USA
"Paddling as hard as I can, but the creek is still winning!"
