Is it possible through a built-in tool, plugin, or some hack to populate my course TOPICS and ACTIVITIES via an external source, such as a CSV? I'm finding that creating a dummy course set up like I want all my courses, then IMPORTING it to another course, then deleting out what I don't want to be a time-ineffective method. It takes days. I've used other systems that have csv/excel importers that build course content including activities that automate the building of many complex courses. It's particularly slow to have to edit every single topic to have the same set of activities, completion rules, and conditional release rules, and custom pages, etc. google hasn't brought up anything for me yet, I'm hoping someone might know of a good way to build courses using some kind of automation or external process.
Hear, Hear!
Batch update from a flatfile is much easier for the user to manipulate.
However -- from my own programming experience -- a batch update is much harder for a programmer to implement, particularly if there are as many variables as there are in a course record. A user record is easy, with only a dozen fields to evaluate.