Capability to copy resources/activities

Capability to copy resources/activities

Joan Vendrell -
回帖数：18

Hi,

We are a students group of Pompeu Fabra University planning to add some features to moodle (actually we have to contribute to an open source project and we have chosen moodle, the software we use in class, in its version 1.4). We have thought about some improvements that may be interesting and here goes the first: the capability to copy the resources/activities we have previously added (similar to the one than let us change the position of any resource in the main page). The idea is to let the user copy and modify an existing activity, if it’s very similar to the one he wants, and not to have to create a new one every time (filling all the fields of the form and so on).

The question is, anybody know if this feature is already in development or added to the last version (we are currently working with 1.4.4)? I ask it because it will be worth upgrading to the newest version or waiting until the feature is released if it’s not too long than doing the same again. If not, we are going to develop it and of course we will release the source once we finish it, because it may interest or help somebody.

Any comments and suggestions are welcome 微笑

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回复Joan Vendrell

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Chris de Kok -
Hi Joan,

It's a nice idea to create function that copies activities and resources. ( perhaps whole courses also). The copying of whole courses can now only be done by backupping and restoring which isn't logical. I did not hear it was in development.. but make sure it isn't when you start!

Good Luck! I think this could help lots of Moodlers ..

- Chris -
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回复Joan Vendrell

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Michael Penney -
Hi Joan, Auduns layout editor (which Teemu linked to) works really well for copying resources.

One thing that Moodle doesn't have which would be a huge improvement would be a way for students to annotate documents online: something that would pull up a text editor and save notes along with the Moodle resource url, so a student could go back to the resource and view their notes (and perhaps share them with other students).

This is a big reason students here print out documents from Moodle (and our other LMS): so they can take notes. If there was a way to take notes online, save them, print them, etc. it would be a great new feature & one that hasn't been done yet: more discussion here.
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回复Michael Penney

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Josep M. Fontana -
I haven't tried the layout editor Teemu talks about but in the post he linked to it talks about 'moving' not 'copying'. What Joan specifically talks about is 'copying' resources which is a very different thing and it would actually be a big improvement. Having drag and drop capability for moving might be nicer than the present way of doing it but not such a big change if we compare it to being able to copy resources at will across different blocks.

Josep M.
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回复Josep M. Fontana

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Audun Hauge -
It started out as a layout editor, for moving mods between sections and rearranging sideblocks, but you can now also drag in mods from other courses.

I've made a 'nother version that is geared to copying from a Source course (most likely a metacourse) into your own course. This script lets you choose a Source course from a list of courses and then you can drag whole sections into your own course (or individual mods).
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回复Josep M. Fontana

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Michael Penney -
Hi Josep, Audun's layout editor also copies from one course to another. It works pretty well (if you have lots of courses with lots of content it can get a bit busy).

Audun, I'd love to see your new script when it is ready!
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回复Michael Penney

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Josep M. Fontana -
What do you exactly mean when you say you can "drag mods from other courses"? Do you mean activities in other courses created with a particular module? For instance, I have created a few quizzes with Hot Potatoes through the HotPot module and I can drag and drop them to another course? Or a forum from one course to another?

I think what Joan had in mind is to be able to copy a particular resource or activity from one block to another within the same course. Actually, more than resources or activities themselves, what would be interesting is to be able to copy the titles of blocks or of activities or resources. When you are preparing a course it is a real pain to create similar titles for different blocks , for instance. Imagine you have a course organized by weeks. In order to write Week 1, Week 2, etc. you have to click on the editor, write the title, give it a specific format, close the editor again. If we could copy these titles across the different blocks, this task would become much less painful.

Josep M.
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回复Josep M. Fontana

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Audun Hauge -
The new script for copying from a Source course into your course shows an outline of
each course side by side. There is a div for each section and divs for each mod within a section.
You can take a Source section and drag it onto a target section. All mods (activities) in the source section
will be copied over to the target section. You can also drag a mod (activity) individually over to the
target section of your choice. If you drag a Section then also the section summary will be copied over.

Copying of activities is rather shallow (except for lessons). Only the main table entry is copied. For quite a lot
of activities this should be sufficient, as you often don't wan't the contents - only the design.
Journal, Exercise, Assignment etc.
For activities (mods) like book and quiz I'd like to copy the complete mod, but this will come later ....
I've made a deep copy for Lesson, you get a clone of the original.
I haven't looked at copying hot-pot. The script as is will copy the main table entry, nothing more.

There is nothing preventing a user from setting up a copy from Source to Target where they are the same course.
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回复Audun Hauge

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Josep M. Fontana -
Great! I can't wait to try this. Is the version you posted on "Thursday, March 3 2005, 02:31 AM" the most recent one?

Josep M.
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回复Josep M. Fontana

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Audun Hauge -
It needs some reworking. Tables and names have been changing in 1.5 so there are some strange quirks (bugs). Page type has changed from course to course-view and other changes I haven't caught yet. I thought I'd wait until 1.5 was relased so that I don't have to chase a moving target.

I've attached a demo (GUI test) for copying from a SOURCE to a TARGET course.
I'd like to use the same theme as the course I'm copying, but don't know how yet.
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回复Audun Hauge

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Josep M. Fontana -
It looks neat. I hope this gets finished soon. Something like this will be really
useful.

Josep M.
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回复Audun Hauge

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Darren Smith -
Hello

I hoped to try this this out but I'm a little foncused (thoughtful). Is the atttachment above for 1.4.4 or a test script for 1.5?

Thanks for your time

Darren
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回复Joan Vendrell

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Gustav W Delius -
I implemented such a feature a while back, see http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=8468 but the user interface I chose did not meet approval. The code for copying is actually still in Moodle, just the user interface was disabled. With all features in Moodle getting the user interface right is the hardest bit, so please read the discussion mentioned above and then propose your solution.
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回复Joan Vendrell

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Joan Vendrell -

First, thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

About the layout editor, I'm going to try it in order to see if it fits properly with what we need, and if so, then we can spend our time adding another feature.

In addition, searching the forum I have found some interesting posts releated with the topic. I don't know why, but it seems that it's already implemented, but not used (I have read that it can work using the properly URL directly).

Anyway, I'm going to take into account the suggestion of Michael and to report it to the teacher and to the other groups. Maybe we can help in some way. Actually, if I'm not wrong, another group was working in a similar function, to let the students put notes across the text of the documents (the goal was that the students could communicate their problems to the teacher adding notes in the lines of the text which they don't understand).

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回复Joan Vendrell

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Karrie V -

I would LOVE to be able to copy activities.  This is something I have to do ALL the time!!! 

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回复Joan Vendrell

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Martín Langhoff -
This feature (or one looking a lot like it) is part of the upcoming 1.5 -- the code was written by Penny as part of the NZVLE project. We have had that patch in use in production servers for ~6 months now -- everyone very happy.

Get 1.5 and give it a test drive. The code will let you copy module content from other courses. It doesn't copy stuff within the same course -- if you are wanting to do that, you may want to extend this feature, rather than write it from scratch.

This is the first release of the feature, so there is plenty of opportunity to improve it.

An area of interest, if you are wanting to work on this track, is the granularity. This feature relies on the backup facility, and right now backup needs to be refined to allow selection of individual module instances. That'd be a good thing to work on towards 1.6, I'd say (what do you think Eloy?).



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回复Martín Langhoff

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Darren Smith -
Get 1.5 and give it a test drive.

Where in 1.5 is it? Sorry for being a bit dim but what do I have to click on shy
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回复Martín Langhoff

Re: Capability to copy resources/activities

Joan Vendrell -

Get 1.5 and give it a test drive. The code will let you copy module content from other courses. It doesn't copy stuff within the same course -- if you are wanting to do that, you may want to extend this feature, rather than write it from scratch.

Ok, I'll try it.

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