Is a Metacourse the answer?

Is a Metacourse the answer?

by Michal Denny -
Number of replies: 5

HI everyone,

I'm a relative newbie to Moodle but learning lots quickly. I have a problem and haven't been able to find a clear answer. 

We are running Moodle 2.6 in a secondary school. I would like to have the following scenario:

1. A Year 9 Science course containing all the content needed by the students.

2. 10 Year 9 Science courses that contain all the course content but also allows each teacher to add material specific to them. I also see this as an easy way to restrict forum participation to just the students in the class.

I thought the answer to this would be to use a Metacourse structure, which I've set up. But the course content in the parent course doesn't show in the child (teacher) course.

Have I missed something in my set up or do Metacourses not work this way?

Michal

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In reply to Michal Denny

Re: Is a Metacourse the answer?

by Jez H -

MetaCourses allow you to inherit enrollments between courses they do import content from one course to another so this is incorrect:

    "the course content in the parent course doesn't show in the child (teacher) course"

What would actually happen is that the student would have access to two separate courses through a single enrollment.

If you need to import content you can use the import feature within a course and grab sections from other courses, of course that wont keep the content in sync, if it changes in course 1 it wont update in course 2.

From what you say I think you should read up on groups, so with in one course you could create multiple groups and restrict access to forums, course sections and other resources based on their group.

Hope that helps smile

 

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In reply to Jez H

Re: Is a Metacourse the answer?

by Michal Denny -

Hi Jez,

Thanks for your reply. it has given me a lot to think about.

If I understand you correctly, all the metacourse set up does is enable the student to automatically access the  parent course without having to enrol again. If the student needs to use material in the parent course, they either have to go into the parent course or the teacher can import it into their child course.

I will go away and do some research into groups to see if that is the best solution for us. We have 300 students and teachers who want the freedom to customise their course eg set specific assignments for their class but still access core content.

thanks

Michal

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In reply to Michal Denny

Re: Is a Metacourse the answer?

by Jez H -

Yes using metacourses would require students to access two courses but you could still do it that way, having core content in one and multiple courses for tutorial groups linked to it.

the other options I mentioned maybe cleaner from a students perspective but would be more of a headache for staff.

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In reply to Jez H

Re: Is a Metacourse the answer?

by Robert Brenstein -
Metacourse is probably a simpler, more flexible, and safer solution in such a big course. Using groups can work but all groups must follow exactly same structure and all instructors must watch to always properly set groups and/or groupings, which often causes trouble when many instructors are involved.

You can insert a direct link to the parent course into each of the children courses and insert links to individual group courses in the shared course to make hopping between the two easier for all users.
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In reply to Robert Brenstein

Re: Is a Metacourse the answer?

by Michal Denny -

Thanks for the replies Jez and Richard. I'm inclined to go the metacourse route as it seems simpler from the instructor/teacher perspective.

Michal

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