Improving the usability of a Book

Improving the usability of a Book

by Conor Bradley -
Number of replies: 11

Can anyone help me?

I'm trying to improve students experience with a course I'm running that uses the Book module to display a course handbook. At the moment the next/previous arrows are pretty small and not all that obvious. In addition, students often ignore the contents list block on the left as they just assume its the standard navigation block. These problems lead to them not realising that there's more than one page of content, or how to move through the content. Are there any obvious ways of helping the situation? I thought of:

- a "you are on page 1 of 14" indicator

- changing the next/previous icons to larger arrows with "next/previous" written on them

Any advice or suggestions much appreciated.

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In reply to Conor Bradley

Re: Improving the usability of a Book

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

The buttons appear to be in ...yourmoodle/mod/book/pix in png format. They are also there in svg making it easy to change them and then create new bigger png's.

AL

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In reply to Conor Bradley

Re: Improving the usability of a Book

by Ryan Archer -

I asked a similar question a while back about modifying the arrows within the book module here at https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=266849 - I received a great answer and it helped me very much!

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In reply to Ryan Archer

Re: Improving the usability of a Book

by Ryan Archer -

Wow Al, you so quick!!!

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In reply to Ryan Archer

Re: Improving the usability of a Book

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Nah, just happened to turn on my Surface while eating breakfast and remembered my answer to you a few days ago, so I didn't need to look anything up or experiment.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Improving the usability of a Book

by Derek Chirnside -

warning.  Completely off task.  Random association due to AL's blatant product placement in post.  M$ surface/onenote parody and ad.  Go elsewhere now if you should be working.


-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Improving the usability of a Book

by Conor Bradley -

Thanks for all the help - and the off topic but entertaining video!

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In reply to Conor Bradley

Re: Improving the usability of a Book

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

@ Derek...the off topic sometimes just makes my day, especially this year when I am trying to keep some 11 (yes eleven) year old Windows XP computers working in my lab. My students aren't quite up to making something that good, but they do try.

@ Conor, you didn't mention student age or subject, but one of my for extra credit project ideas this year is for students to come up with their version of buttons for places in Moodle like those navigation buttons in the Book. I'm also going to have them make their own version of the pictures for the hangman game in the Game module. They love making stuff like that.

AL

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In reply to AL Rachels

The Diehards

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
> especially this year when I am trying to keep some 11 (yes eleven) year old Windows XP computers working in my lab

moodle.org has more than its portion of diehards:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=269271#p1161966
:-?
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: The Diehards

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Unfortunately for me, I am a diehard by necessity and not by choice. sad Parents want their kids to be taught using the latest and greatest equipment, but please don't ask them to increase taxes or fees to pay for new equipment to replace that which was worn out or broken, sometimes deliberately angry, by previous students.


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