How to have course into page in two pages

How to have course into page in two pages

by M Williams -
Number of replies: 7

Hello all, 

My client is interested in having the intro page over two pages. Or another way to look at it, is to have an interstitial page before the intro page for further information about pre-course information and a survey. 

I've been into details as to why this in not possible as the intro page contains the course lessons, and the content we've added is in a block (the inrto content) on the page, rather than a page in itself. I think the client is thinking like a CMS, not Moodle as an LMS. 

Has anyone needed to do something like this? I'd considered an overlay (like those sign-up forms in overlays that you have to cancel to get to the page underneath) but I think that could be troublesome to do. It would be containing a survey monkey form, which I have as the first page of the first lesson. It works fine there. 

Additionally, the theme we're working with is a separate theme to the rest of the site. So modifying the core code to achieve this would affect the rest of the site. 

Any suggestions? Many thanks!

Michael

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In reply to M Williams

Re: How to have course into page in two pages

by Howard Miller -
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Maybe it's just me... but can you explain precisely what you mean by 'intro page' (as Moodle doesn't have anything called that)?

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: How to have course into page in two pages

by M Williams -

Hi Howard, 

Thanks for responding. Sorry, I'll try to be clearer. (I added a screen shot to the next post in the thread...)

It's the Course page that introduces the course content and shows the menu of the lessons for the course. If you navigate into a category you see a list of courses, click on a course and the first page you have is the introduction page. It's that tricky one that you need to 'Turn editing on' before you can get to the spanner to edit it. 

Michael


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In reply to M Williams

Re: How to have course into page in two pages

by Richard Oelmann -
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Leave your structure exactly as it is, but use conditional access so that none of the other activities and content are shown until after the initial introduction and survey are marked as completed.

Its not theme related, needs no hacking or development (technical development anyway), just some planning of what needs to be done before the subsequent content is released.

HTH

Richard

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: How to have course into page in two pages

by M Williams -

Hi Richard, 

I'd thought of that too yet there are two issues... One being the client wants to be able to get confirmation that a user has completed the survey before they get access. Now short of using some API through to the SurveyMonkey site, we are not going to be able to capture that information. 

Secondly, if you take a look at the attached image of the intro page for the course, I've hidden the generated menu that appears in the course introduction page and hand coded the menu in the HTML block on the right. So even if I put a conditional activity in the course, it's not going to affect the hand coded lesson menu. 

I did try a menu block plugin but it doesn't show any lesson details. It's blank. 

Snookered I think... 

Moodle version is 2.2.5. 

Thanks for responding. 

Michael.

Attachment MoodleFrontPage.png
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In reply to M Williams

Re: How to have course into page in two pages

by Richard Oelmann -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Well, you could lay out your course menu horizontally in a label at the top of the page - you would then be able to use conditional acccess on it as well. If you fiddle with some of the rules, you should also be able to use the conditional access to hide the original intro after its been read and the survey completed.

And your survey could (probably) just as easily be carried out internally within Moodle as it is using an external system like SurveyMonkey (Quiz, Feedback?), which would allow the results (as well as the activity completion) to be recorded all within one system.

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: How to have course into page in two pages

by M Williams -

Hi Richard, 

The design is created by a designer who may not have a complete grasp of the nuances of Moodle functionality. The option of having the menu in the content area is not appealing for the client.

In the version of Moodle I'm running (2.2.5) custom surveys are not an option and they want to be able to keep the answers in a central location, which is currently SurveyMonkey. 


I was quite sure there was no solution for this but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a trick. So thanks to all who have contributed their thoughts. 

Michael.


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In reply to M Williams

Re: How to have course into page in two pages

by Richard Oelmann -
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Well, I'm not sure I would say there is no solution Michael - just that the stipulations put by the client prevent the use of perfectly good, existing (and commonly used) methods within Moodle. But hey, they're the client, you can only advise them of the alternative solutions and if they want to tell you to use oars on a motorboat thats up to them. And if the external designer tells them "'they're very nice oars" ...

You should probably also point out to them though that 2.2 is no longer supported and really should be upgraded as soon as possible.

Good luck smile

Richard


PS

Feedback and quizes have been around in Moodle since v1.x and would keep that central location within the company rather than out in the cloud on someone else's serversas well as allowing far easier tracking and logging of who has done what - just because something is called a 'survey' doesn't mean you have to use the survey module for it.

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