Usability Suggestion - Standard content in new courses

Usability Suggestion - Standard content in new courses

by Marcus Green -
Number of replies: 2
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One of the barriers to usability for students is that resources in courses may be in very different places and have very different names. This would be improved if a system wide template course could be used to populate every new course. For example it might have content describing the plagiarism policy and links to the reading list.  This could be done by code that caused the template course to be backed up and restored into each new course. This might be something like for hand created courses in the edit.php file you would add ...

        $bc = new backup_controller(backup::TYPE_1COURSE, $templatecourseid, backup::FORMAT_MOODLE,

        backup::INTERACTIVE_NO, backup::MODE_IMPORT, $USER->id);

Then execution code and

        $rc = new restore_controller($backupid, $course->id, bla bla bla


What do you think?



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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Usability Suggestion - Standard content in new courses

by Colin Fraser -
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Good idea, Marcus, but isn't that a template? I haven't tried it, but is setting up templates easy or not that straightforward in Moodle? I think most of us would be familiar with the idea of templates, long before we get ti know Moodle, so how difficult is it to extend that idea into our Moodle courses?  

EDIT: Then I find this in the Docs and after a quick scan see, that Admins are going to have to teach their course creators how to do that, then provide them with the agreed template. In an environment where such standardization is a demand of the workplace, it will work nicely, but where it is not, or where the people who are leaders and are not Moodlers, they are just not going to demand it. They wouldn't even understand the efficacy of such a solution, just looks complicated and for more than a few Admins, I suspect the same would apply. I work in an environment where "diversity" is "encouraged"... sort of... well- not really, it is actually "anything new is dangerous". For the Teachers... oh a Maths Moodle is not the same as a Humanities Moodle... they have different priorities and what worksd ... blah blah... into a round of endless blabbering descending into inaction and meaningless drivel. Or am I being too cynical? 

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Usability Suggestion - Standard content in new courses

by Marcus Green -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Yes it is a template, and oddly it is only when uploading a course with .CSV do you get content. With other ways of creating content, e.g. by hand or with authentication such as LDAP you only get the course settings (e.g. the format such as Topic or Date).  I suspect there are more courses created with those technologies than by CSV. With LDAP the course is created when the first person enrolled on the course logged in, zero teaching of course creators and so rather attractive to admins. You don't get template content when creating by hand either.

I think it would be very easy for Admins to overdo the use of templates and there are only so many commonalities between subjects. Some examples that spring to my mind is having a link to a reading list and details of course re-take policies and contact details of course tutors. This would be blanks requiring completion once the course is created. It's easy to imagine some tutors forgetting to do it and ending up with text such as "Course Tutor Details go here" or similar, but you could do a database scan to nudge on these.

"Or am I being too cynical? "

Possibly, or you might be an experienced realist?



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