course import - WTF?

course import - WTF?

by Dave Stone -
Number of replies: 15

v2.5

I'm trying to use the course import feature, and don't understand the behaviour.

Instead of importing topic sections and their activities and APPENDING them at the bottom of the existing topics,

it MERGES the activities into the existing topics, and I lose the topic headings that are being imported.


Firstly, I don't understand what use that behaviour is to anyone. I can't think of a situation where anyone would want that behaviour. Is this another example of developers not actually using Moodle themselves, and having no idea what admin is useful to the user? I have had so many WTF moments with Moodle lately, it's unbelievable that this is ten year old software that is supposed to be able to handle hundreds of courses. /rant.

Secondly, is there anyway to change it from a 'merge' action to an 'append' action?

Thanks.

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: course import - WTF?

by Dave Stone -


OK, no solution, but a workaround.
I have to create many empty topics at the bottom of the course and manually move them one by one to the top of the course.
The import will use these topics (and the general topic at the top).
Then I have to move them all down to the bottom of the course one by one again.

Sigh. I can't express how much I have grown to hate this software.

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: course import - WTF?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Are you talking alone about https://docs.moodle.org/en/Course_backup and https://docs.moodle.org/en/Course_restore ? Then the name tells it - there is no mention about appending or activities starting with 'F'.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: course import - WTF?

by Andy Chaplin -

Hi Visvanath,

I believe Dave is talking about importing materials from another course, not the backup/restore function.  I've experienced the same frustrations, though I usually am importing into a blank course.  If the course is already populated, I get the impression that the material imports into the same topic number as in the course that it comes from (though I'm not sure if this is always the case).

I agree with Dave that there should be the option to append the imported material and then be able to place it where I want as the chances of an imported rubric or exercise landing in the right place in the middle of an existing topic are pretty remote!

All the best


Andy

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In reply to Andy Chaplin

Re: course import - WTF?

by Dave Stone -


Yes, that's right, Andy. Our school Moodle was set-up to allow teachers to create their own courses for a year, without anyone realising what a mess that would create. This morning I attempted to collate 9 unnecessary courses into one new course, and came across the problem that each course I imported added all its resources throughout the existing course instead of appending its topics to the end. I posted the workaround (ie. empty topics placed at the top).

However, it took me three hours just to collate nine courses into one this morning, because once imported I had to reorganise the content, properly utilising the topic areas. Doing that for all the courses would take me a further 150-200 hours, so I have now abandoned that approach, and I have a another idea how to clean up the mess: The teachers may well hate me for it, but right now I am moving all their courses to an 'old' category, unsubscribing all the students from them, and enabling guest access. So if the students really need something, they can go and browse through the 'archive' of old courses.

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: course import - WTF?

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

I once had to piece together a number of courses and found that using the Sharing Cart easily let me put everything right where I wanted it to go in the new course. It does take a little time, but is faster than moving topics up and down in a course. I first went through all the old courses and selected everything that I thought I wanted to copy, into the Shopping Cart. I had so many items that I even organized them into folders in the Cart so they were easy to find and select when I wanted to add them into the new courses.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: course import [xxx]?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
@Andy

It must be then https://docs.moodle.org/25/en/Activity_backup and https://docs.moodle.org/25/en/Activity_restore. No, I have never done that. Looks like the "visual" (GUI) metaphor taking to the extreme. Or in other words Moodle, or any other web-based GUI, are not good authoring tools. This is why I do this: "PDF and HTML from the same LaTeX source, a minimal example" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=276119.

@Dave
I am pretty sure that this "Activity backup/restore" behaved exactly the same an year ago. So the person who set-up you school Moodle made a mistake. See AL Rachel's method, for example. It is wrong to shout here.

P.S. Talking of shouting, the whole wide area of topics have nothing starting with an "F". So I covered that phrase in the subject line.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: course import [xxx]?

by Dave Stone -

> It is wrong to shout here.

I know that. But you have to understand that whenever I post here I am often close to rage because this software is so convoluted, clunky and often absolutely useless at what it is supposed to be able to do (Eg. make it easy to manage many courses and users). I've lost a hundred and fifty hours of my own precious, rare, personal, private time over the last two months trying to find clever, quicker ways of fixing/merging/organising all the superfluous courses that were created at our school during the first year of Moodle usage, and I've ended up doing almost everything by hand anyway because Moodle (v2.5) is so half-assed. If the edit timer was set for longer, I'd actually calm down eventually and delete most of my little frustrated rants. But 30 mins is not quite enough time to regain composure before they're locked.

I also have to say that if you take offence to an acronym like WTF, then you are being a bit too sensitive.
You could just read it in your own mind as 'What the fudge'. 

I can tell you this though - you won't have to put up with me for much longer. I'm nearing the end of my Moodle journey. Once I've finished the job that I committed to for my school, I swear I am never going to touch Moodle again.

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: course import [xxx]?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi Dave

> But you have to understand that whenever I post here I am often close to rage

I believe you. Saw "Managing subscriptions is absolutely killing me" in the other discussion https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=324671 (whereas the answer is so simple https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=324671&parent=1304232 ).

> because this software is so convoluted, clunky and often absolutely useless [...]

One can turn the card around and say, you are the wrong person to manage your school's Moodle.

> I also have to say that if you take offence to an acronym like WTF, then you are being a bit too sensitive.

May be, from your background. You know, the Internet brings people from all over the world to one global village. But still people carry their cultural identities. You haven't disclosed your origin, but english seems to be your mother tounge (not mine FYI), so you are from the civilized world. If you could maintain a civilized language at least people will show compassion which in turn could subdue your rages in the long run.

> ugh - you won't have to put up with me for much longer.

I don't mind, really. In fact, I like to understand what goes in raging minds.

> I'm nearing the end of my Moodle journey. Once I've finished the job that I committed to for my school, I swear I am never going to touch Moodle again.

I hope that this incompatibility is not a wider problem, that it touches only Moodle.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: course import [xxx]?

by Dave Stone -

> whereas the answer is so simple

Except that wasn't the answer, because I wanted to disable all forms of enrollment and have no users subscribed; the courses should not display in anyone's 'my courses' list. The answer was to disable the 'guest' feature at the site level (forcing log-ins), enabling 'guest without password' at the course level, and disabling all other enrollment types. The official docs don't make it clear that these two guest features are independent of one another.

> you are the wrong person to manage your school's Moodle

No, I am the wrong person to spend hundreds of hours of my own spare time, free of charge, on top of an already full workload, trying to fix a system that was not implemented properly, on software that is barely fit for purpose, for a bunch of teachers and students who don't even want to use it. I'd like to know who the right person is, under those circumstances.

> If you could maintain a civilized language

I read WTF as 'what the fudge'. If you swear in your head while reading that acronym, then it perhaps says more about you than me!
No-one is forcing you to swear in your head, except yourself! In a second language no less!

> I hope that this incompatibility is not a wider problem, that it touches only Moodle

I put 100% into everything I do, and gave Moodle (v2.5) a damn good chance. It fell short in just about every admin task I needed to perform. So, no. The problem is not me. The only way someone else could have got further with it, is if they ignored the Moodle web interface completely and set up all the courses, subscriptions, groups/groupings and blocks using a combination of php scripts, CSV, LDAP and database queries. But then, a person with that kind of skillset would not be working during their evenings, weekends and holidays for free, would they?

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: course import [xxx]?

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Dave, your post made me wonder if other LMS's that you are familiar with are any easier at combining courses.  In my experience, I can't say that any of the major ones are any better (BB, D2L, C).  I too would like moodle to read my mind, but it often doesn't.  When I combine courses, which is not that often, I do like that I can drag and drop topics and activities.  Yep, sometimes there are work arounds, as you found, and sometimes other utilities, like the one that Al mentioned.

Moodle does have a very organized way of asking for additional feature, it's the Tracker system.  The other LMSs don't have this mechanism.  Consider adding a feature request for making moodle work better.  The developers really do listen and care.  This is one way that moodle has become more powerful, and more complex though the years.

Moodle also allows one to install it on a local computer: a PC, Mac, or Linux computer.  If you find yourself wanting to offer to do more for the school, consider installing Moodle on your local PC where experimenting (I find to be) is easier.  Then you might be able to provide the school a more accurate estimate of how long it might take you, and what to charge for your services.

I have found that Moodle has some of the best documentation, many ways to experiment, and many folks here on moodle.org that are willing to help.  But there is no "company" to phone for help, and many of us are not experts at this stuff (I am a novice), we are just trying to help.  I am in no way connected officially to moodle, I am just a professor.  All of the support here is free.  But you could hire a moodle partner to help.

As you gain skills at moodle and fix the problems of those novice teachers, consider documenting your efforts so that the next person (or even yourself) will remember the best ways to combine topics.  The school should appreciate this documentation.  Already your tip about adding blank topics will help others.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: course import [xxx]?

by Dave Stone -


> Dave, your post made me wonder if other LMS's that you are familiar with are any easier at combining courses

No, they're all pretty bad. There's a saying I've seen on the Net: 'Moodle is the worst LMS.... except for the rest'.
But just because it's marginally better than most others doesn't mean anyone should break out the champagne!

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: course import [xxx]?

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Dave, thanks for your reply.

Okay, help moodle "break out of the champagne" by posting your feature request in the Moodle Tracker system.

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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: course import [xxx]?

by Andy Chaplin -

Mind you, putting triple X in the title probably means that most school filters will now block the thread!  smile

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In reply to Andy Chaplin

Re: course import [xxx]?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
LOL. T r i p l e X is an acronym of its own!

I read it as "exercise three times". If school administrators have other imaginations, they should get their heads examined! Ha, ha, ha!

@Mod: May be the off-track part of this thread, starting somewhere here https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=324669#p1304229, belongs to a different forum, specially since more are coming: see https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=167471&parent=1304325. How about "Comparisons and advocacy" for a change?
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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: course import - WTF?

by Mike Churchward -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Hi Dave -

As far as I can see, the import function has been built to only merge sections into existing sections. I can see a use for "append" though, as you are suggesting. It could be an option for the entire operation, a section by section option, and/or an activity by activity option.

Can you create an improvement tracker item in the Moodle Tracker requesting what you think would be most useful. Then it can be discussed, designed, and (hopefully) implemented.

mike

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