Wiki or Glossary?

Wiki or Glossary?

by Melissa . -
Number of replies: 6

This is what I am trying to do, and I am not sure if I should a glossary, Wiki, or if Moodle is not even the right choice.

I have a group of students who are going to be part of the same group for a number of years, 6th - 12th grade.  During those years, I want the group to add words to either a wiki or a glossary.  I want it to be something that the students contribute to from all of their courses (separate Moodle courses), and from year to year.

Essentially, I am following the philosophy of ED Hirsch where he created a list of words that he believed that a literate adult knows.   I want to expand on this idea by having the students essentially build their own personal encyclopedia / wiki / glossary.  In the end it will be a multi-year, multi-class group activity.  In the end, I would want them to also be able to export the glossary / wiki and then be able to import into something like Mediawiki, joomla, or some other content management system of their choice.

It would nice if I could just create a class called "Graduating Class of 2020", and add all of the students to that class.  Then create the glossary / wiki in that class, but then all of their other classes / teachers (math, science, history, etc.) would need to be able to access that "Graduating Class of 2020" course and be able to assign activities to that class from their own classes, for example, the math class.

I would also expect the students build upon the Glossary / Wiki entries from year to year.  For example, if at the beginning of 6th grade I assigned a student "George Washington", it might be a simple entry like "First President of the United States", but by the end of 12th grade, after the students have completed a high school level US History course, I would expect the entry to be a lot more detailed.

Thanks for any help.

Melissa



 

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In reply to Melissa .

Re: Wiki or Glossary?

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

I don't have the answer. Just to be sure that I understand correctly:
- This is group work. There will be so many wikis or glossaries as the number of groups?
- The work spans many years, so not limited to a course?

I fear the orientation of Moodle towards courses makes it difficult. The standard solution is called portfolio - as implemented in Mahara.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Wiki or Glossary?

by Melissa . -

Thank you for the suggestion, but I looked at Mahara, and it is not appropriate.  If I cannot do something within Moodle, I would just use mediawiki.  But then  I would have to have multiple installs.  The core of Mediawiki is not the issue.  It is the templates and images that would be an issue.  I tried to set things up with different areas "Student 1:" "student 2:", but then every article would have to have that prefix and it makes things too complicated.

As for what I am doing inside Moodle.

* Work spans multiple years.

* Work spans multiple courses.

* It could either be a group project or an individual project.

The individual vs group I know that Moodle can handle that part.  It is the multi-year / multi-class part that I am wondering about.

Although if the "assignments" are just "Make a wiki page for 'wiki_word'", then I could just make a Class of 2020 course, and put the wikis there.   Maybe just have a one activity course.  Even within the same course there is no direct "make a single wiki page" activity.

Melissa



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In reply to Melissa .

Re: Wiki or Glossary?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hallo Melissa

I ventured in to unknown territory, hoping others will come to the rescue!

Yes, multiple install is not a good idea, unless there is a seamless integration. I'd expect the Mahara/Moodle integration to be very good.

Anyway, starting with the most simple, go through the site-wide activities first. I know for example site-wide blogs. Failing that explore the available plug-ins at https://moodle.org/plugins/. The search needs some imagination. You might not find exactly what you need, but something you can abuse for the purpose.
wink
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In reply to Melissa .

Re: Wiki or Glossary?

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

Courses can span any time period you want, so the fact it's multiple years should not be an issue

You can use cohort enrolment to add the relevant students to the course you set up and then they would have access to it from their dashboard (or you could add a link to the top menu so it appears throughout the site - could be a drop down so each cohort has access to their own). Add all the Class of 2020 students to a Class2020 cohort and enrol the cohort on the relevant course. So long as the students and staff are enrolled on that course, then they would be able to access the activity directly from a link to it.

Its then up to you which activity you use - whichever is most appropriate. From what you have said I would probably opt for the glossary, but there may be other options.



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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Wiki or Glossary?

by Melissa . -
I don't know if this is a bug in the Random Glossary block, but I think

that I found the solution.  When I select the Random Glossary Block it asks

me which glossary I want access to, but when I look at the list, it shows

me EVERY glossary that I have access to no matter which class the glossary

belongs to.  For example, I had set up a Global glossary on the site home

page.  A Glossary in the math class.  I had a third glossary in the

language page.  When I looked at the Random Glossary block setting, it

showed all three glossaries.



There is a link to "add new entry", "view the glossary".  When I click on

either link, I am brought to the correct glossary.



There is a part of me that is thinking ... "that is a bug in the glossary

block", but there is another part of me that is thinking ... "who cares if

it is a bug or not.  it works the way that I need it to work".  :)



There is no "random wiki" block, but then a glossary setup as an

Encyclopedia seems to work the way that I need it to work.  I will have to

work with it to find out if there are features that I need in the wiki that

are not in the glossary/encyclopedia configuration.



Does anybody know of any differences that I should be aware of?



Also, does either the glossary or the wiki allow the quick linking to

images that are available in mediawiki?



Thanks,



Melissa





On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 9:59 PM, Richard Oelmann (via Moodle.org) <
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In reply to Melissa .

Re: Wiki or Glossary?

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

You are seeing other glossaries because you have set them to be global which means the entries are available elsewhere and you are an admin and so can set global glossaries.

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