Syllabus Form

Syllabus Form

by Christie Trent -
Number of replies: 4

I have a request to develop a Syllabus plugin (I'm assuming as a resource) for teachers to add the Syllabus detail via an online form per each course.  The syllabus would need to be exported as a PDF.  I am new to Moodle, but confident in PHP and OOPHP.  Learning the types of plugins and the Moodle architecture has been a little overwhelming.  


The syllabus form would have static sections which would be part of the Syllabus.  The PDF would be needed to upload to another system.  I'm wondering if anyone else has made an online form for a Syllabus or just a form for content that only the teachers would have access to add/edit.  I am very new to Moodle, so any recommendations on the best method to achieve this would be greatly appreciated.  I have made a block plugin just to perform a test using a custom plugin on a course level, but I'm not sure what the best course of action is for my needs.


Thanks so much in advance for any feedback.

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In reply to Christie Trent

Re: Syllabus Form

by Mary Cooch -
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Why not get the teachers to type the syllabus into a Moodle Book resource? It will easily then convert to PDF for uploading elsewhere and you don't need to create a new plugin

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Syllabus Form

by Christie Trent -

I just quickly looked over the Book module. Could I have a "Book" that is shared among all courses and teachers with some static information and some information that they would complete?  Thank you very much for the feedback.  I'm going to take a deeper dive into the Book resources.

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In reply to Christie Trent

Re: Syllabus Form

by Kevin Wiliarty -

We have addressed this need at our institution by styling up the course print view. Moodle courses are already very close to the desired syllabus format, and it is easy to save a web page to PDF. Of course there are complications:

  • We have not tried to cope with 'editing' mode. If editing is off, the result is good; if it's on, then the result is not so good.
  • It would be difficult to use this approach with multiple themes. You would not want to have to maintain customized print versions of all of them.
  • You have to decide what you want to do with hidden content or activities.
  • You have to decide how to cope with multiple course formats.
With all of those caveats, this has been a good solution for us. It is certainly lightweight.
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In reply to Christie Trent

Re: Syllabus Form

by Richard Jones -
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Hi Christie

The previous suggestions are good ones but if you are still interested in taking the custom development route, this resource might help:

https://github.com/richardjonesnz/moodle-mod_multipage/tree/week_8_extended

It is a multipage resource developed as a programming exercise for a course in Moodle development but it has many of the features you mention.  The edit_page_form could be easily modified to your requirement.  You would have to work out the conversion to pdf but, if the Book module does it, the functionality must be in Moodle somewhere.

Richard

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