Uploading course content from Excel

Uploading course content from Excel

由Matthew Bennett發表於
Number of replies: 7

Good evening.


I have a large course written on another LMS not portable to Moodle. I have managed to get the files and content into Excel, so have the titles, descriptions and video file local paths as an Excel table. There are several hundred small video files and need to transfer these as a course in Moodle. 


I cannot see any way to do this. I was hoping that the course import feature would allow me to do this, also cannot see a plugin for this, yet it seems pretty straightforward.


One option I have is to SQL inject direct into the MySql database but I want to avoid this if possible. 


Please advise if there is a way to achieve this?


Best regards,


Matthew

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In reply to Matthew Bennett

Re: Uploading course content from Excel

由Ken Task發表於
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Please see:

https://docs.moodle.org/36/en/Upload_courses

Think that is about as close as you are gonna get.

Direct to the DB would involve many, many, many tables and require someone probably rated 'guru'.   Wouldn't advise unless you are 'guru' and really really really familiar with backend/DB for Moodle.

'spirit of sharing', Ken


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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Uploading course content from Excel

由Matthew Bennett發表於

Hi Ken,


I must be missing something here as this seems to talk about how to upload courses, not course content. 


I have a series of video files. I want to add the title, narrator transcript as the description and the file path. These have been obtained from a data scrape of our old system (not a backup). We also have the video files downloaded in the file paths we're referred to. 


I know that I can add multiple files as a folder, but I want each one to be a separate item in moodle, with its own title and descriptions, which I don't believe is possible this way.

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In reply to Matthew Bennett

Re: Uploading course content from Excel

由Ken Task發表於
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Believe I said 'closest you are gonna get' ... 微笑

No, it doesn't include files you have to upload and link in a course ... course has to exist first, though, wouldn't it?

Sometimes one cannot do what one wants to do in one step.  That would be true, BTW, if you did have a backup (.mbz) to restore.

I'll be so bold to suggest to you that you need to figure out how moodle works by itself using the Moodle interface.   Let's take your video files.   Create a "test" course, upload one of those videos and then see the results in mdl_files table and locations of those video files in /moodledata/filedir/

Since you're proposing something that doesn't exist in Moodledum, the other approach might be to build your own .mbz backup from what you have.

Backup the "test" course.  Download the backup.  Uncompress it. Inspect the contents of the extracted files ... xml's as well as folders related.

Either way ya go, think Emma is spot on ... it would be easier/faster to just build courses - or at least shell courses which teachers could add to ... than to spend the time necessary to program/test - redo when if fails, etc.

Just my 2 cents, of course!

'spirit of sharing', Ken


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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Uploading course content from Excel

由Matthew Bennett發表於

Thanks Ken, I appreciate your thoughts on this.

Tbh my team have been working on manually setting up these courses for the past 3 months manually. We have 21 live, but are trying to leave the larger ones till last. 

Working on a 12 hr course and re-building the video files, quizzes and simulations is taking on average 3 days.

I am going to try a different approach using windows macro automation software (RoboTask) to be able to copy and paste the data from the scrape to create each item. This might speed things up a little.

Best regards,


Matthew

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In reply to Matthew Bennett

Re: Uploading course content from Excel

由Emma Richardson發表於
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Including the time you have spent, it would probably have ended up being quicker to just create the course from scratch!  You can drag and drop files into a course which is a fairly quick process.  Ken is right, this would not be an easy option in mysql.

Does your previous lms export to Blackboard?  Because you could export to blackboard format and then import to moodle.

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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Uploading course content from Excel

由Matthew Bennett發表於

Hi Emma,

Tbh I've never had to use Blackboard, so don't know if this will help me. 

There are 320 courses, some with hundreds of video files and a 12 hour course will take me 3 days up piece together. This is why I need a faster solution. 

Looking at SQL injection, Aria seems to be responsible for creating random ID numbers, so it would not be possible to inject. Also opening the web form to add a file seems difficult to control through COM. I've tried to build a Powershell script to add the variables onto the web form, but the id for each field in the form is different for each item, making it impossible for me to determine the IDs to inject data via COM.

The only other option I have is macro automation software which will simulate mouse movements, but that's not elegant.

I am surprised that there isn't an approved plugin for uploading bulk course content of the same type. I did see one bulk file uploader sent to the community some time ago, but it looks as though this was never approved, certainly is not in the catalogue.

Best regards,


Matthew

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In reply to Matthew Bennett

Re: Uploading course content from Excel

由Emma Richardson發表於
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You don't have to use Blackboard.  But, most lms's provide an option to export to a Blackboard format and Moodle has the option to import from a Blackboard format so often it is the best way to transfer courses with content.

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