Glenys Hanson

Hi Gordon,

I've contacted you privately so you know I'm thinking carefully about all this.

Your Bucchake English Listening course is really pedagogically interesting - but I couldn't see it all as a guest.

Cheers,

Glenys

Sorry, Mary, for misquoting you. I misunderstood.

Cheers,

Glenys

Hi again Gordon,

At the moment in Moodle 1.9, it easy to make Hot Potatoes exercises visible and doable to Guests. This is very important for me in "courses" that are just intended to showcase exercises for teachers. I would think it's important too for those who want to show prospective customers a sample to entice them to sign on for a full course.

In 1.9, with some fiddling with roles and permissions, I've managed to make it possible for Guests to do Hot Pot exos through the Hot Potatoes Module. I've also managed it through the QuizPort Module but it's not so user friendly: they have to be told in advance to click on "Preview" to see the exercises. Another workaround is to provide them with a direct link, like this one - which I do in forum messages to illustrate some point, but I've never done so for a whole course of hundreds of exercises.

I'm not sure if either of these are possible on Moodle 2 - Mary Cooch has said she hasn't managed the first. Could I have the password to your test site: http://bateson.kanazawa-gu.ac.jp/moodle/23/mysql/ so that I can check the direct link workaround?

Thanks,

Glenys

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for these useful suggestions.

I hadn't realised that QuizPort could send the content of Hot Potatoes through the Glossary filter. So I'll probably choose that solution. Though for presenting tutorials I would think Glossary is not as neat as Book. But I haven't tried it out yet.

I hadn't realised either that if you restore with user data Glossary entries are restored. I've always downloaded and then uploaded to the new course.

Another possibility would be too keep the Book version on the main course page and also put copies of the tutorials in the folder with my Hot Pot exercises and link to them from the exercises. I try to avoid, though, having duplicate copies of tutorials because of updating problems.

Cheers,

Glenys

Hi Gordon,

As I feared, it's possible but not easy and it has a cost.

I'm also wondering if it's something I should be doing: helping people who haven't read the instructions before they start. I know we all do this, me included, but when I come unstuck, I do know where to look to find a solution - some people don't. Maybe I shouldn't spoon-feed - I do provide detailed instructions at the beginning of the course - and I've just tidied it up to make it even clearer: here. Could I do more on the course page?

Hot Potatoes exercises seem to me to be fairly intuitive. Are there many people around on the Internet these days who need "Drag & Drop", write in the text box or choose the correct answer explained to them step-by-step? Or if they really can't suss it out, don't have a child or friend to help them out? What is "best practice"?

It's not that I'm reluctant to cough up some cash for you, but that I have another request that is far more important to me: see next post.

Cheers,

Glenys