Message-ID: <8411091.1182532585803.JavaMail.joeescobar@joe-escobars-computer.local> Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 22:53:57 -0800 (PST) From: moodleadmin Reply-To: Online@lanecc.edu Subject: Draft message to faculty re new Moodle instance Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_Part_115_14779264.1182532585802" GWItemID: 45ED8E95.LCC-Mail.MC_PO3.100.1346735.1.363A.1 ------=_Part_115_14779264.1182532585802 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=MacRoman Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Folks, Below is a draft of the usual notification to instructors that a new instan= ce is ready. If there's anything you'd like me to add (or anything that yo= u'd like me to remove or re-word), please let me know. I hope to send this= out tonight, but I have a couple of problems in the Administration block t= o fix before I make this public. David ---- Instructors, The Spring 2007 instance of Moodle is now available for you to work on your= classes. We are actually still working on some stuff under the hood, but = from your standpoint, everything is in place and shouldn't change before th= e term starts. On that note, however, if you experience any problems or no= tice any missing pieces--blocks or modules that don't seem to be available,= stuff like that--please send me email. If you log in and don't see all of your expected courses, please verify tha= t Banner lists you as an instructor on the courses in question. If you are= , then please send me an email with the CRN of the course and your L-number= (there are cases where a course with multiple instructors in Banner doesn'= t get all of the instructors assigned in Moodle, and that may be what happe= ned). If you are not listed as an instructor for the course in ExpressLane= , however, please talk to the appropriate person in your department to get = yourself added. The list of instructors that we get from Banner is authori= tative for who we assign as the default instructors in Moodle. Schedule You can go ahead and begin logging in and working on your Spring courses an= y time. We will begin enrolling students on Thursday, March 29th (the Thur= sday before Spring term), and we will actually start allowing students to l= og in on Sunday, April 1st. At that point, if your courses are visible, st= udents can log in and access them. A reminder: by default, all courses are hidden from students, and it is up = to you to make them visible. Please remember to do that before the first d= ay of classes. If your course is hidden and a student logs in, that class = won't even show up in her list of courses, which means a good deal of confu= sion on the students' part (most of whom think they somehow have not been p= roperly registered). To make a course visible, go into the course, click on= Settings, and set "Availability" to "This course is available to students.= " That menu is about half the way down the page. Backing up and restoring courses Remember: your empty Spring courses ('shells') should be created for you au= tomatically. If you already have a content developed for a particular cour= se, you can back up that course (wherever it is--be it the Fall term, Winte= r term, or any other instance of Moodle), save the backup to your desktop, = and then restore its content into the course shell in Spring term (overwrit= ing the existing=D1empty=D1content). The course shell will keep its full n= ame, short name, and ID, but its contents will be replaced by the course yo= u uploaded. Step-by-step instructions for doing that have been provided by= the faculty webmasters at . We strongly urge you to review these materials, as there are some g= otchas that can bite you if you haven't gone through it in a while. Some i= mportant reminders: - The process for backing up and restoring courses has changed over the las= t term. You need to be particularly careful not to include any user data w= hen you make your backups. Follow steps 4 and 5 of the backup process very= closely. - When you restore the course, be sure to choose to delete the existing con= tent in the course shell. This is covered in step 11 of the restore instru= ctions. One final note: setting up a metacourse is a little more complicated. The = current metacourse form requires you to specify which child courses you are= assigning when you create the metacourse. BUT: if you want to restore an = existing metacourse to the one you just created, the child course assignmen= ts are also replaced, which means yout new metacourse won't have any childr= en attached. You'll need to go back into the metacourse form, select the m= etacourse, and re-add the child courses to it. There's a section on this i= n the metacourse instructions at . If you have any questions, or you need any assistance, please= contact me. Quizzes Two things of note here. 1. By default, quizzes are not secure. If you want to restrict students t= o taking your tests in a secure lab, you'll need to add the list of approve= d machines to the secure workstation list. =20 2. New question type. A number of instructors, particularly those teachin= g programming, have noted that essay questions have difficulties with certa= in characters like angle brackets (and some other entities like single quot= ation marks and ampersands). We have created a new question type that deal= s with this problem, called a "Programming Essay" (so named because the imp= etus was from programming instructors). This question won't do any 'cleani= ng' of the user's input, and therefore won't cause problems when HTML entit= ies like angle brackets are saved in the database. For those of you who've= encountered this problem, you can begin to use this question type as a wor= karound. Please however, don't start using it yet: we stlll some additiona= l tests to run, and we'll need to help you reset your questions to the righ= t type. So if you need to start developing a quiz that will use this kind = of question, please contact the Moodle administrator first. As always, please contact me about any problems you have logging in or find= ing your courses.=20 David Walton =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D David Walton Moodle System Administrator Lane Community College For enrollment, course creation, logging in, or general server issues, emai= l moodleadmin@lanecc.edu For faculty assistance using Moodle, email online@lanecc.edu Voice: 463-3367 =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D ------=_Part_115_14779264.1182532585802--