Message-ID: <6162001.1182532586370.JavaMail.joeescobar@joe-escobars-computer.local> Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 19:26:06 -0800 (PST) From: moodleadmin Subject: Moodle for Spring 2007 now available Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_Part_116_9861859.1182532586369" GWItemID: 45EEAF5E.LCC-Mail.MC_PO3.100.1346735.1.364A.1 ------=_Part_116_9861859.1182532586369 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=MacRoman Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable 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 but don't see all of your expected courses, please verify tha= t Banner lists you as an instructor on the courses in question. If it does= , 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. Please let me know if you have any difficulty logging in or finding your cl= asses. 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. On Friday, March 30th, the default Mood= le URL (http://moodle.lanecc.edu) will be redirected so it points to Spring= term instead of Winter term. You'll still be able to get to Winter term e= ither by adding the term manually after the host name (http://moodle.lanecc= .edu/winter2007) or by clicking the link for Winter 2007 in the "Access to = other terms" box. 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 the process in a while= . Some important 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 to note here. 1. By default, quizzes have not been secured. If you want to restrict stu= dents to taking your tests in a secure lab, you'll need to add the list of = approved machines to the secure workstation list. The list is "0.0.0.0,10.= 9.129.33,10.1.0.167,10.22.0.142,172.20.33.161/29,172.20.32.15/27" (sans quo= tation marks; also, remember not to add any whitespace or punctuation--if y= ou do, your test may not be secure). It's a very good idea to review my Ja= nuary 26th email on securing tests in Moodle, as well--if you don't have it= to hand, I can forward you a copy. 2. Problems with essay questions/new question type: a number of you, parti= cularly those teaching programming courses, have noted that essay questions= have difficulties with certain characters like angle brackets (and some ot= her entities like single quotation marks and ampersands). We have created = a new question type that deals with this problem, called a "Programming Ess= ay" (so named because the impetus was from programming instructors). This = question won't do any 'cleaning' of the user's input, and therefore won't c= ause problems when HTML entities like angle brackets are saved in the datab= ase. For those of you who've encountered this problem, you can begin to us= e this question type as a workaround. Please however, don't start using it= yet: we stlll have some additional tests to run, and we'll need to help yo= u reset your questions to the right type. So if you need to start developi= ng a quiz that will use this kind of question, please contact the Moodle ad= ministrator first. As always, please contact me if you have any questions or you need assistan= ce. 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_116_9861859.1182532586369--