Thomas' Work Space

First consider using the Library ereserves! However, to help teachers with the management of digital learning materials (text, audio, small video files) in your Moodle courses, to help students with a familiar learning interface (unlike Webdrive), and to relieve IT from having to store files in sparse environments like network shares or to manage duplicate files from many similar Moodle sections/courses across terms, the LRC is introducing Moodle metacourses.

In many Moodle installations, such metacourses – while lacking the advanced features of an LMS-integrated eRepository (software options are still under exploration) -, are commonly used like a shared library, holding teaching materials which a number of courses need access to and which the teacher of these course can link materials from in their respective courses.

You can view both a short list of our LRC Moodle metacourses and a longer list of language learning materials in these resource Moodle courses.

The CTL has arranged for all [your language here, e.g. French] Moodle courses to automatically become “child courses” (don’t get hung up on that terminology!) of the “LRC-[your language here]-Resource” Moodle course (AKA “parent course”) course at the beginning of each term. That means: all teachers and students in [your language here] courses will have access to the learning materials in “LRC-[your language here]-Resource” course. (At the end of the term, all teachers and students will be automatically un-enrolled also).

Please note: Due to technical limitations within Moodle, with you gaining access, the LRC staff loses access to the “LRC-[your language here]-Resource” course. However, if you want to make changes, you can yourself go to the parent course and manage either your child course (dropping) or individual resources in the parent course (hiding – please coordinate with colleagues, especially teachers of other sections).

Please note also: Like any library (or specifically the LRC) is a room, the metacourse is a (virtual) room, meaning: students must (virtually) “walk over there” to see the library resources. You can facilitate this if you link to library resources in the parent course from your regular course, preferably opening them in a new window for easy return to the regular course.

How is included in these helpful hints from a metacourses user: “The only minor problem is that the student navigation might leave them in the metacourse instead of the normal section course. To lessen this effect, I always launch links to the metacourse in a new window. Normally students understand that they need to close the popup window when they are finished with it. There are several advantages to using metacourses in this way. First, it saves having to upload the same materials more than once. I can change a file in the metacourse and know that it is changed in all section courses. Second, it saves storage space. Third, it provides the possibility of developing learning objects or mini courses that can be quickly linked to create a new course. Finally, it would allows several teachers to pick and choose what materials to include in their section courses. One hint, I put all activities (assignments, forums, journals, etc.) in the child course, not in the metacourse. This keeps grading segregated” .

Alternatively, if you do not want to distribute files through the parent course and rather drop your child course from the parent course, self-enrolling in the LRC-CLS-UNCC-Projects (URL sent on request) which as a child course of all metacourses will give you access to download the teaching materials (How? view how to use Moodle File management to zip and download files) and republish them into your Moodle course ((How? view how to upload files into Moodle).