Drupal – Course Structures

Introduction

When creating a course in OpenCourseWare (powered by Drupal) for the first time, the ILTS team can provide a starting course template in Drupal either based 1) on the course structure and content from Learn; OR 2) as a blank template with an agreed structure.

In this post, we would like to focus on the options available for a blank template structure within Drupal. We will use courses, already available within OpenCourseWare, as examples of the types of course structure you can choose from. The following is not an exhaustive list of all courses within OpenCourseWare, but a small sampling of courses within our chosen structures. The home page of Open Course has a list of all courses for you to browse, if preferred.

Course Structures

A) Structured by activity (e.g. lectures, tutorials, readings, etc.):

• ARO and EPL

ARO Navigation Menu in Drupal - public view — ARO Navigation Menu, in Drupal (public view)

B) Structured by week (e.g. week 1, week 2, week 3, etc):

• CDI1; IRR; and SDM

CDI Navigation Menu in Drupal — CDI1 Navigation Menu, in Drupal (public view)

C) Structured by schedule (e.g. a schedule table with links to slides, video, handouts, etc):

• CT; EXC; and IQC

D) Courses with a mixed structure (e.g. by schedule, activities and weeks):

• ANLP; CGGS; IQPS (aka QPS-11); and USEC

USEC Course Structure - Weekly View — USEC Course Structure – Weekly View

USEC Course Structure - Lecture View — USEC Course Structure – Lecture View

Further Information

When creating the course in Drupal, ILTS will provide support and guidance for you to choose a suitable structure for your course. This agreed structure will then make it easier for you to build your content and populate your course in time for Welcome Week.

If you’d like to discuss the options and contact ILTS then please visit the support page. We look forward to working with you.

Copying a previous lecture recording (Media Hopper Replay)

Our most common enquiry is about how to use a recording made in a previous year in Media Hopper Replay.

As an instructor, you can make a copy of a previous recording in Media Hopper Replay and then upload it to your personal library, thus allowing you to publish it to another linked course in Media Hopper Replay. This one page quick reference guide details the two step procedure to do this for each recording. View the PDF quick reference guide here.

This quick reference guide, along with many others, is available via the IS Media Hopper Replay quick reference guide website.

The IS Helpline supports Media Hopper Replay throughout the University. Contact details are listed here.

Teaching Hour – How to use your teaching support budget to best effect

The Teaching Hour, in the School of Informatics, on February 24th 2022, focussed on “How to use your teaching support budget to best effect”.

Abstract from the event: “In Informatics course organisers have a budget to spend on employing staff and students as teaching support: tutors, demonstrators, teaching assistants, markers and any other roles help to support teaching and learning on courses. In this session colleagues detailed what the various teaching support roles are and who can take them on. They then illustrated and discussed different choices of learning activities in examples of Informatics courses”.

The recording from the session can be viewed, via Media Hopper Create, at this link here. And the slides used during the session can be viewed, via Sharepoint, at this link here.

Informatics Teaching Festival 2022: Design of Teaching and Learning

The Informatics Teaching Festival is back for a third consecutive year and will run Monday May 9th to Wednesday May 11th 2022.

The 2022 Informatics Teaching Festival will focus on the design of teaching and learning and consist of the following sub-themes:

overview of course design (Day 1, May 9th 2022)
design to develop student skills, including for the industry (Day 2, May 10th 2022)
design of assessment (Day 3, May 11th 2022).

Each day will include both presentations on school and university processes, tools and support, as well as the sharing of experience and good practice around different approaches to the design of teaching and learning, and internal (Informatics or university-based) as well as invited external speakers.

If you’d like to attend any of the following sessions, and are not a member of the School of Informatics, please register your interest here, and a Collaborate link will be emailed to you in advance of the session(s).

Schedule* –

Day 1: Overview of Course Design. Monday, May 9th 2022

Topic (and links to recordings after event)	Date/Time	Speaker, with linked Resources
Opening / Welcome Session	9-9.10am	Björn Franke
Morning Session – Designing a new course:	Morning Session: 9.10-12.30pm
Process and experience of designing new courses: Designing a new Informatics Course – Sharon Goldwater; Design Decisions and Dilemnas in a new data science course – David Sterratt; Designing INF2-IADS – John Longley	9.10-10.40am	Sharon Goldwater David Sterratt John Longley
Coffee break	10.40-11am	Meet in Gathertown
Support for course design (ELDeRs)	11-11.30am	Fiona Hale Cristina Alexandru
Sharing positive experiences on improved courses	11.30am-12.15pm	Heather Yorston on DMP Pavlos Andreadis
Discussion	12.15-12.30pm
Lunch break	12.30pm-2pm
Afternoon Session – Improving an existing course:	Afternoon Session: 2-5pm
Course proposal / improvement (involving Board of Studies approval)	2-3.20pm	Aurora Constantin Felipe Costa Sperb Heather Yorston RS for CAM
Coffee break	3.20-3.40pm	Meet in Gathertown
Course improvement (not involving Board of Studies approval)	3.40-4.30pm	Cristina Alexandru on SEPP Pavlos Andreadis
Discussion	4.30-5pm
Day end	5pm

Day 2: Design to develop student skills. Tuesday, May 10th 2022

Topic (and links to recordings after event)	Date/Time	Speaker / Resources
Morning Session – Developing core Informatics skills:	Morning Session: 9-12.30pm
Cristina Alexandru, Heather Yorston, and Brian Mitchell: Teaching students with varied profiles in UG1 Judy Robertston: Teaching First year students with varied backgrounds	9-10am	Cristina Alexandru on Varied Profiles UG1 Heather Yorston on FAC and MC Brian Mitchell – Prize and Prejudice Judy Robertson – prerecorded video
Teaching programming	10-11am	Pawel Orzechowski Charlotte Desvages – Day 2 Judy Robertson – prerecorded video Michael Glienecke
Discussion	11-11.15am
Coffee break	11.15-11.30am	Meet in Gathertown
Teaching Modelling: Reflection on including the industry perspective in our teaching	11.30am-12.30pm	Pavlos Andreadis Sanjay Rakshit
Lunch break	12.30pm-2pm
Afternoon Session – Developing transferrable skills:	Afternoon Session: 2-5pm
Guest Presentation: Back to the future: shaping software engineering education with lessons from the past (abstract)	2-2.45pm	Joseph McGuire
Coffee break	2.45-3pm	Meet in Gathertown
Developing research skills	3-4pm	Felipe Costa Sperb Stefano Albrecht – pre-recorded video
Skills for the industry: Rebecca Clacy-Jones on “Employment for Informatics Students” and Pavlos Andreadis on “View of Informatics Students”	4-4.35pm	Rebecca Clacy-Jones Pavlos Andreadis
Skills for the industry: Large companies and what they require	4.35-4.55pm	Michael Glienecke
Day end	5pm

Day 3: Assessment. Wednesday, May 11th 2022

Topic (and links to recordings after event)	Date/Time	Speaker / Resources
Morning Session – Philosophy of Assessment	Morning Session: 9-12.30pm
Assessment in Informatics	9-9.45am	Björn Franke
Guest Speaker: Vertically integrated assessment in Physics (abstract)	9.45-10.30am	Ross Galloway, School of Physics and Astronomy
Coffee break	10.30-110am	Meet in Gathertown
Asssessment Approaches: “Let’s talk about Groupwork”: David Sterratt “A brief introduction to WebPA”: Meredith Corey “Why and how to assess and give feedback on code (using standard tools)”: Charlotte Desvages	11am-12.15pm	David Sterratt Meredith Corey Charlotte Desvages – Day 3
Update on Asssessment Plans (from ILTS and ITO)	12.15-12.30pm	Toni Noble Meredith Corey David Sterratt
Lunch break	12.30pm-2pm
Afternoon Session – Marking Approaches	Afternoon Session: 2-4pm
Rubrics Cube: Puzzles in designing rubric-based marking schemes		Aurora Constantin
How do we set challenging assignments without encouraging students to throw arbitrary amounts of time at them?		Iain Murray
Marking to the Common Marking Scheme with Criteria & Decision Rules		Paul Anderson
Closing Ceremony	3.30-4pm	Jane Hillston
Day end	5pm

* The schedule is still subject to change. As best we can we will not make big adjustments to speakers and timings.

Zoom – two big changes now in place for teaching

A year after first being licenced at the University, Zoom is now 1) licenced to cover teaching and 2) integrated within the University Learn VLE. Both of these changes should benefit many teaching staff (and students) within the School. When first licenced and implemented within the University teaching was not covered within the Zoom licence. This has now been changed.

And over the summer 2021, Zoom was integrated within the Learn VLE, which allows staff to schedule and access Zoom meetings within their Learn courses. After adding the Zoom tool to a Learn course, staff and students will be able to access a course-specific meeting schedule and cloud recording library and the scheduler will display all meetings scheduled for the course.

More details on Zoom, the integration with Learn and the training available for using Zoom are available from the ISG website here. Support for Zoom is available from IS.Helpline@ed.ac.uk.