Forums | E-Learning Practitioners

09 December 2014, 17:13

Dear colleagues

One of the areas of the QMplus template that causes continuous hassle is the two-column 'show-hide' area within topic zero. It works as a space-saver when presenting a lot of content and it is part of all module templates in HSS as the 'Assessment info' . It is also widely used elsewhere to provide the same or module info more generally.

The problem comes when you want to add new content to it...this requires an exploration into the HTML - easy for some but by no means all of you!  We plan to make the process of adding, deleting and moving content in those two columns easier.

I would welcome any thoughts and ideas you might have about doing this..or what you would expect to see as a result.

e.g. I will ask in the requirements document that we could add files, activities, pages etc to the bottom of topic zero (as you can now) then simply drag them into the appropriate column (1 or 2) They would have all the same edit capabilities in the column as they do now in the normal format.

I will also ask about auto-population of the 'assignment dropbox/ area' in the second column whenever an assignment is created in any topic section below -  though as not every school utilises the second column for this we would have to have a way of choosing not to as well .

As the requiremenst document hasn't been written yet..I'd welcome any ideas from our users.

Best wishes

Brett

18 December 2014, 14:27

A useful feature would be to be able to add activities / resources directly to each column - allowing easy additiion of a book form module handbook for example

M

16 January 2015, 11:21

Dear Brett

Thanks for this, and apologies for taking some time to respond.

Although we have no issue with working in the HTML ourselves, we welcome developments that make QMplus features more accessible to general users. Having said that, we wouldn't want to lose any of the control that we currently have over the way in which content is displayed in topic zero generally, and in the two columns in particular. Large, complex modules on occasion benefit from certain design tweaks that make information more readable.

To give an example: many of our full-year modules have very long 'submit assignments' boxes. This is not only because of the large number of individual coursework elements that students submit, but also because associate students taking the module for only semester one, or only semester two, need distinct versions of these assignments which reflect a different set of weightings, deadlines, and (in some cases) instructions. In order to help our users navigate a long list that might easily be confusing, we introduce some light-touch formatting in that box... We certainly wouldn't want a drag-and-drop style interface to limit our ability to make this kind of ad hoc design amendment in those modules where they seem appropriate.

All best wishes

Matthew