As the Spring semester approaches, I have been transferring some of my Moodle course materials from previous semesters into the courses that I will be teaching this semester. This is pretty easy to do, but I always forget to make sure the format of my current course matches the format of my old course before doing the import. For example, by default, new Moodle courses at Gustavus are in the “weekly format” seen below.
However, my old course used the “topics format” which allowed me to group all my discussion forums in the same location.
If I want my new course to follow this same structure, I need to make sure the “Format” and “Number of week/topics” for the new course match the settings for the old course. After clicking on “settings” while viewing the new course,
I select the “Format” of my old course, in this case, the “Topics format”.
Then, I make sure the “Number of weeks/topics” also matches my previous course.
After making those 2 changes, using the “import” function will maintain the overall structure of your previous class. If you forget to make these changes before performing the import (as I did last week), files and activities can end up in wonky places.
On a related note, be sure to check out this semester’s Gustavus Technology Training Classes. The Moodle course is February 16th.