Creating Online Courses and Course Objectives

Overview:

Creating an online course involves the following steps:

 Create the course container (see below).

 Optionally, assign the course to a category and/or a catalogue.

 Optionally, assign prerequisites for the course (create prerequisite courses, if any, first, so they can be referenced by the courses that rely on them).

 Optionally, add a pretest or quiz, or link to an exam

 Develop the course objectives and add content.

 Assign the course a security group.

 Assign workflow approvers if applicable.

 Save and preview the completed course and, when finalized, make it available to learners (for details, see Chapter 6, ―Making Medworxx LMS Items Available to Learners‖).

Creating the course container:

From the Learning Items menu, click Courses. The list of existing courses for which you have view rights will appear. To create an online course container, click Add Online Course.

When the Course Container launches you will see three tabs; General, Security and Workflow.

The General tab is where the course itself is built and is sometimes referred to as the ‗Course Container‘.

Within the General Tab, enter information in the fields outlined in the table below:

Field name What To Do How it Appears to Learner

Course Title

(mandatory) Enter the title as you wish it to appear to the learner.

Appears in the Course Name

field of the Learning Studio, in the window that appears when a learner clicks on a course name for more information, and on the title bar of the online course.

Course Code Enter an identifying code of your choice.

Appears in the Code field of the Learning Studio, as well as in the online course.

Description Enter the course description as you wish it to appear to the learner.

Appears on the first page of the online course and in the window that appears when a learner clicks on a course name for more information.

Thumbnail Upload an image reflecting

the learning item. Appears next to the course description in the Catalogue and Learning Item Landing page. External Cost Enter cost for use of external

resources (instructors, materials, etc.) for this course.

Not shown.

Internal Cost Enter cost for use of internal resources (instructors, materials, etc.) for this course.

Not shown.

Course Duration Enter the estimated duration of the course, in minutes, as you wish it to appear to the learner.

Appears with the first page of the online course and in the window that appears when a learner clicks on a course name

Contact Hours Enter the number of Contact

Hours if applicable Appears in with the course in the Catalogue and the Learning Item Landing page.

CME Credits Enter the number of

Continuing Medical Education Credits if applicable

Not shown

CME Type Enter the CME type if

applicable Not shown

Keywords Type in any additional

keywords Not shown, but used to help locate a learning item when Learners do a search in the Learning Studio.

Review Reminder Emails

When the Next Review Date is set, the creator (owner) of the learning item will get reminder emails sent to them. By default, the reminder emails will come at 90 days, 60 days, 30 days, 10 days, and 7 days prior to the next review date. An email reminder will also be sent on the day.

Automatic Publishing/Unpublishing of Learning Items

Effective & Expiry dates may be selected for learning items. When using these dates, you can automatically publish or unpublish (and/or

inactivate) items in the system which allows you to control when the item appears in the Catalogue tab of the Learning Studio.

Under the item definition page, you can set an effective date that is in the future, as long as that date is less than the expiry date.

The nightly process looks at any effective dates that are set to today or in the past and publishes these items. The nightly job will not publish items until they have reached their effective dates.

Publishing a learning item manually:

You want to publish the learning item immediately to the catalogue, just leave the effective date blank. If you do not want the learning item to unpublish/inactivate automatically, just leave the expiry date blank.

Assigning the course to a Category and/or Catalogue:

Catalogues appear in the Learning Studio and help learners find courses based on some kind of classification. Alternatively, Categories are used to group related learning items together in reports based on their Category. To add a new category or catalogue, see the ―Setting up Categories‖ or ―Setting up Catalogues‖ sections of this manual.

To associate learning items to Catalogues/Categories, in the Learning items container, click on the + sign in the Categories field.

You will be presented with a list of Categories and Catalogues. The Catalogues have the word ―(Catalogue)‖ in brackets beside the name and the rest are Categories. Click on the check box to select your

Catalogue(s) and/or Categories and click on the Assign button.

To remove a catalogue/category once assigned, click on the beside it in the list. You will be prompted to confirm the removal.

Assigning prerequisites for the course:

When a prerequisite is selected the learner will need to successfully complete the prerequisite(s) learning item prior to taking the course.

In the Prerequisites area of the Online Course screen, click the add button.

In the screen that appears, choose from the existing items, and then click Assign.

Adding a pretest or quizzes, or link to an exam:

In the Tests area of the Online Course screen, do one of the following:  To add a pretest (used to determine which content the

learner needs to see, based on their current knowledge) click the pretest button.

 To add a quiz (used as an informal measurement of a learner‘s knowledge) click the quiz button.

 To link to an exam (used to formally assess a learner‘s knowledge) click the exam icon. Exams cannot be created here. In the screen that appears, choose the exam you want to appear as the final test for the course. If it has not been created yet you will need to create it and then come back and link it to your course.

For instructions on how to create pretests and quizzes, see Chapter 5, ―Working with Exams, Tests, and Surveys‖.

Developing the course objectives and content items:

In the Course Objectives area of the Online Course screen, click the add icon to add course objectives.

In the screen that appears, add the title, a description and expected duration for the objective and click the Add button. You have created an objective container within which you will add a course content item. Each new course objective appears numbered in the Course Objectives area of the Online Course screen.

The button is to re-arrange the order of the objectives. The button is to add a file content item to the objective. The button is to add HTML content to the objective. The button is to remove the objective from the course.

Changing the order of your objectives

The arrow button can be used to change the order of your objectives. To do this, click on the button of the one you want to move and drag it on top of arrow button you want it moved above.

Adding external files as content items to course objective: Click the file button. The File Content screen

appears.

Enter the Content Title, and then browse for the desired file. When you are finished, click Add. The file is uploaded to the Medworxx LMS and the title of the content item appears under the course objective in the Online Course screen.

If you need to update the file you will need to open the file outside of the LMS system, make your changes and upload the new version by clicking on the file title to the left of the [FILE] brackets and browsing out to find it.

Adding zip files as content items to course objective: Click the file button. The File Content screen

appears.

Enter the Content Title, and then browse for the desired file. When you select your zip file a new field will appear prompting you to enter the start file name.

To see the list of files to determine the start file, double click on the zip file in Internet Explorer and the files should be extracted in your zip program.

The start file is typically named something similar to

When you are finished, click Add. The file is uploaded to the Medworxx LMS and the title of the content item appears under the course objective in the Online Course screen.

Note, if your zip file was created in a 3rd party tool and has multiple components (files, tests, etc), use the Import feature of this system to import the zip file instead, to ensure the components of the course play properly and the data stored when users take the course is tracked correctly.

Adding HTML content to course objective:

Click the HTML button. The HTML (Rich Text Editor) Content screen appears.

Enter the Title, and then, in the HTML editing screen, enter content appropriate for this objective of the online course, using the

familiar desktop publishing or word processing icons. For help with HTML items such as hyperlinks, tables, etc., see the table below. When you are finished, click Add. The title of the content item appears

under the course objective in the Online Course screen.

HTML Editor Toolbar Functions

Toolbar Element Function

View or edit the document source code (for advanced users). See

Source Editor.

Removes all content, creating a new blank page.

Saves the page you were editing.

Preview what the HTML page will look like for users.

Select a layout template. See Templates

Cut the highlighted text to the clipboard. See Cut, Copy and Paste.

Copy the highlighted text to the clipboard. See Cut, Copy and Paste.

Paste the data copied to the clipboard (with or without formatting). See Cut, Copy and Paste.

Paste content copied from Microsoft Word or similar applications. See Cut, Copy and Paste.

Print the current document. See Printing.

Spell check the text in the document. See Spell Checking.

Undo or redo the most recent action taken. See Undo and Redo.

Find and replace a word or phrase within the document. See Find and Replace.

Select the entire text in the document.

Remove the formatting from the highlighted text.

Applies bold, italic, underscore or strikethrough formatting to the highlighted text. See Text Formatting.

Superscript or subscript the highlighted text. See Superscript and subscript in Text Formatting.

Creates numbered or bulleted lists. See Creating Lists.

Increase or decrease the text indentation.

Format a block of text to identify quotations (text provenient from other sources).

Sets the text alignment (left, centered, right or justified). See Text layout and format in Text Formatting.

Converts or removes the text in hyperlinks. It may also be used to manage file uploads and links to files on the web server. See

Links, E-Mails and Anchors.

Inserts or modifies a link anchor. See Links, E-Mails and Anchors

Inserts images into the document. See Inserting Images below.

Inserts an emoticons image (smiley faces, email icon, light bulb, etc.).

Inserts symbols & special characters (accented characters, trademark, currency symbol, etc.).

Inserts a printing page break. Only impacts printed version.

Styles & formatting determine the appearance and semantic value of your document. You may use the drop down boxes to apply styles, set the font, its size, etc. To remove the applied style select the style name again. See Text Formatting.

Changes the color of the text. See Size and color in Text Formatting.

Changes the background color of the text. See Size and color in

Text Formatting.

Maximizes the editor size inside the browser.

Shows where the block elements boundaries in the text.

Shows information about the FCKeditor.

Form Functions

Toolbar Element Function

Creates a new form block into the page.

Inserts a checkbox to the page.

Inserts a radio button to the page.

Inserts a text field into the page.

Inserts a selection field into the page.

Inserts a form button into the page.

Inserts an image into the page, which behaves much like form button used to submit forms. Do not use it to insert plain images into the document.

Inserts a hidden field into the page.

Retrieved from "http://docs.cksource.com/FCKeditor_2.x/Users_Guide/Quick_Reference"

Inserting an Image

Inserting Images in FCKeditor is very simple. Just press the button on the toolbar. A popup window called "Image Properties" will appear.



The first tab refers to the "Image Info"

 URL: defines the URL address of the image. You may also use the

"Browse Sever" in order to browse the files.

 Alternative Text: puts the descriptions of the image if you want it

to be different than the image name.

 Width: specifies image width.  Height: specifies image height.

You may lock the image proportions by pressing or you can return to the original image size by pressing .

 Border: specifies the size of the border you want to place around

the image.

 HSpace: defines the size of the horizontal gap.  VSpace: defines the size of the vertical gap.

 Align: specifies the alignment of the image. You can choose from: Left, Abs Bottom, Abs Middle, Baseline, Bottom, Middle, Right, Text Top or Top.

To choose an image or upload a new one, click on the Browse server button. You will be presented with a list of already uploaded images. Choose one or to upload a new image, click on the Browse button at the bottom.

Browse to find your file on your local machine or on a share drive. Click on it and then click on Open.

Your image will be added to the list. To choose your image from the list click on it to select it. The Image Properties window will open showing a preview of the image and its properties. Note you can adjust the size of the image by

changing its width or height settings. Adjust the properties or leave them at the default settings and click OK.

You image will be embedded into the Editor window where your cursor is located.

Deleting an Objective

The button allows you to delete an objective in a course that hasn‘t been started or taken by a learner yet. Once this happens, you will not be able to delete it as the button will be grayed out.

The Security tab permits the user to identify who can perform actions on each individual learning items such as courses, exams and surveys, and who can have access to the course data on reports.

For any learning items, the security tab looks similar to this. Notice there is a ―Learner‖ and an ―Administration‖ section.

Learning Security

Under the Learner columns, you are defining which learners can view the learning item in the Catalogue of the Learning Studio, whether they can take it and if they need approval.

You can also add people and groups and give them learner rights by clicking on the People | Groups links.

When you click on these links a new window will open and you can search for and select one or many from the list.

Once chosen, assign them rights by activating the appropriate radio buttons. If you select the Requires Approval option for anyone, you will need to define the Approver(s) on the Workflow tab. See the ―Workflow‖ section below for more details or Chapter 8

Administration Security

Under the Administration columns, you are defining which learning item (content) authors can View, Assign, Report On, Edit, Publish, Copy, Export and Manage the Security of your learning item.

Note: as the Owner of the learning item you will be given default rights on your item. When creating a learning item, the owner can usually adjust their default rights before saving and exiting. To ensure you can edit these rights after saving and exiting, ensure you have Manage Security rights.

Additionally, you can give other People and Groups Security by choosing them as defined above, and assigning appropriate security rights. Note, when you add a person the rights you can assign them is based on their

global LMS role they‘ve been assigned (Learner, Author, Educator, Manager). This will denote which radio buttons will be available for activation.

Workflow Tab

If you have specified that your content item requires approval you will need to identify who the approver/s will be in the workflow tab. This tab provides you with the ability to specific and/or multiple approvers for a learning item. The options for approver(s) are ―My Manager‖ and Specific Person(s)/Groups(s). The ―No Approvers Required or Remove Existing Approvers‖ option is the default but can also be used to remove any selected approvers.

Chapter 8: Learning Item Workflow, gives further details about the Workflow tab.

Once a learner requests approval to take a course, any one of the assigned approvers (My managers, Persons or groups) can approve that request and once approved, the other approvers will no longer see it in their ―To-do‖ list.

Approval of a Learning Item

When an approval is required before a learner can take a Learning Item a Request Approval button will be presented in the course details.

Once the learner clicks on this button, they could possibly set their own target

In document Medworxx Learning Management System Administration Guide. Medworxx Learning Management System Version May 2011, Version 8 (Page 87-115)