Moodle/Datatel Provisioning Information - Course Staging and Content Transfer Procedures

In the past, faculty contacted the DL Department to request new shells or copies of shells; a new process implemented in Fall 2010 eliminates the need for shell requests. Instead, if a faculty member needs a shell for a course, he/she will simply create one in his/her Course Staging area (contact DL if you need a cousre staging area or to learn how to use your staging area). Otherwise all courses are being provisioned and, when it is time to teach a course, a provisioned shell will be waiting for you in the Moodle tab in MyClackamas or the MyCourses block in Moodle

This message describes a new process to facilitate the management of courses and course content. There are three steps to getting a course ready for student use:

• Find or develop your course in the Course Staging Area (or recycle your live course)
• About a week before the prior terms ends, find your corresponding Provisioned Course
• Transfer Content between the Course Staging Area and the Provisioned Course and, at the start of the term, go live with it

Step 1. Find or develop your course in the Course Staging Area

The "Course Staging Area" is an area in Moodle used by faculty for creating shells, developing courses, and storing course content. Content from courses in the staging area is used to populate newly-provisioned, but empty, shells. Faculty can make as many courses as they want in the "Course Staging Area" either for development, cloning, or archive purposes. Courses/content can copied from a live course into a course in the staging area for future use. Courses in the staging area are generally not used with students. [For a more complete description of the new Course Staging Area for faculty and how to use it, click here].

Step 2. About a week before the prior terms ends, find your corresponding Provisioned Course

“Provisioning” a course produces a Moodle shell that is linked to Datatel and your student rosters. Provisioned courses are the courses that are actually used with students. Each term, shells for all DL, HYB, and face-to-face courses will be automatically provisioned. This process is managed by DL/ITS staff. For a more complete description of Course Provisioning and why we’re going in this direction, click here.

Remember:

• Newly provisioned shells do not contain content. The instructor must add content before teaching the course.
• Newly provisioned shells remain hidden from student view until the faculty member teaching the course makes the course available to students. This normally occurs on the first day of the term.

Step 3. Transfer Content between the Course Staging Area and the Provisioned Course and, at the start of the term, go live with it

Content Transfer is the step that copies a “staged” course to a “provisioned” course. Once a course is designed and built in the staging area, the content is transferred via a backup/restore process to the provisioned course shell for teaching. Once the source content is copied to the destination shell, two copies of a course will exist: the original and a “clone” of the original. Copying can be repeated to produce as many clones as needed. Content can also be imported from one shell to another. For a more complete description of Transfering Content between courses, click here.

A benefit of this new process:

In the past, faculty contacted the DL Department to request new shells or copies of shells; this new process eliminates the need for shell requests. Instead, if a faculty member needs a shell for a course, he/she will simply create one in his/her Course Staging area (contact DL to learn how). When it is time to teach a course, a provisioned shell will be waiting for you in the Moodle tab in MyClackamas or the MyCourses block in Moodle

What is "Course Staging"?

"Course Staging" is preparing a course for teaching, but before teaching, the content is to be transferred to another shell (a provisioned shell). The "Course Staging Area" is the storage place for these courses. Courses in the staging area are usually still in the development phase, and are unavailable to students in Moodle. Faculty can have copies of every course they develop and teach in the "Course Staging Area" awaiting further development. Once they are ready for teaching, the content is transferred via the import OR backup/restore process to another course shell for teaching.

It is important to accurately identify the source and the destination courses as part of the content transfer step. Source courses are in the Course Staging Area and Destination Courses are in the YEAR/TM (e.g., 2011/WI) section

Content Transfer Process (For use after a course has been provisioned)

Import process for standard Moodle Users (you do not use customised blocks and/or themes)

Backup and Restore Process for Advanced Moodle Users (you use customized blocks and/or themes)