Interactive Syllabi

It is a course scenario – a signpost from which students enter the individual e-learning activities. The syllabus is usually structured by time or topic. The teacher prepares the activities one by one and then publishes them to the students in a coherent form.

Homepage of the interactive syllabus in normal view:

The teacher can fill and edit the syllabus in the editing mode (option "Edit" in the menu of operations for the selected syllabus). Viewing the syllabus in editing mode:

It's not. It is possible to use only part of the e-learning (e.g. practice using ROPOTs, homework vault, discussion forum). It is not necessary to create a syllabus for the small number of activities during the semester. But once students have many learning materials and more learning activities, structuring a course using an interactive syllabus becomes more straightforward for them.

To create a syllabus, use

You can then set who the syllabus is intended for, its title and how many main chapters you wish to divide the syllabus into. It is also possible to set a bulk timetable for unpacking individual chapters and publishing them by clicking on "Fill in with a timetable". Once the syllabus has been created, you can start adding content and editing parts of it.

For copying the interactive syllabus, as well as other materials in the course, there is an application for copying study materials:

in the ROPOTs and interactive syllabi for the target semester. If the syllabus still needs to be modified (dates, chapter titles), this can be done in the "Batch mode" application. This allows you to bulk move dates in chapters, set locking/publishing and change chapter titles.

If you need to copy the content of one interactive syllabus to another, you can use the "Copy chapters" tool. The tool can be accessed by following the path:

You can edit the syllabus by:

To insert elements into a chapter, you need to first open the chapter (by clicking on the title or the entire chapter title bar, or the "Open" arrow).

New elements can be inserted by clicking on the corresponding icon in the edit bar. They are inserted at the place where the cursor is currently in the text:

Multimedia, PDF files, images can just be dragged from the computer to the chapter syllabus area. The system will recognize which file it is. It will display the images and prepare some audio and video formats for playback. Individual elements can be deleted using the waste container icon next to the embedded element.

More details about inserting individual elements:

• Inserting a new chapter: a new chapter can be inserted into the syllabus and other chapters (the number of levels is limited to five sublevels). When inserting, you also set the publication options.
• Text insertion: the text is entered into the syllabus chapter directly in the space that is visible. Basic text color, italics or bolding, indentation can be set using the edit bar.
• Discussion forum: the syllabus can include a link to the discussion forum of (any) course or directly to a specific discussion thread. You can find the thread number in the address bar of the discussions:

  

• Study materials: you can upload files from your computer (by dragging or searching) or files stored in the Information System (search for them via the File Manager).

  

  After clicking on the selected file, folder or ROPOT, confirm the choice by clicking "Select".

• Inserting video and audio files: files in common formats can be dragged or uploaded from your device to the chapter syllabus, the system will recognize them and automatically convert them to the HTML5 player so that they can be played directly in the browser. At the same time, they will be secured against downloading. More information is available in the Playing videos in the MU IS help. Playing videos in the IS JAMU help.
• Inserting PDF documents of presentations for direct viewing: PDF files can be inserted into the syllabus via the "Study Materials" icon in the editing bar or by dragging and dropping from the teacher's device. To view a PDF file directly in the syllabus, select "Edit" for the selected file and set "View" to "Embedded". The embedded PDF file will be browsable but not downloadable.

  

• Highlighted text: to make the texts inserted into the syllabus clearer, the text can be supplemented with icon boxes that provide students with selected important information, tips or warnings.
• Inserting images: images can just be moved into the syllabus chapter or uploaded from your device, the systém will recognize them, save them in the syllabus and display them.

Moving elements to another place or deleting an element is done using the icon on the top right corner of the element.

For a typical use in the current course, the syllabus does not need to have the access rights changed because it is implicitly accessible to students of the course. If for some reason it is desirable to limit or extend this right, you can use the "Rights - Setting" option (in the interactive syllabus menu). You will be presented with a dialog for setting the rights of the interactive syllabus file, in which you can change the rights in the desired way. In the case of extending rights, remember that all parent folders in the Study Materials of the course needs to also have the desired read right.

If the syllabus is accessible to students (students of the course immediately after the syllabus is created), they can see it in their interface

a link that they can use to open it. If you want to make the syllabus available to someone else, you need to set the rights of the file to open the syllabus (.qwarp), including the folder where the file is located, as described above. The syllabus can then be opened by clicking on this file in the course study materials.

• Please make sure you have set its access rights correctly.
  • You can do so by clicking on the Access rights reference situated at the top of your syllabus. Make sure the rights are set the way that allows your students to access the syllabus. If they are not, change the settings.
  • Similarly, you should also check the rights of the Study materials folder housing the file containing a reference to your syllabus. If the students are not allowed to access this folder, they cannot access the file, and thus the syllabus, either.

• Are you really sure you have made all your chapters public? When editing the syllabus, check that there is no lock icon for each chapter, if so, click on “chapter settings” (pencil icon after moving to the chapter line) and set to “publish now”.

  

  If you need to publish multiple chapters at once, use the "Batch mode" link in the operations menu.

• a syllabus containing as many chapters as there are weeks in the term (one chapter for each week)
• a syllabus containing as many chapters as there are topics you want to deal with during the term
• multiple syllabi (one for each seminar group)
• a syllabus containing multiple chapters – some for lectures, some for seminars
• a syllabus containing general course-related information and its chapters with seminar group-specific information

Provided some seminar groups have been created under your course, the application used for creating a new syllabus allows you to select between a lecture (course) syllabus and a seminar group one.

The system allows teachers to insert their own opening image or select from a set of basic ready-made themes. The same opening image can be set for chapters.

The ideal parameters of your own image are:

• minimum size 1200x450 px, but for best results 1600x620 px, larger is not recommended;
• the ideal format is JPG;
• the ideal file size is 200 KB, then it will load quickly, the maximum file size is 1 MB.

Editing the interactive syllabus is called WYSIWYG (acronym for the English sentence "What you see is what you get"). If you use prepared elements and do not embed advanced scripts in HTML code, for example, you will see the syllabus content as students will see it.

If you want to test how the outline looks in real view without editing elements during editing, use the “Normal View” option in the outline operations menu.

Use the “View All” option (in the normal view) to view the outline of the interactive syllabus, including the locked chapters (eg to check the outline of the interactive syllabus after editing). However, such an outline can only be seen by a person with sufficient rights, not by the student.

To print the interactive syllabus, select “View All” (in normal view) and then print the outline using the “Print” option in your browser.

You will be asked to provide a name for the file containing the syllabus, the folder in which the file should be stored, and information on how the syllabus should be structured. This option therefore allows you to create another syllabus in, for instance, the Document Server or Depository sections.

Validation verifies the functionality of all elements in the interactive syllabus. Problems found are marked in red. Situations that may be problematic are highlighted in yellow. The validation is located in the list of operations with the interactive syllabus.