Resources

“Resources” is a generic term encompassing the different forms of content in a course. A resource can be of one of four different types:

  1. An uploaded file. This may be an PDF document of scanned pages from a book, a MS Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, an MP3 file, or an html file, or pretty much any type of file you can imagine. These are created outside the woodle system and uploaded into the Files area of your course. The 'resource' is merely a link to this file. This is the preferred method for adding resources to a course as it means you will have a backup on your computer. [In woodle under Add a resource : Link to file or web site]

  2. Compose text or html. You can compose a text or html page directly within woodle using the built-in editor. Make sure that you copy any text and paste it into a new document on your computer. This will give you a backup and a copy for the the next time you teach the course. Firefox works best for this as it supports the Javascript WYSIWYG editor used by woodle. [In woodle under Add a resource : Compose web page]

  3. Link to a web site. This can be your own personal web site, a link to a bibliographic resource, such as electronic reserves, which requires logging in, or the URL of a web page. [In woodle under Add resource : Link to file or web site]

  4. Display directory (aka folder). You could use this when you want to give students access to a collection of files. You'll need to create a folder in the Files area of you course, upload, move or copy the files into that folder and then link to it from Display directory. Your students will then open this as a folder and be able to download all the files. However, a better option might be to create a zip archive of the files and upload the .zip file. This will save on space and cut down on the amount of overhead involved in creating a Directory in woodle. [In woodle under Add a resource : Display a directory].

How to handle html

Html files (web pages) can be handled in many different ways in woodle. The table below summarizes the different approaches and when they might be used.

Technique Examples of use Advantages Disadvantages
Compose html web page.
[In woodle under Add resource : compose web page] 		Class instructions. Can edit online. Don't need fancy html editor such as Dreaweaver. Material is contained within the woodle course and thus content can be proprietary. You have to create and edit the text online. Can be problematic with a slow network connection. The inline html editor is fairly basic. You might forget to make a backup on your computer.
Upload html file.
[In woodle under Add resource : link to uploaded file] 		Text is already present as html file -- just upload it. Displays quickly inside the browser -- doesn't need to load a PDF reader or MS Word. Styles are preserved which preserves the appearance as you intend. Any changes need to be done offline and the file uploaded again (same problem with any uploaded document). Links to graphics are very likely to break unless great care is taken.
Link to personal web page.
[In woodle under Add resource : link to web page] 		Many faculty have course material already present on their web site. Can just link to these pages. Last minute changes can be made to the web page and the updated text does not have to be uploaded into woodle. Need to use offline editor. Not suitable for proprietary content since it's exposed to the web from your site. Pages are external to woodle and disconnected from the woodle course; could lead to problems with keeping things straight.

Descriptions

There are three crucial components to describing a resource on woodle:

  1. Name: This is displayed in the Outline and what your students click on to read. It should be concise but descriptive; for example, a PDF resource of a book chapter (or part thereof) might have the chapter heading as its name.
  2. Summary: It's crucial to provide adequate detail here for a number of reasons:
    1. to model what you expect your students to produce in their own bibliographies
    2. so that you can keep track of exactly what material you have made available

    For pages from a book, you might include the title, author & year, chapter number and heading and page numbers. For every file you should indicate what kind it is, eg PDF, MS Word, and give the number of pages and file size. This will enable students to get a good idea of how long the file should take to open.
    Example:

    Isaac Asimov , From The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov, 1986
    Chapter 21: The Last Question.
    PDF 15 pages, 1.6 Mb

    This tells the student that she will need a PDF reader on her machine to access this resource and it's only 15 pages so she probably won't want to read it on screen and should print it out.

    Web references (URL) should have a link in the summary section to the home page of the originating site and a brief description of what's on the page. Date of page creation can also be useful.

  3. Location: If you name the file sensibly as above it'll be easy for you to find the correct file in amongst the hundreds of others that you'll end up with.

Display

A resource can displayed in two basic ways:

  1. Inside the woodle window (Same window). Here there is the normal site navigation at the top of the page allowing the student to easily return to the course. Choosing Put resource in a frame to keep site navigation visible anchors the site navigation at the top of the page and scrolling down just moves the content.
    This is the default behavior and you should use this as the normal option when creating a resource.
  2. Popup window (New window). Here a new window pops up and you can specify the default width and height and other attributes of the window. The disadvantage is that these windows can hang around and get in the way, and popups may also be blocked so that the window does not appear.
    Use this when you want students to read some instructions online and do a task in a different woodle window.

Note:

Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and Excel files will display within the Internet Explorer browser window rather than running MS Word. This does cause consternation amongst students — a good solution is to convert to PDF format (Print to pdf), this also has the advantage of producing a smaller file and the student doesn't need the MS Office suit to read the file.
The Mozilla Firefox browser will start up the requisite Microsoft application however, assuming the user has set this as the default way of handling such files.

To direct link or not to direct link

When composing sections of the course Outline or an Activity you may want to add a link to a web site. It is possible (and indeed easy) to add a direct link to the page on the web site that you want to reference (highlight some text and click on the Link button). Adding title text to this link allows you to give some extra detail which will appear when the student's mouse hovers over the link. However, this is not the best practice from a pedagogical standpoint since

The alternative is to create an annotated URL as a resource and link to this instead. This is easily accomplished as follows (requires Firefox):

  1. Start up a new tab, open woodle and navigate to the course Outline.
  2. Add a resource : Link to file or web site in the same week or topic section referenced in your original open tab
  3. Assuming that you already have the web site open, copy its address and paste it into the Location field. Selecting New window makes sense in this circumstance because the referenced page will then popup without interfering with the flow of the original text.
  4. Briefly describe the contents and purpose of this web page and insert a link to the originating home page of the site.
  5. When you Save changes the page will appear — it may popup, but not if you have enabled block popups, in a separate window if you enabled New window. Locate the originating window and copy the URL from the address bar — this is your resource URL and it should look something like https://woodle.wooster.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=371.
  6. Now return to the tab containing the text you wanted to link from, highlight the text string you want to click on, press the Link button and paste in the resource URL address you copied from the other tab. In the Title field you could make the comment that this is a woodle resource, and then OK.

Although this does seem rather complex and long winded nevertheless the technique has some advantages. It allows you to see all the web URLs you have referred to in the course and the summaries tell you what content is covered by references to web sites. Direct links makes these references de facto invisible. It is pedagogically more satisfying because now the list of resources can form the basis of their exam or quiz revision. In addition, you will be modeling the way that you want your students to refer to web resources in their own work by means of annotated links in a section of references.