A quick guide for course teams (teachers, managers, editors) on how to build things in UCLeXtend.

1. UCLeXtend
A quick guide for
course teams
It is Moodle, but slightly different…
By Matt Jenner, September 2016

2. UCLeXtend homepage
Main objective - sign in.
Future plans – reduce (local) catalogue substantially, link/embed courses from Life
Learning catalogue.

3. Sign in page
Primary goal – UCLX users sign in with their email address and password.
Secondary goal – Internal UCL folk click on the subtle ‘UCL Login’ link (for UCL single
sign-on)

4. MyeXtend (aka Dashboard or My Moodle)
Lists each enrolment as a course tile. Tiles contain Course graphic (from course
Settings), Full name, enrolled teachers (as icons) and progress bar / tracking.
Clicking your Name / profile icon will take you to your profile (to view, edit).

5. Editing a course
- Adding sections
- Editing content
- Adding resources / activities

6. A course – with 0 sections and only one heading. Nothing else.
Notice: Editing mode is always on!

7. Scrolling down the course. You’ll see:
Edit topic – to edit the Title and Summary of Topic/Section 0.
Creative learning activity or resource – opens the ‘Activity chooser / selector’
Files can be dragged/dropped into the course – more later.

8. Editing a section/topic label
Snap tends to show a minimalist screen, no blocks and non-essential settings
hidden/collapsed on the right side (more on this later).
UCLeXtend is currently using the Atto text editor – but this is under review.

9. Writing text in Atto is simple and Snap uses a mix of Serif and Sans-Serif fonts for
displaying content. There’s a good argument why it does but let others fight it out, it
looks alright.

10. Headings, and general type-based changes are simple.
Clicking ‘Save changes’ takes us back to the course…

11. Here’s the result of what we just added.
Snap’s simple workflow is, for things like labels and section introductions very
simple, and the same as a normal Moodle theme.

12. This course is pretty simple, so let’s add some sections/topics...
Click ‘Create a new section’ at the top to add a new section (next slide)

13. Creating a new section takes the user to add the Title and first label/introduction
(but note, not mandatory).

14. … bulking up this demo for you...

15. Quick workflow – previously you’d add a section (or increase the number of topics
in the course Settings) and then go back to edit the titles/intro for the section. Snap
introduces more of a workflow to guide the user.

16. Now we have a number of sections for our course. These can be moved, hidden or
deleted with the first row of icons (below ‘Back to basics’ shown above)
To do: sometimes these are ordered in one column, sometimes in two – not sure
how to change this yet (or what process decides)

17. Adding activities or resources – in any section/topic click on the ‘Create learning
activity or resource’ button.

18. The activity / resource chooser appears, as it used to.
To do: Font’s a bit small here, but changing it caused some issues across the site.
Not a deal-breaker.

19. For a simple demo, we’ll add a URL / web link.

20. Again – the workflow is the same as Moodle, one screen with all the options. One
advantage here is the collapsed options are on the right, available but also out the
way.

21. A fairly normal setup for a URL – the Name, URL and Description. Also have chosen
to display the description to the course page, as it’s helpful (and rendered nicely in
Snap).

22. Snap shows files and URLs as a ‘tile’ in the course page. They’re big and clear, but
also not just lines as conventional Moodle themes show them. They are assigned a
colour and icon to represent what they are. The description is shown inside the tile.
The layout is 3x tiles wide, as the width reduces, the tiles drop down to new lines.

23. Going back a second – if you wanted to set other options, like Restricted access –
the user expands that menu, sets the options and then proceeds as usual.

24. Returning to the course page – like other Moodle themes, files can be dropped onto
the course – but only to that ‘Drop files…’ box at the bottom.
Here we’ll drop ‘A very important file for this course.docx’

25. Dropping the file…

26. And then a tile is created for that resource, picking up the Name automatically from
the filename. The tile is blue – for a Document and a document icon is shown.

27. When adding multiple files (or showing many resources in a row) Snap will show
then in a grid, 3x tiles per line (in full width). Some like this, some don’t. There’s no
descriptions, because we have only dropped files – but they can be edited to add
them in.

28. Tiles (or any activity or resource) can be moved, like Moodle by clicking the -> arrow
which brings up this interface. Click the ‘Move here’ or the + icon to move the
resource/activity to that destination (or find another topic/section to move it to).

29. Many tiles in a row might also not be idea, and courses ‘migrating’ to snap may
experience this as a layout issue. The Baseline recommends course elements are
described, usually with labels. ‘Additional readings’ has been added as a label (at
the bottom).

30. The ‘Additional readings’ label has now been moved, between the resources. This
breaks them up and explains to the learner what’s expected of them or guides them
somehow.

31. The Course administration block is hidden away, available by clicking the
‘Hamburger’ menu icon, right of the UCL logo.

32. When clicked, the course is ‘shifted’ left to show the menu.
The grey X (replacing the Hamburger menu) can close the menu again.

33. Course Settings are as expected, with many options collapsed on the right.
Note: Snap always keen to show a minimal interface, only giving you what you
(usually) need to see.

34. Course summary files are used as a header image across the top of the course. So
let’s replace the existing one (it was a pancake) with another. Drop it on…

35. Course tools – always shown in the bottom right of the Contents menu will render a
new screen with common course options, and all the blocks for the main course
page.

36. Course tools – lists common parts of Moodle which are useful for organising, or
taking part in a course.
Note: PLD is a feature we’re not using right now.

37. Clicking ‘Edit course blocks’ from Course Tools will take the user through the ‘Add a
blocks’ block and it’ll present all the usual Course blocks available.
Here – we’ll just add one – Search Forums.

38. Once added, we can add more blocks, edit the existing one (such as placement) or
‘turn editing off’ a hint to the old way of working, and right now, the only way to get
out of here successfully (this needs to be improved).

39. Once added, the blocks appear in the Course Tools space.
They are more out of the way when compared to traditional Moodle, but then also
all in one space.
Note: the Navigation block is gone from Snap (it can be re-enabled, but it was bad!)

40. Clicking Participants from Course Tools will show the list of people who are in the
course. Simple layout, no clutter or ‘compression’ that blocks might cause.
Note: sadly you still have to use Breadcrumbs to return back to the course 

41. Same goes for Grades / Grader Report – loads of space, as much as possible.
Note: slightly scrolled down the page, for this screenshot.

42. Ditto – enrolled users, saving screen estate for the task at hand.
Note: these pages have all been scrolled down for this screenshot, hiding the
breadcrumbs/header!

43. Like many activities – Discussion forums are clean and easier to use. No clutter, just
reading and posting to the forum discussions. Quizzes, Questionnaires, Assignments
– all do a similar thing.

44. Pretty simple interface, put your attention into your task at hand!

45. Back to the course – there is a new search box added to the Contents menu area.
It’ll search through the resources and activities in the course. Not entirely sure this
has value, but probably improves if Global Search is enabled.

46. Clicking the Admin menu and then ‘Switch role to’ > Student will enable any editor
to have a clear, student-view of the course. Let’s see…

47. Here we have a (slightly scrolled down) view of the course, no editing on.
Snap is keen on; simple navigation, clear content display and the Section navigation
buttons at the bottom – all for clear navigation and presentation.

48. Here are those tiled resources again – in a student / learner view.

49. Switching back to normal view.
Mira and I discussed how this could be re-branded as a ‘Course preview’ button,
rather than the more technical term of ‘Switch role to’ – it might promote its usage.

50. When dropping an image to a course Moodle will ask – do you want to show in-line
or as a download.
Note: This is a nice feature for new files but we’re struggling to see how you change
existing files from download to view (or vice versa).

51. Adding many in-line images shows them as ‘medium-sized’ thumbnails but
essentially they are labels with one image added. This is all automatic and will work
on any image size (above a few hundred pixels).