re:Learnings

 The fact that Canvas questions can be imported at all is awesome. However it’s rarely totally straight forward. This is a deeper dive into the problems and the workarounds of just getting the file imported (not question content issues like broken images). Same error but different causes Canvas exports quizzes as QTI files (it’s in XML format). Sometime importing a QTI file into Moodle, the importer says there’s no questions in the file: Error: There are no questions in the import file. This one obtuse error message can have three possible causes. Issue 1 : Canvas Question Banks When you look at the QTI file in a text editor, indeed, there certainly is no questions: Cause The issue is in Canvas. The quiz is drawing questions from a question bank which simply don’t export the question items. Workaround Recreate the quiz in Canvas, but import the questions directly – don’t reference the question bank. Export to a new QTI file Import int...

The single biggest risk to Project Bob was converting quiz questions. Possible Question Conversion Strategies When you have subjects like Chemistry with 480 quiz questions of a variety of types, copying and pasting is just not an option. What are the conversion options and how good are they? Respondus Windows only tool; training/learning required for implementation. Limited question types supported (Multiple choice/True-False). As an incomplete solution it was prone to human error, time consuming and variable quality. IMSCC/QTI Fails to import: solution not available. GIFT (question format) Training/learning required for implementation, Images embedded in questions not supported.  An Incomplete solution, subject to uman error and time-consuming. Moodle plug-in (Canvas QTI) Further development required for implementation. Not supported (developer hasn’t updated since 2015). No official Moodle release. Installation approvals on Prod...

Just because you can use a shiny tech trick doesn’t mean that you should. Presenting Learning Content Moodle Labels, Lessons, Pages and Books are the primary elements to carry content. Which to use? Labels are the fast track to scroll of death Importing Canvas content automatically generates Moodle Pages. Lots. Lessons are cool but too limited and have gradebook & UX problems. Moodle Books have strong navigation but you can’t add activities inside them. The best compromise was to use Moodle Books. A topic introduced by using a Moodle Label. The Moodle Book provided a deep dive into that topic. In the above image, you can see the structure of content: an introduction, a list of Moodle resources and activities. Note how a Moodle book was split with activities between the two. Then simple, light indenting was used to ‘group’ the learn...

Canvas content imports into Moodle as pages. Lots of pages. This makes for excessive navigation for students and academics – not a good experience. Moodle Books are a surprise workhorse of Project Bob. They were selected for the better experience in navigating content. Similarly it’s quick to edit individual book chapters/sub-chapters. The small effort to convert Canvas Pages to Moodle Book Chapters was acceptable. The challenge The challenge is to automate getting content in along with images and linked files. Solution Moodle Books has a Import chapter feature. It can ingest a zip file containing html files (each one becomes a ‘chapters’), images and documents: Moodle Book feature: Import chapter The trick is to prepare the html files first: Beautify Code The plainer and cleaner the HTML source code, the more success you will have. Both Adobe Dreamweaver and Atom Editor are useful tools for making large changes across multiple fil...