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Moodle Instructor Install Guide

Moodle Instructor Install Guide

Owned by Adam Blake
Last updated: Feb 26, 2024
4 min read

This guide is for Instructors importing CourseKata content into their course on the Moodle learning management system.

 Prerequisites

To follow this guide, you will need

  • the CourseKata application installed into your LMS. If this is not already done, you will need to talk to your LMS administrator to get them setup. You can refer them to tech@coursekata.org and we will work with them to supply the relevant documentation and help with installation.

  • an instructor account at CourseKata. If you do not have one, you can request one (free) at our website. Make sure to use your institutional email address.

  • a class in your LMS to install the course content into.

  How CourseKata Works

CourseKata content is built and hosted on our servers and delivered via <iframe> over the LTI protocol to your Learning Management System (LMS). To make this work, you will need to create a class on CourseKata, import the content into your LMS, and then link the LMS class to your CourseKata class.

Importing Content

  1. From the menu on the top right of CourseKata, choose My Classes under Teaching.

  2. Click the New Class button and choose New Class

A Continuation Class is something you might use if your course is split over two academic periods (semesters, quarters) but you have a separate LMS class for each period. The first period you will select New Class and the second period you would select Continuation Class to connect the class. Using this class will let your students pick up from where they left off the last period.

  1. Fill out the form with your institution’s information, and make sure to mark that This is a real class. If you are unsure of which book, there are some descriptions of the differences here: CourseKata Book Descriptions. Give your best estimates for the other values as they help us understand what kind of support you will need. When you are done click Create Class.

  2. Copy and paste the URL to your Moodle course into the textbox click to the next step where you will download your cartridge for the course.

The cartridge is specifically built for the book and version you have chosen. Once you install that cartridge into your LMS class and link it to your CourseKata class, you should not change the cartridge—it may appear that everything is working, but it is likely to fail at some point.

  1. In Moodle, click the Site administration tab, then the Courses tab, and on that page, Restore course

  1. On this page in the Import a backup file area, upload the cartridge you downloaded in step 4, then click Restore

  1. Confirm: The next page will indicate that this is a non-standard import file, and that the format is IMS Common Cartridge 1.1. Continue to the next page.

  2. Destination: Choose to Restore into an existing course. You can either choose to Merge the backup course into the existing course, which will add the contents of the book to your course, or Delete the contents of the existing course and then restore, which will clear everything out first.

If you are trying to replace a previous CourseKata book with a new one, only matching pages will be replaced. For that reason, it is recommended that you choose to Delete to make sure there are no broken pages lying around after. However, this will remove other content you may have added.

  1. Settings: Keep the default settings on the next page, and just scroll down to continue to the page after.

  2. Schema: This page lets you configure your course settings, merging in any values set by the cartridge. Make any change you wish and then continue to the next page.

  1. Review: Check that everything looks right to you on the next page. There should be course settings at the top, then a bunch of modules being imported by the book cartridge. If anything looks wrong, go back to the previous step(s) to fix it. Click Import to finish.

The content should now be properly imported! Open one of the CourseKata modules like My Progress + Jupyter. When you access the module, you should see a sign in page where you can sign in and choose which class on CourseKata matches the one that you are in.