#1 2008-05-18 22:47:54

**_mark2741_**

Structure of a Course/Curriculum

How does everyone else structure their curriculums/courses?

I would like to have a structure like this, but it doesn't appear to be possible:

Curriculum
     > Course One
            > Lesson One
            > Lesson Two
            > Lesson Three
      > Course Two
            > Lesson One
            > Lesson Two

But every piece of content is automatically converted to a 'course' when added to a curriculum. I want to keep my filesizes manageable, and other than the structure of the lessons being in powerpoint/Presenter, many of the slides will contain SWF files. My 'courses' have to be a minimum of 50 minutes due to CPE requirements. Fortunately I can break that up in 10 minute chunks (or whatever I want, so long as they are > 50 minutes in totality).

Ideally I would like to have many 2 or 3 minute 'units' of content, but only one piece of content can be made into a course. In other words, it would seem to me the ideal way would be to have a course simply be a metapackage of many smaller content pieces. From a development/maintenance standpoint that seems obvious to me, but it doesn't seem possible in Connect.

How are you all doing it? It looks like I'll have to have a lot of 'Course One, Part One', 'Course One, Part Two' etc to make Connect Training work for me?

alistairlee

Re: Structure of a Course/Curriculum

Hey Mark,

Can you use the folder structure in curriculums to achieve this?

For example, you would have:

Curriculum:
- Topic 1 Folder
    - Course 1
    - Course 2
    - Course 3
- Topic 2 Folder (with the previous courses as a pre-requsite)
   - Course 1
   - Course 2
   - Course 3
- etc...

**_mark2741_**

Re: Structure of a Course/Curriculum

That would probably work for me if it was possible - I'm not seeing any option to add folders inside a curriculum. Maybe I'm missing something (I hope I am!). When I create a curriculum my only options are to add a new course or a new piece of content. I can't add a new folder or organize the content/courses into directories.

**_matthewwoodside_**

Re: Structure of a Course/Curriculum

After you have created your curriculum, you can go back and "Add Item".  That will give you the option to create folders.  You can then select individual courses and "Move" them into the folders that you want.

**_mark2741_**

Re: Structure of a Course/Curriculum

Thanks! I just took a look and, although not ideal, I should be able to make this work.

**_jrommers_**

Re: Structure of a Course/Curriculum

Yes we also work with the folder structure. This works perfectly for us.

I work for an electronics manufacturer and my department trains the technical engineers who repair our products in all of Europe.
More important in this is the modularity of the lessons.

Our old structure use to work as follows:

Curriculum#1
Course#1
- 1 piece of content with different chapters in this course.
Course#2
- 1 piece of content with different chapters in this course.

The problem was in course 1 there is a chapter we also cover in course 2 so this was a waste of development time and for our student a waste of time cause they have to follow the same material twice or even more. But dividing this in the same structure as you bummed onto gave us the same problems.

Modularity was the key. (in the folder structure)
To give you a specific example on one of our curriculums:

Curriculum (Mobile Engineer)
- Folder (Mobile model #1)
  - Course#1 (Introduction Mobile Model #1)
  - Course#2 (Bluetooth technology) <this course can also be used in another Mobile Model # or another product
  - Course#3 (DVB technology) <this course can also be used in another Mobile Model # or another product
  - Course#4 (UMTS Technology) <this course can also be used in another Mobile Model # or another product
  - Course#5 (Mobile model #1 exam)

- Folder (Mobile model #2)
  - Course#1 (Introduction Mobile Model #2)
  - Course#2 (Bluetooth technology) <same course as in model#1
  - Course#3 (DVB technology)  <same course as in model#1
  - Course#4 (UMTS Technology)  <same course as in model#1
  - Course#5 (Mobile model #2 exam)

In this way when a student is done with model#1 it takes him less time to follow model#2, cause the technology courses where already done before. This saves time for both parties.

Last edited by **_jrommers_** (2009-02-12 11:32:20)