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University Content#

Purpose#

The Content Interface is designed to help with the creation and maintenance of learning materials for University courses. Consequently, the Content Interface offers functionality to help support learning in University courses. The following table provides a summary of that functionality with the following sections offering more detail.

Label

Description

Readings

Visually distinguish descriptions of readings learners should undertake.

Activities

Visually distinguish activities learners should perform.

Note

Visually distinguish important information that learners should take note of.

Aside

Represent information that is indirectly related to the main content. A slightly toned-down version of Note.

Indent

Indent some text, without any additional styling

Poem

Used to display poems. Text is indented and has a shaded background

FAQs

Two styles (FAQ Question and FAQ Answer)

University Dates

Enable the automatic insertion of a specific date into generic date descriptions - e.g. Monday, Week 5 becomes Monday, Week 5 (20 August, 2020) – based on the trimester or study period for the specific course site.

Film Watching Options

Automatically translate the name of a film into specific instructions for how learners may watch the film.

Activity#

An activity will be displayed on the web in a way different to a reading. However, you specify an activity much the same way. Create the text and then apply the Activity style to it. As seen below, the Activity style has a different background colour (blue) to highlight the different style.

What it looks like in Word#

Figure 1 - Example of activity style as it appears in Word

What it looks like on the Web#

Figure 2 - Example activity style as it appears on the Web

Note#

Any text that has the Note style applied will appear currently in a quite obvious warning box when displayed online (and yellow background when displayed in Word).

What it looks like in Word#

Figure 3 - Note style example as shown in Word

What it looks like on the Web#

Figure 4 - Note style example as shown on the Web

Aside#

The Note style can be a little extreme for some purposes. Sometimes you just want to add something that is indirectly related to the content. Useful to highlight but not a warning. A purpose that fits the Aside style.

What it looks like in Word#

Figure 5 - Aside style example as shown in Word

What it looks like on the Web#

Figure 6 - Aside style example as shown on the Web

Reading#

If you want to have something appear as a reading that is clearly separate from the rest of the text then apply the Reading style. As I’ve done with the following content. Not the different background colour that is part of the Reading style. This change in colour is used to more clearly indicate what is or is not a reading.

Current practice is to have a title for the reading (or activity that is not styled Reading). As shown below.

What it looks like in Word#

Figure 7 - Reading style example as shown in Word

What it looks like on the Web#

Figure 8 - Reading style example from the Web

Poem#

Some courses wish to display poems in a visually distinct way. The Poem style provides one method.

What it looks like in Word#

Figure 9 - Poem style example as shown in Word

What it looks like on the Web#

Figure 10 - Poem style example as it appears on the Web

FAQs#

Providing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) is a common requirement. FAQs can be displayed in a variety of ways. Explicit support for FAQs is provided by two styles:

  1. FAQ Question – defines the question or header.
  2. FAQ Answer – defines the answer.

What it looks like in Word#

Figure 11 - FAQ Question and FAQ Answer styles in Word

What it looks like on the Web#

As suggested in Figure 12 initially only the questions (the text styled with the FAQ Question style) appear. To view an answer (the text styled with the FAQ Answer style) the visitor clicks on the question. Clicking on the question again causes that answer to be hidden.

Only one answer at a time is displayed.

Figure 12 - FAQ Question and FAQ Answer styles on the Web

University Dates#

If you wish to include the date for an assignment you might write

Assignment 1 due 5pm on Wednesday Week 5 (17 March 2019).

Problem: What happens when your course content gets rolled over into another trimester or study period? A study period that has different dates. Almost certainly Wednesday Week 5 will no longer be 17 March 2019.

The solution to this problem is to use the University Date style to tell the Content Interface to insert a date specific to the course’s current trimester/study period.

What it looks like in Word#

Figure 13 shows numerous examples of the University Date style being used in Word. Any text shown in red has had the University Date style applied to it. When viewed on the web a specific calendar date will be inserted in braces after the date string. The date will be based on the teaching period for the current course site.

Figure 13 - Examples of the University Date style as shown in Word

Note: As shown in Figure 13, there is some flexibility in how the date string is written. Flexibility includes:

  • the case (upper or lower) is used for the letters;
  • the day is written (in full or abbreviated); and,
  • how the day and week are separate (by a space; by the word of, or by a: comma, semi-colon, colon, hyphen or dash)

What it looks like on the Web#

Figure 14 - What examples of the University Date style from Figure 13 look like on the Web

How to do it#

  1. Write out the date using the format - Day Week NumWeek
    Where Day is replaced by a day of the week (capitalisation not important) and NumWeek is replaced by a number representing the week of the trimester/study period.
    e.g. Thursday Week 4

  2. Apply the University Date style to the date you wrote.
    In a Word document based on the right template, the date text should be red in colour and use the Courier New font. The change in font and colour is intended to help you recognise the difference when editing the Word document.

Figure - What it looks like in Word

Film Watch Options#

In a small number of courses learners are required to watch numerous films. The Griffith University Library provides methods by which learning resources – such as films – can be sourced for use in courses.

Problems: While many films can be provided to students to watch online, not all of them can. The variability of what can be provided complicates that task of explaining to learners what films to watch and how. it also means that as films become available to watch online, the course writer needs to remember what online materials need to be updated.

The Film Watch Options functionality aims to semi-automate and simplify this process. Instead of manually updating course content, there are three steps:

  1. Preparation.
    A CSV file is maintained that matches the name of a film with the URL where the film is available. An empty URL indicates a film that’s not available. As URLs change, this file is updated.
  2. Authoring.
    In content, rather than embedding the specific URL for a film, you write the film’s name and apply the Film Watch Options style.
  3. Viewing.
    When the content is viewed on the web, the film’s name is recognised, the data file is consulted to find where it is available, and the film’s name is replaced with the current location specific information.

Watching via Griffith University

The options to watch the following films are provided via Griffith University. Hence are only available to students and staff of that university.

What is looks like in Word#

As shown in Figure 16, there is just a list of film names. The film names must:

  1. Have the film watch options style applied.
    Indicated by the green italics style as shown in Figure 16.
  2. Be separated by some content in another style.
    A list of film names one after the other all in the Film Watch Options style will be treated as single long film name. In Figure 16 the Film Watch Options style is separate by bolded text using the Normal style.

Figure 16 - Film Watch Options in Word

Each film is represented differently depending on if and how the video is available. For example, the films in Figure 16 are represented as follows.

Rear Window#

In this example, Rear Window was available via the Kanopy service. Kanopy provides a link, but not an easily calculated embeddable video player. Hence Figure 17 shows the bolded normal text of the film name (which was written in the Word document shown in Figure 16) and then a rounded box that contains the film name and a message with a link to Kanopy where the film can be viewed.

Figure 17 - "Rear Window" as shown on the web

Shadow of a Doubt#

Shadow of a Doubt is available on the Internet Archive, which provides an embeddable video player. Hence, Figure 18 shows the film name (the bolded text in the Word doc) and the embeddable video player. With the movie ready to play.

Figure 18 - "Shadow of a Doubt" as shown on the Web

Lost in Translation#

Figure 19 illustrates when a film was not available. No URL was provided. As a default the Film Watch Options will generate a link to a search on the website https://justwatch.com/au. This website provides a service that searches all the available online sources of film and TV (e.g. streaming services). This allows the student to discover if they can source the film themselves.

Figure 19 - "Lost in Translation" as shown on the web

How to do it#

This process is reasonably complex, especially the first time. Ask David Jones for assistance.

Griffith University Specific

Some of the following information is Griffith University specific. Though it can be used at other institutions, there is a bit more work to do.

Create and maintain a “film availability” spreadsheet#

  1. Download a copy of this film availability spreadsheet.
  2. Save your copy to a network drive (e.g. OneDrive, SharePoint).
  3. Maintain a list of all the films used, including if and how they are available online.