Adding/editing a glossary

Adding a new glossary to the course, you will define several fields:

Name/Description

Here you should describe the purpose of the glossary, provide instructions or background information, links etc.

Entries shown per page

This defines the number of entries shown per page. The glossary can be configured to restrict the number of entries shown per page. If you have a large number of automatically-linked entries you should set this number lower to prevent long loading times.

Glossary Type

Here you can decide whether the glossary will be main or secondary. The glossary system allows you to export entries from any secondary glossary to the main one of the course. In order to do this, you should specify which glossary is the main one. You can only have one main glossary per course and only teachers are allowed to update it.

Students can add entries

This lets you specify whether a student can or cannot add, edit or delete his/her own entries. Entries exported to a main glossary can be updated or deleted by teachers only, so this setting only applies to secondary glossaries. (Note: A teacher can edit or delete any entry at any time.)

Duplicated entries allowed

Turning that on allows multiple entries to use the same concept name.

Allow comments on entries

That allows students to add comments to glossary entries. You can choose whether this feature is enabled or disabled. Teachers always can add comments to glossary entries.

Allow print view

That allows students to use the print view of the glossary. You can choose whether this feature is enabled or disabled. Teachers always can use the print view.

Automatically link glossary entries

Turning that on allows individual entries in this glossary to be automatically linked whenever the concept words and phrases appear throughout the rest of the same course. This includes forum postings, internal resources, week summaries and so on. Note that enabling linking for the glossary does not automatically turn on linking for each entry - linking needs to be set for each entry individually. If you do not want particular text to be linked (in a forum posting, say) then you should add <nolink> and </nolink> tags around the text. Note that category names are also linked.

Approved by default

That allows the teacher to define what happens to new entries added by students. They can be automatically made available to everyone, otherwise the teacher will have to approve each one.

Display format

That specifies the way that each entry will be shown within the glossary.

The default formats are:

• Simple Dictionary

That looks like a conventional dictionary with separate entries. No authors are displayed and attachments are shown as links.

• Continuous

That shows the entries one after other without any kind of separation but the editing icons.

• Full with Author

A forum-like display format showing author's data. Attachments are shown as links.

• Full without Author

A forum-like display format that does not show author's data. Attachments are shown as links.

• Encyclopedia

Like 'Full with Author' but attached images are shown inline.

• FAQ

Useful for displaying lists of Frequently Asked Questions. It automatically appends the words QUESTION and ANSWER in the concept and definition respectively.

Browsing options in Alphabet Display

You can customize the way a user can browse a glossary. Browsing and searching are always available, but you can define three more options:

1. SHOW SPECIAL Enable or disable browsing by special characters like @, #, etc.
2. SHOW ALPHABET Enable or disable browsing by alphabetic letters.
3. SHOW ALL Enable or disable browsing of all entries at once.

Allow entries to be rated

As in forums, you can allow entries to be rated. Here you will have to consider enabling two options:

Use ratings

If you decide to rate posts on the forum, you will have to define settings of the three following aspects:

• Users

If you want everybody to rate posts, choose 'Everyone can rate posts'. Otherwise, pick 'Only teachers can rate posts'.

• View

If you want to keep the grades known only to the individual students graded, you should choose the option 'Students can only see their own ratings'. If there is no such a need, opt for 'Students can see everyone's ratings'.

• Grade

There are several grading scales you can choose from. You can give a number of points to each post (from 1 to 100) or you can opt for two other scales: Scale: satisfactory (Outstanding, Satisfactory and Not satisfactory) or Separate and Connected ways of knowing (Mostly Connected Knowing, Separate and Connected, Mostly Separate Knowing). More information about the latter one are to be found here.

Restrict ratings to posts with dates in this range

If you enable the Use ratings option, you will also face the necessity of choosing whether or not enable another option restricting ratings to posts in terms of time.

You can also decide on whether or not the glossary will be seen by the students. You can hide the activity from students by selecting "Hide" in the Visible to students field. It is useful if you wouldn't like to make the activity available immediately