Adding/editing a glossary

Adding a glossary

Adding a glossary

To add a glossary:

1. Click the "Turn editing on" button.
2. Select Glossary from the "Add an activity" dropdown menu.
3. On the Adding a new glossary page give your new glossary

a descriptive name.

1. Describe the purpose of the glossary, provide instructions or background information, links etc. in the Description

area.

1. Select the general, grade and common module options (see below).
2. Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

General options

Entries shown per page

This sets the number of words and definitions that students will see when they view the glossary list. If you have a large number of automatically-linked entries you should set this number lower to prevent long loading times.

Is this glossary global?

Administrators can make a global glossary, with entries linking throughout the whole site. Any course may contain a global glossary, though usually they are only included on the site front page.

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.

Note: Prior to Moodle 1.7, only Teachers could edit the main glossary. From Moodle 1.7 onwards, a role override can be used to change glossary permissions.

Students can add entries

Prior to Moodle 1.7, you can specify whether a student may add, edit or delete their own entries. Entries exported to a main glossary can be updated or deleted by teachers only, so this setting only applies to secondary glossaries. (A teacher can edit or delete any entry at any time.)

Note: From Moodle 1.7 onwards, this option has been replaced with a role override and preventing the capability mod/glossary:write.

Duplicated entries allowed

This allows the entry of more than one definition for a given word.

Allow comments on entries

Students and teachers can leave comments on glossary definitions. The comments are available through a link at the bottom of the definition.

Allow print view

This provides a printer-friendly version link for students. (Teachers are always provided with a printer-friendly version link.)

Automatically link glossary entries

If site-wide glossary autolinking is enabled by an administrator (see Filters (administrator) for further details), then turning this 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: 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 style - This 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.
• Entry list - This lists the concepts as links.
• FAQ - Useful for displaying lists of Frequently Asked Questions. It automatically appends the words QUESTION and ANSWER in the concept and definition respectively.

The table below summarises the different display formats.

Format	Entry	Author	Date	Definition	Images	Attachments
Entry list	x	-	-	x*	x*	link*
Simple Dictionary	x	-	-	x	x	link
Continuous	x	-	-	x	x	link
FAQ	x	-	x	x	x	link
Full without Author	x	-	x	x	x	link
Full with Author	x	x	x	x	x	link
Encyclopedia	x	x	x	x	x	x**

* Will be shown in a pop-up window.

* * Attached images are shown inline.

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:

• Show "Special" link - Enable or disable browsing by special characters like @, #, etc.
• Show alphabet - Enable or disable browsing by alphabetic letters.
• Show "All" link - Enable or disable browsing of all entries at once.

Edit always

If you want entries to be always editable, set this to Yes.

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.

Visible to students

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'. It is useful if you don't want to make the activity available immediately.