Help:Courses

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This is a page for sharing experience about setting up a course for support on StudyPlace. It is easy to learn how to do things in a Wiki because the coding is relatively simple and visible to all. Explore how existing courses are set up. Examine the coding (but please — Don't touch! Copying it is OK; changing it is not). Copy what you think is cool into your course page and adapt it there.

[edit] Page naming

For your sake and the sake of the rest of the site, give all the pages you create for a course a unique prefix that will enable you to keep the pages together and to distinguish them from other pages on StudyPlace. A good one is the the course number.

Here are instructions for setting up a basic course with an overview page, a help page, a bibliography page, a participant listing, and pages for 15 sessions of the course. The instructions will walk you through the process, and once it is complete, you should be able to insert other pages to suit what you want to accomplish through the course. Setting up the structure is a little tedious, but it should not take long. Once the structure is set, you can fill it out as you like, briefly or at length. It is not necessary to have a separate page for each session, but doing so does not take long to set up and it creates an good framework for commenting and interaction by participants.

You set the course up by using a generic set of templates for pages and page components, particularizing them primarily by substituting the number of your course "abcd4321" for "course" in various places in the templates. In addition, the templates will prompt you to fill in some other basic information. It is best to go through the template set-up process first, and then to return to them to add fuller information as you prefer. It will help to print the instructions so that you can refer to them while working with the templates.

• To start, create a new page by entering your course number in the "new page" box and click "Create Page."
  • An edit box will come up and enter {{subst:Course}} and click "Save page" at the bottom of the window.
  • Click edit. If possible, on your browser File menu, click print to print the page for reference.
  • Follow the comments to the code and change "Course" to your course number three times (best if it capitalization is the same as it appears at the top in the header, "Editing Course number".
  • Click "Save page" at the bottom and you will see three red links on the resulting page. Work up from the bottom.
• Click the link labeled "Template:CourseNumber-overview".
  • In the resulting edit box enter {{subst:Course-overview}}. Click save. You can click edit, and fill out the overview and save it, or leave that task for later.
• Click the link labeled "Template:CourseNumber-instructor".
  • In the resulting edit box enter {{subst:Course-instructor}}. Click save. Click edit.
  • Enter the instructor's name, putting it as the top prompt suggests in an external link to the instructor's bio if you like.
  • Fill in the information for office hours as prompted and then click save.
• Click the link labeled "Template:CourseNumber-right-includes".
  • In the resulting edit box enter {{subst:Course-right-includes}}. Click save. Click edit.
  • At the top, put the course title in. Do not include the course number as that will be on the screen automatically above the title.
  • Fill in the time & location for "Class Meeting"
  • Substitute your course number for "Course" at the beginning of the next five lines.
  • Lower down substitute your course number for "Course" in {{Template:Course-sessions}}
  • Check that you have all the substitutions and click save. If "course" still appears in any of the red links, click edit, find it, and change it to your course number.
• Click the link labeled "Template:CourseNumber-sessions".
  • In the resulting edit box enter {{subst:Course-sessions}}. Click save. Click edit.
  • Change "Course" in "Course-Session" 15 times to your course number. If you have more sessions add the appropriate number of lines, or fewer, subtract them. Fill in the dates. Click save.
• Enter your course number in the "search" box and click "Go". You should that your course framework is now basically be complete except for a column of red links for your course sessions. Making these will go quickly with the following routine.
  • Click edit with your main course page active. Mark and save everything in the edit box.
  • Click cancel to bring the main page back into the article window.
  • Click the first red session link and in the edit box paste the code from the main course page.
  • Click edit and go down to next to last line and remove {{Template:Course-overview}} and the comment. Be sure to leave the "|}" in the last line.
  • Then mark and copy everything remaining in the edit box. Click save.
  • Click the next red session link, copy what you saved into the edit box and click save.
  • Repeat until there are no red session links.
• You have finished setting up the course framework and you can proceed to fill out its components as you like.

[edit] Subtleties

It may be a little tricky to distinguish between pages created for the course from pages created by a course for the StudyPlace site. Pages for a course consist of its syllabus and other structuring pages such as a calendar of discussions, readings, and the like. Everything on StudyPlace is accessible by any visitor, but as a matter of practice there will be pages that very few will access unless they are participants in a course and specifically interested in that course. Those are pages for the course and should have names that clearly associate them with the course. Pages generated for or through a course that might be of interest to StudyPlace users who are not participants in the course should probably be given names not associated with the course to be treated instead as an addition to the contents of the overall site. The more the work of a course generates material of value to the intellectual concerns of the site as a whole, the more effectively the course will be making its internal instructional processes contribute to the direct advancement of knowledge and understanding.