LON-CAPA Help

• Selecting Course Editor in the Inline Menu

• Selecting Edit course contents from the Main Menu.

• Clicking the icon in the Tools at the top of the Course Contents screen.

• Clicking to the right of a folder name on the Course Contents screen. (Editor will open that specific folder).

• Clicking in the Functions menu when viewing content in the course. (Editor will open that specific folder).

The Course Editor contains three tabs:

1. Main Content Editor

2. Supplemental Content Editor

3. Content Utilities

Main Content Editor tab is used to manage the primary content of the course. Content within this area can:

• Have parameters set (including dates controlling availability)

• Can be incorporated in PDFs for printing, created by LON-CAPA's print utility

• Can be a part of sub-folders for which different students may see a subset of contents picked from a pool, and/or contents displayed in a different order.

• Be organized within a hierarchical arrangement of folders and sub folders.

• Can originate in a variety of ways including import from the shared content pool.

Within the course, students use the navigation controls to move through the Main Content. Main Content is listed on the Contents screen. Main Content was added to LON-CAPA in 2003 (version 1.0), so pre-2003 courses (as well as courses deliberately created in the old style) will not have Main Content. The Main Content was called Main Course Documents in versions 1.0 through 2.10.

Supplemental Content Editor tab is used to manage supplemental content in the course. Content within this area is restricted to uploaded files, a syllabus page, a web page created using the HTML editor, or a web page on an external server retrived from a remote site, but displayed within the LON-CAPA interface. A hierarchical arrangement of folders and sub folders can be created. Students access supplemental content documents by selecting the Supplemental Content tab while viewing the Course Content. Supplemental Content is particularly useful for auxiliary files that may not be directly viewable or usable in a browser, such as PowerPoint presentations or Word documents - some of which may require a viewer to be installed on a student's computer.

NOTE: Although the Course Editor provides instructors with the ability to import content from the shared content pool, or to copy content from other courses, as well as personalize courses with their own syllabi or information pages, for the ultimate power in creating reusable content, you will want to become a content Author. This is especially true if you plan to create your own assignments. The "simple problem" templates available to create assessment items directly with a course, provide a much restricted set of components compared to those available when constructing assessment items as an author.

Policies and methods for creation of Author roles vary depending on user status and domain. If you are a course instructor, and you do not have an authoring role, and you do not see a "Request author role" link on your Roles page, make a request through the "Ask Helpdesk" link available on the "Help" page. For more information about content authoring in LON-CAPA, see the LON-CAPA Author's Manual available online at http://help.lon-capa.org .