Totara Learn Open Discussions

Using content in multiple courses

 
Steffen Rüter
Using content in multiple courses
by Steffen Rüter - Friday, 10 February 2023, 12:13 AM
 
Please pardon my English, I am not a native speaker.


I am just a trainer, using my employer's totara V13 installation to add/modify content within the courses and modules I have been assigned, so I neither have administrator privileges nor deeper knowledge. Following my colleagues' lead, who had about as much totara training as I did (none at all), all I did at first was to upload my externally prepared teaching material (PDFs) to the system to share them with my trainees.

Having found out more about the exciting possibilities of totara, I recently added more dynamic content like a self-test quiz for my trainees, or self-learning ressources like book content with relevant information. And then I got stuck: How can I create and modify content at one location that is being used within different courses / modules? This was triggered when I noticed I had course content that was necessary for distinct courses, and so far I did the rather inelegant pseudo-solution of exporting the content from one course and importing it into another, creating a distinct copy.

Looking at the ressources I found here, the only possibility I identified so far is to create a SCORM object and link it to the courses with auto-refresh enabled, but this seems to be sub-optimal as this would separate the creation/editing of this content from the totara "ecosystem"...

Do you happen to have any hints for a better solution or could you point me towards any helpful ressources? I

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Craig Eves
Re: Using content in multiple courses
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Monday, 13 February 2023, 4:41 PM
Group Totara

Hi Steffen

If you select the file in the course and choose the Create an alias/shortcut to the file then only one copy of the file will be used.

You can choose the file from the Totara server or private files area of Totara or from an external repositories such as Google drive, Dropbox

regards

Steffen Rüter
Re: Using content in multiple courses
by Steffen Rüter - Monday, 13 February 2023, 9:54 PM
 

Hi Craig,

thanks for this helpful answer, but unfortunately this only seems to work with (external) content made available as a file. 

I did not find a way to apply this to content created wthin the totara environment, e.g. book content, without exporting it first - which somehow seems absurd as this would remove the advantage (editing within the system).

If I was just too dense to get it, I'd be more than happy to learn ;)

Regards

Craig Eves
Re: Using content in multiple courses
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Tuesday, 14 February 2023, 12:07 PM
Group Totara

Hi Steffen

I see what you mean - the book activity isn't really a file so using a file alias won't work.

In this case it is possible to add the book activity to the frontpage and hide it so it isn't visible to all users.

Then go into the course you what to access the book and add a link to the book activity on the front page - everyone is automatically enrolled in the FrontPage course so will be able to access this through the link

regards

Steffen Rüter
Re: Using content in multiple courses
by Steffen Rüter - Tuesday, 14 February 2023, 9:37 PM
 

Thanks, this seems to be the way to do this.

Regards

Steffen