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This guide covers linking to or uploading your SoftChalk lessons into the Moodle 2.x / 3.x learning management system.
View all our guides at https://softchalk.com/support/user-guides/.
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Try out a SoftChalk Cloud account for 30 days FREE! Click the Join Now button (see above) and click Register for a Free 30-Day trial for SoftChalk Cloud link to fill out the form. You will receive an activation key via email.
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- Scored lessons, see the section Scored Lessons (Cloud Users). (While your preferred method would probably be to collect student scores in the Moodle gradebook, you can also collect emails from students and have students print certificates. See the section Print or Email Scores.)
- Non scored lessons, see the section Non Scored Lessons (Cloud Users).
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When you view your SoftChalk lesson scores within the Moodle gradebook, you are using a SoftChalk feature called the ScoreCenter. In other words, you click on the name for your lesson in the assignments area of Moodle and you see the SoftChalk ScoreCenter interface but all the scores are also "plugged into" the Moodle gradebook. In Moodle, students will also see their grades from SoftChalk lessons as well.
IMPORTANT: To use the ScoreCenter feature, your Moodle administrator needs to configure your system to use this feature. See the section Moodle Administrator.
With the ScoreCenter feature, you can:
- Determine which score is the grade for the student (i.e. first, highest, last or average score). (Attempts for all scores are viewable.)
- Determine how many times a student can go into a lesson (unlimited times or a specific number of times).
- Get detailed scoring information for individual students (i.e. what a student did on an activity and or quiz items).
- Change scores.
- Update your lesson in one place (SoftChalk Cloud) and link to it in multiple sections or courses.
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IMPORTANT: Within your lesson in SoftChalk Create, be sure to assign points to each QuizPopper and Activity. (In the main editing window of your SoftChalk lesson, right-click on the QuizPopper or Activity and choose Modify QuizPopper or Modify Activity. Go to the Options tab and use the Points dropdown menu to assign points.)
To have your student scores appear within the Moodle gradebook area (i.e. ScoreCenter interface), you need to:
- Save your lesson into your SoftChalk Cloud account (see the section Save a Lesson to the Cloud in the SoftChalk Cloud Guide).
- Copy the LTI Link for this lesson (see the section Copy the LTI Link for Your Lesson in the SoftChalk Cloud Guide). IMPORTANT: Be sure to copy the LTI Link and NOT the Hyperlink for the lesson.
- Paste this LTI Link into the Lessons area in Moodle (see the section Paste the LTI Link into Moodle).
- Set the Grading Method and Maximum Attempts for each lesson (see the section Set the Grading Method and Maximum Attempts).
- View or change your students' scores (see the section View or Change Scores).
- If you plan to collect and/or score essays, see the section Essays.
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- After copying the LTI Link for your lesson (see the section Copy the LTI Link for Your Lesson in the SoftChalk Cloud Guide.), log into your Moodle account and choose your course (see below).
- If necessary, at the top right, click Turn editing on (see below).
- Click Add an activity or resource
- Select External Tool on the left in the pop up window and click Add
- Type in an Activity name (such as a name for your lesson). For your external tool type, select Automatic, based on launch URL For the Launch URL, paste the LTI Link for your SoftChalk lesson in your SoftChalk Cloud account. (NOT the hyperlink – for details, see the section Copy the LTI for Your Lesson in the SoftChalk Cloud Guide.) Then click Show More
- For the Launch container field, you may want to select New Window as we have seen compatibility issues with certain browsers when New Window was not selected (see below).
- Scroll to the bottom of your page and click Save and return to course.
- IMPORTANT: If you get an error u'\xa0' when you click on your LTI link, see below.
If you are entering an Activity description for your LTI link (in Moodle, click the Show Advanced button to show the Activity description field), you may encounter an error -u'\xa0' - if you have extra space(s) at the beginning of your description (see below).
- Be sure to see the next section Set the Grading Method and Maximum Attempts.
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You will need to set the grading method (i.e. first attempt, last attempt, average attempt or highest attempt) and the maximum attempts allowed (unlimited or a specific number of attempts). All the student attempts will be collected and you can view all the attempts for each student for each lesson. You can change the grading method and maximum attempts at any point. If you want to allow your students only one attempt for the lesson, you need to set that option right away.
- Log into your Moodle account and choose your course (see below).
- Click on the name of your lesson (see below).
- The SoftChalk ScoreCenter screen appears. Click Change Grading Method. Select a grading method from the drop down menu and be sure to click Change Grading Method (see below).
- At the SoftChalk ScoreCenter screen, click Change Maximum Attempts. Select the maximum attempts from the drop down menu and be sure to click Change Maximum Attempts (see below).
- If you chose to open your lesson in a new window, you can click the X for the browser window to return to your course.
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- Log into your Moodle account and choose your course.
- Click on the lesson name (see below).
- The SoftChalk ScoreCenter screen appears. In the Learner area, click the dropdown menu for the attempts for a specific student. Click on an attempt (see below).
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- Notice you can view detailed information about this attempt at the bottom.
- If you need to change the Score for the Attempt, click Change Score for Attempt. Enter a new score and click Submit (see below). IMPORTANT: An attempt has to be complete before you can change the score.
- Notice that you also have the option to Clear an attempt (see below). If you clear an attempt, it will not count as part of the grade calculation. If you change your mind, you can restore the attempt.
- Notice that you also have the option to Complete an attempt (see below). If a student starts a lesson but neglects to click the Finish button at the end of the lesson, then that attempt is incomplete. An incomplete attempt does not count as part of the grade calculation. You can cause the attempt to be completed so that the score for the attempt is part of the grade calculation.
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You have the option to complete all attempts for all students for a lesson. You may find that your students have neglected to complete their attempts (i.e. they have neglected to click Finish on the last page of the lesson – clicking Finish sends a completion status to the gradebook).
IMPORTANT: You may want to do this procedure after the availability of your lesson has expired. After you do this procedure, future attempts can be incomplete.
IMPORTANT: This procedure cannot be undone. (You can change individual scores or re-open individual attempts if you need to.)
- Log into your Moodle account and choose your course.
- Go to the area where you have your content or assignments.
- Click on the name of your lesson.
- Click Complete All Attempts and Complete All Attempts (see below).
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If you use essays in your lesson, you can view the essays within the ScoreCenter area (see the previous section View or Change Scores). Please note the following important information.
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You can modify the grade for the lesson based on the points you decide to give to the essay. For example, you may have a lesson worth 100 points including one essay worth 10 points. (You assigned the points under the Options tab for the essay and other items.) Let's say a student completes everything correctly, completes the essay, clicks the Finish button for the essay and then clicks the Finish button on the last page of the lesson to submit his or her score. At this stage, the student has a score of 90 out of 100 because you will need to evaluate the essay and assign points. You can go into the gradebook (i.e. ScoreCenter) and evaluate the essay and modify the score. You may want to provide feedback to the student on the essay by clicking the Feedback button within the attempt.
(You may want to explain the above process to your students; as mentioned, you also have the option to assign 0 points to an essay if you like.)
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- Log into your Moodle account and choose your course (see below).
- At the left under the Settings area, click Grades (see below).
Your Grader report appears with the scores from your SoftChalk lessons (see below). IMPORTANT: A column for your LTI lesson will appear in the Grader report only AFTER a user has completed an attempt for the lesson.
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This section explains how to have your students access "practice" SoftChalk lessons. In other words, you don't plan to collect student scores from these lessons. [You can have items that have points assigned to them within your lesson, but if you want to collect the scores, see the section Scored Lessons (Cloud Users).]
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- If necessary, at the top right, click Turn editing on (see below).
- Click Add an activity or resource (see below).
- In the pop up window for the left-hand list, scroll down to select URL and click Add (see below).
- Enter the information for Name, External URL (i.e. the hyperlink for your SoftChalk lesson) and Description (see below). For details on finding the hyperlink for your lesson, see the section Copy the Hyperlink for Your Lesson in the SoftChalk Cloud Guide.
- Scroll down to the Appearance area. Under the Display dropdown menu, you'll probably want to have your lesson appear in a new window (see below):
In pop-up displays the lesson in a new window.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save and return to Course.
- Click on the name of your lesson to preview it (see below).
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If you used the LTI Link or Hyperlink to your SoftChalk Cloud lesson, then you can easily edit your lesson within your SoftChalk Cloud account. (You don't have to paste in a new LTI Link or Hyperlink; simply edit your current lesson in SoftChalk Cloud and the LTI Link or Hyperlink for this lesson will still work.)
IMPORTANT: If you edit a lesson that has scored items and you have pasted an LTI Link for this lesson into Moodle, we recommend the scoring for your lesson remain the same if students have started taking this lesson.
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The steps below are for your Moodle administrator to enable the LTI/ScoreCenter feature for your Moodle server. For details on the LTI/ScoreCenter feature, see the section Scored Lessons (Cloud Users).
As a Moodle administrator to use the ScoreCenter feature, you need to register with SoftChalk and configure the ScoreCenter for your system.
- Please contact help@softchalk.com and provide the following information to register with SoftChalk and receive authentication credentials (i.e. an OAuth Consumer Key and an OAuth Consumer Secret).If you have a test server and a production server, you may send us two LMS URLs and we will register both of them. (You will receive a separate email with a unique key and secret for each registered URL.)
- Your institution name
- LMS URL
- First Name (optional) of the person registering with us
- Last Name (optional) of the person registering with us
- Email for this registration (the email can be a specific person's email or a generic email such as lmsadmin@myinstitution.edu)
- After registering, you will receive an email from SoftChalk with information to enter into your Moodle system (see the following steps).
- Log into Moodle. At the left under the Settings area, choose Site Administration/Plugins/Activity Modules/LTI/ Manage external tool types (see below.)
- Click Add external tool configuration (see below).
- For the Tool Name, enter SoftChalk Cloud. (This name will be easy for your instructors to recognize - see below for a completed screen).
- For the Tool Base URL, enter https://softchalkcloud.com
- Copy and paste the consumer key and secret from the SoftChalk email you received after your registered your server. IMPORTANT: Be sure NOT to paste in spaces at the end of the key and secret. (Make sure you do NOT copy the spaces from your email.)
- Under the Privacy area, for Share launcher's name with tool choose Always. For Accept grades from the tool choose Always (see below).
- At the bottom click Save Changes.
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IMPORTANT: As mentioned previously, we recommend using the SoftChalk Cloud ScoreCenter solution versus using SCORM. See the section ScoreCenter Overview.
IMPORTANT: Within your lesson in SoftChalk Create, be sure to assign points to each QuizPopper and Activity. (In the main editing window of your SoftChalk lesson, right-click on the QuizPopper or Activity and choose Modify QuizPopper or Modify Activity. Go to the Options tab and use the Points dropdown menu to assign points.)
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Your students can print certificates of their scores and/or your students can email you within the lesson to send their scores. The basic steps are:
- Create scored quiz questions and/or activities within your SoftChalk lesson and assign points via the Options tab for each quiz question or activity.
- Add the email feature within your SoftChalk lesson. For SoftChalk Create and SoftChalk 7 users, choose File/Package Lesson. (For SoftChalk 6 users, choose Properties/Lesson Reporting.) Make the appropriate selections under Student Options.
- On the last page of your lesson within the web browser, is an area for students to type their name or identifier and then click Email Score, Print Certificate and/or Print Score Summary. (You can preview your lesson on your local computer to see how this works.)
With the email option, you will get an email from each student for each attempt the student made for the lesson. (As mentioned previously, we recommend the use of the ScoreCenter feature with SoftChalk Cloud as you won't have to manage individual emails. With the ScoreCenter feature, students can click the Finish button on the last page of an LTI linked lesson and have the option to print or email the score to themselves.)
If you are uploading a zip file to Moodle, then see the next sections In SoftChalk: Package a Zip Lesson and In Moodle: Upload a Zip File.
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- Within your lesson in SoftChalk Create (or SoftChalk 7 desktop version), choose File/Package Lesson. Under Package type, choose Standard Zip. Under Track score using, choose LMS with SCORM 1.2 (see below).
Within your lesson in SoftChalk 6 or lower, choose File/Package Lesson/SCORM 1.2 Format. (If this option is disabled, then save your lesson or open a lesson.)
- If you are using SoftChalk Create, select the area where you want the zip file saved such as your Desktop. Then click OK. By default, you would save to your Documents area. With earlier versions of SoftChalk, the _sco.zip file is saved within the lesson folder.
- Your packaged file has your lesson name with a _sco.zip extension (see below). If your file extensions are not showing, you will not see the .zip at the end of the filename. Look for a folder with a zipper or package icon with your lesson name.
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- Log into your Moodle account.
- Choose your course (see below).
- If necessary, at the top right, click Turn editing on (see below).
- Click Add an activity or resource
- Select SCORM package on the left in the pop up window and click Add
- Under the General area, type a name and description (see below).
- Under Package file, click Choose a file (see below).
- In the File picker pop-up window, click Upload a file.
- Click Browse.
- Navigate to the location of your sco.zip file. Click on your sco.zip file to select it (see below) and click Open. (If your file extensions are not showing, you will not see the .zip at the end of the filename. Look for a folder with a zipper or package icon with your lesson name.)
- Click Upload this file (see below).
- Notice that the name of the SCORM file appears under Package file. (see below).
- Scroll down to the Other Settings area. Click Show Advanced (see below). (If Hide Advanced appears, go to the next step.)
- Change the Grading method to Highest grade (If you happened to select Learning Objects, the score will NOT record.) Change the Maximum grade to 100 (or another point value depending on the number of points you designated in your lesson). IMPORTANT: Even though the Grade method is set to Highest grade, the score updates each time in the grader report. In other words, the score displays the LAST score for the student (see below).
IMPORTANT: When you upload packaged SoftChalk lessons into Moodle, the Number of Attempts and Attempts grading options don't have any effect (see below).
- Scroll down to the Display package option. From the dropdown menu select New window.
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save and return to Course. (You could also click Save and display.)
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- Click on your lesson name to preview. (located under the area where you put this content ).
- Click Enter (see below).
- After previewing your lesson, you can return to your course page by clicking on your course in the upper left corner of your screen (see below).
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After your students have finished your lesson, then you can view their scores in your grader report using the steps below.
- Log into your Moodle account.
- Click on your course to select it.
- Scroll down to the left hand bottom of the screen and select Grades under Settings (see below). (You may need to click on the arrow for Course administration to open up this menu.)
- You can view your student scores (see below).
- Click on the name of the lesson (see below). to view more details (see below).
- Below are the details of the scores for your lesson.
IMPORTANT: As mentioned previously, when you upload packaged SoftChalk lessons into Moodle, the Number of Attempts and Attempts grading options do not have any effect.
IMPORTANT: As mentioned previously, the score updates each time in the grader report. In other words, the score displays the LAST score for the student. (This is how Moodle works with SCORM content.)
IMPORTANT: As mentioned previously, we recommend using the SoftChalk Cloud ScoreCenter solution versus using SCORM 1.2. See the section ScoreCenter Overview.
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Within SoftChalk, you can package a lesson in a .zip format. Then upload this .zip file into Moodle and unzip it. See the steps below.
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- Start SoftChalk Create. Within your lesson in SoftChalk Create, choose File/Package Lesson. Under Package type, choose Standard Zip. Under Track score using choose None (see below).
Within your lesson in SoftChalk 6 or lower, choose File/Package Lesson/Zip Format. (If this option is disabled, then save your lesson or open a lesson.)
- If you are using SoftChalk Create, select the area where you want the .zip file saved such as your Desktop. Then click OK. By default, you would save to your Documents area. With earlier versions of SoftChalk, the .zip file is saved within the lesson folder.
- Your packaged file has your lesson name with a .zip extension (see below). If your file extensions are not showing, you will not see the .zip at the end of the filename. Look for a folder with a zipper or package icon with your lesson name.
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- If necessary, at the top right, click Turn editing on (see below).
- Click Add an activity or resource
- Select File on the left in the pop up window and click Add
- Type a name and information in the Description area under the General section. ex. Eye Anatomy for the name field and Interactive lesson on Eye Anatomy for Description.
- Select files by clicking the Add icon under the Content section.
- In the File picker pop-up window, click Upload a file.
- Click Browse.
- Navigate to your zip file. Click on your .zip file to select it (see below) and click Open. (If your file extensions are not showing, you will not see the .zip at the end of the filename. Look for a folder with a zipper or package icon with your lesson name.)
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- Under Content, click on your zipped lesson. A drop box will open. Click Unzip (see below).
- There may be a pause while the file unzips.
- After your unzipped files appear, scroll down your list of files and click the index.html and select set main file (see below).
- Scroll down to the Options area. Under the Display dropdown menu, you have several choices to display your lesson (see below). You'll probably want to use one of the two options below:
AutomaticDisplays the lesson within the framework of Moodle, i.e. you can see the Moodle navigation at the same time as the SoftChalk lesson.
In pop-upDisplays the lesson in a new window (If you don't see the Popup width and Popup height, click the Show advanced button at the left.)
- Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save and return to Course.
- Click on your lesson name to preview. (located under the area where you put the content ).
- After previewing your lesson, you can return to your course page by clicking on your course in the upper left corner of your screen (see below).
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IMPORTANT: You cannot overwrite a SCORM lesson. If you put up a second SCORM lesson, there will be a separate column for the SCORM lesson in your gradebook.
- In SoftChalk, edit and save your lesson. Package the lesson (see the section In SoftChalk: Package a Lesson).
- In Moodle, delete your lesson folder.
- Upload your lesson again (see the previous section In Moodle: Upload a Zip File.)
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The web link for this guide is below. As we update this guide, the URL will remain the same. (You may want to bookmark this guide link in your web browser.)
https://softchalk.atlassian.net/wiki/download/attachments/129536436/lms_moodle.pdf?api=v2