Overview

Toward the end of each calendar year, you'll need to create new instances of the certification courses that are specifically for the upcoming year. As employees complete their certification training for the current year, the WBLMS will automatically enroll them in the appropriate instances of the re-certification, as long as that new instance of the course has been created.

Underview

There are a couple of ways that you can create a new course instance. The most direct way to create a course is by duplicating the contents of a "current" course instance in a backup file, then importing that backup file into a newly created course instance.

Preliminary Preparation

Before you begin the restore procedure to create a new course instance, be sure that you prepare some details regarding the new instance which will be required when you set up the new course.

Course Full Name and Short Name

Be sure to decide on the full name and the short name that you'll use to identify the course. For the full name, the convention that's been used in WBLMS to date repeats the same course name (e.g. Fire and Life Safety) and appends the year for which the course applies (e.g. by adding " - 2017" to the course full name). For the short name, we've used a form that's comprised of three letters that indicate the course title (e.g. FLS for Fire and Life Safety), followed by three letters indicating the major category in which the course occurs (ANN for 'annual', BAN for 'biannual'), followed by a four-digit number for the year that the course is effective.

Course Number

Each course in the WBLMS has a unique identifying number associated with it, which you'll assign when you create the new course instance. To date, the numbers have been assigned as series, to help differentiate the courses according to the categories to which they've been assigned. For example, courses in the Re-certification: Annual category have been assigned a Course Id Numbers between 5000 and 5999. When you assign a new Course Id Number, be sure that the number has not been previously used.

Make Backup Copy

• Log into the WBLMS as the Training Administrator

• From the Navigation menu block, select Site Administration > Courses > Manage Courses and Categories

• Expand the Re-Certification category heading by clicking on the "+" block beside the heading

• Click on either the Annual Recertification or Biannual Recertification categories, which will bring up that category's list of courses, in the center column of the page.

• From that list, select the particular course for which you'd like to create a backup file. A new column will appear to the right, with details regarding the course you selected.

• At the top of the course details column, find and click on the Backup function.

• On the Backup Settings page, confirm that only the following settings have been checked before clicking the Next button: ** Include user role assignments ** Include activities ** Include blocks ** Include filters ** Include comments ** Include badges ** Include calendar events ** Include completion details ** Include question bank

• On the Schema Settings page, uncheck the "News Forum" option first, then uncheck the "General" option. For the rest of the course, you should only need to check the contents that you want to transfer into the new course instance. If there are any empty topics, uncheck those topic headings

• The next Confirmation and Review page lets you confirm the options that you've selected, as well as editing the default name that Moodle will assign to the backup file that will be created. The backup file name is unique and specific to course instance, so using the default name is generally a good idea. When you've confirmed the options, click the Perform Backup button at the bottom of the page.

• The backup's progress is shown on the next page, and shows you a successful completion message when it's done, along with a Continue button. Click the button.

Restore as a New Course Instance

On clicking the Continue button, you come to a Restore page which will list the newly created backup file under the User Private Backup Area heading. Click the link at the far right of the backup file line to start the restore procedure.

1. The Confirmation page will show the list of pages that comprise the course's content. Click the Continue button at the bottom of the page.
2. If you have already created a 'shell' course instance (in order to accomodate future enrollments from last year) you can elect "Restore into an existing course", and check the radio button of the course into which you intend to import the backup course contents. Otherwise, if you need to create a new course instance, select "Restore as a new course" and choose the course category that's appropriate. Either way, after you've made your selection, click the Continue button at the bottom of the appropriate section.
3. Review the Restore settings on the next page, then click the Next button.
4. On the Course settings page which appears next, be sure to enter (or edit) the Course Name and the Course Short Name appropriately. Also, set the course's start date to January 1 of next year, then click the Next button.
5. After reviewing the course settings on the next page, click the Restore course button.

The next page should inform you that the course has been successfully restored, allowing you to click the Continue button to proceed.

Edit Course Description

When you have successfully imported the backup course contents into a new course instance, don't forget that you may also need to adjust the course title and the course description that are included in the course's contents by going into "edit mode" (from the navigation menu). Typically, you'll need to change the date references in the course's introduction text so that they appear appropriately for this instance of the course (for example, changing '2016' to '2017').

Also, be sure to change the title of the course's quiz, which you'll find under Topic 2 (at the bottom of the course content).