[LON-CAPA-admin] Cloning a course

[Stuart Raeburn]

Lars,

> With the new version, lon-capa 2.9, is it now possible for a course
> coordinator to clone his/her own courses?

Yes, this is possible, although cloning may still only occur at the  
time the course is being created.  It has always been the case that a  
Domain Coordinator could define cloning of an existing course when  
creating a new course for a course coordinator.  The difference now is  
that a Course Coordinator can now perform that task directly (if a  
domain decides to allow it).

The plan for the future is to make cloning more configurable, and  
allow cloning of just someof the content from the old course into a  
new course by the Course Coordinator, even after the new course has  
been created.

Anyway for now (starting with 2.9.0) the Domain Coordinator can  
configure the domain to allow course creation by certain users --  
these can be individual users (via Modify User), or can be based on  
institutional status.  The latter requires customization of  
localenroll.pm (to define institutional status/affiliation types,  
e.g., Faculty, Staff, Student etc.), and assignment of institutional  
status/affiliation to each user, either by a DC (via Modify User) or  
via Autoupdate (again with localenroll.pm customized for access to  
institutional directory information).

If a particular user is allowed to request courses, then this can be  
configured to allow automatic course creation, or alternatively  
approval by a Domain Coordinator. (Institutions can also configure  
conditional automatic course creation, conditional on validation of  
status as instructor of record - if localenroll.pm is customized).

As part of the course request, the user (who will be the owner of the  
new course (and will be a Course Coordinator) can select a course from  
which to clone from a list of the courses for which the user has  
cloning rights.  A user can automatically select any one of the  
courses for which he/she is the owner, or has an active Course  
Coordinator role.  Other existing courses may also be available for  
selection, depending on the cloning rights established for them in the  
course configuration for each course.

LON-CAPA incorporates the concept of official courses (those for which  
there is an institutional code - which typically means the course is  
listed in the institutions's official schedule of courses), and also  
unofficial courses. Course request rights can vary for these different  
types of course.

Some screenshots of the LON-CAPA course request interface can be found  
in faculty support pages within the MSU LON-CAPA site. See:

http://loncapa.msu.edu/courserequest.html

There is also a brief discussion of this topic in the 2.9.0 Domain  
Coordination manual (sections 2.10 and 2.11). In you domain see:
http://schubert.tmcc.edu/adm/help/domain.manual.pdf

Stuart Raeburn
MSU LON-CAPA group


Quoting Lars Jensen <ljensen at mail.tmcc.edu>:

> With the new version, lon-capa 2.9, is it now possible for a course
> coordinator to clone his/her own courses? This never worked in the
> previous versions, but I didn't see it mentioned among the new
> features...
>
> Lars.
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