Course organization & multiple categories for courses

schifazl
Forums
Hello, I'm evaluating Opigno for our school. It seems very nice and powerful, and I have some questions abount course organization and categories. Our school is structured in this way: 3 programmes (electronics, mechanical and bio-chemical programme), each programme lasts 5 years. Usually a subject (later I'll explain why I am using subject instead of course) is associated with one or more years of a specific programme (e.g. Electronics for the 3rd, 4th and 5th year of the electronics programme, automation for the 4th year of the electronics programe etc.), but general subjects could belong to multiple programmes (e.g. Slovenian, Italian and English for all the classes, physics for the first two years of all the programmes etc.). This is necessary due to the fact that we are a school of the slovenian linguistic minority in Italy, so we don't have a lot of students and the general subjects are often grouped together, spanning more than one programme in the same year of schooling. Also: the same subject could be taught by more teachers. If we have a lot of students so that the general subjects aren't grouped together, we could have three different teachers for the same subject for the same year (e.g. physics course in the 1st electronics class, physics course in the 1st mechanical class and physics course in the 1st bio-chemical class. We could also have the same teacher teaching physics in the three classess, but due to the different skill levels of the students, the three courses would have different progresses. We could also have a teacher teaching physics in two classess and another teacher teaching in the third etc. That's why I used "subject" and not "course" in the firsta part of my post. As you can see we have a great variety in how our courses and teachers are organized. I hope that I was clear. So I was wondering how to organize this. To put this in a more schematic order: Our subjects can span vertically (trough years) and horizontally (through programmes The same subject of a specific year could be taught by more than one teacher in the different programmes, or by the same teacher in the different programmes (e.g. physics course A for all the students of the 2nd electronics year and course B for the other two programmes), or by one single teacher teaching all the programmes together (e.g. physics course for all the students of the 2nd year), depending on the classes organization I thought to create three categories (the three programmes), for each category five subcategories (the five years of each programme) and associate multiple categories to the courses, but I see that this isn't possible (a course can belong only to a single category), so I can't create Slovenian course for the first year of electronicsa and bio-chemical programme together. Is my approach wrong? Maybe I should do this categorization at a user group/class level, by simply adding a user group to the course (if it's possible), or adding the course to a class? Or maybe it's possible to create a single course with multiple "subcourses", one for each programme? I was also wondering how to manage the "same subject, different teachers" situation. It's possible to split a single course in multiple "subcourse" as I've asked below? Or should I simply create multiple courses with the same name belonging to different teachers? Since each teacher has different teaching styles, minor variations in his/her teaching plan and diffenrent progress depending on the class skill level, probably they will want to have a certain degree of freedom from other teachers teaching the same subject. Thanks and sorry for the massive TL;DR, but I wanted to be detailed, I hope that our peculiarity could give you some interesting insight for your future Opigno development :)
axel

Hi,

Hi,

Thanks for your interest in Opigno.

I think it's perfeclty possible to manage your organisation with Opigno. Here is how I imagine it:

- A course would be a subject for one or more years. For example "automation 3rd year" or "electronics for 3rd and 4th year"

- A class would be a program for one year. For example "Electronics 1st year"

- You would basically add all the students for a program and a year to the classe, and the related courses.

- It would be possible to add the same course to all the programs. For example all the programs for the first year (in other words the 3 classes related to the 1st year) would contain the same "English 1st year" course.

- It would be possible to add a course to many classes related to several years. For example the course "electronics for 3rd and 4th year" would be added to the classes "electronics 3rd" and "electronics 4th year"

- So it would be possible to span vertically and horizontally the subjects

It's indeed possible to add only one category to a course. This could be very easily changed if necessary for you.

It's not possible to create sub-courses, so you would have to create distinct courses, but the organisation described above should fit your needs.

Then, regarding teachers, Opigno is very flexible, you can add one or more teachers to a course, and you can also add coaches to the classes (and the permissions of coaches can be easily modified to be the same as the teachers if necessary). So you would have all the flexibility you are looking for the teachers management.

I hope my explanations convinced you that Opigno is the right tool for your school :-)

I remain at your disposal in case og any question.

Best regards,

schifazl

Thanks for your very quick

Thanks for your very quick reply! :) The multi category for the courses isn't an issue since this could be managed on the other side with classes. Sorry for posting questions that are explained in the documentation, but the LMS world is new for me and I have to understand the philosophy that lies beneath it. After your explanation I read again the relevant documentation and now it's OK. I'll thoroughly ponder all of your suggestions :) What isn't clear to me it's the lifespan of a course. Let's consider physics again ang let's say that we have Physics for the first year. Is "Physics 1st year" considered a course regardless of the academic year, or "Physics 1st year 2014/2015" is a course, "Physics 1st year 2015/2016" is another course etc.? In the first case I imagine that every year the teacher needs to clean up the course and hide some of the more advanced lessons, in the second I imagine that every year the teacher needs to recreate a new course and add the lessons to it. And regarding the lessons: if I'm right, a lesson could be created without being associaced to any course. It doesn't live and die with the start and end of the course. So every teacher creates a (personal) repository of lessons in order to add them to the course(s) which (s)he teaches. A Lesson won't be deleted when a course ends or it's deleted. Am I right? Or a Lesson belongs to a course, and when the course ends it vanishes with it? Sorry if the questions are silly. I have some questions about SSO, but I suppose that it's better if I open another topic as it's another matter :) Thanks
axel

Hi,

Hi,

No problem, feel free to ask all the questions you want, this forum is here for that.

Regarding your question concerning the courses, you can use both methods with Opigno:

- have the scholarship year (2014-2015 for example) in classes and keep courses independant (for example "Physics 1st year"). In this case you will be able to reuse the course content for next scholarships

- or have specific courses for each scholarship year. In this case you will have to recreate courses.

It's possible to take one lesson from one course to another one, they are independent entities in Opigno.

Regarding SSO, you can open a new post on this forum.

Best regards,