04 December 2022, 6:35

Hello,

A teacher of my university wants his/her students to complete a page with profile information and reports of events they have to attend in their program. Their first idea is to use the "File(s) to download" block for every report, but I think it would better if students put some information aside the file, namely, a title, some text and an image. Besides this, I think it could be a good opportunity to introduce templates, but I am facing some problems.

My first choice for journal in the template has been the "One résumé field" block. I have created a page with the template option in settings and the permission to copy. After creating a couple of CV "Achievements" entries with title, text including an inline image and attached file, I put the "One résumé field" block in the pagen and select the aforementioned content. I do the same with a "Profile information" block.

I share this template page with a group. Afterwards, with the account of another member of the group, I copy it. Everything as expected: after copying the page, this user has a new page with both blocks without any content on them and s/he is required to select his/her own content, or to create it.

BUT, then I have think it would be better to use journal entries instead, and have realised that this can't be made with diaries, because when diary block are skipped when copied, or copied with the template's author entries in. ¿Why are journal behaving this way? ¿Is there any workaround? Text and image blocks have not a field for attachment, so they are not filling my purpose.

Many thanks,

07 December 2022, 12:57

Hi Ramón,

The 'Journal' block behaves differently from other blocks because at the time when it was created, the team had made the decision to give it more flexibility so the page author could decide whether somebody else should receive their content when they made a copy or not. If you want to use a journal in a template, you can have someone copy an empty journal. Creating journal entries up front may not be a good idea because then the creation date is not actually the date when the student added to the entry, but it is always only the update date.

If you were thinking of adding question prompts to the journal entries for students to answer, i would be great to build that functionality into Mahara itself and support it.

Cheers

Kristina

10 December 2022, 1:51

Hi Kristina,

Thanks for the clue: put an empty diary in the template.

I have tested like this: 1) empty diary block, 2)  third option for copies in the diary block included in the template page ("Others will get their own copy of your entries journal", 3) allow to copy and 4) share in a group. Members of the group can copy this template and edit the diary block to select their own diary entries. That what I needed!

In the meantime the teacher who wanted this model has preferred not to use template. He has found "easier" to simply show students how to create their own page. I keep this learning for another opportunity.

Cheers,

21 December 2022, 10:17

Hi Ramón,

Great to read that it worked for you. There are many ways to create a portfolio, and templates aren't necessarily the holy grail, depending on what you / your teacher want to achieve.

Cheers

Kristina