DOWNLOAD CENTER GUIDE

The purpose of this guide is to take you through the steps that are required in order to copy your files and resources from Moodle – as well as your descriptions and links – and upload these to Brightspace. In order to achieve this we are going to use the Download Center on Moodle.

The Download Center will takes your files and folders, ebooks and assignments from Moodle and zip them up and download them to your computer. It will not copy the section descriptions, the URL links, embedded video information or BBB/Panopto content information.

1 – Create a Zip Archive

Log into Moodle ( https://moodle.ul.ie) 

Go to your Module 

Review your module.  What this means is that the download centre will download all files and folders in a given week IF that week is shown in Moodle. If the week is hidden the content is skipped and ignored in the generated zip archive. If you want to include a hidden week you must first unhide it so that it is captured in the zip file. Once the file is created you may re-hide the week if that is required.

Click on the download centre in the left hand menu on the module page.  

At the top, choose the Show Type Options and click None on any activity or resource you don’t want to download. Examples might include Assignments or Pages etc. 

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on  

to generate a zip file of all of the content on the Module. This will download to your default download location based on the web browsers settings. Usually this is the downloads folder on the computer but it may vary depending on how your setup is configured.  

Once Moodle has zipped up the content the file will start to download to your computer. Please allow a few minutes for the download to complete as the download time will vary depending on your internet speed as well as the size of the zip file.  

2 – Windows Tidy Up

The package will start to download and give you a rough time estimate on when it will be complete.

When the download is complete locate the file on your computer. An easy way to do this is to click on the little folder icon on the right hand side of the download file to open the enclosing folder where the file is located.  

Now you can extract the zip file to access the content . 

Once you have successfully extracted the content you will see two files/folders with the same name – please note that one is a folder and one is the zip file – denoted by the zip icon running down through the image of the file. 

Rename the folder to avoid confusion – I usually recommend shortening the name of the folder to the Module code name. Right click on the folder to rename it.

Download centre creates folders whose title is based on the title pulled from the weeks / sections / topics in Moodle. Brightspace has a character limit of 255 characters so it is recommended to shorten these names to a bare minimum to get them uploaded to Brightspace correctly. Every file that is downloaded is first put into a folder with the same name as the title of the file. We have to move these out of their subfolders and back to the root folder for that week also.  

Above is an example of how the folder structure appears in Windows ( right hand side image) after you open the module code root folder – ie NM4122 in this example. There are several folders with general information and several folders with teacher material. Rename an shorten the folder and you should end up with the image layout on the right hand side at the finish.

If there is no pertinent information in a folder then consider deleting it and removing it from the root folder. News forum etc might be one such example.  

With regards to the weeks, using the naming convention 01, 02, 03 etc for the weeks. This will keep them in order when you are finished. If you use 1,2,3 then you will run into problems when you get to the weeks 10,11,12 etc as they will appear between 1 and 2 in the Windows explorer window.  

Go into each week and tidy up the structure. An example is shown below for week 2 of teaching. Initially it displays several folders ( on the left most image below) with content and material located in each. We want to take the content from each of these sub folders and move it back up to the root folder for this week ie folder 02 ( shown on the right most image) . That way , when you enter the folder 02 you see all the pdf files and articles for that weeks teaching. Then we can link this to different sections and areas within the week two of teaching in Brightspace.  Click on the images below to view them in their original size.

The above shows the before and after versions. All the files within the sub folders and moved up one level and their corresponding folders are removed. The final version is a folder called 02 – for week two of teaching – and the files and articles located in here. Take note to rename any long file names in here before finishing this section. 

Repeat for the other weeks / folders in the module.  

3 – GENERAL INFORMATION CONTENT

While the download centre copied all the files and folders from a visible section in Moodle to a zip archive there are several pieces of key information that are not copied unfortunately. Some of these pieces of information include  

Here we are going to copy and paste this information to a word document and attach it to the module content that we have already downloaded and tidied up in the stages above.  

Go back to your module on Moodle and copy the module code and full title from Moodle. This is located at the top of the module home page. Open a blank word document and paste this as plain text into the document and save it. 

3.1 Section Description

Next go to the first section you want to copy information from, select the text in there and paste it as plain text into the word document. It is easier to do this with an external mouse as opposed to the trackpads on the laptops. Check to see if there are any of the above mentioned information resources in this section that you want to copy ie URL / BBB / Panopto / Embedded videos. Follow the steps below to copy these to the word document. 

3.2 URLS 

Right click on the URL link in Moodle and open in a new tab. Verify that the link is still active and working by following it to the destination. Copy the URL from the URL location in the web browser and paste it into the section corresponding to it in the word document. Close the tab and go back to Moodles main content page for the module.  

3.3 Embedded Videos

Videos from youtube and other video hosting platforms can be embedded into the teaching pages on Moodle. If you have a video that you want to use in future teaching you can right click on the embed video and copy the URL and paste it into the word document.  

3.4 BBB / PANOPTO

Follow the link to the video file and copy the URL from the address bar and paste it into the Word document . There is a detailed video located here that migh be of benefit to you re these steps with regards to Panopto content. Use the table of contents on the left hand side of the page to video the relevant sections.

Repeat the above steps for each week / section / topic in Moodle that you wish to preserve the content and information for future use.  Save the Word document and place it with the folder of tidied up resources that you modified earlier.

4 – Summary

Now you have a word document with your descriptions, a zip file with your content in their respective folders named after the week – as well as any additional information and you have given your module a very quick QA walkthough, the final questions is “What are we going to do with it?”

All of this information is zipped together and we will then upload this to the Manage Files Area in your course offering on Brightspace. This will speed up and assist you in building out your course offering on Brightspace more effectively and efficiently. You will be able to locate and find matearial and resources easier on Brightspace by following the above simple steps – and it will hold moving forward when content is copied from one year to the next for future teaching.