Publishing requirements for various learning objects

This article describes publishing dependencies for various learning objects supported by EduBrite. 

Tests and Questions

Always requires publishing. System maintains two copies of every questions and tests. One remains authored (draft) and one published. All edits are done in the authored copy, and publishing the test copies them to published copy. Any changes done thru test editor won't be seen by the users when they take the test (or survey), until you publish them. 

Course 

Course (and its properties) do not have a separate authored and published copy. When you create the course, until you publish it, you can't create a course session for it, and therefore users won't be able to take it. But once its published first time, and you created a course session, after that you can keep doing the changes to the course properties and they would be instantly visible to the users via existing course sessions. 

Modules and Topics

New modules and Topics can be created in an existing course anytime. Until the course is published again, these new modules and Topics are not going to be visible to users via existing course sessions. The reason is, at each course session level, these modules and topics are maintained as a link to original course. This link gets created when the course is published for the first time. Changes in properties of the existing (published) modules and topics will become instantly visible in existing course sessions, if you make any changes in them in the course, without requiring publishing. 

SCORM / AICC 

New SCORM / AICC content work similar to modules and topics. So newly added SCORM and AICC in the course won't be visible via existing course sessions, until the course is published again. Changes in properties of the existing (published) SCORM / AICC will become instantly visible in existing course sessions, if you make any changes in them in the course, without requiring publishing.  Subsequent changes of the uploaded content (when you re upload the SCORM/AICC zip file) are also instantly visible. 

Lessons

Newly added lessons created using uploaded files (presentations, videos, audio, external content like YouTube, Vimeo ...) become visible via existing course sessions, without requiring course to be published again. Subsequent changes of the uploaded content (when you re upload) are also instantly visible.  

Online edited lessons

For online edited lessons, content EduBrite supports versioning. Versioning is maintained for each lesson (if there are multiple lessons in the course). Editing in the content is performed in a draft copy of the lesson content, which gets versioned when the course is published. Users who are taking the course via course sessions, do not see the draft content, they only see the last published version of the content. 

Grading Variables

There are many count variables at course level, that gets cached for each course session. E.g. number of mandatory lessons, number of mandatory/gradable lessons / tests / scorms, total tests in the course, total points across all tests in the course. These variables get recomputed for the course sessions, when you republish a course. Therefore when you have made any changes to properties of learning objects, which you are using (or relying on) for course grading or completion criteria, you should always republish the course. 

Resources / CMS content

Any resources created in groups, courses, course sessions, events, or any type of CMS content, placement content, email templates are also handled similar to online edited lesson described above. There is a draft copy for the content, which gets edited, and when you publish the resource, a version gets created. At any point, only the last published version can be seen by the other users. A resource can be edited only by one user at a time. As soon as editable copy (draft) is created by one user, the resource gets locked for edits by other users. Until the publish action is performed by the user holding the lock (draft), resource remains locked. For the Site Page, Site Page Include, Site Template (in CMS), besides publishing the specific content, you must also perform publish action from the CMS list, to make the current versions of the Site Page, Site Page Include and Site Template active for other users to see. 

 

  


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