Moodle Monday: Book Module
The Book Module makes it easy to create a multi-page resource with a book like format. You might create a sequence of web page resources in your course which would add to the need to scroll the course page, using Book helps address these issues. The Book module is basically a series of web pages collected together in chapters and sub chapters as appropriate, so on the course layout its one link, but that opens up to show the book index and content.
Whilst the book module allows you to have main chapters and sub chapters, it goes no deeper. Sub chapters cannot have their own sub chapters, for example, as the module is intended to be a simple resource for tutors and students. The book module itself is not interactive, however you can link to choices, forums etc, from within a book. Multimedia (flash videos, YouTube videos) may be included in a book.
You can use the book module to present information in a well-structured, user-friendly format. But there are other uses, because this module allows you to import individual web pages or folders of web pages, it is useful for group work. One example is each student creates a simple web page about a topic then uploads the pages to the book. Alternatively, you could enable students to upload pages to the book – see Moodle Docs Book FAQ for details.
For more information on the book settings you can visit the Moodle Docs page.
Have you used the book module in your teaching and learning? Do you think it would be useful to include a book module in your Moodle course in the future? If you have any questions or would like any more help, information or advice, then please post in the comments below, or contact TEL@yorksj.ac.uk.
Emma
When we used to have module handbooks, we tried to implement the use of the moodle book, however we had some issues cutting and pasting the information from existing documentation into the moodle book. In the end it would mean that we had to re-type everything so we moved away from it.
I’m sure that there would be other possible uses for it though.
Copying and pasting from Word into Moodle does cause a lot of problems, because MS Office leaves in loads of hidden HTML formatting that doesn’t always then let you format the text how you want it when you paste it into Moodle’s text editor. Moodle will end up trying to follow the instructions in the hidden HTML from Word, and we’ve seen some fantastically messed-up formatting that can result in messing up the whole layout of a Moodle course.
We always advise to copy and paste into Notepad first, which strips out all formatting and leaves you with plain text, so you can then copy into Moodle’s text editor and use the built-in formatting tools instead.
We mentioned this in our Moodle Monday post from January, but it does come up a lot. The Notepad ‘copy and paste’ option is the best one, if you don’t like typing.
http://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/moodle/2017/01/23/moodle-monday-the-basics-text-editor-accessibility-and-labels/