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Associating and Assigning Templates
Objective
WebCTs Help for: Managing Templates, German Version, French Version.
This page provides you with a step by step instruction to the associating and assigning of templates to sections (that is how courses are called in Vista-speak). Further information can be found in Part 4, Chapter 36, Sect: "Template Manager" in Designers and Instructors Reference, WebCT Vista 4 (pdf, 2.5 MB) p.807. Get UN & PW at edutech Vista Support.
Table of Content
- Introduction
- Associating templates to your section
- Assigning templates to sections
- Reassigning Templates to Sections
- Other Learning Objects concerning the linking of content
Introduction
Imagine you could place all your material, pages, images, simulations, etc. in one template course and derive child-courses from this parent and this child-course could keep a link to it's parent-course. And when ever you correct or otherwise edit an html file in the template, all its linked 'child'-instances are adapted and thus present the same content.
Thus you could have hundreds of courses derived from one template but you would only need to correct one instance, when editing is needed. In Vista this can be done by associating and assigning sections to such a template creating a sort of parent - child relation.
Note: Only the editing of text, corrections in the text or position or added new text will automatically be passed down from the parent template to the child. Any new file, be it an image, a html-file, an animation, etc, that you add later on to the template is not automatically passed on down to the child. The same holds also for any changes in the overall formatting of the template which are not automatically 'inherited' by the child. In this case the template will have to be reassigned. See "Reassigning Templates to Section" below for more details.
Note also: If, in the process of associating a template, you can not see a specific file (button or menu) that you know is there, than you probably do not possess the appropriate permission or role.
Associating templates
Institution Administrators, Division Administrators, and Group Administrators can associate templates to sections. They use the "Learning Context Manager" to associate templates from all learning contexts with courses and assign or reassign associated templates to sections. Section designer in certain circumstances can do that too provided the template is public; see further down below.
To associate a template, do one of the following:
- From the Template Manager screen:
- Navigate to the course learning context with which you want to associate templates.
- Next to the course title, click the ActionLinks icon. A menu appears.
- Click View/Manage Associated Templates.
- Click Associate Templates. The Associated Templates screen appears displaying all templates associated with the course.
- Check the boxes for the templates you want to become available and end the procedure clicking Select and Done.
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- From the Administration tab:
- Navigate to the course learning context with which you want to associate templates. The Sections screen appears.
- Click the Templates sub-tab. The Templates screen appears displaying all templates associated with the course.
- Click Associate Templates. The Select Template pop-up window appears. This screen displays all templates available for association that are saved in this course, or any of the course's parent learning contexts. The template's status is indicated under the column heading, Public. Section Designers can only assign public templates to sections.
- To view information about a template:
- Click the template's ActionLinks icon. A menu appears.
- Click View Information. A pop-up window appears with the template information.
- Close the pop-up window.
- Next to each template that you want to associate, select the check box. To associate all displayed templates, in the table heading row, select the check box.
- Click Select. Each newly associated template appears in the listing of all associated templates.
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- assigned template: a template assigned to a section. It is the base from which the Section Designer builds the section.
- associated template: template available at the course learning context, from which the assigned template is taken.
Assigning templates to sections
Warning: The following procedure will delete the existing content in the child and replace it by the content and design of the template. Any content in any tool, such as messages in mail and forum as well Assignments sent by the students will be erased.
To prevent any loss through the assignment procedure:
- first go to the student related tools
- activate the "Create Printable View"
- chose "Save as File" and download this file onto your hard drive
- upload this file to the section once the assigning of the template has ended.
- You can than display this file e.g. as an archive.
Institution Administrators, Division Administrators, and Group Administrators can assign templates to sections. .
- From the "Administration" tab, use the tree-view of learning contexts to locate and click the course level of the target section to which you want to assign a template. The Sections screen appears.
- Click the ActionLinks Icon for the target section. A drop down menu appears.
- Select Edit Properties. The Edit Section Properties screen appears.
- Under Reassign Section Content you can select a radio button next to Assign template.
- With Select Template you progress to the list of templates associated to the parent course of your section.
- Select the radio button next to the template that you wish to assign. Click Select and then end the procedure with Save.
- A progress bar will help you wait, if the template takes it's time.
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Section designer can assign templates to sections when they start with a new course that has not been assigned to anything, (by default sections are assigned to at 'blank' template) if a public template is provided (by association) for the corresponding Course.
- From the My WebCT, click the link to the new section. The Assign Course Content screen appears.
- Select Assign Template to this course and click Continue.
- Chose which template to assign and click Continue. A progress bar will help you waiting.
- A congratulation will confirm the end of the procedure and let you continue to start building your section.
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Reassigning Templates to Sections
Only the editing of text, corrections in the text or position or
added new text will automatically be adapted between the linked files.
Any file, be it an image, a html-file, an animation, etc, that you add
later on to the template is not automatically passed on down to
the child. In this case the template will have to be reassigned. In
this case you will have to reapply the procedure described under Assigning templates to sections.
Note 1:
- by the way of linking the new material individually into the section. More details in Sharing and Copying files (keeping the link).
- with the Exporting and Importing Learning Modules-Tool.
- Administrators manage public and private templates in the learning context of the part they administrate.
- Designers manage templates that they create or for which they have received editor permission only in their learning context.