Embedding a Dragster activity in a CourseLab course

UPDATE – see instructions on using Embed activity option

CourseLab is a powerful free e-learning content authoring package which uses a familiar authoring interface modeled on Powerpoint. Here are a set of instructions for integrating a Dragster drag and drop activity within a CourseLab course:

1. Author and publish your dragster activity.
2. Unzip the published dragster activity to view all the activity files.
3. Now go to your courselab course. On the slide use the menus to select Insert > Object and expand the Media section and drag a Flash object on to the slide.
4. Resize this flash object to make it as large as possible.
5. Right click on the Flash object and select properties.
6. For the file option, select the dragndrop.swf file in your published Dragster activity.
7. Publish your completed Courselab course on to your PC.
8. You now need to copy some additional dragster activity files into your CourseLab course to make the dragster activity work. These files are dragndrop.xml and any image files within the published dragster activity folder. So select all these files and copy them (Ctrl-C).
9. Now unzip your published courselab course.
10. Open the unzipped course folder
    paste the dragster activity files into the folder called 1 (you should see a file called start.html within this folder).

    

    

11. Now test the course by opening start.html inside the folder called 1.
12. Re-zip the course for upload in your VLE.

Any problems encountered are most likely to be due to copying the extra dragster files into the incorrect folder in the published CourseLab course.
(Note – the dragster activity will not work when using the View module preview in rthe CourseLab authoring system unless you also copy these extra dragster activity files into the folder called 1 inside the folder used to save the course during its development)

There is an alternative simpler integration method that uses Insert > Object > External and the Iframe option. This requires that the dragster activity already be available on the Internet and also that it scales with the browser size (a setting only available in Dragster 3). This approach doesn’t require you to copy the extra activity files as the working dragster activity is being imported “live” from the web using the iframe rather than running inside the courselab course.

View an example created using these 2 approaches

Note - CourseLab itself incorporates drag and drop functionality which allows simple drag and drop activities to be authored within courses without using Dragster. However in Webducate’s opinion creating an activity as rich as an average Dragster drag and drop activity within CourseLab would be extremely difficult  if not impossible (but feel free to give it a go!).

PhysioUK – online course management system

Its been a long painstaking development process but just before Christmas 2008 Webducate completed the new PhysioUK website. This represents probably the most sophisticated web based face-to-face course management system around and includes a whole host of features including:

• Full course search facilities
• Integrated online payment system
• Automated course enrolment and pre-course confirmation emails
• PDF course documentation generated dynamically from data base of course details
• Waiting list enrolment automatically provided when courses are full
• Automated traceable PDF course completion certificates
• PDF registers generated for checking attendence
• Comprehensive web based admin system behind the scenes
• Participant accounts providing personal enrolment details, certificates downloads, receipts etc via a login
• and much, much more…

With this new site PhysioUK intend to spend less time managing their courses and more time developing new innovative services for their clients.
For Webducate this website has been the most ambitious and demanding project yet and we are looking forward to developing even more features for PhysioUK in the future!

Previous to working with Webducate our experience of getting our new website written had been painful to say the least. However, fortunately for us, we started working with them and the website developed quickly into something that was far better than we initially imagined. They have been both highly professional, and more importantly adaptable, in both the development and implementation of the website. I can’t thank Tony (and his team) enough for giving us a site wihich has streamlined our business to a new and far improved level.
Chris Murphy – PhysioUK