Summary
Within the MBChB programme students have many different places they need to be at different times – often changes occur with short notice. As part of the the minimum requirements for a module the programme requires that students are able to receive their timetable via MedMoodle. This enables students to access their personalised timetable on their chosen device/s in an up-to-date manner.
Events are created in bulk in Moodle by the eLearning Facilitators from a spreadsheet of data provided by the module. In order to create the specific spreadsheet a template can be found above in the Resources section.
The first time you look need to build a spreadsheet for bulk event creation it can look a bit daunting – the eLearning Facilitators are available to guide you through the process.
Resources
Anatomy of a Spreadsheet
The bulk event upload spreadsheet contains a number of different columns. Some of these columns are compulsory and other are optional. Below is a list of the columns, whether or not they’re are compulsory and a brief description of what you would use each column for. How these translate into Moodle is demonstrated in the section following – Anatomy of an Event.
| Column Name | Status | Description |
| Week | Optional | This is the week number the event is for |
| Date | Compulsory | This is the date the event occurs in the format dd/mm/yyyy |
| Start_Time | Compulsory | This is the time the event starts in the format hh:mm (24hr time) |
| Duration_minutes | Compulsory | This is how long in minutes the event lasts |
| Event_Name | Compulsory | This is the name of the event |
| Location | Optional | This is the location of where the event occurs |
| Comments | Optional | These are any comments that may apply to the event |
| Staff | Optional | This is the name/s of any staff running this event |
| Dept-Contact_Details | Optional | This is the name of the department running this event |
| Activity_Name | Compulsory | This is the name of the activity |
| Activity_URL | Optional | This is the URL that the Activity_Name above links to. |
| Event_Type-Shortname | Compulsory | This is the type of event i.e. ENT Clinic; Lecture; Tutorial |
| ModuleLink_Descr | Compulsory | This is the name of the module and will form a link to the module- keep it nice and short |
| ModuleLink_Shortname | Compulsory | This is the shortname from Moodle for the module – it enables a link to be created i.e. 2023e2_Skills |
| Student-Group_Name | Optional | This is the name of the group this event is for – leave blank if it is for everyone in the module. |
| Location-Shortname | Optional | This is a shortened version of the location – it is used in the title of the event |
| EventType | Optional | This is the event type i.e. Course; Group; Clinic |
| ModuleUpload_Shortname | Compulsory | This is the shortname from Moodle for the module where this event will appear in the calendar – usually this is exactly the same as the ModuleLink_Shortname |
| MoodleTopicID | Optional | This is the section/topic in Moodle that this event links to i.e. #section-0 – this would take you to the first section in your module. |
Anatomy of an Event
Calendar events created via the templated spreadsheet have a specific look – this was directed by the students for consistency and ease of finding the key information.
The screenshots below show you a comparison of where the various columns go in a calendar event (with the column names) and then what an event using every column looks like.
Calendar event with template column heading names (on left). Calendar event with real data (on right).
Common Traps
- Student-Group_Name – the names used here have to match exactly with the groups available in your Moodle module/course i.e. 2023e2_Skills_A and 2023e2_Skills_a are different and will cause the creation of events to fail.
- Date and Time format – Moodle requires the dates and times used in the spreadsheet to be in a certain format. Make sure you have formatted these columns to the date and time formats specified (dd/mm/yyyy and hh:mm in 24 hour time)
- Whitespace – this one is tricky to spot because it looks invisible but for things like group names and module shortnames having an extra space after all the text will cause issues for Moodle as it sees it as a different value i.e. ‘2023e3_Skills ‘ is different to ‘2023e3_Skills’
