Plone Zope EduCommons-Publishing Process

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Publishing Process

Contents

Publishing Process

The publishing process for a course takes place initially on a staging server called open.umich.edu/stage-education. Once the course has been built and reviewed by the faculty member, the course is then moved to open.umich.edu/education for the final publishing steps. The instructions below state explicitly which steps are performed on /stage-education and which are performed on /education.

Prepare Course/Resource Space on Staging Website

Create a Landing Page for your Course (on /stage-education)

Log on to the Open.Michigan EduCommons site. If you don't see the login prompt at that URL, try the following URL instead: http://open.umich.edu/stage-education/login Perform these steps to create a landing page for your course.


  1. In the left nav, select the appropriate department (e.g., School of Information, Medical School) for your course.
  2. When the landing page for the department appears, click "Add New" tab and select the "Course" folder.
  3. In the "Title" field, enter the title for your course (but not the course number).
  4. In the "Description" field, enter a short summary of the course content.
  5. In the "Body Text" field, insert the appropriate info for your class into the html code.
  6. Complete the "Course ID," "Term," and "Structure" fields; pull down "Level" and select "Undergraduate" or "Graduate."
  7. Enter the name of the primary instructor teaching this course in the "Instructor Name" field.
  8. Enter the email address of the primary instructor teaching this course in the "Instructor Email" field.
  9. Do NOT check the "Display Instructor Email Address" box.
  10. If the instructor is the primary author of the course materials, check the "Instructor is Primary Author" checkbox.
  11. If the course should be cross-listed, please select the appropriate divisions from the "Cross Listing(s)" pull down list.
  12. Click "Save." You will see a new landing page for your course.

Select a License and Add Copyright Info for your Course (on /stage-education)

  1. Display the landing page for your course on the EduCommons site. Click the "Edit" tab.
  2. Then click the "Ownership" button (which appears in the bar above the course title).
  3. In the "Copyright Holder"field, enter "© <year_of_course>, <name_of_professor>, or by the Contributing Authors where otherwise noted." For example, "© 2008, Peter Woolf, or by the Contributing Authors where otherwise noted."
  4. Under "Copyright License", select the "Creative Commons License" radio button, and then click the "Choose" link to the right.
  5. A new window will open asking you questions about how the work may be used. Answer these questions and then click the "Select License" button.
  6. When you return to the "Ownership" window, click the checkbox for "Apply License To Contained Objects".
  7. Click "Save."

Copy a Template to your Course Landing Page (on /stage-education)

The template provides the basic structure for the course and will make it easier for you to add elements (syllabus, lectures, etc.) to your page.

  1. In the left nav, click "School of Information." When the list of courses appears, look for "Template" and click on it. (Or go directly to this link https://open.umich.edu/stage-education/si/template
  2. The Template landing page will appear. Click the "Contents" tab.
  3. Use the checkboxes to select the course elements you want to use, then click "Copy" at the bottom to copy them to your clipboard.
  4. Navigate back to your course page. Click the "Contents" tab.
  5. Click "Paste" to insert the template elements.

Add an Image to your Course Landing Page (on /stage-education)

When you publish a landing page for your course, it will have a default "under construction" graphic. To publish an image that better represents the course, perform the following steps:

  1. Select an image for your landing page. (Follow this link for some potential sources. The UM Image Source collection is also an option.)
  2. Save the image as a jpeg. A good size is 275x275 pixels, but you can vary that somewhat depending on what works for that particular image.
  3. Navigate to /stage-education. Click on the landing page for your course.
  4. Look for "Add new..." above the course title, click the green arrow, and select "Image" from the pull down list.
  5. Click the "Browse" button (along bottom).
  6. Browse until you find your jpeg file. Click "Save."
  7. Your image file will now appear under the "Contents" tab for your course.
  8. Navigate back to your course landing page. Click the "Edit" tab.
  9. In the "Body Text" box, modify the html code to point to your jpeg file, and instead of the default image.
  10. Determine the proper attribution for your image. Also, look at the currently published courses on /education for examples of how this is handled in various cases.
  11. Place the attribution in the "Body Text" box as follows:
    • Look for the </table> tag.
    • Immediately following the </table> tag, insert: <p id="caption">Image courtesy of XYZ under a Creative Commons license: BY. </p>

Gather, Assemble, Convert, and Optimize Files

Log On to OERca

  1. Navigate to OERca and login there.
  2. Find the course you want to publish and click on the course title.
  3. Click the checkboxes for the modules you want to download. You may find it easiest to do all the lectures in one download, and then go back and do all the other course elements (syllabus, reading list, etc.) in separate downloads.
  4. Click "Download" (this creates a zip file).

Important Note about Links in Microsoft Office Files

Before converting your Microsoft Office files to PDF, you may need to perform a few tweaks so the links will appear correctly when you save the files as PDFs. In Microsoft Office, it is important that all links are displayed in the text, you should not use different displayed text to represent a link. Because when you save the Microsoft Office file to PDF, you will only see the displayed text in the PDF, not the link.

So, in your Microsoft Office file, do this: A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology edited by Richard Pearce-Moses. http://www.archivists.org/glossary/index.asp
Do not do this: A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology edited by Richard Pearce-Moses.

Bulk Convert Microsoft Office formats to OpenOffice

  1. Open OpenOffice
  2. Go to the File menu. Select Wizards > Document Converter
  3. Select the Microsoft Office radio button
  4. Select the checkboxes for PowerPoint and Word documents
  5. Click Next
  6. Deselect the PowerPoint Templates checkbox
  7. In the Documents section, select the appropriate folder (from step 1 of previous section) for "Import from"
  8. Select the same folder (from previous step) for "Save to"
  9. Click Next
  10. Click Convert
  11. Preview the .odf files to verify the conversion was successful and formatting maintained.
  12. Fix formatting if necessary.

Bulk Convert files to PDF

  1. Unzip the file to your hard drive. Make sure that the save edited materials for the given course/resource in a separate folder from other non-edited files.
  2. Open OpenOffice
  3. Go to the File menu. Select Wizards > Web Page
  4. Select the default settings.
  5. Click Next
  6. Click Add
  7. Navigate to the appropriate folder. Select all of the OpenDocument documents to convert to PDF. (It makes sense to use the ODF files since you've corrected the formatting in the previous section.)
  8. Click open
  9. For each item in the list, changed the "Export to file format" choice to "PDF Print Optimized.
  10. Click Next .
  11. Keep the default values for Main Layout. Click Next.
  12. Keep the default values for Style. Click Next.
  13. Keep the default values for Web site information. Click Next.
  14. Select the checkbox next to "Publish the new website to a local folder." Create a new folder (suggestion: use the course name and term).
  15. Click Open.
  16. Deselect the checkbox Save settings.
  17. Click Finish.
  18. Navigate to the new folder created.
  19. Open the content folder.
  20. Preview the .pdf files to verify the conversion was successful and formatting maintained.
  21. Create a zip file containing all the PPT, DOC, OpenDocument, and PDF files you want to upload to EduCommons.

See http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1169832,00.html for more information.

Reducing File Size when Converting PPT to PDF

If you are having problems getting good results after trying the steps above (e.g., Open Office versions require too much clean up OR your PDF files are still too large), here are some steps you can try to save your PPT as reasonably sized PDFs.

  1. Check if the PPT uses an image as the background on each slide. Start by checking the master slide. Delete this graphic and select a plain solid color background instead.
  2. Check if the text in the file uses effects such as drop shadow or 3-D. This causes each line of text to be exported as a jpeg when the PPT file is saved as PDF. Start by checking the master slide. You may be able to remove this effect from the entire presentation simply by altering the master slide.

Finalize Staging Website

Import the Zip File (on /stage-education)

  1. Navigate to /stage-education. Click on the landing page for your course.
  2. Click the "Contents Tab."
  3. Click the "Import" button (along bottom). Click "Exclude from Navigation" (this prevents your upload from being added to the right nav).
  4. Upload the zip file, it will take at least 5 minutes for the file to upload and unzip.
  5. Check that all files have uploaded successfully.

Edit Course Pages (lecture, syllabus, schedule, learning outcomes, etc.) to Add Links to Uploaded Content (on /stage-education)

  1. Click on "Lectures" in the left nav. When the Lectures page appears, click the "Edit" tab.
  2. In the "body text" box, edit the html code to include links for each lecture (PPT and PDF). Also include the file sizes for each file.
  3. When you are done editing this page, click "Save."
  4. Repeat this step for each of the course pages (syllabus, schedule, learning outcomes, etc.).
  5. For pages such as syllabus and reading list, add html version of content to landing page as well. (Click here for example.)

Adding Metadata (on /stage-education)

It is very important to include metadata for each course so that other OER and OCW content repositories can find our materials and point to them. To see examples of metadata for our published courses, you can display the Resource Description Framework (RDF) for the course by appending "/rdf" at the end of the course URL. For example, https://open.umich.edu/education/si/si563-fall2008/rdf Here are the steps you perform to add metadata.

  • Make sure that you have entered a description for the course.
  1. Display the course landing page. Click the "Edit" tab.
  2. Immediately following the "Title" field you'll see the "Description" field. Enter the description.
  3. Scroll down until you see the "Save" button and click it.
  • Make sure that the professor is listed as the owner of the course (EduCommons displays the person who created the course, usually a dScribe2 or the Publications Manager, as the owner.) To do this,
  1. Display the course landing page. Click the "Edit" tab.
  2. Click "Ownership" (which appears just above the course title).
  3. In the "Creators" field, enter the name of the instructor(s). You may add the name of the dScribe(s) to the "Contributors" field as well.
  4. Click "Save."
  • Now you will want to enter the metadata keywords that represent the course content. You can determine these by pulling keywords from the course description and syllabus. Later, when you ask the instructor to review the course, tell him/her which keywords you have selected and ask if they have any additional suggestions. Once you have your list of keywords,
  1. Display the course landing page. Click the "Edit" tab.
  2. Click "Categorization" (which appears just above the course title).
  3. You will see a box on the left with a collection of existing metadata. Scroll up and down and use Shift-Click to make selections from that list.
  4. To add new metadata, type the information in the box on the right. Each item should appear on a separate line.
  5. Click "Save" when you are finished.

Rename the Course to Follow Open.Michigan Naming Conventions (on /stage-education)

We follow U-M conventions for naming our courses. This helps keep our URLs short and consistent. Before you publish a course, find out the proper abbreviations for the division or college and the course name. For example, if you are publishing an LSA course, use the LSA course guide So, for the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts course PHYSICS 140, General Physics 1, fall 2007 -- we want the published URL for the course to be https://open.umich.edu/education/lsa/physics140-fall2007. In this URL "lsa" represents the official U-M abbreviation for "College of Literature, Science, and the Arts" and "physics140" is the official course catalog listing.

Here are the steps for renaming a course.

  1. Display the department landing page (for example, "College of Literature, Science, and the Arts"). Click the "Contents" tab.
  2. When the list of courses appears, put a check mark next to the course you want to rename. Click the "Rename" button at the bottomw.
  3. In the "New Short Name" field, enter the shorter version of the title that you want in the URL (for example, "physics140-fall2007"). Please use all lower case characters and use dashes to separate words. The "New Title" field should retain the full name for the course (for example, "General Physics 1").
  4. Click "Rename All."

Check that the Course sections appear in the Correct Order (on /stage-education)

We want all the courses to display their sections in the same order (for example, the course home page should be at the top followed by "syllabus" and "course feedback" at the bottom). For a list of course sections and their correct order, refer to this spreadsheet.

Sometimes the sections for a course get out of order in the left nav. If the course sections appear in the wrong order in the left nav, perform these steps:

  1. Paste “/order_sync_view” in the URL for the course. For example, https://open.umich.edu/education/si/si640-winter2009/order_sync_view
  2. Check the order of the sections again. For a list of course sections and their correct order, refer to this spreadsheet.
  3. You may still have to use the “reorder” function in EduCommons to make additional adjustments.

Have Faculty Review the Course (on /stage-education)

When you have finished building the course on /stage-education you create a login ID for the faculty member who will review the course. Perform these steps using the Zope interface on /stage-education to add a faculty member as user and give him/her the appropriate level of access:

  1. Go to https://open.umich.edu/stage-education/acl_users/manage_workspace
  2. When the directory listing appears, click "source_users"
  3. Look for "Add a user" in the upper left and click on it
  4. In the "User ID:" field, enter the person's user name
  5. In the "Login name:" field, enter the person's user name again
  6. In the "Password:" field, enter a password in our office default format.

Repeat this again in "Confirm password:"

  1. Click "Add User"
  2. You will now see this user under the "User ID" list.
  3. Return to acl_users
  4. Click portal_role_manager
  5. Click the question mark next to Member.
  6. In the principal ID field, enter the username.
  7. Click Search.
  8. Select the user
  9. Click right arrow
  10. Return to portal_role_manager
  11. Click the question mark next to Producer.
  12. In the principal ID field, enter the username.
  13. Click Search.
  14. Select the user
  15. Click right arrow


Notify the faculty member that the course is ready for you by sending [an email with their login info that follows this example]. Give them 2 weeks to review the course. After 2 weeks, you will generally have to remind them again.

Final Publishing on Production Website

Move the Course from /stage-education to /education

Once the faculty member has approved the course, and you have made any necessary modifications on /stage-education, it's time to move the course to /education.

  1. Go to https://open.umich.edu/oer/manage and log onto the Zope Management Interface (ZMI) Note: you may need to login as "et-staff" in order perform the steps below.
  2. In ZMI, look in the left column under "Root Folder" and click the "unpublished" folder (this is /stage-education).
  3. When the folder list for "unpublished" appears, navigate to the folder containing the content you want to publish.
  4. Select the checkbox(s) for the course or resources you want to publish (for example, “si640-winter2009”).
  5. Press the "import/export" button.
  6. You’ll see a new “Export Object” window. Look for the “Export to” radio button and make sure the radio button for “Save to file on server” is selected. Click the “export” button.
  7. Back at the top of the file list, look for a message indicating the resources was successfully exported.
  8. In approximately 10 minutes the cron job will run copying your selected resources from the “export folder” on /stage-education to the “import folder” on /education.
  9. After the 10 minutes has passed, go to /education using ZMI. Navigate to the department or college where the material will go.
  10. If you are updating an existing resource, first delete the current version of the resource from /education before importing the new one.
  11. Click the "import/export" button. Then look under the “Import filename” drop down list to find your resource (you many need to use the pull down arrows to view the full list). It will have a ".zexp" extension, for example, "si640-winter2009.zexp".
  12. Click on the "import" button.

Cautions and Tips!!

  • Do not move entire departments as all contained courses will move as well. If you need to make changes on a department landing page (new image, name change, etc.), do it manually on /education.
  • Small changes we should essentially make by hand (copying and pasting from /stage-education to /education).
  • Larger changes we should move the entire course. (But this could be a problem if the course is very large? Maybe we just move the folders that have changed within a course.)
  • If the course sections appear in the wrong order in the left nav, paste “/order_sync_view” in the URL for the course. For example, https://open.umich.edu/education/si/si640-winter2009/order_sync_view You will see a screen that says "Course Ordering Information Missing," click the "Submit" button. Check the order of the sections again. You may have to use the “reorder” function in EduCommons to make additional adjustments. For a list of course sections and their correct order, refer to this spreadsheet.

Publish the Course (on /education)

Once the course has been moved to /education, you need to perform a few final steps to make it publicly accessible.

Perform these steps to publish your course:

  1. Log on to /education. If the login prompt does not appear, use this URL: https://open.umich.edu/education/login
  2. Navigate to the landing page for your course.
  3. Click the "Contents Tab."
  4. Put a checkmark next to the files and folders you want to publish (or click "Select All" at the top of the Contents table). Then, click the "Change State" button at the bottom.
  5. A "Publishing Process" window will appear. Under the content list, click "Include contained items" to include the contents of your folders. Scroll down and look for "Change State." Select the radio button for "Submit Content to QA." Click "Save."
  6. You will return to the Contents tab. Look at the "Course Summary" area on the right. This shows your progress as you proceed through the various publishing steps.
  7. To go to the next publishing stage, repeat step #3 above.
  8. The "Publishing Process" window will appear again. Under the content list, click "Include contained items" to include the contents of your folders. Scroll down and look for "Change State." Select the radio button for "Release Content for Publication." Click "Save."
  9. You will return to the Contents tab. If you look at the "Course Summary" area on the right. You'll see your progress has changed.
  10. To go to the next publishing stage, repeat step #3 above.
  11. The "Publishing Process" window will appear again. Under the content list, click "Include contained items" to include the contents of your folders. Scroll down and look for "Change State." Select the radio button for "Publish Content." Click "Save."


TIP: You'll also want to make sure the course main landing page is published. Display the landing page and look at the "State" tab in the upper right. It should say "Published Content." If it doesn't, click on the green arrow and cycle through each publishing step (just as you did for the course content in the steps above) until you see "State: Published Content."

Unpublish the Course Folders (on /education)

To ensure that users won't be able to display file lists on /education, and to ensure cleaner navigation of the site, we recommend that you unpublish (but not delete!) the folders contained in your course (being careful not to unpublish the folder contents). To unpublish a folder, perform these steps:

  1. Go the Contents tab and put a checkmark next to the folder(s) you want to unpublish.
  2. Click "Change State."
  3. When the "Publishing process" window appears, make sure you do NOT select "Include contained items."
  4. Scroll down and select "Rework Published Content" to unpublish just the folder.
  5. Click "Save."

Package Course (on /education)

Once a course is published, you can "package" it so the user can download the whole course as zip file. This step should be done at the final stage of the publishing process. If you add any new materials to the course, you will need to repeat this step.

Please Note: you must have "manager" access permission on /education in order to package a course.

Also Note: ALL course content will be packaged (published and unpublished) so be sure to delete anything you don't want packaged with the course (step 3 below).

  1. Navigate to /education. Click on the landing page for your course.
  2. Click the "Contents Tab."
  3. Delete any elements you don't want packaged with the course. This is because ALL course content (published and unpublished) will be packaged.
  4. Click on the "Package Course" button below the course listing in the contents tab of the course.

When you do this, a zip file is built from the current published course materials. A link to the zip file will be added on the right side of the course landing page.

After packaging the course you may see "Reuse Course, Download this Course" listed twice on the course landing page. If this is the case, perform these steps:

  1. Click on "Manage Portlets" over in the right column
  2. Click the red "X" next to "Reuse Course" to delete it. So under "Portlets assigned here" you just want "OER Recommender Portlet" and "Course info portlet".
  3. Click the "Save Settings" button

Post Publication Steps

Notify Faculty that their Course has been Published

Congratulations! You are finally done. Now send an email to the faculty member telling them that their course is now publicly available. Your email should follow the style of this example.

Notify Flickr Account Holders that you Used their Image

If you selected a CC licensed image from Flickr to use on the course landing page, it is a good practice to notify the Flickr account holder that we are using their image and thank them for openly licensing it. This will hopefully encourage them not to remove or change the license, and may encourage others to start the practice themselves.

  1. Log on to Flickr using the Open.Michigan account (TIP: if you forget the password for the account, look in CTools --> Enabling Technologies --> Wiki --> PW)
  2. In Flickr, display the page that has the photo you selected and click "Add to Faves".
  3. In the comment field, say something along the lines of: "Great photo! And, thanks to your use of a CC [insert license type] license, this image is being used in an Open Educational Resource hosted by the Open.Michigan Initiative here: [insert course URL] " Click on "Post Comment."

Archiving Content to DeepBlue or other Repositories

In addition to publishing our course materials on EduCommons, we also deposit courses in MLibrary's DeepBlue repository. We do this as a batch deposit approximately once a semester. Instructions for preparing the batch deposit, along with info about other archiving options, are in the "Archiving Content" section of the wiki.

Maintaining a Course

If you need to make changes after a course is published, you need to be a bit careful to avoid "version control" issues between /stage-education and /education. Please consider the following guidelines when making updates to a published course:

  • Small changes should essentially be made by hand on /stage-education and then use copy/paste to add them to /education.
  • For larger changes you may want to make the updates on /stage-education and then move the entire course to /education again. Or, you may want to just move the folders that have changed within a course.
  • Do not move entire departments from /stage-education to /education as all contained courses will move as well. If you need to make changes on a department landing page (new image, name change, etc.), do it manually on /education.
  • If the course sections appear in the wrong order in the left nav, paste “/order_sync_view” in the URL for the course. For example, https://open.umich.edu/education/si/si640-winter2009/order_sync_view You will see a screen that says "Course Ordering Information Missing," click the "Submit" button. Check the order of the sections again. You may have to use the “reorder” function in EduCommons to make additional adjustments.

Tips, Tricks, and Troubleshooting

  • Problem: I downloaded files from OERca, published them in EduCommons, but the links don't work.
Solution: Sometimes files stored in OERca have a space as the first character of the filename. Check if this could be the problem. If it is, navigate to the "Contents" tab for your course and use the "Rename" button to remove the space from the filenames. This should fix the links.
  • Problem: The sections for my course appear in the wrong order in the left nav.
Solution: If the course sections appear in the wrong order in the left nav, paste “/order_sync_view” in the URL for the course. For example, https://open.umich.edu/education/si/si640-winter2009/order_sync_view You will see a screen that says "Course Ordering Information Missing," click the "Submit" button. Check the order of the sections again. You may still have to use the “reorder” function in EduCommons to make additional adjustments. For a list of course sections and their correct order, refer to this spreadsheet.
  • Problem: I click on a link for a file that I published and the file doesn't open.
Solution: Each file has a "Title Name" and a "Short Name." The "Title Name" for each file must include an extension (.doc, .pdf, .ppt, etc.) or the URL will not work. To resolve this, display the tab containing the list that includes your file. Check the box next to the file and click on the "Rename" button below. You will see the "Title Name" and "Short Name" for your file. Make the appropriate corrections and click "Rename All."
  • File naming suggestions: Always use dashes, rather than underscores, in filenames. Sometimes even dashes are problematic (especially for image files). If you are having trouble getting an image to display, you may need to rename it and remove the dash. Also, avoid using characters such as &, <, $, or > in your filenames (which could cause your filename to be interpreted as a unix command when you upload it to EduCommons).
  • Problem: In EduCommons, a page appears as "locked" and I can't edit it. I click "unlock" repeatedly, and nothing happens. Try logging out of EduCommons and then logging in again. Usually this will unlock the page.
  • Problem: In EduCommons, I want to add documents to a folder, but the "Import" button doesn't appear, just the "Paste" button. Try doing "Add New File" to the folder to add just one file. Once the file has been added, the "Import" button should appear again and you can do a bulk upload to the folder.
  • Problem: Not all files appear correctly in the Zip file when I use the "download this course" feature.
Solution: Make sure each page name in your course (lectures, syllabus, etc.) includes an ".html" extension as part of its "Short Name" (use the "Rename" feature to check this). If it doesn't, the file turns into an "exec" file type when you package the course.
  • Problem: Links contained in Microsoft Office files are not working when I save the files as PDFs. In Microsoft Office, it is important that all links appear in the text, you should not use different displayed text to represent a link. Because when you save the Microsoft Office file to PDF, you will only see the displayed text in the PDF, not the link.
So, in your Microsoft Office file, do this: A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology edited by Richard Pearce-Moses. http://www.archivists.org/glossary/index.asp
Do not do this: A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology edited by Richard Pearce-Moses.
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