Enhance lesson preparation and homework

Do you want to enhance your lesson preparation work with references to scientific or cultural resources (e.g. Europeana, Mendeley, EconBiz…)?
Do you want homework to not only be copied from Wikipedia, but to be enriched with content from renowned databases for science, humanities and culture? Then EEXCESS is interesting for you!
Moreover, do you use Moodle to support your lessons? Then you should use the EEXCESS Moodle Plug-In!

 

Installation Procedure

The plug-in consists of two components: a Moodle server plug-in which allows you to read EEXCESS content, and a plug-in for the Moodle Atto editor to insert citations. Both plug-ins have to be installed by a Moodle administrator.

Moodle server plug-in

  1. Download the plug-in from http://purl.org/eexcess/install/moodle-server-plugin
  2. In Moodle: go to administration/Plugins/Install plugins
  3. In the section “Install plugin from ZIP file” select the downloaded file or drag it to the specified area.
  4. Click the button “Install plugin from the ZIP file”
  5. Click the button “Upgrade Moodle database now”
  6. Click “Continue”
  7. Change the settings if necessary and click the button “Save changes”
  8. Installation is finished.

After the installation, an EEXCESS Button EEXCESS_Buttonwill appear on the top in the centre. User settings for changing the preferred citation style will be added to the navigation block.

Moodle Atto Editor plug-in

  1. Download the plug-in from http://purl.org/eexcess/install/moodle-atto-editor-plugin
  2. In Moodle: go to administration/Plugins/Install plugins
  3. In the section “Install plugin from ZIP file” select the downloaded file or drag it to the specified area.
  4. Click the button “Install plugin from the ZIP file”
  5. Click the button “Upgrade Moodle database now”
  6. Click “Continue”
  7. Change the settings if necessary and click the button “Save changes”
  8. Installation is finished.

After installation, an EEXCESS button (for displaying the recommendations) will appear in the Atto toolbar.

Atto_Toolbar

Administrator settings

In Moodle: go to Site administration/Plugins/Local plugins/EEXCESS

At this stage, we have two settings:

  • Change default EEXCESS citation style
  • Change base URL for recommendations

The default EEXCESS citation style is applied for new users. The base URL serves to be able to change quickly between different EEXCESS server implementations, e.g. to use a specific federated recommender with pre-selected providers as sources.

Moodle_Admin-Settings

User settings

However, users may edit their settings via the navigation block in the section “EEXCESS settings”.

Moodle_User-settings

Guided Tour

Search content (click on the screenshots to enlarge them)

You can select any text on any page in the Moodle site. The EEXCESS button gets animated while the system is looking for recommendations. As soon as recommendations are found, the animation stops and the number of recommendations is displayed.

Moodle_Text_Selection

Clicking on the EEXCESS button opens the recommendation display.

Moodle_visualisation_dashboard

 While writing a text (e.g. a forum post), the system gets active as soon as a paragraph is finished (by pressing “return”). The EEXCESS button gets animated while the system is looking for recommendations. As soon as recommendations are found the animation stops and the number of found recommendations is displayed.

Moodle-text_editor

 Clicking the EEXCESS button in the Atto Editor toolbar or on top of the page opens the recommendation display. You have three options to enrich your text with recommendations:

Moodle_visualisation_dashboard_highlighted

1. Embed an image

Moodle_embed_image

2. Embed a citation

Moodle_embed_citation

3. Embed a screenshot of the visualization

Moodle_embed_screenshot

The recommendation gets inserted into the written text in the editor:

Moodle_enriched_text