Converting Archives and Backups with ConversionThingy 2
ConversionThingy 2
automatically identifies the type of archive at hand and processes only those
that actually have content that can be processed--ANGEL's 7.3 and 7.4 backups
and archives and Moodle backup files
(1.98 and probably earlier and later versions) are recognized
automatically and processed accordingly.
The process of converting an archive file involves clicking the
Giddyup button, selecting which file to convert, and then
watching the progress on the Status tab as the program enumerates the
objects being converted and created. This document provides some important
information on what converts, what doesn't, and what you can do to make your
course conversions as useful as possible.
ANGEL 7.3 and 7.4 course
archives and backup files process virtually all content, transforming most
course elements into a
resonable equivalent in Moodle; ANGEL-generated IMS Common Cartridges are cleaned up and left as
Common Cartridges. And Moodle 1.98 backup files are passed through a
restructuring process to emerge as Moodle 2.0 backup files, retaining in the
process the most common objects and the lot of their settings.
Allowing for variations in computer speed and course composition, most course
sites that were saved without user data should convert in less than half
a minute. The greatest portion of time spent in processing most
conversions is the time spent unzipping the source archive: archives
without user data will be processed more quickly. Aside from the processes of
unpacking and repacking the archive files, the most time-consuming element is
the construction of questions in course sites that have enormous question banks For some details on optimizing
conversions and minimizing issues in the converted output, see the "Recommendations for a Good Conversion," below.
When Things Go Wrong
Some conversions won't work. ConversionThingy 2 itself may stall out,
crash, or produce output that your Moodle installation doesn't know what to do
with. If you find yourself with a file that didn't survive a conversion
attempt--and this will happen--your only practical recourse is to try to
tweak your source materials (according to recommendations below) or to abandon
the conversion of the file that's (f)ailing. You can, if things are very
desperate, send me a note (click the "Feedback" button on the program's
"License" tab). But you oughtn't trouble the nice people at Moodle with problems
created by ConversionThingy 2: they've got their hands full and really
can't be expected to resolve problems that are not of their making...
NOTE: If your output is destined for a Moodle 2 installation, you might want to
make sure that you've got a good healthy timeout set in your PHP configuration.
A max_execution_time of 300 seems to make possible restorations of backups that
simply fail to restore if the max_execution_time is set to 30 or 120.
Requisite Reminder about Copyright
Before converting ANY course archive, you should ensure that you are not violating
any copyrights in doing so: this means that you should not convert course archives that
contain e-reserve materials, course cartridges supplied by publishers, or other materials
for which you do not hold copyright or appropriate permissions. You must remove any such materials
from course sites before archiving and converting them.
Recommendations for a Good Conversion
This is a short list, but it's pretty important stuff, all related to the
general theme of cleaning up the site before you generate the
backup file or archive you're planning on converting. Most of these
recommendations are worth considering regardless of whether your source files
are to be derived from ANGEL or Moodle.
- Remove any duplicate copies of assessments/drop-boxes that you may have set up
to accommodate special teams.
- Remove any materials that don't actually serve a current function in the course
site--don't, that is to say, convert a publisher's volume of question bank
materials that you're not actually using, and don't convert those hidden folders
full of "unused materials" that haven't been used in years....
- Get rid of any remnants of ANGEL Quiz objects: they won't be processed in the
conversion.
- Get rid of any empty question bank folders that were generated by ANGEL as part
of a Quiz-to-Assessment conversion. While you're at it, get rid of duplicate
assessments.
- Make sure that your gradebook actually adds up and has values attached to all
categories and assignments.
- Make sure that you haven't lost keywords or difficulty levels at some stage of
an ANGEL upgrade or archive upload, or question pools using those criteria will fail.
- Make sure that the question pools that you expect to return x number of
questions actually return x number of questions.
- Get rid of Assessments that don't have any questions in them.
- You might also want to trim away any ANGEL Games, Syndicated Folders, or Blogs--none
of those will be converted. They won't cause any problems in the conversion,
they'll just be skipped.
- Ensure that content that is drawn from ANGEL's LOR's is COPIED and not
LINKED--if it's linked, it doesn't move into the course archive and won't be part of
the conversion.
- In ANGEL 7.4, use the Backup rather than the Export option to create the file to
convert--the 7.4 Export omits a block of course related information identifying
the instructor, department, section, course title, etc. The export-generated
archive can be processed, it'll just be missing details that you'd be able to
use to review all conversions for a particular instructor; it'll also have a
less-than-intuitive title when it gets parsed by Moodle.
- Make sure that your ANGEL File objects and ANGEL Link objects connect to their
destination files/links.
- If you've built a wee subweb of interdependent files (html/jar/image) in ANGEL's
associated files area, prepare for this to fail horribly. You might as well get
rid of it before the conversion, because only the entry page of that
interdependent cluster will be included in the conversion. (With the files on
hand, you might be able to pull off a similar structure in Moodle 1.98; I
believe that
this could be accomplished in Moodle 2, but
the conversion doesn't handle it.)
- If you use ANGEL's Matching question type, ensure that you've provided for at
least three matches.
Things That Won't Convert
As noted above, ConversionThingy 2 will make no attempt to convert
ANGEL's Games,
Syndicated Folders or Blogs; beyond these objects, there's also no attempt made
to capture ANGEL's Standards or Association mappings or specific team assignments,
although Team ids and Team descriptions will be migrated. Question Bank
and Assessment questions are converted insofar as it's possible to do so.
ANGEL's Sorting questions, and
Offline item questions do not have ready equivalents in Moodle, so those
types will be sidestepped; although Moodle supports questions based on
algorithms, ConversionThingy 2 makes no effort to reconcile ANGEL's
algorithmic questions with Moodle's. Whenever ConversionThingy
encounters an ANGEL question that cannot be converted, a "description" object is popped
into the corresponding Moodle quiz/question bank, indicating that a
question has been omitted. It bears mentioning that ALL converted materials
should be checked carefully to ensure that missing (or potentially corrupted)
items do not end up passing unnoticed. Particular attention should be paid to
gradebooks and quizzes/tests in the converted site: you don't want to be
surprised when a pool of questions comes up short because of omissions based on
question types, and you don't want to be in the middle of a semester and
discover your gradebook no longer adds up.
ANGEL's "Quiz" objects (as opposed to the "Assessments" that replaced
them) are not processed. If an older ANGEL archive (like a 7.2 or potentially
even a 7.1 archive) slips into the conversion cue, you'll discover that
gradebooks go missing also, as the format has changed considerably. At the
moment, there may be less-than-graceful failures in the handling of ANGEL
archives that were generated under versions earlier than 7.3; if earlier
versions of ANGEL archives parse at all (and some may), they will be without
Quizzes (see above) and they will probably also be without gradebook entries.
In all likelihood, they'll just draw an error message and shut down.
A "Conversion Report" document is generated with every conversion--it gets
included in the "Files" area of the Moodle backup file. This
document contains, amongst other details, notes on most (if not all) of the
omissions that may have occurred as the course site was transferred.
Things ConversionThingy Doesn't Know and Can't Do
Just as no two ANGEL implementations are exactly the same, it's also the case
that any two Moodle implementations may differ considerably. As such, ConversionThingy makes no guesses about file size limitations (it assumes
there are none in Moodle that wouldn't also have been at hand in the user's
ANGEL system), it guess that there's no problem with javascript in files, it
supposes that no content must urgently be blocked (so it doesn't flag SWF files,
even though it's an administrative option to block these in Moodle).
And, finally, it doesn't presenlty offer any choice of which "blocks" that
should appear as part of the Moodle site (it assumes that the default set is
pretty much OK). The program also doesn't know what the course dates or access
dates for converted materials should be, and rather than populating these fields
with dates in the future, it inserts a date safely in the past. Users of the
converted materials will have to reassign dates before the course can be taught,
but that should be pretty standard practice anyway, one might think.
Shifting the New Backup File to Moodle
In a Moodle 1.98 course site, click on the Files link, upload the newly
created backup file, click the Restore link, and follow the prompts. The video, below,
takes you through the process really really quickly...
In Moodle 2.0, look for the "Restore" link among the admin options on the
site home; upload the file, and then follow the prompts, or find the restore
link amongst the Course Administration settings in a course site. (It bears
noting that some odd things can happen if a course backup having 18 topics is
restored into a course site that has only 10: you'll want to adjust the number
of topics before completing the restore process.)
