Summary
The Glossary activity enables both instructors and students to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary, or to collect and organize resources or information. Glossaries have many uses, such as:
- A collaborative bank of key terms
- A ‘getting to know you’ space where new students add their name and personal details
- A ‘handy tips’ resource of best practice in a practical subject
- A sharing area of useful videos, images or sound files
- A revision resource of facts to remember
How do I create a Glossary?
To create a glossary:
- Click “Turn editing on”.
- Click on Add an Activity or resource where you would like the Glossary to appear.
- Select “Glossary” from the “Add an activity” drop-down menu.
- On the “Adding a new glossary” page, name your glossary.
- Write a description of the glossary and/or give directions to your students in the Description area.
- Select the settings you would like to use. See the next section for settings details.
- Click “Save changes” at the bottom of the page.
What do the settings in the Glossary do?
General
- Display description on course page: Check to display the (optional) Glossary description on the course home page.
- Is this glossary global? Check this to link to glossary entries from throughout your whole course site. Any time you type a glossary entry word in another activity/resource, it will link to this glossary. Any course may contain a global glossary, though usually they are only included on the site front page.
- Glossary type: The glossary can be either main or secondary. This is used when you need to import glossary entries. Secondary glossary entries can be imported into a main glossary.
Entries
Here, you can change the approval, editing, and commenting settings, as well as automatically linking entries throughout your course site.
Appearance
Here, you can change the display format and the number of entries per page, as well as other appearance settings. There are multiple display formats:
- Simple, dictionary style - No authors are displayed and attachments are shown as links
- Continuous without author - Entries are displayed one after another without any separation apart from the editing icons
- Full with author - A forum-like display format showing the author's data and with attachments shown as links
- Full without author - A forum-like display format without authors and with attachments shown as links
- Encyclopedia - As for "Full with author" but attached images are shown inline
- Entry list - Concepts are listed as links
- FAQ - The words QUESTION and ANSWER are appended to the concept and definition respectively
Grade
If you would like the Glossary to be graded, select a grade category to place it in your Gradebook. Then, move on to the next section, Ratings, to configure your grading.
Ratings
It is possible to rate glossary posts within GauchoSpace to count them for a grade. Rating settings are detailed below:
Aggregate Type: This is how all the ratings given are combined to form the final grade in the Gradebook.
- No ratings (default): You will not be able to rate posts, and the activity will not appear in the Gradebook.
- Average of ratings: This is the mean of all the ratings given.
- Count of ratings: Counts the number of rated entries which becomes the final grade.
- Maximum rating: The highest rating is returned as the final grade.
- Minimum rating: The smallest rating is returned as the final grade.
- Sum of ratings: All the ratings for a particular user are added together.
Scale: This is the type of grading used for rating. You may choose point or scale.
- Point (Recommended): Rate by giving points on a scale of your choosing. Enter the Maximum grade, which is the highest amount of points possible when rating forum posts.
- Scale: Choose from a variety of scales for ratings. We do not recommend using Scales because they are very difficult to incorporate with the Gradebook.
How do I add words or entries to a glossary?
To add a glossary entry:
- From the “Glossary page”, click “Add a new entry”.
- Enter the word you want to define in the concept text field.
- Add the definition.
- If there are synonyms you want to include with the entry, add them to the Keyword(s) text area. Enter one word per line.
- If you want to add an attachment, such as a picture or an article, you can attach it below the text area.
- Expand the Auto-linking section. If you want this particular entry to be linked automatically within the course, check the “This entry should be automatically linked” checkbox. You also have the option to have case sensitive entries and to match whole words instead of partial words.
- Click “Save changes” to add your word to the glossary.
How do I organize my glossary by categories or topics?
Categories can help organize your glossary entries.
To create a glossary category:
- Click “Browse by category” tab in the main page of the glossary.
- Click “Edit categories” on the left side of the page.
- Click “Add category” on the resulting Categories page.
- Give the category a name.
- Choose whether you want the category name autolinked as well.
- Click “Save changes”.
How do I import and export a Glossary?
As you build your glossaries, you may want to share them between classes or with other instructors. Fortunately, there’s a way to export and import glossary entries without needing to share your entire course structure. Note: Glossary entries will not come over when you do a full import of your course site. You will need to perform an import and export of just the glossary to bring over the entries to another course site.
To export glossary entries:
- Click “Export entries” at the top right of the main glossary page.
- Click “Export entries to file”.
- Save the XML file on your computer.
To import glossary entries via XML file:
- Click “Import entries” at the top right of the main glossary page.
- Browse for the XML file on your computer and upload it.
- Select where you would like to import your entries.
- If you want to import category information, click the checkbox.
- Click “Save changes”.
