Written Docs

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Getting Started

The Outline Project is an online system used to help create course outlines at City College. You can access this system at:

http://instruction.ccsf.edu/OutlineProject

To get started using the Outline Project, you’ll need to get registered. Use the “Get Registered” link on the left side of the screen. You’ll be asked to think up a login ID and password, and will be asked for some basic information that will be used as defaults for the outlines you create (department, department chair name, etc.). You’ll also be asked for an email address. This address will be used if you forget your password.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Editing Basics

When you use the “Create New Credit Outline” or “Create New Noncredit Outline” links, you’ll be presented with the main outline editor. There are tabs across the top for the seven major sections of an outline:

General Description

Course Specifics

Catalog Description

Major Learning Outcomes

Content

Instructional Methodology

Title 5 Classification

For four of these seven sections, editing the specifics of the outline is hopefully very straightforward -- just click on the item you’d like to edit, enter the new value, and click Update. These four sections are: General Description, Course Specifics, Catalog Description, and Title 5 Classification.

For some items, the possible values are limited. For example:

When entering the Date of Approval, you’ll be prompted for a month and year

The repeatability for a credit outline is a number, 0-3. You’ll use a selection list to pick the appropriate value

Some of the values have default text:

Your name is entered as the outline preparer

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Working with the Outline Editor

In the Major Learning Outcomes, Content, and Instructional Methodology sections, you are editing content that conforms to an outline format. The Outline Project has a built-in editor to help you create a well-formed outline.

Each line of your outline is treated as its own element. You can highlight that element by clicking on it. Doing so brings up an outline editing toolbar, pictured at right.

There are buttons on the outline editing toolbar to:

Move an item up or down in the outline

Promote or demote an item (move it to a higher or lower level)

Add or delete an item

Edit an item

Next to the Add button you’ll see a Mode button. You can add items using one of two modes:

Use Single mode to add just one item. You can click on the Done button (or just hit return) when you are finished entering the text of the item.

If you have a lot of items to enter, use Continuous mode. Now, when you’re done entering the text for an item, you can hit return to start entering the next

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Importing Content

In the Major Learning Outcomes, Content, and Instructional Methodology sections, you have the option of importing content from another application. To do this:

Highlight the content that you’ve got in the other application, then click on Edit, Copy

Switch over to the Outline Project, then click on the Import button

Click inside the window that appears, then choose Edit, Paste. You’ll see your content pasted into the window. Click on the Import button to finish.

The Outline Project will try very hard to preserve the outline levels you had in the original document, attempting to fix any enumeration problems, and putting the outline into the correct format (capital letters first, then numbers, then lower-case letters).

Important Note! Using the Import option will replace any other content you’ve got entered in the applicable section.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Validation

One of the things that sometimes trips up people in making course outlines is when they create just one sub-element of an item in the Content or Instructional Methodology section. For example, you might create something like this:

Desserts

Cookies

Chocolate Chip

Pie

Blueberry

Cherry

Boston Cream

Coffee and Tea

In this example, there’s only one entry underneath “Cookies”. When creating an outline, you would typically resolve this by either adding another type of cookie, or by changing the cookie entry to say, specifically, Chocolate Chip Cookies, an eliminating the (a) underneath.

When editing these sections, a Validate link appears at the top of the screen. You can click on this button to ensure that you haven’t made this sort of an error.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Italics, Bold, and Underline

In the Major Learning Outcomes, Content, and Instructional Methodology sections you have the option of putting text in bold, italics, or underline. To use one of those formatting options, you’ll need to surround the text you’d like to format in some special characters:

Surround text you’d like to format in bold with two stars

Surround text you’d like to underline with two underscore characters

Surround text you’d like to set in italics with two slashes

Consider the following examples:

If you enter “This is an **important** point”, it will appear as “This is an important point”

If you enter “I want to //emphasize this//!”, it will appear as “I want to emphasize this!”

If you enter “This is the __name to use__”, it will appear as “This is the name to use”

You can choose to use just one of those options, or combine them (for example, use both underline and italics). If you choose to use two formatting options, you’ll need to “next” the special characters. For example:

If

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Printing an Outline

Once you’ve finished editing an outline, you can return to the main menu by clicking on the Main Menu link in the upper left hand corner of the screen.

When you’re back at the main menu, you can click on the printer icon next to the course outline to get a PDF version of your outline. Depending on your browser and other installed programs, the PDF version of the outline may appear in a browser window, or may open in a separate application.

Once you have the PDF version of your outline, you can save it to disk, print it out, or email it as an attachment to someone else.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Sharing an Outline

As the creator of an outline you have the ability to share this outline with other users of the Outline Project. Click on the lock icon next to an outline you’ve created to set these permissions.

You can find a person two different ways:

By first and last name

By their Outline Project login ID

There are two types of permissions you can set:

View only

View and Edit

As you give permissions to other users to work with your outline, those users are listed on the right side of the screen. You can change their permissions by changing the list next to their name. Click on the red X to eliminate their ability to view or edit the outline.