A colleague here in OUCS is using new WebLearn in a fairly novel way. They have a database (actually a subversion repository) full of HTML-based teaching material and fancied making it available in WebLearn (in addition to other places where it is currently used).<\/p>\n
They didn’t want to have to manually update WebLearn every time the material was updated and wondered whether we had a suggestion as to how this could be done.<\/p>\n
The solution that we hit upon is fairly simple. A site was created to host the material. We then set up a Webdav connection from the user’s Linux PC.<\/p>\n
After this a script was written which does a check-out from the repository into a temporary folder and then copies the files into the WebLearn site via Webdav. These files replace the incumbent in WebLearn and so the site is brought up to date.<\/p>\n
The final piece in the jigsaw is to schedule a ‘cron job’ to run the script at 4am every Sunday night \/ Monday morning – this effectively automatically updates the WebLearn site every week ensuring that the teaching materials are more or less up to date at all times with no manual intervention.<\/p>\n
This scenario is not uncommon and we can provide guidance should anybody else fancy trying this.<\/p>\n
A colleague here in OUCS is using new WebLearn in a fairly novel way. They have a database (actually a subversion repository) full of HTML-based teaching material and fancied making it available in WebLearn (in addition to other places where … Continue reading