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Overview of the Bodington System

New Funtionality added September 2004

Development work contributed by a range of teams and individuals both within Leeds and elsewhere has enabled a number of new features to be included in the latest release of the Bodington software, Version 2.1.1. The software was originally developed to create the University of Leeds virtual learning environment Bodington Common (managed by the Leeds University Library Virtual Learning Environment Service) and the Leeds system has been upgraded to the new version of the software.

Summary of New functionality:

Copy rooms or resources facility

The Copy rooms or resources facility provides a simple way of copying existing resources from one location in a Bodington site to another. Copies can be made of single resources or of every room and resource within a containing location. This is a powerful management tool which has been requested by users of the Bodington software for some time.

The Copy rooms or resources facility was developed by Colin Tatham at the University of Oxford.

Graphical, navigation and accessibility options

A range of user options and administrator facilities have been added to provide more flexibility in the graphical appearance of Bodington systems, and aid accessibility for users accessing sites via small screen devices (eg. PDAs).

A number of user configurable options allow the navigation aids and the aesthetic images in a Bodington window to be removed or reduced in size. This is particularly useful for users with small screen machines like PDAs. A number of options also allow the user to configure the way menus of links are displayed. The Resource Menus - User Interface option allows you to force menus to be displayed as trees.

A range of graphical options, currently only accessible to members of system administrator teams allow the appearance of Bodington sites to be customised.

The Graphical, navigation and accessibility options were developed by Jon Maber of Bodington.org at the University of Leeds.

MCQ functionality

New Multiple Choice Questionaire question types have been added which allow a range of different responses. These include Multiple True/False, Strict Multiple True/False, and Multiple True/False/Don't know. The associated help text has been updated and improved, both to explain the new question types and to indicate the implications of their use.

An Undecided option is now present at the bottom of every question when taking a test. This does not affect the results of the test, but provides the student with an on/off reminder that indicates whether they have completed a particular question. This is particularly useful for multiple response questions where it is unclear from the selected answers whether a question has been completed or not.

Using the new question types is very straight forward. When editing a test, simply select an appropriate new question type from the Question type drop down menu.

The new MCQ functionality was developed by Professor Andrew Booth, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds. Jon Maber of Bodington.org at the University of Leeds, added additional options and help text.

Log book functionality

Two new features have been added to the Log Book tool which considerably enhance its flexibility and usefulness. A file upload facility has been added that allows a student to upload files and attach them to entries in their log book. Students can also allow other individuals to access their log. This enables group activities to be recorded and viewed by a group of students, or alternatively enables peer assessment of individuals logs.

The new Log Book features were commisioned by the University of Leeds Medical School and were developed by PEVE at Manchester University.

Pigeon hole and Short answer paper management facilities

Options have been added to Pigeon holes and Short answer papers to ease the marking and management process. The status of all entries can now be changed with just a few simple clicks.

The new Pigeon hole and Short answer paper management facilities were developed by Professor Andrew Booth, School of Biochemistry, University of Leeds.

Help Index Pages

An index of help pages has been added to the MCQ tool. This is intended to act as a trial of this style of help information before the possible development of similar help pages for the other tools in Bodington.

The Help Index Page functionality was developed by Jon Maber of Bodington.org at the University of Leeds.

Improved log-in

The Bodington log-in process remains relatively unchanged, but the user interface has been greatly improved. The potentially confusing tick boxes for log-in with help and big text have been removed and replaced with buttons. Quick log-in boxes have been provided on the first log-in screen, vastly reducing the effort for the majority of users to log-in.

The Improved log-in options were developed by Jon Maber of Bodington.org at the University of Leeds.

Bug fixes

A range of assorted bug fixes have been made since the last upgrade, including:

Thanks to Paul Wheatley Virtual Learning Environment Service Team Leader, University of Leeds for his contribution to the content of this page