So we have already added the Outcomes to the site. Now let's go through the steps required to enable one Outcome for your course.
- Log in as admin, or a teacher who has the rights to Mahara Product Course.
- Using the Navigation block, click on the course name to browse to the course.
- In the Settings block, under Course administration, click on the Outcomes link.
- You will see that this brings you to a page under Grade administration. That is because Outcomes are directly related to grading. You should see an image like the following one. There are no Outcomes in the left column as we have not yet selected any for the course.
- Select Mahara Benefits from the column Available standard outcomes.
- Click on the Add button and this will add the Mahara Benefits to the left-hand column. You will also notice that it has Standard not used above it to indicate that it has not been used in an activity yet.
- Select Mahara Description from the column Available standard outcomes.
- Click on the Add button and this will add the Mahara Description to the left-hand column. You will now see in the following image that two Outcomes have been enabled on this course and two Outcomes have not.
We just enabled two of the site-wide Outcomes on our test course. This will allow you to assign either of those two Outcomes to activities. The other two Outcomes are not going to be available to an activity until they are added to the course.
There is also a link to Edit outcomes below the two columns. This brings you to an Outcome manager page like the one before, with one exception. Now when you add an Outcome, you can decide if it is a Standard outcome or not. If you just want to add an Outcome to the local course that is not relevant site-wide, this is where you add it. This locally added Outcome would be a custom Outcome.
There are probably many reasons that one may want to add a course-level Outcome, and one that I have come across is when there is no centralized course design and management and each course creator adds their own Outcomes for their own course. This does work in some circumstances, but may lead to duplication of effort if the same Outcome is used in multiple courses.
I do not recommend you using this method to add Outcomes. Outcomes by their nature should be approached from a site-wide basis and not an individual course basis, if possible.
While you are rolling out a new product or service, you need a simple and concise course that covers all aspects of the product. Suppose someone has already created the course which includes various resources and activities, and you have been asked to create two Outcomes, what should you do?
Should you create the new Outcomes site-wide or just within the course? What will influence this decision?