Professional Project Content Builder

Sharp minds would realize that there are issues with reuse. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great for most things, but for a course? Not so much. That’s where cloning comes in handy.

Let’s say we are building 2 courses, both related to object-oriented programming. Well, one may speak in terms of Java, where the other chooses Ruby. However, the high-level concepts may be exactly the same. Thinking of each “learning object” as a chapter, the user has 3 options:

1. Create a brand new intro “chapter”
2. Reuse an existing OOP intro “chapter”
3. Clone and modify an existing OOP intro “chapter”

They’re all valid, but if you only need to slightly adjust a chapter, it’s a shame to recreate the whole thing manually. So you’d clone it. Then you would have an exact copy of that learning object (er, chapter), which includes all of the associated screens, too, and in there respective order. Now, instead of worrying about your changes propagating throughout all courses (standard reuse), you can modify the learning object to your hearts content.

Now about how you clone, which is what this screen is showing. To clone a learning object, you simply drag it up to the “Drop here to clone” box. By default you’ll see a list of the most recent learning objects. There’s also a live search to find what you need (i.e. we were looking for “object-oriented programming”). Once found, drag the “chapter” to the drop box. It will automatically get a new title of “Copy of [original title]”. It has proven to be a very useful feature, and is about 90% of the use case. We’re currently on the fence as to whether or not “reuse” should be banned in favor of cloning. I’m of the opinion that it should be.