Introduction
A common email we receive is about the quota of a module being reached. You may have seen this when you’ve gone to upload some new content in your module. A red error message appears, telling you that the module quota has been reached and you can’t add any more content. In a nutshell, it means your module is full. In this blog post, we’ll look at some things you can do yourself to prevent this from happening, and some ways in which you can free up space in your module.
PowerPoints with audio or video elements
We’ve discussed the pros and cons of narrating over PowerPoints in previous blog posts. By now, it hopefully goes without saying that using ReView is the way forward. If you missed it, this blog post explains the hows and whys and we strongly recommend this approach: https://blogs.tees.ac.uk/lteonline/2020/10/21/using-review-to-record-your-lecture-content/
However, there may be rare occasions when this is not feasible. There are still a few options open to you. You could try running PowerPoints optimization and compression routines (found under the File menu in PowerPoint) to reduce the overall size of the presentation. You could also convert the presentation to video. Once the video has been created, upload this to your ReView Video Library. To create a video, go to File, select Export and then Create a Video.
Image Heavy PowerPoints
If your PowerPoint has a lot of large images, this can result in a large file size. The compression routines mentioned above might go some way to reducing the size of your PowerPoint. Another option is to convert the PowerPoint into a PDF. From within PowerPoint, click on File and then Convert. You can now choose PDF. A quick test of one PowerPoint reduced the file size from 40mb down to 2mb.
Large PDFs
If you are using PDFs that are large in size, you could try compressing them. This is possible through Adobe Acrobat, available online to Teesside Uni members via https://creativecloud.adobe.com. From here, there is a compression routine that you can apply to your PDFs. A test of one PDF reduced it from 150mb down to 110mb with no noticeable degradation of quality.
Depending on the nature of the PDF, another option is to convert it into a movie. There are many free online services that can do this for you. Once you have your video, upload it to your ReView Video Library.
Audio and Video Files
As mentioned above, you can use ReView to upload existing audio and video content. ReView (powered by Panopto) handles a wide range of file types. Follow this link to get more detailed information on the types of support file types: https://support.panopto.com/s/article/Supported-File-Types.
This guide explains how to upload existing content into your ReView Video Library: https://eatsupport.tees.ac.uk/staff/knowledgebase/uploading-external-video-content-in-review/
Student Submissions
When students submit work through an assignment, this does not count towards your module quota. So, please rest assured this will not be a problem in your module.
Course Files
When you add a file to, say, Learning Materials, it actually gets loaded into an area of the module called the Course Files area. The content item you create is essentially a link to this space. We normally don’t need to worry about this, but the issue sometimes arises when you delete an item from Learning Materials. You are only deleting the link to the file, which still resides in the Course Files area, taking up space.
Therefore, from time to time, it can be useful to do a bit of housekeeping in the Course Files area.
To access Course Files, go to the Control Panel of your module. Click once on Files and then click on the module code that will appear. You can now see all the files that are stored in the module.
If you are in any doubt about whether or not a file is in use, you can check. Hover your mouse over the file name and click the small grey circle that will appear to the immediate right. From the menu that appears, select 360o View. If there is nothing listed under Links, then it is safe to say this file is not in use and can be deleted.
This guide explains the Course Files area in more detail: https://eatsupport.tees.ac.uk/staff/knowledgebase/course-files/
Course Copy
It’s possible to copy the contents of one module into another. It’s vital to be patient with this process. When it has completed, you will get an email notifying you of this. We’ve seen in previous years people starting a course copy routine, but not being aware of the email. So they run the course copy routine again, resulting in the same content copied over twice.
Conclusion
Hopefully the above suggestions will help you manage your modules. If in any doubt, please don’t hesitate to contact the eLearning team at elearning@tees.ac.uk who will be only too happy to discuss things further with you.