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How to tell people about your module: metadata
From Qedoc
Critical points in telling the world about your module include:
- Using a good title
- Adding a helpful subtitle
- Adding a long, informative description
- Appropriately classifying your module
- Adding keywords
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Where to enter the information about your module
The metadata is possibly the most important part of the entire module when it comes to distributing your work. This is the information which will be extracted from the module for display on websites which redistribute your work. This is the information which people see when they first open the module. Unless you distribute to a captive audience (such as your class), people who use your module will decide whether or not to try it out primarily on the basis of what you write here.
The "about" section
The "about" section contains standard information to
- identify the author (name, contact options if any).
- identify the module (e.g. title, id number, version number, description).
- clarify distribution and usage rights.
The "about" section can be thought of like the inside flap of a book with information like author, publisher and ISBN number. Some of the "about" section information is automatically generated for you and cannot be changed. Some is left for you to edit.
Contact information
You have the option to specify contact information. This is important for copyright and licencing issues and we advise that you make it possible for people to contact you. Note that due to email harvesters operated by spammers, we encrypt your contact information and do not allow its extraction for display on websites. The contact information field can only be seen when the module is actually opened in the Qedoc Quiz Player.
Advisable contact methods:
- Website URL
- Work phone number
- Work email address
- Surface mail address
Inadvisable contact methods:
- Private phone number
- Private email address
Versioning and module ID
Although you may not realise it when starting out with the Qedoc Quiz Maker, in the course of time you will go through many different versions of your modules. If you then add in the possibility of large online libraries listing the modules of many authors, the need for careful identification and version management becomes clearer.
- Module ID: the module ID is created out of your author ID and the running module number. Each time you create a new module, the module number is incremented. This means that every module ever created should have a unique ID.
- Version: the version number consists of three elements.
- Major version number - i.e. the number before the first decimal point.
- Minor version number - 2 digits after the first decimal point.
- Build number - 4 digit final number at the end. The build number is automatically controlled and incremented every time you save the module. It is there to save you the bother of incrementing the version numbers yourself when you make minor changes. It also allows distribution sites to distinguish versions in case you forget to change the version numbers between uploads. How you use the major and minor version numbers is entirely up to you.
Description
In order to encourage contributors to write descriptions for their modules, the automated module rating will substantially increase depending on the number of words your write here.
