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Creating a Book

Creating a Book 

The QMplus book tool is a useful and flexible way to present content in a structured, student‑friendly format. The Book tool lets you create multi-page resources with chapters and sub‑chapters. It’s a great way to collate and organise resources and information whilst avoiding visual clutter on your QMplus page  The Book does not only allow for text you can also embed images and videos, and add links to external sites and documents.

Adding a Book to your course page

  1. Turn editing on via the slider (in the top right of your screen).
  2. Select the section where you would like to add your Book.
  3. Hover over the plus icon at the bottom of the section, and choose Activity or resource.
the plus sign at the bottom of a section and Activity or resource option 


4. Select Book from the Activity picker

Moodle book icom

Filling in the Book settings 

  1. Give your Book a name. This name will appear on your course page.
  2. Add a descriptive summary to your Book if you want one, don't forget to select Display description on course page.
  3. Under Appearance, choose how you want the chapters to be formatted, Numbers is a good option, it is easy to direct students to chapter 3.
  4. You may choose to use some of the other settings, e.g:
    1. Restrictions: If you would like to restrict access (e.g. to a specific date) 
    2. Competencies: If you would like to link course competencies to this activity
    3. Assessment information: If you would like add your Book to the Assessment Panel
    4. Click Save and Display
  5. You will then be asked to name your first chapter, you can edit the titles at any point, you will need to add some content before you can save it.
  6. Once your first chapter is created, you can now add more chapters and sub chapter. To do this, click the drawer arrow in the top right.
The drawer arrow, in the top right


7. This opens the Table of contents.

Table of contents

8. The icons from left to right, allow you to

  • reorder your chapters
  • edit the chapter you have open
  • delete a chapter
  • Hide or show a chapter (for example if you are editing it, or you don't want your students to see it yet
  • add more chapters and subchapters


Adding content

As well as using the text editor to write the content of your book, if you already have the content in a Microsft Word document, you can import it straight into your book.

Importing content

To do this

  1. Click the Import from Microsoft Word option in the top horizontal menu. 
  2. You can then either click and drag your file into the upload or box, or click the Choose a file button and select it from your own device, or your QMplus files, OneDrive or Dropbox.
  3. Once you have selected your file, simply click Import at the bottom and your file will be imported into your book, you can then edit it by clicking the pencil icon in the left hand Table of contents.

Adding an Image

  1. Click the Insert image button in the toolbar

The insert image button

2. You can then either click and drag your image into the upload or box, or click the Choose a file button and select it from your own device, or your QMplus files, OneDrive or Dropbox.

3. You can resize your image, we would recommend anything under 900 to ensure it fits onto the page, without needing a scroll bar. Once you are happy with it, click Save image.

Don't forget to add Alt-text to your images, and to ensure you are not breaching copyright. You can download royalty free images from websites such as Pexels, Unsplash and Pixabay

Adding a link

You can add a link to your text, to do this:
  1. Highlight the text you want to link to
  2. Click the link button
The link button

3. Paste the URL into the Enter a URL box and click Create link

Adding a link to a file

You can also link to files, for example you may want to link to a lecture PowerPoint, there are two simple ways to do this.As before, highlight the text you want to link to,

Click the link buttonInstead of pasting a URL, click the pink Browse repositories buttonFrom the next screen you can choose to upload a file or search for one you have uploaded beforeWhen students click the link it will open the resource you have linked to.

However if you know you will be uploading multiple files across your book or courses, or you know you may want to edit them, searching for the files could become tedious to avoid this problem, you could use option 2.

Option 2: Link to hidden files in your course. 
  1. Ensure your files are in PDF format if they aren't going to be in a folder. (This method doesn't work for a non PDF document that has just been added on it's own to your course)
  2. Add your PDF or folder to your Moodle course as normal
  3. Open the document and copy the URL
  4. Click the three vertical dots to the right hand side of the resource and choose Make available but don't show on course page. (It will be visible to you when you have editing turned on, but not your students)
  5. Highlight the text, click the link button and paste this URL into the URL box.

To ensure your course is accessibility friendly, please use descriptive link text and set the linked resource to open in the same window. If you must open it in a new window, please add the text - (opens in new window) - directly after the link.