Please restore 7.1 Courses tool functionality which showed all Mobile Ed reading requirements

Mattillo said:

I wonder why they would take that away

Mobile Ed courses have two levels of resource content: 1) Resources that are truly required, that is, necessary in order to complete the course, and 2) resources that are suggested, but not required.

7.0 listed all of the resources referred to by the course regardless of whether they fall into category 1 or 2. This also caused confusion, because truthfully, if a resource contributes only one suggested reading, it's not really "required" for the course. Other users complained that they weren't seeing Mobile Ed courses that they ought to be able to take while skipping the suggested readings they don't own.

7.2 ships with an update that lets the course designer create a hand-picked list of truly required resources, leaving any others as incidental or bonus content. What's showing in the list of required resources now is this hand-picked list. 7.2 also lists all available courses for all users, broken into categories to show which ones you fully own resources for, which you partially own, and which you don't own at all. The intent of both these updates is to make it easier to select courses that mesh well with your library.

In making the information more focused on true requirements, it seems that we stopped showing some information that you-all found useful, so I agree that we should also list the additional resources, in another section, so we can show which ones you could purchase to get 100% coverage rather than just "required" coverage. That is now officially on our list of things to consider. Thanks (and sorry)!

RE: Showing all the courses In 7.2. I might be wrong about what ships when, because I tend to run internal versions and betas. Not at my desk. Will confirm tomorrow.

PetahChristian said:

Were you referring to the existing "Suggested Reading" and "See also" sections that show up both in the course segments and in the spreadsheets?

I would jump for joy if the Courses tool requirements used the same two levels to split up the requirements list, as I already make heavy use of that spreadsheet information outside of Logos, to plan resource purchases.

I'm referring to a general pattern not specific to any course or collection of courses. The Courses tool is a general-purpose platform intended to be a fitting container for every imaginable kind of educational content, not just Mobile Ed courses. I think the division of resources between "required" and "included but not required" is universal. Some Mobile Ed courses have a more specific division of the "included but not required" resources into "suggested" and "see also" which makes sense in that context, and I can imagine some future courses that might have four or five different ranks of connected resources. At some level, we have to let it be. You can, of course, always scan through the table of contents for a course and look for the lock icons.

PetahChristian said:

Is there any chance the # of Links could also make it into the course tool's requirements, so we could also identify which resources are most/least used?  Perhaps a Lexham Bible Dictionary (used 48 times) format?

That's a good idea.

PetahChristian said:

I only see Mobile.Ed courses that I own. I expected to also see courses I don't own, returning in 7.2, but there's no "Partially unavailable" or "Unavailable" sections for courseware. Is this a bug that needs to be reported?

We did a little bit of internal investigation, and you really should be seeing multiple headings and courses you don't own. If you go to Help | About, does Logos say that it's 7.2?

Disciple of Christ (doc) said:

This hand picked list is s poor decision for my needs, I don't want somebody who does not know me or what I want to get out of these courses determine what I should or should not see listed. Everything should be listed. Just because only one reading in the whole course comes from that resource does not mean that reading is not going to be valuable to me. I really don't understand how as designers you come up with some of these decisions. 

As I said, the mistake we made was to only show one of the two lists. That we can fix. (FWIW, we were responding to feedback from other users that listing EVERYTHING as required was causing them to skip over courses -- more importantly, causing us in some circumstances to de-list courses -- they could profitably take w/o having every book.)

I'm going to stick to my guns that the course designer has to decide what's core to the course objectives and what's incidental or bonus material. In my experience, having a required reading list and a suggested reading list is pretty standard publishing and pedagogical practice, and it's always intrinsic to the course and its objectives, which don't vary, and not the students' interests, which do.

FWIW, I'm super glad that everyone is getting a lot of good value out of the suggested readings.

Martin Folley said:

Logos Bible Software 7.2           7.2.0.0020

I can only see 'Available courses' ... 

Looks like a bug then. I'll get someone to follow up. Sorry about that!

PetahChristian said:

Prior to 7.2, it was very easy to buy missing resources for courseware right within Logos, before starting a courseware plan.

In 7.2, the only required resource now listed for a course is the courseware itself. All the readings are no longer listed in the requirements list.

Would you please restore the prior behavior, to let us again see which resources we have (or need) for any courseware we own.

On an unrelated note, would you also please restore showing courses we don't own, and list them under the "Unavailable" heading?

Thank you for your consideration!

PetahChristian,

This was added back in for 7.3 (7.3.0.0031)