Configuration Options: Enabling Course Files

Configuration Options: Enabling Course Files

Synopsis

The Files feature allows users to upload artifacts to courses in Concourse; any file type can be uploaded, including documents and images, with the limit of 100MB of storage per course. This feature is not intended to substitute for files that are uploaded to the Learning Management System; it should only be used to store files relevant to the syllabus. 

Files can be enabled whether a Concourse system uses structured (templates) or unstructured (uploaded files) syllabi. In this context, “files” does not refer to uploaded syllabi but to related artifacts. In structured Concourse systems, uploaded files can be attached to specific syllabus items to provide students and other viewers with integral information, context, or documentation related to the specific syllabus item.

Key Terms

  1. Course: The artifact in Concourse that contains the syllabus; users are registered to the course, not the syllabus.
  2. Syllabus: The main resource in a course in Concourse; the syllabus can be either structured or unstructured and contains course content, language, and policies. 
  3. Files: The collection of course files that have been uploaded to Concourse.
  4. Group Permissions: Each user group’s ability to manage or view course files is managed by domain administrators at the individual syllabus level or en masse.

Important to this Decision

Before making decisions about how your institution uses Concourse, you should consider how stakeholders, systems, timelines, and other factors are impacted. Review the important elements below to be better prepared to make changes to your Concourse configuration or implementation.
Key Players
Academic leaders and staff whose work is related to accreditation and compliance should be consulted when making this decision.
Consideration
When the Files feature is enabled, group permissions can be set to allow users to upload files to courses and view course files. 
Timing
Files can be enabled at any time. If end users are expected to upload artifacts to courses, it is recommended that using the Files feature be included in training materials and presentations.
Connected Systems & Locations
The Files feature is enabled at the system level, but permission to use Files can be controlled more granularly; permission to upload and view Files is set per group per course. Artifacts uploaded to Files are specific to each course; when template syllabi are cloned to create section (live) syllabi, Files uploaded to the template course are NOT included in the cloning process.
Method
To enable Files in your Concourse system, let your implementation team know. If your institution has completed the implementation process, you can email support@campusconcourse.com to make the request.
Motivation & Impact
The Files feature is useful for associating important course documents, such as waivers, forms, or acknowledgment statements, with the syllabus while not increasing the syllabus length. This feature is not intended to replace the ability to upload files in the LMS; files not directly relevant to the syllabus experience should be stored elsewhere.

Configuration Options

By default, the Files feature is enabled in Concourse sandboxes but disabled in Concourse production environments. Feel free to try out the Files feature in your sandbox environment to get a better sense of how it operates. Your institution may choose:
  1. Option A: Enable the Files Feature in your Production Environment
  2. Option B: Don’t Enable the Files Feature in your Production Environment
If you have questions about enabling or disabling the Files feature after reading the options below, reach out to Client Services for guidance.
Option A: Enable the Files Feature in your Production Environment
  1. Approach: To enable Files in production, alert Client Services that you would like to opt into this feature. A member of Team Concourse will update your configuration settings and then Files will be accessible on a system-wide level. Files can then be uploaded to all courses in the system. Access to edit or view files can be set system-wide using group permissions.
  2. Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that use external documents as required course artifacts.
  3. Effort: The time investment required for enabling the Files feature is minimal; a decision-maker on your Concourse team just has to submit a request to Team Concourse to update the configuration setting. Note that training materials should be updated to ensure that end users understand how to engage with this feature; the time required to update training materials is likely under an hour.
Advantages of Enabling the Files Feature
Disadvantages of Enabling the Files Feature
The Files feature only has to be enabled once and all courses in your system can use the feature.
Files cannot be uploaded via feed; files are managed manually on a course-by-course basis.
Domain administrators and editors can manage files during the syllabus development and review processes.
Files uploaded to templates are not reproduced in the cloning process, so files must be added to each course individually. 
With Files, lengthy documents can be uploaded to courses and attached to syllabus items, thus ensuring content accuracy and compliance without making syllabi prohibitively long for users.
Files are not a reportable component of Concourse courses; as a result, reviewing and reporting upon content in Files must be done manually.
Option B: Don’t Enable the Files Feature in your Production Environment
  1. Approach: The Files feature is disabled in your Concourse system by default. If you choose to leave this default setting in place, no action is required. If you leave the Files feature disabled, you may want to discuss protocols for linking to or including external documents in syllabi to result in the most efficient review and reporting processes for your system.
  2. Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that choose to limit the content that can be added to or edited in the syllabus for quality assurance and compliance purposes; typically, these institutions also employ robust reporting processes that the implementation of Files could challenge or disrupt.
  3. Effort: The time investment required for disabling the Files feature is minimal; the Files feature is disabled by default, so your team does not need to take any action if you do not want the Files feature available in your system. 
Advantages of Not Enabling the Files Feature
Disadvantages of Not Enabling the Files Feature
If Files are disabled, then all course-related content should be present in syllabi; as a result, manually reviewing files isn’t necessary.
If Files are disabled, editors and instructors can still add links to external sources to their syllabus items, and a manual review of those resources may be necessary after all.
If all content is created in Concourse instead of via external tools, there is no need to manually review Files for accessibility compliance.
If external sources are linked in syllabus items, a manual accessibility review of those elements is still necessary.
If the Files feature is disabled, then there is no need to update or create new training materials to help users learn about the feature.
Without an easy way to upload external documents, syllabus editors and instructors may choose to either omit important documents or paste large amounts of content directly from external documents into the syllabus, thus making the syllabus more challenging for students to use.

Post-Decision Changes

Your institution’s needs may change over time and you may need to make changes to your configuration settings. In other words, the configuration decisions you make during the implementation phase might not be as efficient five or ten years afterward. Review the guidance below to better understand how changing this particular decision may affect your Concourse system or deployment in the future.
Enabling Files Later
If your institution decides to enable Files at some point, you will need to update training materials and socialize the intended use and expectations for Files to syllabus editors. Enabling the Files feature will not disrupt your existing system data in any way.
Disabling Files Later
If your institution initially decides to enable Files but later disables the feature, files that were previously uploaded to courses will no longer be accessible to any user groups. If the material uploaded to course files is important and needs to be accessible moving forward, course files will have to be manually downloaded and stored in an external repository for posterity.

Related Topics

Before making a decision about enabling the Files feature, you should be familiar with some related issues and contexts. See the following articles for more information:
  1. Learn about Concourse’s Bandwidth and File Storage Limitations.
  2. Learn about Setting Group Permissions to allow or restrict access to Course Files for specific user groups.
  3. See our VPAT for more context about Concourse’s platform Accessibility Features and Conformance.

Tell Us About Your Experience

Did this article answer your question? If you made a decision like this for your Concourse instance, let us know how it turned out. If we missed something in this article or if you have a question that isn’t addressed in our Knowledge Base, let us know how we can help by reaching out to support@campusconcourse.com. 

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