​It is something that happens every year on SUNLearn, when the new year's modules are created, the content is transferred and the staff are enrolled, all to be ready and in place for when the students start registering and get access to their online module content.

But how does the process work?

Some of you may remember a questionnaire that was send out a few years ago. In this questionnaire staff were asked to list all their courses with a SUNLearn presence, to indicate whether the content had to be copied to the following year's module, and to include any colleagues that also must be given access. The team then had to go through the list, one by and manually do the rollover for that one module, complete the requirements, before moving on to the next module or request.

As you can imagine, this process took the team a very long time to complete. In fact, the biggest delay was late requests; about a third of the rollover requests were placed after the new year had already started. The team therefore decided to automate the process.

SUNLearn, or rather, the software Moodle, has a function where you can batch create modules in bulk and transfer content from an indicated source module. We investigated this function for mass module content transfer, and it worked surprisingly well. What it entails is to set up a file with a list of target codes of the following year, and a list of source codes from the current year. You upload the list to the system and wait it out. Once the system has processed the file, the indicated source modules' content has been transferred to the target modules.

Making use of this process has allowed us to complete the rollover process in a matter of weeks instead of months.

The final step is to draw a list of staff as they are currently enrolled and to enrol them to the corresponding modules for the following year and rollover is completed.

More information about the 2021-2022 rollover will be posted on the SUNLearn website. ​