Sowiso offers a variety of ready-made courses, which include theory pages and exercise packages. Some of the Sowiso users prefer to make changes to theory pages and exercises (for example, different wording). To achieve this, users can create their own copies of Sowiso materials and make changes to them.
🎥 Watch a video on our YouTube channel, explaining the whole process:
❗Please note: If you notice an error in an exercise, please contact our support team. We would like to fix this error for everyone, so our team will fix the original exercise, and the changes will reflect for all the users of that exercise.
💡Although this article focuses on exercises, you can adjust this process and make changes to a theory page as well. In that case, you would follow steps 1, 2, then break the link to the original theory page, make changes, and go to step 6.
We will follow these six steps:
- Get proper access
- Copy the chapter
- Copy the exercise
- Make changes to the exercise
- Add the exercise to your chapter
- Replace the old chapter with a new one
Get proper access
You will need to have certain level of access in order to edit Sowiso-made material. You will need a read/copy level author access to the Sowiso author group where the material is located. Additionally, you will need writing access in your own author group. To get access to a Sowiso author group, please contact our support team.
Copy the chapter
❗Please note: once you make your own copy of the chapter, you won't be able to receive any updates that our authoring team makes on that chapter.
In order to copy your chapter, you will first need to find the exact chapter in the authoring environment. It might be possible to find the chapter by its name, but the name is not always unique. Therefore, it's best to use the chapter ID.
To find the chapter ID, go to the "Teacher" tab, and then to "Course material". Hover over the chapter name to see its ID.
Watch a quick video on how to find the exact chapter you need to copy:
Now that you have your chapter ID, you can find your chapter and make a copy of it. Go to the "Author" tab, and then to "Chapter". Put in the chapter ID in the search bar.
Please note: If you aren't able to find the chapter using its ID, you likely don't have access to the correct author group. Please contact our support team to request access.
Once you find your chapter, click on the "Copy" symbol. This action will take some time, so don't click away from the page until the new chapter has loaded.
❗Please note: Once you create your own copy of the chapter, your students' progress won't transfer to this new version of the chapter. It will look like they never solved any exercises in the new chapter, even if it's the exact copy.
Watch a quick video:
Copy the exercise
Sowiso follows a certain content structure. When you copy a chapter, you will get a new version of your chapter, subchapter, theory pages and exercise packages. The exercises will not be copied over. Those will be the same original exercises from the original course. You will not be able to edit those.
This is why you will need to create a separate copy of the exact exercise(s) you wish to edit.
If you still have the new chapter you just created open in front of you, you can find the exercise in your material and right-click on it, and choose "Edit". The exercise will open up in a new tab. You won't be able to actually edit the exercise, as it will belong to a Sowiso author group where you only have read/copy access, but you will be able to copy it. Click on the "Copy" icon in the upper right corner.
If you don't have the chapter open anymore, you can find the exercise you wish to copy on the home page. When you open the exercise, you will see the exercise ID next to the title. You can use this ID to search for the exercise under "Author", "Exercise".
Make changes to the exercise
Now you can make the changes to your own version of the Sowiso-made exercise. Make sure to change all the relevant fields, otherwise students might see some of the old parts of the exercise. Also, if your students are using Sowiso in multiple languages, make sure to make the changes in all those languages.
Click "Save" for each field that you change. Once you are done making changes, click on "View exercise" in the upper right to preview it.
Add the exercise to your chapter
Now that we have the new version of the chapter, and a new version of the exercise, we can combine the two. It's easiest to do this if you have both the new chapter and the new exercise open.
With the chapter editor open, find the exercise package where your exercise is located. Right-click on the package and choose "Edit".
In the new window, you will see all the exercises in your package on the left side. Remove the old exercise by clicking on the "X" symbol. Then, look for your new exercise by searching for its ID in the search bar on the right side of the screen. Click on the "Plus" symbol to add it to your package.
Replace the old chapter with a new one
As the last step, we will remove the old chapter from the course material, and add a new one. To do that, go to the "Teacher" tab, and then to "Course material". Remove the old chapter by right-clicking on it and choosing "Remove".
Then, use the search bar on the right side of the screen to look for the new chapter, using its name. If there are multiple results showing up, hover over the chapter names to find the one with the correct chapter ID. Right-click on it and then click on "Add". The chapter will be added at the end of the course material list, but you cna drag-and-drop it to the correct place.