Glossary Entry as Tip of the Day

Would you like to engage your students with a daily tip or a weekly puzzle? Use a glossary in combination with the “Random glossary entry…” block.

You can find information on creating and configuring a glossary activity here: Creating a Glossary

With the “Random glossary entry…” block, you can display changing content from a glossary directly in a block in your course room. The selection of displayed entries is more or less random, depending on the configuration.

To add the block, switch to editing mode in your course by using the switch at the top right. Then, click on the gray arrow to open the right block menu and click on “Add a block”. From the list that opens, choose “Random glossary entry…”.

After that you will be taken directly to the block settings, where you can choose the following options for the glossary entry:

Title:	The title of the block. Choose a meaningful title, such as “Word of the Day”.
Take entries from this glossary:	Select the glossary that will serve as the source for the displayed entries.
Days before a new entry is chosen:	Enter the interval in days after which a new entry will be displayed in the block. The value is equivalent to a daily interval. With a value of 1, a new entry is displayed daily, with 7, weekly. The default setting of 0 causes a new entry to be displayed with every page load. This setting is also useful for testing, as it allows you to check the display order of the entries simply by refreshing the page.
How a new entry is chosen:	Here you can control how the entries displayed in the block are selected. This allows you to enforce a specific order, such as displaying sequential entries in a desired order. Random entry selects a new entry entirely at random from all entries. Last modified entry always displays the entry that was last created or modified. In this case, the duration setting becomes irrelevant. Next entry selects the next entry based on the order in which they were created. Alphabetical order displays the entries in alphabetical order. You can also make use of this by numbering the entries to determine the order yourself.
Show concept (heading) for each entry	Here you can control whether the heading of the glossary entry is displayed in the block or just the definition.

Example: Block Settings for a “Word of the Day”

With the additional settings, you can also determine whether students will see extra text or a link to the glossary in the block. If you want to completely disable this, simply delete the entered texts.