The sharing cart feature in QMplus provides an easy way to copy content from one QMplus area to another. You can copy resources, such as files, web links or books and you can also copy activities such as forums, glossaries, quizzes and databases. You can also copy whole topic sections at once.

For some activities, you will be given the option to copy user data associated with the activity. e.g. if you have a glossary or a forum which students have contributed items to, you will be able to copy the user content. You are not able to copy data such as assignment submissions or quiz attempts.

N.B. There are a number of content types that you should not use the sharing cart for:

• Assignments which use Turnitin – You should not use the sharing cart to copy assignments which use Turnitin as this is likely to cause issues with the Turnitin integration.
• H5P/Interactive content – You should also not use the sharing cart to copy H5P/Interactive Content activities.

Enabling the sharing cart

The sharing cart is a QMplus block. Once you have added it to a page, it becomes your sharing cart and you will see it on every page where you have editing access. Students and other staff members will not be able to see your personal sharing cart.

To add the block, click the pencil icon in the top right of your course area to turn editing on.

Next, click on the burger menu (three horizontal lines) on the top left corner of the page to expand the pink menu panel. Scroll to the bottom of the list and choose ‘add a block’. Select ‘Sharing Cart’ from the pop up menu.

Once you have downloaded the block, it will appear on the right hand side of the page. You may need to scroll down to find it.

Putting items into your cart

Once you have enabled the sharing cart block, you will find that individual items and whole sections in your QMplus area have a Shopping Basket icon. To copy the item into your cart, click this icon.

You will see the item appear in your sharing cart block.

If you have copied a whole topic, that will appear as a folder in your sharing cart. You can click on the folder to see the contents. You can also copy a whole topic by selecting it in the drop down menu in the sharing cart block and clicking on the Copy section button.

Depending on the type of item you are copying you may be asked whether you wish to copy user data. For example, if you have used a glossary activity to allow students to build a shared resource, you can choose to copy that activity, along with all the entries, into another QMplus area where it can continue to be built on.

Copying items out of your cart

To copy items from your cart into another QMplus area, navigate to the appropriate area and turn editing on as explained previously. You will see the sharing cart block with all of your content in it. Click on the copy icon next to the item in your cart which you wish to copy.

You will see some rectangles with dotted lines appearing in various places in your QMplus area. These indicate where you can put your copied item.

Click on the place you wish to copy the item to. It is only possible to place the item at the end of a topic, if you don’t want it there, you will have to move it again after copying it.

If you have chosen to copy a whole topic, you will be asked what name you want to use for the topic.

If you want to copy individual items from a topic instead of the whole topic, click the folder to open it and then select the copy icon next to the item you want to copy.

Cancelling a copy

If you’ve clicked the copy icon but then decide you don’t want to complete the copy process, you can cancel it by using the icon that you will find at the top of the course page.

Deleting items from your cart

When you have finished copying your content from one place to another, we recommend that you delete the items from your cart completely. Your sharing cart takes up storage space and we may run into difficulty if people keep storing large amounts of data in their cart.

You can delete individual items by clicking the trash can icon next to them.

Clicking the trash can icon next to a folder will delete all the items in that folder. You can open the folder and delete individual items from it.

You can also bulk delete items from your sharing cart by clicking on the cog icon and selecting the Bulk delete option.

You can then select the items you want to delete…or choose to delete everything.

Organising your cart

There are a couple of features which allow you to organise your sharing cart:

• You can re-order items in the list
• You can put items into folders

Clicking the Move icon allows you to move an item to a different position in the list of items.

You can then click where you wish to move the item to.

If you want to cancel the move, you can click on the cancel icon to the right of the item you are moving.

You can also create a simple folder structure and place items into the folders. Click on the arrow icon next to the item you wish to put into a folder.

Click on the drop-down list to move the item to an existing folder.

Or type into the text box to create a new folder.

Things to keep in mind

Some things that are worth bearing in mind when using the sharing cart:

• You can’t share your sharing cart – The sharing cart is a personal area. Users cannot see the contents of each other’s sharing carts. This may be slightly inconvenient if you have a large course team.
• You can’t stop other teachers from copying content – If someone has teacher or course administrator access to your QMplus area, they can copy any items from that area into their own sharing cart
• It creates copies of items – When you put something into your cart, you create a copy of it. There is no link between the original and the copy. If you update the original, the changes are not reflected in the copy. Similarly, when you transfer something out of your cart, you create a copy. This does also mean that deleting copies has no effect on the originals, i.e. deleting something from your cart will not delete the item anywhere else. So don’t be afraid of emptying your cart!
• The cart is meant as a temporary storage area – The sharing cart is meant to be used as temporary storage while you move things from place to place. It is not intended to be used for long term storage or backup purposes. We recommend that you empty your cart when you are finished. If we find that the sharing cart feature is being used to store large amounts of data across long time periods we may have to review its use.
• Copying large numbers of items can take time – If you choose to copy whole topics with lots and lots of content in them, the process of copying things into, and out of, your sharing cart may take some time. Be patient until the process completes.

An important note about H5P/Interactive Content

The sharing cart does not work with the H5P/Interactive Content activity. If you try to use it to copy this content, you will find that the copy process never completes. If you want to copy a whole topic which has H5P content in it, we recommend you move it out of the topic before copying the topic into your sharing cart and then move it back in to the topic afterwards.

If you need to copy an H5P/Interactive Content activity from one QMplus area to another, we recommend that you use the import/export function within the activity itself.

See our guide on Creating interactive activities with H5P for more information.