Emurse allows creators to import lists of vocabulary and phrases into term lists. Term lists power Emurse lessons and allow creators to quickly build many different instructional experiences from a single list of terms. Each translation entered is associated with an entry. An entry is a piece of text and a language, one or many translations can be associated with an entry.
Terms are imported into Emurse via pasting data from a spreadsheet like Google Docs or Excel. There are a few built in fields and the creator has the ability to define their own fields to meet the needs of their course.
Built in Fields
| Field | Purpose | |
|---|---|---|
| Text | The text of the word or phrase in the language being studied | |
| Translation | The translation in the learner's native language. | |
| Audio | import only | The file-name of the audio file being imported. This field is not persisted. It is used during the import to determine which audio file to use when multiple files are dragged into the importer. |
Custom Fields
Custom fields can be added to terms by creators. The custom fields can be anything you want to add to a term. It can be a single item or a list of items. Examples of custom fields:
- Verb conjugations
- A list of chapters in a book where the term is used
- A list of tags that help describe the term
- Category or categories
- Term reading
- IPA pronunciation
- hiragana text (for a Japanese word written in Kanji)
- Pinyin
List Fields
List fields are a special type of custom field that can be added through the bulk import process. List fields can be text, term placeholders or object data. The field data is separated by commas. Square brackets "[]" are appended to the end of the column name to tell the importer it is a list, and not plain text. For example:
text meta.related.minimal_pairs[]
rat bat,pat,mat,cat
sat tat,bat,bat,mat
Object Fields
Object fields let the importer know that the field to be imported is data encoded as JSON. Tab characters should be removed before importing. To indicate a field is an object, append curly braces "{}" to the end of the column name.
Best Practices
- Group like terms into Term lists
- Limiting term lists to a few hundred terms will make the list easier to manage and quicker to load.
- If you've already added a term to Emurse, do not re-add it or re-import it, add the existing term.
Recording Audio
Recording Audio can be done in the creator dashboard or in an external application. You can upload a file in the "Record Audio" view. Multiple recordings can exist for a translation. Use the toolbar above the list of items to select the parameters for what your are recording (speaker, tempo, etc).
To upload multiple files at a time, you may use the special "audio" column name in your import data to indicate the file name that will be uploaded. Drag the files you want to upload into the view. The active recording will be updated, if there is none a new one will be added.
Bulk Updates of Existing Audio
Bulk updates to audio can be made in the same way as an initial import. If a recording is currently selected, it will be overwritten. If you need to update/add several different kinds of recordings, it can be done by running a new bulk update for each set of recordings.
For example, if you want to update both the "slow" tempo recordings and the "normal tempo recordings - you would go through the bulk update process twice: once for slow and then again normal.
No recordings are saved until you press the "Save" button.
Importing Custom Fields
To import a custom field, it is prefixed with the text "meta." It is good practice to divide like fields up into groups. For example, in the Japanese Phonetics course, we display a simplified graph of the pitch accent as well as the category it falls into. In the spreadsheet, the fields could be named meta.pitch.graph and meta.pitch.category.
Updating & Bulk Updating Existing Terms
It is straightforward to update existing terms. Small numbers of edits can be done the Creator Dashboard. If you have a larger number of terms to update, those updates can be done in bulk.
The bulk update process is as follows:
- Use the "Download" button inside "Edit Term List" to download a tab-delimited version of the file or copy to the clipboard.
- Use a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets to edit what you want to update. The "tid" column is used to determine the term to update. Remove any other columns and rows that you do not want to update.
- Make your updates. Note: Deleting the value from a meta field will remove the value from the term.
- Select "Import Text" from the "Actions" menu. Paste in the text you want to update, including the column headings. Check the "Update Existing" checkbox and other settings as appropriate. You will have a chance to preview your changes before you complete the process. Nothing will be updated until you press the "save" button.
Adding Existing Terms
If you want to share terms between term lists, you can use the "Add Existing Terms" button inside "Edit Term List". This will allow you to look up one or more terms by term text. Place each term on a separate line. You can also perform a more granular search using the "search" option or select terms from another term list using the "browse" button.
Adding Related Terms
To add related terms, you first need to add the placeholder information that will later be linked to the term. This placeholder information can be either the text or the tid (term id) or the term that you want to relate.
Once you've added the placeholder term information, you can start "Add Related Terms" from the "Actions" menu. Only terms on the term list being edited will be suggested as replacements. You will be able to review your changes before you complete the process. Nothing will be updated until you press the "save" button.