Documentation:Learning Environment/Moodle Exploration

edit   Learning Environment Exploration This page documents the exploration of the capabilities of Moodle to enhance the student learning experience. A small closed development environment has been created to try out various tools and themes that might enhance the student experience. Moodle Development Install: 2.8.2

edit   Moodle Plugins Plugin Name Purpose/Utility Comment Adobe Connect Provides an activity level integration between Moodle and Adobe Connect Pro Not a product that is used. Attendance Plugin Part of Set called Attendance Not a typical functional issue, will not be loaded at moment. Banner/Luminis Mesage Broker Process courses, users, and enrollments out of SunGard HE/Ellucian Banner. Includes support for realtime notifications from Luminis Message Broker. Potentially relevant to IT BigBlueButton Plugin Web conferencing connection Installed Certificate This module allows for the dynamic generation of certificates based on predefined conditions set by the teacher. Currently not available for 2.8 Email-based Self-registration Provides email-based self-registration with admin confirmation instead of user confirmation. Currently not available for 2.8 Face-to-face Plugin To help manage sessions where registration is required/Event Management Not typical course scenario, will not be loaded at moment. Mobile Identity Verification Plugin Custom plugin by Lambda solutions Paid plugin. Not available on Moodle site Moodle Welcome Plugin Sends a welcome message to new users, sends a notification to a moderator of the new user creation Future interest??? My Grades Report Plugin A Moodle Report that shows all user grades in all courses Currently not available for 2.8, future interest Progress Bar Plugin A time management tool for you and your students Installed SAML Authentication Plugin SAML Authentication plugin based on the simplesamlphp software. (Also install the SAML Enrolment plugin if you want auto-enrol based on SAML) More an IT focused plugin, will not currently install Subcourse Plugin The module provides very simple yet useful functionality. When added into a course, it behaves as a graded activity. The grade for each student is took from a final grade in another course. This allows course designers to organize the learning content into separate units. Future use?? will not load. Vericite Plugin Plagarism detector, requires subscription Future desire??? Webinar Plugin For use with Adobe Connect only Currently not of interest, will not be loaded. Checklist Set (Block/Module) creates interactive checklist Installed Course Checks Block This block carries out a number of automated checks on a course, to encourage a minimum standard of course quality, avoid common mistakes and highlight possible areas for improvement. The block also allows for a course to be cleared of empty sections. Installed Collapsed Topics An interchangeable topic or week based format that solves the issue of the 'Scroll of Death' when a course has many topics. Installed RecordingsBN Access and manage your BigBlueButton recordings Installed Journal This module allows a teacher to ask students to reflect on a particular topic. The students can edit and refine their answer over time. Installed CourseFeedback This Block intends to give the system administrators a tool for forced evaluation of a course (or other facts). System administrators can define a set of textual questions, which can be rated from students. Installed Grade Me Shows a teacher all of the assignments and manual quiz questions (essays and file responses) that have been submitted, but not graded. Installed Flexpage Provides complete control over how content is presented. Not yet supported for 2.8 Collapsible regions Easy way to create collapsible regions within descriptions and text for Moodle. Installed MyDay The MyDay Moodle app links an existing Moodle installation to SharePoint. Once the app is installed it guides an administrator through the process of setting up their Moodle installation to talk to the app. All the administrator needs to do it fill out a couple of fields then copy some files into Moodle that the app generates Under Investigation Moodle and Microsoft This page provides guidance on how to use Moodle, an open source course management system for educators, with Office 365’s popular productivity tools and services. Under Investigation OneDrive The Microsoft OneDrive repository (formerly known as Skydrive) allows you to access your documents from Microsoft OneDrive within Moodle. Under Investigation Ad-hoc database queries This report plugin allows Administrators to set up arbitrary database queries to act as ad-hoc reports. Reports can be of two types, either run on demand, or scheduled to run automatically. Other users with the right capability can go in and see a list of queries that they have access to. Results can be viewed on-screen or downloaded as CSV. Installed GISMO GISMO, a graphical interactive student monitoring and tracking system that extracts tracking data from an online course maintained with Moodle, and generates graphical representations that can be explored by course instructors. Installed Overview statistics Produces various site and course report charts. The code has been designed in a way that makes adding more reports easy. Installed Timestat Timestat block measures users real activity time. Time is increased only when Moodle tab is active in browser. Installed Enrolment Timer Block to show the user their remaining time enrolled in a course with live countdown and lots of settings to customise the display of this timer. Installed Experience Points (XP) The Experience Point (XP) set contains gamification-style plugins working with experience points given to the students. Installed Stamp Collection The Stamp collection module allows a teacher to give "stamps" (i.e. picture with a comment) to students so they collect these stamps. The activity can be used in many ways, such as motivative bonus marks, absence marks, certification records etc. Installed Mahara Assignment Submission Plugin Allows grading of Mahara portfolio pages & collections in Moodle. Installed - not set up Mahara Assignment Feedback Plugin An optional (but recommended!) addition to the Mahara Assignment Submission plugin. This plugin allows Moodle to automatically unlock submitted Mahara portfolio pages & collections after grading. Installed - not set up Grid Format Layout A modular and visual course format. Hides all topics and creates a grid of icons (one for each topic) with short titles. Clicking on an icon brings up the content from the corresponding topic. Installed One Topic Layout Format to course that allows showing each topic in a tab, keeping the current tab between calls to resources, in such a way that when it returns from a module as the blog or the glossary it returns to tab from where you started. This format is based on the Moodle standard format: “Topics”. It accepts edition by AJAX. Installed Flex Sections Organises course content in any number of sections that can be nested. Each section can be displayed expanded or collapsed Installed Epubexport Moodle plugin which adds EPUB v3 export functionality to the Book plugin. Installed Other Tools: Intelliboard.net analytical tool : Commercial Analytics - http://www.intelliboard.net/ Cost Ephorus Plagiarism : Plagiarism tools Moodle Wishlist of Features Relative date setup - activities based on enrollment date Request in to Moodle.org see: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-48185 Should Reads University of Sussex blog - getting to essence of Moodle. edit   Moodle Themes Name Status Aardvark Installed Bootstrap 3 Installed Bootstrap Base Installed Clean Installed Elegance Installed Essential Installed More Installed evolve-D Installed Shoehorn Installed edit   Moodle LTI A potentially useful listing of LTI's: http://developers.imsglobal.org/catalog.html Name Status WordPress Described here Stalled due to coding issues because of version updates, will be monitored. Example Example Example Example Example Example Example Example Example Example edit   Moodle Settings edit   Moodle Tech Questions Registering an external blog. When I put in the feed address of my blog, I receive a "invalid feed address" message. I know the feed address works because it is used on other contexts. Error caused by fact this is an internal server and is not setup to make this type of connection. Will be trying test with a WordPress install on same server. When editing text, in the elegance theme, when I expand the edit box, it overlaps with the second column and then become non-responsive. Kind of a pain. May be caused by theme not yet being fully 2.8 compliant After using a label, there is default spacing underneath the label that is relatively large compared to space above. Visually, this makes the label appear related to the information above rather then below. It would take a programmer to change this code. Will need a more detailed description/screen shot as the type of text can cause change. Paragraph text close to top while H1 much further down. When trying the bring Big Blue Box into my course, I get a 505 Server Error. Result of not being an externally connected server. Will not be able to test until on server that has external security settings edit   Moodle Useful Links http://opensource.com/education/12/1/designing-aesthetically-pleasing-moodle-courses http://iy103-w14.hibbittsdesign.com/course/view.php?id=2 Discussions on Moodle file structure: http://mattcornock.co.uk/moodle/moodle-2-file-repository-course-files http://www.somerandomthoughts.com/blog/2010/06/15/ftp-files-into-moodle-2-0-with-the-repository-api/ https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=168868#p741355 https://docs.moodle.org/28/en/File_system_repository edit   Mahara Exploration List of available Mahara plugins: https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Plugins https://moodle.org/plugins/view/assignsubmission_mahara YouTube video showing several plugins you can add to your Mahara site, and explains how to use them. These include: Continuing Professional Development, My Learing, Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet, LinkedIn Profile Page, Linkedin Share, Add this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpwzvm07irg