20 ideas for moodle daniel mc sweeney + kyle goslin

20 Moodle ImprovementsDaniel McSweeney – Kyle Goslin

1 Real-time trending course contentProvide an insight to course material that students arereally interested in. Could shine a light on material other students missed. Lazy students will know something is up when they see a surge in activity.

2 Advanced fine-grained logging framework* Push the existing logging framework one step further. Add hooks into existing modules Simple API to allow integration Unseen levels of data produced* May need a lot of power

3 Stripped down “Mother Proof” interface Prevent our “older” companions from getting overwhelmed with the amount of links and options available. BIG fonts, Simple colours. Simple terminology Login?!? You mean “Let me in to that there page”

4Virtual eyes / Poke Similar concept to facebook poke feature Small set of eyes appear Student knows your watching them and better get going with that work…

5Open online usage monitor Students can see how long they have each been online for. Idle time not counted, only actual usage. At the end of the semester, graph pass rate to usage monitor. Can be used as evidence in exam boards.

6 Integrated … to PDF renderer Similar to gmail functionality Allow any file type that has a general text layout to be rendered and downloaded as a PDF. If the student does not have .docx / .doc / .rtf …… viewer, they can just convert to PDF.

73 Life System Student has 3 lives. If the student misses deadlines for submissions they automatically loose a life. If the student looses 3 lives they automatically are summoned for a face to face progress meeting.

8 Integrated social bookmarking Combination of module and browser plugin Imagine finding a website or resource you like  Booking marking by relating it to a moodle course and even a topic/section of that course  Your bookmarks and other learners bookmarks can be visible to all course learners  Think of Moodle integrated with Delicious  Moodle meets informal group/social learning

9 Improved User Interface Can a user tell the difference between Moodle 1.0 and 2.0 in terms of look and feel. Has it changed much in the last 8 years Can we make use of more AJAX functionality and HTML 5? Can we speed up use and basic operations for all users.

10 Simplify the Gradebook I get nosebleeds. Can we simplify the gradebook and divide the functionality into easier to understand components. It is by far the most difficult component to train staff to use. Is there an argument for a basic grade tool and an advanced?

11 Assessment load balancer A failing of many higher education courses is an inability to schedule assessment across modules without causing overlap and periods of excessive workload. Can we expand the assignment types to allow staff to estimate the amount of time it will take to complete an assignment. Can we also allow course owners to set the weekly workload for a module. Moodle can then report on assignment clashes and periods of excessive workload.

12 Student performance monitor Another failing of many higher education courses is an inability to spot a student failing a number of modules. Can we develop an integrated alert system when a student has failed a certain % of assignments or has not submitted.

13 Backup to repository Allow moodle users to add a backup repository to their user profiles (e.g. dropbox) Automate course backups to to repositories.

14 Anonymous Usage for some Activities There are instances when we may want to allow users to use activities in an anonymous guise  Questionnaires  Votes  Feedback  Forum postings  Assignment submissions  Peer review

15 Enhanced Student profile Students tend to move upwards in third level across programme boards. Not unusual to be managed by 20+ academic staff over course of 4 years of study. Require a student information zone. Details on  Academic performance, attitude, behavior etc.  Medical needs  Learning needs  Past incidents etc.

16 Core Attendance Feature Moodle is a course management system with no core feature for managing real world attendance. Issues with two existing modules. Link attendance to previously suggested student profile feature.

17 Cross server backup and restore Many larger institutions take a snapshot of their moodle server and archive it (write protected) Allow moodle courses to be backed to another moodle instance. Allow moodle courses to be restored or migrated from another moodle instance. Allow restore files to exceed course file upload limit. Make migrations easier!!!!

18 Citation Manager for Moodle Perhaps this is outgrowing the VLE Useful to allow students to gather and manage citations in one central location. Moodle would be perfect! Could be linked to assignment submissions, peer sharing and review etc.

19 Make this a resource! Sometimes you receive a student submission or assignment that you would like to highlight or add to your module as a good example.  Example to other students  All students to vote for submisisons etc What about a ‘make this a resource’ button which would copy the submission to the file area and allow you to give it a title etc.

20 Suggestions for Moodle.org Make it easier for people to suggest improvements (non tracker based) Allow rating of modules Show a list of top modules Show modules by  Download  Popularity  Age etc Keep up the amazing work!!!

CONTACT DETAILSDANIEL MCSWEENEYInstitute of Technology BlanchardstownDaniel.mcsweeney at itb.ieTwitter: @DanielMcSweeneyKYLE GOSLINInstitute of Technology BlanchardstownKylegoslin at gmail.comTwitter: @kylegoslin

20 ideas for moodle daniel mc sweeney + kyle goslin

by Ireland & UK Moodlemoot 2012

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