This document outlines a senior project to add social networking features to Moodle forums. It defines problems with Moodle's current forum functionality and lack of community building. Use cases are presented for posting comments and searching forums. The system will be built using open source tools like LAMP stack and integrate with Moodle and Facebook. It addresses authentication, authorization, and privacy considerations. Test cases are described to validate the post comment functionality on mobile devices under sunny and rainy day conditions.
Beyond Boundaries: Leveraging No-Code Solutions for Industry Innovation
VMoodle Social Presentation
1. Karen Fernandez:
Front-end developer and test engineer
Gregory Jean-Baptiste:
Back-end developer and test engineer
CIS 4911 Senior Project
School of Computing and Information Sciences
Florida International University
Dr. Ming Zhao:
Mentor
2. PROBLEM DEFINITION
• Moodle forums lack many features found in social networks that
would be useful for helping students learn better
• Moodle does not encourage social interaction between users,
which keeps it from effectively building a community of learning.
• Much information about students cannot be discerned from purely
classroom interactions. While Moodle is not intended for that, it
would be valuable information for educators.
4. USE CASE #7: POST COMMENT
Entry condition: User must be logged in and on comments View.
Actors: Authenticated students and professors
Flow of Events:
1. Click “Reply” on a comment.
5. USE CASE #7: POST COMMENT
2. System displays pop-up post comment dialog box.
3. User writes reply on comment box and clicks “Post”.
6. USE CASE #7: POST COMMENT
4. System displays a confirmation dialog.
7. USE CASE #7: POST COMMENT
5. System notifies classmates a new comment has been posted.
8. USE CASE #7: POST COMMENT
Alternate Flow of Events:
• If the user leaves the comment box blank and clicks “Post” the system
will display an error message.
9. USE CASE #11: SEARCH FORUM
Entry condition: User must be logged in.
Actors: Authenticated students and professors.
Flow of Events:
1. User clicks the “Search” button on the left-hand navigation menu .
10. USE CASE #11: SEARCH FORUM
2. System displays Search Page.
3. User types in keyword(s) in the search bar and clicks the search icon button.
4. The system displays the threads found on the system which are related to the
specified keyword(s).
11. USE CASE #11: SEARCH FORUM
Alternate Flow of events:
• If the specified keyword(s) are not found, the system will display a message
letting the user know there are no related threads.
13. SYSTEM DEPLOYMENT
• vMoodle Social is built using several opg several open
source tools, including the popular LAMP stack.
• Facebook serves as a presenter for the application.
• Moodle provides the the forum subsystem.
• jQuery is used to build the user interface along with html
15. SECURITY AND PRIVACY
Authentication: Users are identified through a first time
login based on Moodle credentials. Afterwards, their
Moodle and Facebook accounts are linked.
Authorization: Any user can be a student or a
teacher, depending on the course context. The context is
used by vMoodle to determine the status of a user.
Teachers have access to all the student score information.
Privacy: The application requests the users permission to
use their information before admitting the user. That
information is only exposed to the teacher. Passwords are
encrypted.
20. Test setup is the
same as sunny
day test case,
steps 1 - 4.
TEST CASE: POST COMMENT RAINY DAY (MOBILE)
5 6
Purpose: To test Post Comment use case functionality on rainy
day.
21. THANK YOU.
Laboratory for Virtualized
Infrastructure, Systems, and
Applications
Contact Information:
Karen Fernandez
kfern017@fiu.edu
Gregory Jean-Baptiste
gjean011@fiu.edu
Dr. Ming Zhao
ming@cs.fiu.edu
Editor's Notes
Moodle forums lack many features found in social networks that would be useful for helping students learn betterMoodle does not encourage social interaction between users, which keeps it from effectively building a community of learning.Much information about students cannot be discerned from purely classroom interactions. While Moodle is not intended for that, it would be valuable information for educators.
Functional Requirements: The system shall save the new comment to the moodle database, let the user know their comment has been posted, and notify all the other classmates via facebook that a new comment has been posted.Non-functional Requirements: The system shall send the facebook notification within 5-8 seconds of a new comment being posted.The system should be able to successfully save the new comment to the moodle database 99% of the time.The user should be able to post a comment from at least chrome and firefox.The system shall indicate how to recover from the error if an error message should pop up.
Functional Requirements: The system shall retrieve the search results from the database based on the title of discussions, the content of the posts therein, and the tags associated with them. Non-Functional Requirements: The system shall return the results in 5-6 seconds. The system shall return relevant search results 98% of the time.The user should be able to use the search forums feature on at least chrome and firefox.The search button should be located on the left hand navigation bar to make it available from anywhere in the application.
ID: PostComment_SD1Purpose: To test the functionality of the Post Comment use case.Setup:1. Login into vMoodle social.2. Click on the “Senior Project Course”.3. Click on the “General Forum”.4. Click on the “Post Comments Here” thread.5. Click on the orange downward arrow of the thread’s parent comment.Inputs:- Click “reply” on the comment posted by Karen with message “New comment”.- Type a message on the New comment pop-up dialog.- Click “Post”.Expected outputs:The system saves the comment to the database, displays a message on the screen indicated the new comment has been posted, and notifies all of the user’s classmates of the new comment post.
ID: PostComment_RD1Purpose: To test the functionality of the Post Comment use case.Setup:1. Login into vMoodle social.2. Click on the “Senior Project Course”.3. Click on the “General Forum”.4. Click on the “Post Comments Here” thread.5. Click on the orange downward arrow of the thread’s parent comment.Inputs:- Click “reply” on the comment posted by Karen with message “New comment”.- Click “Post” without typing in a message.Expected outputs:The system will display an error message letting the user know that the message field can’t be left blank.