I would like to know if there is any method of exporting the grades and info about one student, so I could send to it’s company.

It would be a report of his lessons and when was the last time he got in to the course, and that kind of stuff.

I often provide a detailed report and spot check of student progress for one of the clients I work with.  There are a few methods and tools within Moodle (and as 3rd party plugins) that can be utilized to isolate one students activities (logs, logins, views, grades all including time/date data).  It maybe a multifaceted approach to get all of the information you’re seeking.

1. You can’t underestimate the power of the course reports tool.  This will let you drill down to an individual student (or the whole course) in any period of time to view their logs, statistics or activity reports.  It provides a snap shot of all activity within a single course.  It’s helpful if your student has a minimum of enrolments.  In Moodle 1.9 course reports can be accessed by entering the course then selecting “Reports” from the course admin settings.  In 2.x they are accessible through the navigation block (just expand for the course you wish to look at).  More about the course reports for logs can be found here: http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Logs.
2. Grades: export a single student’s grades easily using the gradebook.  Just enter the gradebook, then select “User Report” from the drop down and select any individual student from the next available drop down.  Read more about the user report here: http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/User_report.
3. Certificate Module: If you’re looking for a self-service way to do this, providing an end of course certificate might be a way to let users provide their own proof of completion to a 3rd party.  The Certificate Module is available or Moodle 1.9 and 2.x and can be setup as a conditional activity (its availability triggered only after specific criteria are met).  Find the Certificate Module here: http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Certificate_module
4. ELIS: on other possibility which might be worth looking into is ELIS which can provide a much more detailed course completion and outcomes management reporting tool (pulling data from across your site in regards to all courses enrolled).  ELIS is a much more powerful and complicated tool for providing user reports but might be worth checking out if you’re in need of something you can setup to provide ongoing access to specific metrics for any students.  Read more about its outcomes management tools here: http://rlcommunity.remote-learner.net/mod/book/view.php?id=24.  Find it available in the Mod Database at Moodle.org here: http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=4894

Dear Mr. Moodle!

Some lecturing staff where I work are requesting the option to change their Moodle status from online to offline as/when it suits them. They state privacy reasons – that if they choose do a lot of Moodle work online at odd hours they would rather this not be public knowledge and also so that they cannot be disturbed by students at certain times.

Can you tell me how I could add this feature to my Moodle installation (ver Moodle 1.9.11) or is it even possible?

I’m using Moodle 1.9.10 for a few projects and can attest that I never thought of these issues (doesn’t necessarily pertain to self-paced courses).  It strikes me that one of the easiest [temporary] way would be to hide the various tools that students can use to be able to monitor who is online.  Namely the online users and people (participants) blocks.  Without these blocks students have fewer ways to view online user status, last access or even see when someone else is online.  And when you’re ready for students to see it, just click the eye and voila: social communication is back (just not between teachers and students).

Is there another way to “log out” or “go invisible” like other chat tools that you know of for Moodle?  If there is share it in the comments!

I’m trying to understand some aspects of Moodle and I was wondering if someone could answer my questions.  Basically I’d like to know the way that Moodle manages copyright. Is it different than the way Linux does it?

Which of the 2 has the ownership of copyright over the code?

How is the authorship of the contributions attributed?

If they want to publish a version under GNU GPLv3 what would they do to relicense the code?

Thanks!

Well, thank you for raising the question.

From what I do understand, Moodle’s code is governed by the GNU General Public License (http://docs.moodle.org/en/License).  This govern’s the use of it as open source software and sets some guidelines for how subsequent changes, modifications or edits be shared back to the community.

Users are free to change Moodle, distribute changed copies, use Moodle on their own sites (even commercially) and can even “sell” services and the software (though anyone subsequently down the food chain “buying” the code is entitled to the same controls over Moodle’s code base).  Note that this does not govern course content which you create or license from another proprietary source (i.e. by using content from a major textbook publisher in your Moodle course you are not required to share/distribute the content.  That content is governed by its own copyright).

What you may not do, which is more of a trademark issue than open source governance, is use the Moodle name without consent of the Moodle Trust to offer standard Moodle services (e.g. hosting, customization).  As I understand it though, you could take Moodle code, call it JoeboeLMS and distribute it as such to clients with a suite of JoeboeLMS services and hosting.  The distinction here being that the name Moodle derives control and revenue for Moodle HQ which helps to drive further development and support the community (where as JoeboeLMS would need its own community/revenue model).

A very interesting discussion just ensued which covers the ownership of themes created for Moodle (and who retains the ownership of those themes) which might illuminate the question “contributions attributed” and ownership: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=172658

Now, I could be wrong in any of the above (and I apologize if I am).  If you understand copyright and how it pertains to Moodle PLEASE share it in the comments.

I know how to add images to Quiz Questions, but I would like to know if it is possible to add an image that stays on top of the quiz (as a header?) the whole time for students to refer to? I added an image to the Quiz Info (update quiz), but that image is only shown in the beginning and not the whole time the student is taking the quiz. Can you help?

As an example, I can remember taking many standardized tests way-back-when for reading comprehension.  At the top of the page there was a short paragraph or reading and the bottom part of the page was filled with questions which asked pointed questions about that reading assignment.  Reading on top, questions on bottom.

This popular format though might not be obvious in a Moodle based quiz.  Here’s how to set one up.  Based on that example reading comprehension quiz (for more example quizzes check out http://www.teacherneedhelp.com/readingquizzes/.

First create your quiz with the parameters you want.  Next create your quiz questions which will accompany the reading, image or even video which will stick at the top of the page.  To do that, go to the quiz update/edit page where you can add/create questions.  Using the drop down select “Description”.

This is what the Moodle docs have to say about the Description question type,

This is not a real question. It simply prints some text (and possibly graphics) without requiring an answer. This can be used to provide some information to be used by a following group of questions, for example.

Exactly what we want.  Add a description and add to that any information you want.  In this case we’re going to add the text which students will read first to answer the questions below.  Once added you can see that we have several MC questions and one Description.

I’ll add each to my quiz and then it’s a matter of setting up how your quiz will display questions.  Please note that with this setup we’re assuming that you are not randomly generating quizzes and you are not providing quiz questions to students in random order.  Below you’ll see that you can change where the page breaks occur in your Moodle quizzes, this will allow you to guarantee that your description sticks to the same page as all relevant questions.  If you think there are two many questions on one page with the description, consider making a copy of that description and keeping it pinned to two pages of questions.

Here’s what the final quiz might look like:

I imagine he stays on top of all new developments in HQ.

Introducing Mister Moodle (a Poodle + Maltese mix).

That said, I’m off for the Thanksgiving holiday until Monday.  Have an excellent week/weekend.

Do you know if Moodle 2.0 will have a built in attendance block? If not, I wonder why this is not standard on Moodle.

Interesting question; the module being asked about, is of course the Attendance Module and Block [http://docs.moodle.org/en/Attendance_module].  From my experience testing Moodle 2.0 and a quick review of the release notes at Moodle.org, I can attest that the Attendance Module is not default to Moodle 2.0 (but there are activities, such as the offline assignment which could be used as proxy to facilitate an attendance grade).  We recently explored the Attendance Module, and I can say that it’s very useful for blended/face to face classroom settings (but, in general, it’s value falls off if the course is virtual, asynchronous and/or self-paced).

image*

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that it’s not included because a) it’s not a required core feature (teachers/users can get a lot out of Moodle despite the Attendance Block unavailability) and b) since it’s a 3rd party contributed module, it’s better that it remains outside the Core Moodle code (this way Moodle HQ programmers can focus on a little less code but add-ons such as the Attendance Module can easily be added by Moodle administrators).

The Attendance Module is currently only for Moodle versions 1.8+ and 1.9+; hopefully a version for 2.0 will be released shortly after Moodle 2.

What do you think, should the Attendance Module be included in the Moodle Core?  Are their benefits of using the Offline Assignment to facilitate an attendance grade?  What other Attendance taking programs are available that might mesh well with Moodle?

*image from http://cheatham.k12tn.net/News.html

Here’s the long answer and “how to” on adding images to MC answers within Moodle.

First, access your Moodle quiz or question bank within your Moodle classroom.
Select to add a new question,

And set it up as you would any other question (insert your title/question text, etc.).

When you’re ready to add answers here’s where your images come into play.  You must have either already uploaded images to your Moodle or to a 3rd party image hosting site like Flickr.  There are benefits to both, but for this tutorial’s purpose I prefer Flickr because it:

1. Doesn’t create any additional load on the Moodle server
2. Allows me to share/export questions so that they can be used by someone else in another classroom or Moodle (if they were hosted locally in my classroom the image links would break even if the questions were imported to another course in Moodle 1.9; the Moodle 2.0 file directory redesign however skirts the issue for course to course sharing, but not site to site).

Below you can see I’ve uploaded my images to Flickr already.

Clicking on any image lets me view it in full size and provides options to “Share”.  I like this option a lot because Flickr gives me the html code I need to copy/paste into the answer test area.

Simply copy and paste that code into the answer description area for each image/possible answer, or create your own using the URL of the image uploaded locally to your Moodle.

Note that <img src=”IMAGE URL”/> is all you need to make the image embed in the answer (so grabbing the urls after uploading them to your Moodle course, Flickr, etc. is easy if you know/memorize/have handy that code.  If you’re image is uploaded to your Moodle classroom it might be a URL similar to the following: <img src=”http://www.YourMoodleSite.com/file.php/10/images/c.png” />; where “www.yourmoodlesite.com” is your site URL and “10″ is your course ID and /images/ is a directory for pictures that I created.  ”c.png” of course is the image file name.

Here’s what the final product looks like:

Is a godaddy shared hosting account sufficient enough to be able to host and operate moodle?  I know a dedicated server is suggested, but they’re expensive.  I wouldn’t have more than 50 people on it at a time, so I’m hoping it would be enough.

This is a great question (and probably better answered by someone more technical).  But I’ll take a stab at it from my experience hosting two small sites on similar services.

There are many considerations you should make before settling on hosting for Moodle, here’s a few questions I would ponder (but there are certainly many more),

• how many courses will you have (is this for a school, just yourself with several courses, or just one course?)
• will students all be logging at once to take quizzes or work on assignments, or will students move through individually?
• how will you backup your data? (will the hosting company offer backup?)
• will I have FTP access? (this will be necessary to customize your Moodle and to upload larger files)

According to the shared hosting at Godaddy (https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/web-hosting.aspx), the “economy plan” features unlimited bandwidth and 10 GB of space.  The shared hosting also features cPanel-like tool for installation and upgrading of your Moodle (which is handy if you’re going it alone).

There are definitely downsides to shared hosting and not having a dedicated server (and administrator to help you out), but with the improvements that hosting companies like GoDaddy, Bluehost, Dreamhost and others are making (and the low cost) there’s a lot to be said for using their services for small Moodle installations.  With a few reservations I would said that the shared hosting, even at the economy level, would be an adequate pilot for a small Moodle site–If you can afford the risks.  If things start to bog or there are issues with upgrades or modules then you might have to revisit, hire a consultant or contact a Moodle Partner.

Be sure to backup your course, with user data on a regular basis as well.  You never ever know when you’ll need to restore it elsewhere.

Do you have a question for Mr. Moodle?  Ask away at http://goo.gl/6aU2.

I would like to know if there is a way to be able to access Moodle without being listed in the participants’ page.

Well, yes and no.  For the most part, allowing anonymous access is controlled by the editing teacher of the course.

Guest access:

It’s possible to access Moodle without being listed in the participants page if the course and site you’re accessing has allowed guest access.  With guest access you can tap into Moodle course resources and view web pages, books, glossaries, etc. with read-only access.  However you cannot interact with activities (add content to forums, glossaries, or upload files to assignments).  Your course instructor (editing teacher) has a few options for allowing guest access (requiring an enrollment key for example) which are accessible through the course settings.

If guest access is not allowed then there’s really no way not to access a course without getting listed in the participants list.

Shared access:

As an alternative, shared access could be provided as a “test user” account that provides more than one person to login with the same account information.  There are limits and dangers to this approach however, especially if this shared user can interact with activities and post to forums (as there is limited accountability).

Limited access to the participants list:

One final note is that hiding or deleting the participants list is can limit how students can get to the participants list (though it is indirectly accessible by clicking on a classmate’s name, say, in a forum, and then clicking the breadcrumbs to enter the participants list).

If you have a way to allow student access to course content without adding them to the participants list, share it in the comments.

UPDATE: Inspector Role

This one is courtesy of Mary Cooch in the comments:

The Inspector role is a bit like this http://docs.moodle.org/en/Inspector_role.

This is the process of creating a new role within a site which users can be assigned to and who do not show in the participants list.  Note that a teacher or administrator will need to take several actions to enable/set this up.

Caught this little tip from the Moodle.org forums and Mary Cooch (aka @moodlefairy).

With a quick check box you can easily enable the linking of files from the local area network.  This will let you link to files in a shared folder and make them accessible to students as long as they are connected to the LAN on which the files reside or have a similar files structure on the computer they’re using to access Moodle.  It also provides an easier way to update and change files (as long as their names stay the same) and can eliminate download times for students accessing large files remotely. [link to the discussion]

When creating a new file resource, allow links to files on a local file system such as a CD drive or a hard drive. This may be useful in a classroom where all students have access to a common network drive or where files on a CD need to be accessed. Use of this feature may require changes to your browser’s security settings.

This day and age it could also be thumb drives or a folder at home that you previously had students install.  Pretty nifty.  To enable this feature, Administrators must navigate to Modules, Activities, Resource –> Allow local files.

Update 6/29 – it’s possible that this Admin feature is no longer functional.  We’ll report back when we know more.

Update 6/30 - this feature is no longer allowed on modern browsers and will be removed completely from Moodle.org.