MoodleFN: Moodle 2.1 Test Site observations

Hi,

I am unsure what more work is being done on getting Moodle ready for us, but I imagine based on early conversations there's still more being done. However, here are some initial observations from KiHS testers:

What we like:

Navigation bar on left side
My home feature
Marking manager
Quick grading of lessons ("View x submitted assignments")

What is of concern:

1. Content Transfer
-Test courses were transfered but they lost enough formatting so they are not currently usable.
-Images not showing (that might change on the real server?)
-Embedded videos not working.
-We used predominantly AssignmentFN and it appears these transfered as Files not Assignments.
-Without an automatic transfer, it appears it would take our staff a very long time to get our 50+ courses up and running.

2. Assignments
-AssignmentFN was abandoned because the new Assignment is said to contain all the same features, however we were unable to find a way to have an online student editor and a file uploader in the same assignment.

3. Other Questions
-Will we be able to have groups (which we use for communities) as we currently do?
-Will we be able to have logos for those groups (community logos)?
-Will permissions still work the same?
-Will the front hallway still have permissions, such that teachers and admin would have different permissions than students?

Thanks

Kevin

Thanks for the feedback, Kevin. My responses are in green.

1. Content Transfer
-Test courses were transfered but they lost enough formatting so they are notcurrently usable.

Can you point me to 1 or 2 activities with this format issue? Also, please provide links to the original where format is intact. I will look into this further.

-Images not showing (that might change on the real server?)

Can your povide a link? I suspect that, in courses that have this problem, images were inserted using absolute links, rather than relative links. For example, let’s say an activity calls image1.jpg from an absolute link like www.MyFirstSite.com/moodle1/course45/files/images1.jpg. When that activity is moved to a new server, it still looks for the image1.jpg in the old server (same location). To avoid this issue, courses should use relative links (..files/images1.jpg) that point to objects within a course,regardless of the location. If this is the reason for this issue, then these links would have to get changed – either manually or via some kind of script. If not, then we need to investigate further.

-Embedded videos not working.
Please send me a link.

-We used predominantly AssignmentFN and it appears these transfered as Filesnot Assignments.

-Without an automatic transfer, it appears it would take our staff a verylong time to get our 50+ courses up and running.

Actually, courses with AssignmentFN activities were converted using a script.

AssignmentFN read-only activities were converted to “Resources/pages”,
AssignmentFN activities with online editor were converted to “Activity/Assignment/online text” activities
AssignmentFN activities with file uploads were converted to “Activity/Assignment/advanced uploading of files”.

2. Assignments
-AssignmentFN was abandoned because the new Assignment is said to contain allthe same features, however we were unable to find a way to have an onlinestudent editor and a file uploader in the same assignment.

You’re right, none of the standard Moodle assignment types allow for this. Moving away from the AssignmentFN was a tough call – it served us well, especially in the early years. Unfortunately, as the standard Moodle assignment types have evolved over the years, the AssignmentFN has not kept up. Moreover, while it has allowed us to combine assignment types, it also created our separate branch of courses that are not compatible with other "standard" Moodle courses.

Fortunately, there’s an amalgamated assignment type (“one assignment type torule them all”) in the works by folks at Moodle head office, as described here: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-26997. It just doesn’t make sense for us to spend all that time and resources to recreate AssignmentFN for Moodle 2.x when a similar assignment type is in the works. My suggestion is that we do our best to convert MoodleFN activities into standardactivity-types so that we can start using Moodle 2.x.

3. Other Questions
-Will we be able to have groups (which we use for communities) as we currentlydo? Yes.

-Will we be able to have logos for those groups (community logos)?
Not sure.

-Will permissions still work the same? Yes

-Will the front hallway still have permissions, such that teachers and adminwould have different permissions than students? Yes.

Thanks

Fernando

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Kevin, thanks for following up on this thread via email. I've posted my responses below since other MoodleFN users will likely also encounter the issues you raised. The links to your site won't work for non-KiHS folks, but I think the descriptions should suffice. Feel free to comment further on this.

1. Example of existing lesson formatting:

http://www.education.knet.ca/kihs/kihs19/mod/fnassignment/view.php?id=22941

Corresponding new Moodle:

http://www.education.knet.ca/kihs/kihs2/mod/resource/view.php?id=109

Notice colours, font.

Examples from different course:

Old:

http://www.education.knet.ca/kihs/kihs19/mod/fnassignment/view.php?id=4519

New: http://www.education.knet.ca/kihs/kihs2/mod/resource/view.php?id=100

After looking a little closer, it seems to be more of an issue with those

activities that were switched over using a "link to file" option.

Reported as bug 30111, shown here: http://meeting.knet.ca/mp19/mod/data/view.php?d=25&mode=single&page=4

2. Another issue: This (and some other) activity below is not completely

visible but has scroll bars. Normally activities stretch to fill screen.

http://www.education.knet.ca/kihs/kihs2/mod/assignment/view.php?id=61

Can you give me a link to the original activity?

3. Many images that were not showing are now showing. I can't provide you

a specific example now. Our courses have relative pathways for images as

far as I know (the teacher has uploaded images to their Files section in

their course on the Moodle server). This should be good then?

This is probably because you are logged into both the KiHS production site and the KiHS test site at the same time. The images you see on the test site are likely being pulled from the production site. If this is a problem for many courses, then I suspect we'll need to develop some kind of url renaming script. We'll need to discuss this further.

4. Video embed:

example 1 (link to file):

http://www.education.knet.ca/kihs/kihs2/mod/resource/view.php?id=109

example 2:

http://www.education.knet.ca/kihs/kihs2/mod/assignment/view.php?id=31 -

This one worked if I went into html and used the embed code there, but the

automatic conversion of the youtube URL (just above the video after

question 10) did not work. Currently our many videos rely mostly on the

automatic embed feature. Here's a course that uses a lot of videos...

perhaps importing it would provide some examples.

http://www.education.knet.ca/kihs/kihs19/course/view.php?id=194

This is likely because read-only assignments are being converted into “Files” when they should be converted into “Pages”. This issue was included in bug 30111

5. Assignment FN: Could this new amalgamted activity be the used in the

transfer process for all our Assignment FNs? The link to file which seems

to have been used in some transferring seems not to retain formatting as

well, and the video embed doesn't work.

Unfortunately, the amalgamated activity type won’t be released until next year.

There's no longer an "Update this Assignment" button in each activity. To

update an activity you need to access it from the course page instead of

from within the activity itself. Is there any way to get that button

again?

I noticed that too. Not sure if this was a conscious design change by the Moodle folks, but it does make it more tedious to update activities. Will look into it further.

Kevin

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Thanks Fernando,

1. awaiting bug fix

2. I looked again and issue seems resolved. Not sure about that one.

3. You're right, I logged out of KiHS site and images no longer show on test site. All images in KiHS courses are uploaded to KiHS server using image upload feature. I believe the images are all stored in each course's respective file folder on the server. This is the only way we've ever done images (that I recall). I thought these were relative pathways. There doesn't seem to be any other way to do it. So, question remains: will images transfer when site goes live or will we be manually redoing every image in the course? (Significant undertaking)

4. awaiting bug fix

5. This is bad news, as we were under the impression that AssignmentFN type (or alternative) would be available. This will be a significant undertaking to redo lessons, break them up into upload files and editor files.

6(?) Too bad, not a biggie, but too bad.

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Hi,

Just following up about the first part of item 3 above. It seems that site-wide groups are not available yet. Do you know a timeline for this? Breaking students down into community groups would be important for us if we move our courses over to Moodle 2.

Right now, our plan is to try our soon-to-be-developed courses (that will have low enrollment) over to the new site for next year. We could get by without site groups for those few number of students, but if we did a complete transfer, we'd need site groups.

Thanks

Kevin

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