Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project

• MDL-18240 Course Import doesn’t import blocks
• MDL-21162 Course Settings – Needs “course enrollable” default setting
• MDL-16435 Change QuickMail status to core feature
• MDL-15659 restore to “existing course deleting it first” does not bring in the course settings such as forced theme or # of weeks/modules
• MDL-12283 Import : missing weeks/topics
• MLD-17929 Groups: auto-populate from META child courses
• CONTRIB-1709 Bring Banner/LMB into contrib
• MDL-20367 Grade Scales – Currently, only integers can be specified as letter grade boundaries when creating a grade scale. Provide the ability to specify a real number.
• MDL-21265 Group wikis fail in boundary condition
• MDL-16732 Add auto-save and/or save button to forums

The Day 2 report won’t be as comprehensive as the first one; I’ll just hit the highlights:

• You can follow our code development on Twitter: @clamptwit
• We setup a UStream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hack-doc-fest-v
• “Editing Your Moodle Profile” documentation is up on CLAMP-IT.org. Read the documentation.
• We worked on the Groups & Groupings documentation.
• We’ve streamlined our SVN structure considerably. We now have two primary branches:
  • /branches/1.9.7-LAE1.0dev – for development of our next release.
  • /trunk/moodle/current – for our current LAE release.
• The “Extra Time” student role has been documented and is in the Doc workflow; hopefully we’ll have it on the site soon.
• Blackboard->Moodle Migration Documentation: We’re looking at three methods of moving data from Blackboard to Moodle (BFree, the LSU migration tool, and the built-in Blackboard course parser in Moodle), comparing strengths and weaknesses and explaining how to move stuff.
• Moodle 1.9.7 Roadtest: We’re continuing to explore Moodle 1.9.7; there may be some problems with backing up and restoring gradebook data that we need to look at more.
• Luther College Gradebook Changes: We began testing Luther College’s gradebook changes to see how the math works out in complex scenarios (different aggregation methods, drop lowest grade, extra credit, etc.)
• Simple File Upload and Assignment ZIP are feature complete and are now being rolled into the next production release of the Liberal Arts Edition (Moodle 1.9.7+LAE v1.0)
• Bugs were fixed involving:
  • An obscure issue with wikis and groups.
  • Inability to scroll through the Moodle chat history
  • Quickmail’s “can receive” role.
• Import/Backup/Restore issues are being reviewed and worked on by a number of participants. Check redmine tracker for details.
• We’re looking at Single Topic Backup/Restore.

Here’s what the Hack/Doc crew at Lafayette College worked on during Day 1 of the event:

Courtney Bentley, Lafayette College: Went through the Documentation tracker in Redmine and updated all the queues. She posted “Moodle Roles Explained” to CLAMP-IT and is working on a supplementary document on on creating a “unlimited quiz time” role for students.

Sarah Ryder, Hampshire College: Quickmail: Found the can receive bug (needs to be committed). Looked into option for sending emails to everyone at once, but would require creating a whole new function. Decided that was a little silly.

Caroline Moore, Smith College: Did a lot of chatting with Dan Wheeler at Colgate about Simple File Upload. Looks like he took her edits and made them work. Caroline is in the process of testing that out. Would like to add a “Force Download” checkbox with Simple File Upload.

Charles Fulton, Kalamazoo College: Topic Import/Restore thing; applied fix from Tracker.  WIll add vote for it to Tracker. Spent time beating up on Chat.

Eric Merrill, Oakland University: Closed out a number of tasks related to theLuminis Message Broker plugin. Show version of LMB module, secure LMB importing; before you needed to have a secure htaccess file; now the module handles the security. Led a conversation about LMB integration, common problems encountered, what documentation is available, etc.

Steve Taylor, Vassar College and Sarah Ashley, Drew University: Worked on migration notes for moving from Blackboard to Moodle. We’re considering having a “Blackboard to Moodle” brownbag in the spring semester.

Mark O’Neil, Vassar College & Rosalyn Metz, Wheaton College: They spent time looking at a “daily” format for Moodle courses, but found that wasn’t really an option unless they hacked core code in Moodle. But they did find some alternatives they want to try out.

Jeanne Farrell, Diane DeMelo, Wheaton College: Documented differences between the Liberal Arts Edition and vanilla Moodle, creating a plain text explaination. They also looked at Bob Puffer, Luther College’s fixes for the Gradebook.

Rosalyn Metz, Wheaton College: Took on feature to backup a single section from a course.

Jason Meinzer, Reed College: Closing out code tasks in Redmine, looking at subgroups in metacourses.

Daniel Landau, Reed College: Version control wrangling and working on removing the zlib requirement for Assignment ZIP.

Virtual Participants

On the virtual front, our nine hack/dockers worked on:

• Roadtesting Moodle 1.9.7
• Coming up with an evaluation list for Moodle 2.0-Dev
• Worked on Simple File Upload

You can follow Moodle Hack/Doc Fest V on Twitter using the hashtag #mdlhackfest. We have a number of attendees using the micromessaging service, and it’s a good way to keep up with what we’re doing.

A complete list of bugs, feature requests, and road tests has been been posted to Google Docs. Attendees have edit access; everyone else has view access.

• Check out the Moodle Hack/Doc Fest V Task List

Learn how CLAMP uses version control software to manage the Moodle: Liberal Arts Edition project and its myriad components during this CLAMP virtual brownbag being held 12 p.m. ET, Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2009.

Join us to get an overview of Subversion, its basic commands, and how the tool fits into our development workflow. The event will be led by Daniel Landau of Reed College and will be held in NITLE’s Elluminate conference room. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

• Register for the brown bag now

Redmine is a web-based project management tool that’s essential to coordinating CLAMP’s code, documentation and community efforts. At the “Introduction to Redmine” brown bag at 12 p.m. ET on Wednesday, 12/16, Courtney Bentley will explain how we use it, with a particular eye toward coordinating work at our upcoming Moodle Hack/Doc Fest V at Lafayette College.

The brownbag will be held in NITLE’s Elluminate conference room. It is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

• Register for the brown bag.

Hack/Doc Fest V is coming, we’re looking for  suggestions for bug fixes, documentation and new features for Moodle  that the community would like us to address. You can add your requests by making a comment on this blog post. You don’t have to be attending Hack/Doc Fest to make suggestions — we’d like suggestions from the entire community.

Update 1/4/2010:

• Moodle Hack/Doc Fest V Task List: A complete list of bugs, feature requests, and road tests has been been posted to Google Docs. Attendees have edit access; everyone else has view access.

UPDATE: Because of a scheduling conflict, this brown bag has been moved from 11/17 to Monday, Nov. 23 at 12 p.m. ET. When registering, you can still use the 11/17 option in the signup form.

Documentation: everyone needs it, but writing it can be a challenge. CLAMP’s made that easier by creating documentation for Moodle grade book, roles and groups that schools can  take and modify for their individual campuses. The “Documentation Overview” virtual brown bag being held Monday, Nov. 23 at 12 p.m. ET. will discuss what’s available, as well as CLAMP’s process for updating and creating new documentation.

This brown bag will be led by Courtney Bentley, Instructional Technology Program Coordinator at Lafayette College, and will be held in NITLE’s Elluminate conference room. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Register for the brown bag now.

Introduction to Elluminate - the first of CLAMP’s Fall 2009 brown bags – will be held Wednesday, Nov. 11 at noon ET. This session will server as a primer for using Elluminate for conference participants. We’ll run down the basic components of the online conferencing tool, and troubleshoot any audio/video problems you might experience. If you plan on attending, visit the Elluminate Support page before the brown bag to download the software and verify that it works on your machine.

The event is free to the public, but registration is required. Register for the brown bag now.