Moodle 1.9.5+Liberal Arts Edition v1.01

Base Code

The source code that the LAE is based on. See release notes (LAE_readme.txt) in the download for specific version information.

  • Moodle 1.9.5+

The Liberal Arts Edition v1.01 includes a critical security fix backported from Moodle 1.9.6. This fix is also available as a standalone download (containing the fixed file and a patch file)

Included Extensions

These extensions are included as part of the LAE package, and are installed when Moodle is installed. Text in brackets indicates the college responsible for maintaining the code.

  • Filtered Course Block [Smith] DIFF / ZIP / TAR
    • A block that allows admins to setup filtered lists of courses (e.g. courses filtered by course term, a category, or some arbitrary condition)
  • Quickmail [Smith] DIFF / ZIP / TAR
    • A block used to quickly send emails to members of a class.
  • SimplePIE RSS Parser [Lafayette] DIFF / ZIP / TAR
    • Replaces the malfunctioning, deprecated Magpie RSS Parser that Moodle currently uses).
  • TinyMCE 2 Integration [Reed & Luther] ZIP / TAR |  Editor Full Install ZIP / TAR.GZ
    • Replaces HTML Area (the deprecated WYSIWYG editor within Moodle) the TinyMCE editor.
    • Notes: Dual support for  TinyMCE and CKEditor has been delayed to a future release, as has NanoGong integration.
    • Alert: Integrating TinyMCE 2 into Moodle by hand (by downloading the ZIP/TAR files and uploading them to their corresponding directories) is a challenge; we suggest you use the full LAE install or the “Editor” install, which includes a vanilla version of Moodle with the TinyMCE editor baked in.

Download the Liberal Arts Edition

The LAE v1.01 is available for download as a tarball or zip file; be sure to read the readme file (LAE_readme.txt) before installing or upgrading LAE edition.

Recommended Extensions

Recommended extensions are not installed as part of the core LAE edition, but are in use by all of our schools. Extensions listed here offer additional, optional functionality.

Asterisked (*) items indicate code we plan to integrate into a future LAE release.

  • Assignment Zip* [Reed] DIFF / ZIP / TAR
    • A tool that allows the bulk download of assignment files as a ZIP file.
    • Note: Requires ZIP support through PHP
  • Anonymous Forums [Reed] DIFF / ZIP / TAR
    • Anonymizes forum posts so that the author name is not publicly shown.
    • Alert: Currently works only with new installs.
  • Census Report [Kalamazoo] DIFF / ZIP / TAR
    • An administrative report that audits Moodle and displays a statistics about active courses, students and faculty.
  • Common Moodle Patches* [Luther] DIFF
    • A collection of commonly used patches (including the max grade patch) for improving Moodle usability.
  • Gradebook Max Grade patch* [Lafayette] DIFF / ZIP / TAR
    • Increases the maximum allowable grade from 100 to 250.
  • Simple File Upload* [work needed, Colgate & Reed] DIFF / ZIP / TAR
    • An add-on that offers a straight-forward upload option for adding files to a Moodle course that bypasses the normal (and more cumbersome) file upload procedure.
    • Alert: Simple File Upload currently allow users to upload a file, but they can’t update the resource associated with that file without reloading it. We’ve identified the problem and are working on a fix.
  • Scheduler [Lafayette] ZIP / TAR
    • A module that allows faculty to setup meeting times for students, who can then sign up for those times individually or in groups.

Tools

  • Test User Accounts [Kalamazoo] CSV
    • A CSV of 100 users that can be used as test data in Moodle courses. You’ll need to add your own password for these users.
  • Random Course Generator [Kalamazoo] ZIP / TAR
    • Randomly generates 750 courses in Moodle, each with randomly-created assignments, and assigns teachers and students to them.

Recommended Third Party Extensions

The following modules are not included in Moodle LAE v1.01 but are used extensively by member schools.

  • Feedback/Questionnaire
    • Feedback and Questionnaire are the two most popular survey/polling tools for Moodle.  Feedback is scheduled to be folded into core as part of Moodle 2.0, but there has recently been debate in the community about going with Questionnaire instead.
    • Schools in CLAMP are using both modules with good results, but given the uncertain future of these modules (in terms of which is going in to core) we have decided  not to include them in the LAE v1.0 build.
    • Feedback: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Feedback_module
    • Questionnaire: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Questionnaire_module

14 Responses to “Moodle 1.9.5+Liberal Arts Edition v1.01”
  1. Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project » Liberal Arts Edition Update for 7/31 says:
    July 31, 2009 at 4:53 pm

    [...] Moodle Liberal Arts Edition v1.0 [...]

    Reply
  2. Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project » Liberal Arts Edition v1.0 Released says:
    August 24, 2009 at 10:28 am

    [...] Moodle Liberal Arts Edition v1.0 [...]

    Reply
  3. Jon says:
    August 25, 2009 at 6:40 am

    Would it be possible to get some simple instructions on how to apply the diff and generally install the included extensions? Sadly, not all of us that administer Moodle installs are trained UNIX sysadmins. Thanks.

    Reply
  4. lafayettenuke says:
    September 10, 2009 at 7:41 am

    Thanks for the note — we’ll work on getting that documentation together in the near future.

    Reply
    • Johannes says:
      November 17, 2009 at 1:30 pm

      Hi there,

      I’d love to see such a documentation too since the information here is way to short…

      I extremely appreciate the integration of TinyMCE. Thank you a lot. But I just can’t seem to get it to work -.-

      Thanks for your helping me,

      Johannes

      Reply
  5. lafayettenuke says:
    October 1, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    Note: We’ve run into an issue using SimplePie on PHP 5.1.2 at Lafayette. SimplePie RSS (a PHP library which is used to parse RSS feeds in the LAE) triggers a segmentation fault when loading course pages that display RSS feeds. This can cause problems with pages loading incompletely; in our case this manifested as Moodle no longer staying in edit mode after editing a resource (you’d go to Edit mode, add a resource, and when you returned to the page, you’d no longer be in edit mode).

    This is definitely a SimplePie issue, and not a Moodle one. We see also see it throw segfaults when using the Feed API module for Drupal and when displaying feeds in WordPress MU. Both of these use SimplePie; in Drupal’s case, the segfault prevents the module from being able to add any feeds to the site, while in WordPress’s case the segfault occurs after the feeds are added and the page loads.

    This problem doesn’t appear under PHP 5.1.6, and it may be that it is related to our particular version of Redhat Enterprise Linux. If anyone else is running PHP 5.1.2 and has encountered this issue with SimplePie, we’d love to hear from you.

    Reply
  6. andreas says:
    October 8, 2009 at 7:11 am

    Hello CLAMP-IT Team,

    I like the integration of TinyMCE very much, but I have problems with the language selection.
    After installing the german language pack and switching to it, Moodle jumps every time back to the english, but in the language chooser german is active.

    Then I attempted to install german language packs for tinymce without success.

    So I want to ask for a hint or solution for these issues.

    Thanks and best regards
    Andreas

    Reply
  7. lael says:
    October 13, 2009 at 8:19 am

    I am trialing the TinyMCE integration – which by the way, was a piece of cake to install, copy folders over existing ones… Am I missing somthing? the instructions that said it was difficult had me thinking there was going to be an awful lot more to do to install it.

    I have a question about two things – 1; is it possible to include a ‘no link’ button in the tinymce editor. I noticed Mark Pearson seemed to have one working on this forum thread: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=107550 – but am unsure how he did it.
    2. When inserting images – is there a way to change the default behaviour to allow a preview of the image when clicking on it’s name rather than inserting the file location in the url bar? The current html area does this, and it is handy for checking you have the right image before completing the linking process.

    thanks again for your great work and making it available!

    Lael

    Reply
  8. Mark Pearson says:
    October 27, 2009 at 8:48 am

    @lael
    I dug around in my Moodle TiddlyWiki and found the answer to your question.
    Basically, the configuration of the button bar is set in lib/editor/tinymce.js.php (which you probably already know). The code I used was in “tinyMCE.init{{
    The button bar illustrated by : http://www.earlham.edu/markp/miss/graphics/button_changes_2nd_try.png
    is configured thus:

    theme_advanced_buttons1: “formatselect, |, bold,italic, |, bullist, numlist, outdent, indent”,
    theme_advanced_buttons1_add: “|,justifyleft,justifycenter,justifyright,|, forecolor,backcolor,|,charmap,hr”,
    theme_advanced_buttons2: “link,unlink,moodlenolink, |,table,visualaid, image, |, selectall,cleanup”,
    theme_advanced_buttons2_add: “removeformat,pastetext,pasteword,| ,undo,redo,|,search, code”,
    theme_advanced_buttons3 : “”,

    and the ‘no link’ button is ‘moodlenolink’
    Note also that you can set the font sizes for the TinyMCE editor (which default to tiny) in moodlecontent.css. I used:

    body {
    background-color: #FFFFFF;
    margin: 5px;
    font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 90%;
    }
    td {
    font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    font-size: 90%;
    }

    Hope this helps

    Mark

    Reply
  9. Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project » Save the Date: Moodle Hack/Doc Fest V, Jan. 5-7, 2010 says:
    October 30, 2009 at 4:57 am

    [...] Moodle Liberal Arts Edition v1.0 [...]

    Reply
  10. Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project » Moodle LAE v1.0.1 Security Release says:
    November 4, 2009 at 9:42 am

    [...] Moodle Liberal Arts Edition v1.01 [...]

    Reply
  11. Maja says:
    January 20, 2010 at 5:06 am

    hi there,

    i downloaded LAE 1.01 version and tried to install it locally, but get white page after input database data.
    i am using win7 xampp as webserver. i think there is a problem / BUG in creating database.

    could you check it please

    cheers

    dursun

    Reply
    • Patric Lougheed says:
      January 27, 2010 at 4:10 pm

      I have just installed it in a WAMP environment using Wampserver and it setup and runs great. I will bet the user setup in the database does not have enough permission to create. I go in first and create an empty database and then go through setup and works every time.

      I am loving the TinyMCE as we are having many issues with instructors cutting and pasting from MS products and breaking their courses.

      Reply
  12. Ken Newquist says:
    January 26, 2010 at 9:36 am

    We haven’t tested it in that environment; it installs fine under LAMP. Are you able to install vanilla Moodle (1.9.5 or 1.97) in that environment?

    Reply
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