Category: Hack/Doc Fest at Lafayette

Announcing Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, Winter 2017

Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, Winter 2017 will be held Tuesday, January 10 through Thursday, January 12, 2017 at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa. A pre-Hack/Doc documentation and coding sprint will be held Monday, January 9, 2017. Lafayette also hosted Hack/doc in Winter 2007 and Winter 2010.

The lodging deadline is Thursday, December 1, 2016. The registration deadline is Friday, Dec 16, 2016.

Hack/Doc Fest V: Day 3

Day 3 was the final day of Hack/Doc, and was our wrap-up for the event as folks finished up their code, make their final commits to Subversion, and added documentation to the wiki.

  • LAE name change: Based on feedback from the community, we’ve changed our naming convention with the LAE to tie in closely with the Moodle version it’s based on. Thus LAE 1.02 becomes Moodle 1.9.5+LAE1.02  and the new release becomes Moodle 1.9.7+LAE1.0.
  • Moodle 1.9.7+LAE1.0: We created our tentative list of “baked in” modules and blocks for the next release.  The big additions here are Assignment Zip and Simple File Upload; both were available as stand-alone downloads before (and will be again) but are now sufficiently bullet-proof for us to feel confident about folding them into the main LAE release. Full details available in Redmine.
    • Filtered Course Block
    • Quickmail
    • SimplePIE RSS Parser
    • TinyMCE 2 Integration
    • Assignment Zip
    • Simple File Upload
    • Numerous bug fixes
  • Chat History Now Accessible: The Chat module in Moodle didn’t allow you to scroll through the full history of the chat; the fix is in the /dev branch right now and will be folded into the Moodle 1.9.7_LAE1.0 release.
  • Import/Restore/Backup: A bunch of research was done on this with the goal of  a) Options to choose to restore settings/blocks to both import/restore. b) Ability for import/restore to actually do this. The research has been done, but more time/work is needed to implement the changes.
  • Single Topic Backup/Restore: As with Import/Restore, this required a lot of research. WE have a good idea of how to do it, but the work needs to be done.
  • Filtered Course Block: The block has been modified to allow term logic based on shortname/long name/course id, and we intend to add the ability to include multiple future/arbitrary terms to the block. This work is ongoing and likely won’t be ready for the 1.9.7_LAE1.0 release.
  • Voting for Bugs: We’ve compiled a list of bugs/features to vote for in Moodle Tracker.
  • Moodle Gradebook Fixes from Luther College: We spent a good deal of time evaluating Luther’s proposed gradebook fixes, which are designed to make it easier for students to understand their grades, specifically:
    • not being able to display the “real” points for categories and course unless you use “Sum of points” agg method
    • not seeing the accurate point range for categories and course total
    • more flexible User report that allows for turning on and off columns as needed
    • a User report that allows the student to easily view how the grade has been calculated (weights, etc.)
  • More Gradebook Testing: We need more volunteers to help with testing Luther’s fixes; specially importing complex gradebooks into a test instance. Details can be found in Redmine.
  • Blackboard->Moodle Migration Documentation: This documentation is complete and in the wiki for editing; it should be available soon.

Hack/Doc Fest V: Tracker Issue Voting

Here’s the big list of bugs and features that we worked on at Moodle Hack/Doc Fest V which need to be voted on by the CLAMP community. Each link takes you to Moodle Tracker, where you’ll be able to login and vote on each issue. Please add your own comments with your institution’s take on the bug (particularly with regards to interface questions, like QuickMail).

Hack/Doc Fest V: Day 2 Report

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.

Hack/Doc Fest V: Day 1 Report

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