Category: Events

Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, 6/28/11: Day 1

Moodle Hack/Doc Fest officially got underway on Tuesday, June 28th, 2011 It. was a packed day filled with Moodle 2.0 wrangling, documentation work, and demonstrations of Git, Language Lesson, and Amhert College’s flash audio solution.

Hackers

Git for Version Control Moodle Core switched from CVS to Git for version control with Moodle 2.x. As such there’s a lot of interest among the developers about Git. Charles Fulton of Kalamazoo College provided us with an overview of the tool, which led to a further discussion of differences between Git and SVN as well as strategies for setting up repositories. The presentation is available online via Prezi.

https://prezi.com/secure/2a24bc5fe7bd0bc1789e319ba2a90fa44a719ffc/

Audio Recording Tools: Carleton College and Amherst College presented on their respective audio/video tools for Moodle. Carly Born presented on Carleton’s solution, called Language Lesson, lets faculty create assignments which allow students to record audio and video files via a plugin, and then submit those files to Moodle. The files can then be played back via Moodle, and commented on by the faculty member. They are in the process of adding the source code for the project to a branch in CLAMP’s SVN repository.

Howard Hanna (Amherst College) presented on their tool as well, which relies Flash to record audio and video as part of a forum response, and saves the file to a Flash Media Server.

Groupings: The devs created a new option for Moodle groups that automatically creates a grouping when you create a single group. This streamlines the group creation process for those who only need to create a single group. The code’s been developed for Moodle 2.0; they’re backporting it to Moodle 1.9. Learn more in tracker:

http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-28082

Upgrading modules and blocks to Moodle 2.0: We now have a document that outlines the process in Google Docs; Sarah Ryder will be presenting on the process at 11:30 p.m., Thursday.

Randomizer We’ve long wanted a tool that could take a course’s data and randomize it so we could share it with others for debugging. This capability is now built into the Moodle 2.1 export tool, and the devs confirmed it is working as expected.

Lesson The devs are working on an enhancement for Lesson (for Moodle 1.9 and 2.0) that prevents it from randomly shuffling the question list.

Signups Williams College will be presenting on their Sign-up tool (a potential replacement for Scheduler) and their People block (which includes a picture gallery view for course participants) at 1 p.m., Wednedsay afternoon.

Documentation

On the documentation side of the event, much of the time was spent digging further into Moodle 2.0 and organizing existing documentation. They’ve begun creating feature and gripe lists to keep track of things they like and dislike in Moodle 2.0. Any bugs discovered are going into the Redmine tracker.

A contingent is working through the CLAMP Triage Google Doc verifying bugs in Moodle 1.9 and 2.0 for the Devs to tack. They also began discussions of how to publish documentation from Moodle.

The doc’ers have spent considerable time attempting to understand the File Management system in Moodle 2.0. They are creating a suggested workflow for faculty to add a resources to a course, and will be trying out the Link Repository type. Bren Campbell (Brandeis) will be presenting on file management at 1 p.m., Thursday.

New Issues for Rabble-rousing

We continue to add issues to the rabble-rousing queue. Check it out and vote for the issues that affect you:

https://www.clamp-it.org/2011/06/moodle-issues-for-rabble-rousing-june-2011-edition/

Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, 6/27/11: Documentation Sprint

Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, Summer 2011 kicked off on Monday, June 28th with an all-day Documentation Sprint. The goal was to complete as much documentation as possible before Hack/Doc formerly started on Tuesday, but the group found they had to slow down in order to work through Moodle 2.1’s often very different interface.

The tasks undertaken include:

Updating our library of Moodle screencast scripts to be compatible with Moodle 2.0

Documenting the Quiz module, which has seen massive changes. Those changes include an overhauled question bank, new certainty based questions (in which users can specify how certain they are that the answer was correct), interactive mode, and adaptive mode.

Working through Moodle 2.0’s File System (including repositories). The consensus was that this system was considerably more complex than Moodle 1.9, and that there is much potential for confusion among faculty. Particularly challenging was the “server repository”, which was identified as a target for further examination on Thursday.

The University of Massachusetts: Amherst contributed doucmentation that explains how to upload individual files to Moodle 2.0, which is available through the shared CLAMP Documentation folder in Google Docs.

Creating a plain-english description of the Moodle: Liberal Arts Edition, which will translate the readme file into an easily scannable overview of the software package.

Compiling  our “Rabble Rousing List” that documents Moodle Tracker items that we recommend people read and vote for. The list is available via the CLAMP web site:

https://www.clamp-it.org/2011/06/moodle-issues-for-rabble-rousing-june-2011-edition/

Moodle issues for rabble-rousing, June 2011 edition

Here’s a list of Moodle bugs and problems encountered during Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, Summer 2011 at Hampshire College. Please read them over and consider voting for them.

Moodle 1.9 and Moodle 2.0

MDL-28008: separate course backups can become commingled under certain conditions

MDL-20245: grader preferences won’t save under certain conditions. Affects both 1.9+ and 2+

MDL-27931: Trivial, but worth fixing: inconsistency in the user upload form

MDL-27735: Yet more Q&A forum bugs

MDL-28082 auto-create grouping for each group created

MDL-13114: Include bulk course create and remove with Moodle through the use of CSV files

MDL-26657:  Hiding a Sticky Block Can Cause Other Blocks to Disappear

MDL-28223: Alphabetize Groupings drop-down list

Moodle 2.0

MDL-26350: File attachments are stored incorrectly when doing a “File Download” portfolio export from a forum

MDL-27156: File System Repository files limited by PHP upload_max_filesize limits

MDL-27242: Restrict Access by time as well as day

MDL-28080: Error on Oracle DB operations caused by placeholders longer than 28 chars

MDL-26967: Can’t disable My Private File on student role (possibly resolved by PULL-562)

MDL-28101: Bold and italics do not work with the NWIKI formatting

MDL-24120: login as procedure always log the (admin) user out

MDL-24398: “Save changes” after uploading a file seems unnecessary and causes confusion

MDL-28151: High resolution images uploaded as resources are cropped.

MDL-27764: Can’t import topic summaries. This is an old bug from 1.9 which crossed into 2.0/2.1.

MDL-23520: ability to delete wiki pages in 2.0 and 2.1.

Hack/Doc Fest: Summer 2011 Project Suggestions

Moodle Hack/Doc Fest at Hampshire University is a month away and 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.

  • Moodle 1.9 bug fixes
  • Learning how to use Git for version control
  • Demo site for Moodle LAE
  • Further evaluation and testing of Moodle 2.0
  • Planning Moodle 2.0 pilots
  • Identifying and writing needed documentation for Moodle 2.0