--> Moodlenotes

Moodle Notes

Adventures in Beginning Moodling, 2006-07
Lisa M. Lane

MOODLE 1.6

Stuff I had to change:

First, I had to upgrade from Moodle 1.5, which my provider had, to Moodle 1.6. I did this in order to have essay questions on quizzes. This required dealing with settings on the mysql database, which took some time to work out!

When I did this, the week numbers disappeared. I posted to the moodle forum and had an answer that worked within a day.

I wanted a glossary where students contributed entries, and everywhere that word appeared it linked automatically to the glossary. But ine didn't link automatically. I found out at a Moodle forum post that I had to go to Aministration - configure - filters to turn it on.

But it highlighted the entries in grey. I wanted bright, like yellow. A forum post about changing the config.php file to get the grey box to show told me how to edit the theme's css file.

Then I wanted random essay questions, but it didn't work. It looked like the random essay questions were being added, but they weren't appearing on the quiz. After reading some forum posts, I felt confident enought to change the question/type/randon/questiontype.php file, and the mod/quiz/report/grading/report.php files to make it work.

I noticed with all this that I couldn't change the files on the server. I had to download the file, change it and upload it. When I tried just opening it on the server and making changes, it looked like to worked but it didn't.

I had glossary entries set to be rated on a 100 point scale, and discussion forums on a Separate and Connected Ways of Knowing scale. In the gradebook, this had the effect of making my 100+ point class total 1302 points! So everyone was getting an F. Checking out another forum post that has me change the code....

Found out that I could leave everything in Uncategorized until I graded it, then move it to graded. This made weights correct. But Moodle can't give a letter grade for over 100% weighted.

Cron Jobs (1.6)

Jan 07: The joys of CRON! I was noticing that I wasn't getting emails from forums I'd subscribed to, which is important to me running four classes in Moodle. Turns out there a thing called a "cron job", which is where the server tells the program to do its updates. I had to go to Lunarpages C-Panel Cron area, and put in the code. Took awhile to figure out the right code for this server is: php /home/lisahi2/public_html/moodle/admin/cron.php . But now it runs updates every 5 minutes around the clock and folks get emails.

better: nice -20 php /home/lisahi2/public_html/moodle/admin/cron.php

Problem: My host, Lunarpages, said I couldn't run so many cron jobs. It was taking up too large a percentage of my shared server, and if I wanted to do that much I needed by own server. Had to set cron jobs at every 30 minutes, which is hardly ideal.

Marking forums read (1.6)

Moodle is emailing me the post areas I've subscribed to, but when it does that it marks them "Read" in the class itself, which confuses me. The Moodle users forum showed me that I can set that in Admin by changing foum_usersmarksread to "Yes". Of course, this means I must manually mark posts as read, a different kind of annoying.

The default for students is that they get emails from any forum they've posted to. They can turn off the setting in Profiles, but don't always know that. For next time, before courses start, I need to set Moodle to a default setting that creates NOT subscribing to forums as the default. I'll need to change the Forum auto-subscribe value in the mdl_users table in the database from 1 to 0. Not being experienced with databases, I'm gonna wait, and it wouldn't affect established new accounts anyway.

Other issues (1.6)

I posted today (1/30) on Moodle forum that the Last Access date is wrong for at least one student.

The color is not moving to the current week in History 105 (theme is standard red). I don't recall whether this was a problem last semester, but I don't think so. Haven't solved this one yet.

Unable to backup the class with over 40 students in it. It hangs on Backup. Looked through all forums, especially http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=8563 , though it's from 2004. Changed settings in admin/cron.php from 128 MB to 750./ Still won't do it. PHP memory itself is too low. Had to go into php.ini file, which was too dangerous -- Lunarpages said use htaccess file instead. Backed out, as I recall. Nothing worked.

STUFF I REALLY LIKE

Found something wonderful! I can go to the quiz after students take it and click "Manual grading", select Grade All and see all student answers to the same question on one screen and grade them all together. This way I can compare all the student responses to the same question as I grade. Marvelous!

I was able to create a "Sticky Block" with my Moodle tutorial, online status indicators and link to email. This automatically appears in all my courses.

I've had to make a custom offline quiz scale so I can input grades like "6.5" for quizzes in my onsite class.

PROBLEMS

10/30/06 Got 404 error code and 403 Forbidden permission to access the file that processes the quizzes, when I tried to save changes grading a batch of essay questions. Noticed that every time I went back in, ///// symbols had been added before every apostrophe. Stopped using apostrophes to see if it helped. Am writing like Damon Runyon. It does it with " marks also.

Jan 07 notes:
On a Mac using Firefox, when using Manual Grading on multiple essay questions, the HTML editor appears for every question, jamming up the system. I have to use Safari (a browser not compatible with Moodle's HTML editor) to grade a zillion essays.
Also in Manual Grading of Essays, the use of apostrophes creates slashes instead, and jams up the page.

May 07
Deleting an item from the calendar deletes the actual item, not just the notation from the item, if Moodle created the calendar entry! I just accidentally deleted student final exams by trying to clean up the Calendar. Arrggghhh!

Other yucky issues
-- You can't just change a grade in the Gradebook. This has been a problem when trying to give half credit for late quizzes. It can't be done. (solved in Gradebook Plus v2)
-- If you don't use Moodle's internal numerical scales (which do not include .5), the Gradebook cannot calculate weighted grades and translate it into a letter grade.
Solution: To use the internal numerical scales most effectively, it becomes necessary to increase the total points and have them curved down for each test. For example, my final exam has 50 multiple-choice questions (for 5 points) and 1 essay (for 5 points). So each multiple-choice question is worth 1 (the default), then the essay is worth 50. I set the whole quiz for a total of 10, and Moodle calculates it perfectly (as 4.7 for the essay, for example, if it's 47 points). (solved in Gradebook Plus v2 if using Graded Event -- can't make comments, tho' -- must use Weighted for letter grade in preferences)

COOL STUFF

I could add a logo to every course by uploading an image as a Label. However, I found out I cannot see the upload image or any buttons in Safari, and have to use Firefox instead for that. (This is part of the HTML Editor problem.)

SETTINGS

To get an 11-point quiz to show as 10 plus an extra credit, I have to use the "Curve to" set at 10 on the gradebook. (not in Graded Event in GradebookPlus v2)

Student comments on Blackboard vs Moodle (Spring 2007)

The Upgrade (to 1.8)

Now in 1.8 ---------------

Week numbering

Week numbers have disappeared again, having Restored all courses without users. Had to do the same fix again. I realize that will not work with Moodlerooms, which will not allow a code change.

Students Rating Discussion Posts (1.8)

Students are not allowed to rate discussion posts by default anymore! And it's nasty to change it. You have to have administrative rights to allow Teachers to "override the permissions of others", then give them permission to override Student roles, then they have to use the Assign Roles and override tab to check "Rate posts" for students. (Or they can do it for each forum, which is even more cumbersome).

"If the teacher has been given permission to Override permissions for others (by editing the Teacher role in the Administration -> Users -> Permissions -> Define roles -> Manage roles tab), and has also been given permission to override the Student role (Administration -> Users -> Permissions -> Define roles -> Allow overrides tab), then the teacher will get a course-level GUI for tweaking the Student role (Course -> Admin -> Assign roles). Changes made by the teacher to the Student role will apply to ALL students. To affect a single student seems to require a custom role, provided by the admin."

This is from http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=72179 .

Random Essay Questions Gone

Random Essay Questions are not enabled by default and should require a code change, but apparently there are major problems with the database so it can't be used (this according to the expert, Michael Penney, via Moodlerooms). After trying the code change, I wrote to Moodlerooms August 2007:

I have done some pretty extensive testing this evening in my own installation and have discovered the problem, which is also discussed in the thread I sent you (http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=50903#p336763).

Changing the code for random essay questions from "false" to "true" enables such questions. They appear perfectly and can be scored properly, but with two problems:

1. They cannot be Manually Graded (which is how I grade all essays) -- this is mentioned in the last post of the forum.

2. The student cannot see standard feedback, only General Feedback, for those questions.

This severely affected all my tests, and I hope it gets fixed.

For students to see the feedback on a test, the "Responses" item must be checked.

Students may review
Immediately after the attempt
Responses Scores Feedback Answers General feedback
Later, while the quiz is still open
Responses Scores Feedback Answers General feedback
After the quiz is closed
Responses Scores Feedback Answers General feedback

Moving from one Moodle Installation to Another

When I did Backup and Restore from my Lunarpages installation into Moodlerooms' through MiraCosta, all my forums lost their code formatting. They were exported in Moodle auto-format, but arrived as HTML format, removing much of the code and forcing me to repaste each forum starter.

Because they are stored in the database, the Calendar entries (and thus the Upcoming Events) do not transfer. And if you use delete course and Restore, any calendar in the receiving course is deleted. I had to re-enter all calendar entries by hand.

Latest News ... "more" is hidden from students

In 1.6, I could make the News forum hidden, but all info would still show in the Latest News box. In 1.8, I have to make the News forum visible in order for students to be able to click on "more" and see the whole thing in the box. Really stupid, because now all news appears in two places. So I've changed the forum name to "Latest News (same as in the box on the right)". Ugh.

Problems with GradebookPlus v2:
-- In Manual Grading, if you only grade some, it marks the number that needs grading as 0.
--

Issue: The students are still seeing their scores even though I don't have any boxes checked. -- maybe??? or maybe just I am seeing them....

Sept 07: just discovered students can't see anyone's ratings in the forums:
For my own installation, can change student role per course, override role for "View any ratings" (mod/forum:viewanyrating)

GradebookPlus v2 lets one use decimals with Add Graded Event. Can put 10 at top score (even if student gets 10.5) and will calculate grades correctly. No need to double anything!

Activity Reports

Oct 07: students do not seem to be able to see their own activity reports -- am editing student role to Allow "Users: See user activity reports", which says "This allows a user to view this user's activity reports and grades (user context only)". Looks like I then had to go into the course itself, and override the role to do this there too. NO, it keeps saying I'm not allowed to look at that page. Tried in 111 #1260 with Admin done too, and Hist104 without Admin access.

Because of http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80593#p357508, added View Reports (in Core section), but can now see everyone's including their grade!

Kept View Reports, but undid "Users: See user activity reports". Can still see everyone's. In Admin, undid "Users: see user activity reports" in Student roles. Now can't see own in Participants, but can see everyone's in Admin block! Had to undo View Reports in Core.

UGH. The only setting that needed to be changed was a Course Setting: Show Activity Reports.

Oct 26: Trouble is, the activity report shows the incomplete quiz grade also. I haven't graded essays yet, and don't want students seeing that score.

Bounced emails/spam?

Dec 2007: Suddenly, bunches of automatic emails to students (from Latest News forum) getting bounced to me, with this error:

Domain lisahistory.net has exceeded the max emails per hour (800) allowed. Message discarded.

I don't have that many emails, and my student numbers have reduced since the start of the semester. Reported to Lunarpages, who said I'd have to find the email script and fix it myself, since they assume Moodle is causing the problem rather than someone hacking my lisahistory.net account. They noted I'm not in 1.8.2 yet, and that I didn't use Fantastico to install. They did recommend changing CHMOD settings to 755 on everything, which I am doing. But still bouncing every single email. That makes this installation essentially unusable for Spring! May have to get the Moodlerooms account and forget this experiment. Should probably update to 1.8.2 anyway.

Forums not being edited/replicated properly in Forums list

Jan 08 AHA! over the semesters, I've noticed that when I changed the content of a forum by going to that forum from the main weekly page, it didn't change if you went to it in the "Forum" page, linked as a breadcrumb. I don't know why it is, but I figured out I must change the content in BOTH places. That said, when I post a *new* forum, it copies correctly to the "Forum" page. So at first I thought, it's probably an artifact from Restoring from 1.5, then 1.6, into now 1.8. But it isn't. When I go back to that same new forum and edit it, it does NOT change on the Forum list page. This is a Moodle bug.

Pros and cons of going with a Moodle host rather than running Moodle on my own or Lunarpages server:

Moodlerooms through MiraCosta

Issues when MCC went to Moodlerooms:

Student enrollment verification emails were not sent out to some students after they self-enrolled. We had to check the list of users continually and manually confirm for the first week. Only an admin can do this, so Karen had to do it. Site Administration --> Accounts --> Browse

Guest access wasn't working initially and they had to do something to fix it.

1) When you set a theme, it comes up with the default title (such as Flex or Moodle Rooms). This text needs to be changed if an instructor wants to use that theme. Please contact Moodlerooms to see how to change these.

2) As administrator, you will need to set permissions (roles) so that Teachers (or Course Creators, whichever you've decided to use for Faculty) can manage their own users (student enrollments). Under Site Administration - Users - Permissions - Define roles, please set "Allow" for:
Create users
Delete users
Update user profiles

Teachers were not allowed to do admin stuff: be Course Creator, create student accounts, etc. That meant teachers cannot change passwords for students -- they had to call the HelpDesk.

* First try unable to load zip files into installation. Server timed out while they were uploading. Had to send zip files to Moodlerooms and they had to upload for me. Said they fixed it later

Time zone problem: had to be changed by Admin

Under Admin - Modules - Activities - Forum settings, would you please change forum_usermarksread from NO to YES. Otherwise when a user subscribes to a forum and it emails them, the messages look like they've been read in the forum. That makes it harder for instructors to keep track.

To embed anything, needs to change Admin -> Security -> Site Policies -- please check the Allow EMBED
and OBJECT Tags

We will need the Gradebook Plus v 2 on our installation, because it's the only way to edit grades individually (for example, to make a late quiz worth half points). Please ask them to do this on our installation. For 1.8, the URL for the plugin is http://moodle.cvs.sourceforge.net/moodle/contrib/gradebookplus_v2_1.7/ . It's really a patch rather than a separate module.

Having students rate posts required Admin role override: In the last version of Moodle, it was easy for instructors to have students rate forum posts; in 1.8 it isn't. In fact, it's ridiculously cumbersome -- the instructor has to Edit their forum, click on Update, then on the Roles tab, then override the student role for each forum where they want students to use ratings. But Teachers can't do this at all without a permission change. Could you please enable this by allowing a Teacher to override a Student role? If a Teacher doesn't want students doing ratings, they just won't override. But those that do can have it then. See http://docs.moodle.org/en/Override_roles. In order to get this to work on my hosted installation, I had log in as Administrator and override the Student role for each course to permit "rate posts".

Random essay questions were not possible without breaking the installation. Turns out this is a 1.8 problem.

Moodlerooms with my own account (beginning January 2008)

Did all Admin changes above myself, no problem.

Issue 9 January: blocks disappearing now and then -- Messages, then Latest News -- could remake but sometimes disappeared while moving upward -- then reappear (possibly only in 1.8.2 and edit mode, according to moodle.org). [March update: Moodlerooms says this is now a "known bug" and is fixed in 1.9]

They can't/won't change:
- default on mdl-users table autosubscribe to 0, so students have to opt out of emails to each forum they post to (database change)
-week numbers can't be added to weekly layout (code change)

Feb 08

Second slow-down of site -- the first one last month was fixed quickly. This one has gone on for days. The response from Support:

Lisa,
Moodlerooms would like to apologize for any performance problems you might have been experiencing recently. Moodlerooms and Sun Microsystems have been working together on a major project to demonstrate that our new set of new servers will accommodate one million concurrent users. This project is very nearly complete. As a result, we anticipate all of our hosted customers will see increased performance over and above what you normally expect in your Moodlerooms hosted environment.

We are working now to alleviate any problems you might have been experiencing. We anticipate performance will be at or above normal by the end of the weekend at the latest.

Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience and our thanks for your continued patience and support of Moodlerooms.

Regards,

Andy Braden
Manager of Customer Relations
Moodlerooms, Inc.

Hmmmm. Have also had weird issues over last few days, including a student account that completely disappeared (which shouldn't be possible -- one should always be able to add profiles back from the database, but it was completely gone), and a couple of students whose posts disappeared. No response on these yet.

March 08

More slow-downs. They have been unable to fix a problem for one of my associates on the MCC account (the Grades link disappeared from the Admin box, so students can't get their grades) AND have been unable to figure out why one of my students grade on Quiz 2 won't "stick" -- it keeps changing to 0, so I've had to add an extra credit category just for her.

Moodle 1.9

upgraded through Moodlerooms

First issue: Gradebook is completely new -- grades for individual assignments came through, but not course totals or letter grades.

Editing grades: use Turn Editing On

Admin stuff

Assign roles page now lists names of users assigned to each role.

For our administrator:
A. Enable email notification to students after completing a Quiz
In the quiz settings or "Update this quiz" link, email options are turned on under the override permissions tab. Modify the student role and change the "Get email confirmation when submitting" (mod/quiz:emailconfirmsubmission) to "Allow".

B. Let students see our Front Page
Permitting logged-in users to participate in Front Page activities (this allows users to see all visible MCC Moodle courses)
1. Access Site Administration > Front Page > Front Page settings
2. Set the default front page role to student.

C. If you want to refer them to HelpDesk directly for password issues:
Forgotton password URL
If your lost password handling is performed entirely outside of Moodle (for example, only by a help desk), you can set the url of that service here. Anybody pressing a "lost password" link in Moodle will be redirected to this URL. Note that this will disable all of Moodle's lost password recovery options regardless of authentication method(s) in use.

D.Please enable AJAX
Administration > Appearance > AJAX and Javascript (this allows for drag-and-drop of course blocks)

E. Change student role to allow forum ratings (forum:rate) and view ratings (forum:viewrating, forum:viewanyrating)

F. Change teacher role to allow overrides of student role
1. Access Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.
2. Edit the teacher role and change the capability moodle/role:override to allow.
3. Click the button "Save changes".
4. Click the tab "Allow role overrides" (in Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles).
5. Check the appropriate box to allow a teacher to override the student role.
6. Click the button "Save changes".

G. Under Modules - Filters - Manage Filters, enable Algebra Notation.

H. Under Grades - general settings, enable Outcomes

Issues

Gradebook -- the whole thing is an issue
First, my totals from previous classes did not appear. Had to Turn Editing On, Edit the "graded" category, and set to Sum of Grades just to get it totalled.
Extra credit is impossibly difficult. So is excluding grades.

Fall 2008 : Moodle 1.9

Gradebook issue #1: Scales translate automatically as percentages in gradebook.
There is an admin setting where you can not aggregate scaled grades at all, but if you do that it's for the whole site and then it wouldn't aggregate a scale with numbers.

So to make a real scale, it must go in comments -- the easiest way to do this is through the Grades with Quick Feedback visible. Then they see the comment in grades. So each assignment has No Grade (instead of Scales), then Quick Feedback in the Gradebook. Homework is in its own category. The only way to move an item into a category once it's been created is to update that assignment.Then from the Gradebook I edit the Homework category (and Study Guide category) so Grade type is NONE. For each category, item weight is added. Graded = 100%

BUT, this shouldn't be an issue if the category (or course?) uses Sum of Grades:

Sum of grades
The sum of all grade values. Scale grades are ignored. This is the only type that does not convert the grades to percentages internally (normalisation). The Maximum grade of associated category item is calculated automatically as a sum of maximums from all aggregated items.
A1 70/100, A2 20/80, A3 10/10:
70 + 20 + 10 = 100/190

So instead, I put all the homework in a category called Homework, which I set at Sum of grades, and 0.00 weight. The I was able to use the drop-down scale but not have it count for points.

BUT it still showed the percents when they look at their grades (user report is the easiest way to see this). For each item controls, from the gradebook using edit, I tried changing the multiplicator to 0. That at least has it say 0%, but it only worked for ones I hadn't graded yet. So I had to use commenting.

So for online classes:
Course level -- weighted mean of grades (for showing the correct letter grade and percentage -- needs to be SUM near the end of the class so they see points only!
Graded category -- Sum of grades (needed so they can see total points!), weighted mean of grades, max points 100 , item weight 100.00
Quiz -- multiplicator 1.0, grade display real(default), 2 decimal points -- maybe multiplicator should be 1.1????
Category total -- grade display type -real, 2 decimal points, item weight 100.00
Course total -- Maximum grade 110, grade display type default(real) letter, decimal points 0, Grade type=value

For onsite classes, I'm having to add an extra credit item in graded, where I put all points over 10. What a chore.

-----

Other admin settings:

To allow students to upload images, must change Roles -- override -- manage files (allows them access to all files, however)

Planning for shift over to MiraCosta Moodle Fall 2010

Settings I need changed just for me:

Req Dec 09: I would like to have my own role with permission to:

Edit user profile moodle/user:editprofile

I would also like a way to Message all teachers inside of Moodle, to make sure I'm not missing any when I send out announcements. I don't know whether that is covered by this? http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=104551

Answer Jan 10:

I created a new role in Moodle (see screen Shot 1) that was a  duplicate of teacher and then allowed the following per your request.

Edit user profile moodle/user:editprofile

I see you have the POT course on Moodle & Lisa's Demo Class History 111.  I changed your role in both of those classes to this new role for you.  (Lisa Lane Role).

See Screen Shot 2 of where the permissions are for your new role.

I took a look at the Message all teachers inside Moodle link you sent plus did some additional research. It appears this is new in 1.9.   I have contacted Moodlerooms admin support for assistance to see how I might be able to add this to your role so that you will have access to this directly.

May 2010