Activity setting preset builder

Activity setting preset builder

by Lily Asshauer -
Number of replies: 7

Hi everyone!

Moodle activities are insanely powerful—if you take the time, you can fine-tune them down to a very detailed level. That’s absolutely awesome if you’ve invested the time to get to know the system. Otherwise, it’s easy for lecturers to get lost. So how could we make it a bit easier for them?

User Story:

As admins, we want to be able to define a set of custom preset options that will automatically configure an activity, and optionally block users from changing preset-controlled settings.

Background for the idea:

Securing exams can become quite complex when using multiple access rules (e.g. honesty check, IP address restrictions, secure layouts, Safe Exam Browser—you name it). It would be awesome to have a tool that allows us to create a set of buttons or a dropdown at the top of the settings page where lecturers can load a baseline of recommended settings. This could also be useful for other types of activities, especially those with many configuration options.

Since I haven’t done much Moodle-specific development yet, I’m not sure if this idea might be a bit of a stretch for the DevCamp - but let me know what you think!

Best,
Lily

In reply to Lily Asshauer

Re: Activity setting preset builder

by Katarzyna Potocka -
stretch for the DevCamp - no way - everything is possible, even if you might need to finish after the DevCamp I am sure that you can get a pretty good start and definitely produce already some working code wink
In reply to Lily Asshauer

Re: Activity setting preset builder

by Thomas Niedermaier -

Hi Lily,

I absolutely get your point!

But what about the "advanced" and "locked" settings some activities already have? (Link to the documentation, see the attached picture)

I would say the goal could be to check at least the moodle core plugins and to extend the use of this feature to plugins, where they would make sense but are not implemented yet. In my opinion that would be an even more feasable project for the devcamp.

In fact, I am dreaming of an "assistant mode". Depending on the complexity of the plugin the assistant asks the course creator x questions and sets the plugin options accordingly to the answers. 

For example when adding a quiz to your course:

Would you like to create a new quiz or shall I duplicate an already existing quiz and adapt certain details?

  • Create a new quiz
  • Duplicate another quiz

What kind of quiz would you like to create?

  • Self-Assessment
  • Exam

In which phase of the quiz the results should be shown to the participants?

  • Right after the submission
  • After the grading
  • At this date: _______

etc. etc.

I think both approaches have their merrits and they would both enhance Moodle's usability, especially for newcomers or people which use Moodle only one or two times a year.

Cheers,
Thomas

Attachment locked_and_advanced_settings.png
In reply to Thomas Niedermaier

Re: Activity setting preset builder

by Lily Asshauer -
Hi Thomas,
in our experience, the activity presets (including locked & advanced functionality) actually do a pretty good job for the important quiz activity settings.

I love the idea of having an assistant mode, and I think the initial proposal could actually become a foundation for this. When we have the mechanisms for "one-click" presets in place, the logic behind them could come in pretty handy for creating an assistant (builder) tool. Looks like we have our hands full for the next MOOTs to come 😁

Cheers,
Lily
In reply to Lily Asshauer

Re: Activity setting preset builder

by Nadav Kavalerchik -
Hi Lily,
We have developed a "Quiz presets" plugin, that allow admin to create different settings combinations for different pedagogical scenarios,
which allow novice Moodle teachers to choose a preset like "Final exam" or "Practice" and do not care about the setting details.
User experience is structured around educational scenarios rather than system functionality
We presented it a few years ago in Moodle Moot
https://github.com/PeTeL-Weizmann/moodle-local_quizpreset
If there is any demand, I will update the code to Moodle 4.5

Nadav
In reply to Nadav Kavalerchik

Re: Activity setting preset builder

by Lily Asshauer -
Hi Nadav,
awesome, thank you for the link! This looks pretty much exactly like what we are looking for! I ran some quick tests on my test system, and it seems like the base functionality is already working on 4.5

If we could give this a proper look for if everything is ready for 4.5 that would be awesome!

Thank you,
Lily
In reply to Lily Asshauer

Re: Activity setting preset builder

by Nadav Kavalerchik -
Hi Lily,

I have updated the plugin with our latest Moodle 4.5+ version:
https://github.com/PeTeL-Weizmann/moodle-local_quizpreset
And now it also need a small dependency local plugin:
https://github.com/PeTeL-Weizmann/moodle-local_jsoneditor

I haven't tried to install it on a new and clean Moodle,
so you might need to remove some redundant code
that is related to our PETEL project, from which I extracted this plugin.
And if you have any questions, please send me a message.

Enjoy,
Nadav