The Internship Journal Management plugin is a set of three custom database fields designed to allow the Database Module to manage remote student journals and reports with multiple supervisors. Internships, study abroad trips, domestic work/study programs, and
teaching practice periods all require a journal be written for students to
receive university credit. This journal is usually on paper, which means it is
difficult to send back to university teachers and staff to review. Also the
data in the journal needs to combined, analyzed and synthesized into
end-of-term reports to the hosting company/school and the sending institution.
Inspection by the Japan Ministry of Education may be required when formal
credit is being given. Therefore, a secure, online database system could solve
this problem, and provide more timely supervision by teachers. The Database
activity module of Moodle was modified with three custom fields so that the journal data can be
checked and approved by both an on-site supervisor and a remote instructor.
- datafield_datestamp for "hanko" approval/comment by mulitiple supervisors
- datafield_timetable for logging time spent in paid/unpaid training activities
- datafield_notification for automatic reminder mails to students and supervisors
These database fields were all tested on PCs and mobile devices--and fixed for various bugs. This is a modification needed to add to the current core
Database module. Also, the Export feature of the Database module was unable to provide data in useful reports, so this was coded so that students and teachers
can get summary information automatically. These three modifications are freely available on the programmer Ponlawat Weerapanpisit's github. To see the journal in operation at the private demo site, contact Don Hinkelman (hinkelman@mac.com) for login instructions. Initial programming costs for this plugin were provided to Ponlawat Weerapanpisit by an 2019 MAJ Research Grant.
