R&D grants result 2019

MAJ_Internship_Management_Proposal-20190224.docx

Ponlawat Weerapanpisit

65,000 yen

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 will be modified so that the journal data must be checked and approved by on-site supervisor and a remote instructor. If data is incomplete or incorrect, then a system for revision must be included. Also, the interface must be easy to use on mobile devices. This is a modification needed to add to the current core Database module. Also, reports need to be coded so that students and teachers can get summary information automatically.

MAJ_Moodle_Showcase_Proposal

Don Hinkelman

149,000

For 2019, the MAJ Showcase team propose to do showcase programming documentation, MoodleNet integration strategy, Moodle 3.7 and 3.8 upgrading, and testing of code and plugins added to the MAJ Hub.

Showcase Programming and MoodleNet Integration

The Showcase has two sites, one for uploading courses and one for demonstrating new plugins. This section will document changes made for the new hub, and prepare the three blocks for listing on the Moodle plugins database. This will allow better maintenance and a better ability for programmers to take over a more transparent design. Also, during 2019, as features of MoodleNet become publicized, a programming strategy to integrate the MAJ Showcase into its system and network will be proposed.       

Moodle 3.7 and 3.8 Upgrade

As Moodle versions change, the core code and themes are changed which affects MAJ Hub plugins installed on the site, and the courses themselves. In May and November 2019, any programming issues from core Moodle 3.7 and 3.8 that affect the main MAJ site can also be addressed with this part of the grant. This involves systematic testing on various browsers as well. Finally, troubleshooting new plugins will be done to ensure smooth operation with new versions of Moodle.

Moodle MobileAppに対応した出欠Pluginの開発

三浦　謙一

200,000 yen

現在、MoodleにはMoodle MobileApp （スマホアプリ）がリリースされているが、このMoodle MobileApp でも動作するPluginを開発するには、非常に難しい技術が必要である。Moodle3.5からは、JavaScript、PHP、Mustache Template 、Ionic等で作成できる新方式が提供されている。しかし、現状では、MobileAppに対応したPluginは非常に少ない状況であり、この開発手法を含めて、まだまだ普及しているとは言えないのが実情である。

我々は、実際にこの新手法を使ってMobileApp対応の「出欠モジュールPlugin」を作成することにより、MobileApp対応の開発手法を広め、かつ、スマホアプリによるMoodleの活用を広げることに貢献できると考える。

Forum Module Improvements

Matt Cotter

200,000 yen

The goal of this project is to continue improving the forum module and the forum reporting block. Firstly, adding a photo size restriction setting would allow the instructor to set a default size for all photos uploaded to a forum discussion. Related to this is adding support to the report block to count media uploads to a discussion. This would make it simple for an instructor to see how many photos, videos or audio files a student has uploaded to a particular discussion in a forum. Another change is related to the UX of the forum.  Now it can be difficult to follow a thread on a mobile device in a nested view because the limited space makes it difficult to have clear indication of the replies under a particular post. We feel some way to link threads, be it color codes, changing ‘reply’ to ‘reply to (name) may solve this situation. This could make using the forums easier. Finally, an addition to the forum reporting block that would allow an instructor to see the number of replies to a particular thread and not just a total of all replies for one discussion.

Developers: Ponlawat Weerapanpisit, Adam Jenkins
URL　https://github.com/ponlawat-w/moodle-tool_bulkreset

This plugin is mainly for institutional Moodle administrators.

At the end of a semester, courses are typically full of user content: submitted assignments, quiz attempts, forum posts etc. If the same course is to be reused in a following semester, it then becomes necessary to clear out the data and unenrol the previous semester’s students. Moodle has the built-in course reset function that serves this purpose, however it must be done course by course. Even with course upload with CSV files, there is no way to specify what is to be reset. For small sites this may not be a problem, but for sites that are centrally administered with several hundred courses, the task of resetting courses becomes unfeasible. This plugin solves the problem of centrally resetting courses by enabling the administrator to reset multiple courses simultaneously.

First, the courses to be reset are selected from a list of all courses. They can be selected one by one or by categories. Next, the options for resetting every module in the selected courses are set. Also, the date and time when the reset should happen is set. Clicking continue sets a scheduled task that will reset all the selected courses at the specified time. The reset is run as a scheduled task and cannot be run directly through the interface. This is by design as running the reset by cron prevents problems with PHP timeouts.

※ A second plugin to allow defaults for course resets to be pre-specified by the admin has also been developed.　↓

https://github.com/ponlawat-w/moodle-tool_resetsettings

研究成果物は、補助金受領後，1年以内にGPLコードとしてmoodle.orgのプラグインデータベースまたは国内の適切なムードルサイトを通じて一般に公開して頂きます。 また、原則として、翌年のMoodle Moot Japanで成果を発表して頂き、A4サイズで１枚程度の研究成果報告書をそのMoot前までに提出して頂きます。

The resultant product must be released as GPL code and posted for distribution on the moodle.org plugins database or any appropriate Moodle Japan sites within one year of acceptance. It is expected that the grant-subsidized project results will be reported/presented in the subsequent Moodlemoot and submition of a one-page report of research results in A4 size needs to be submitted prior to said Moot.