R&D grants result 2015

Community Hub Custom Theme and Upgrade Proposal for 2015

Don Hinkelman

222,000 yen

The MAJ Community Hub is a free, open courseware sharing site that is a service provided to MAJ members and also a service to the Moodle community as a whole. In 2015, social networking features including leaderboards and badges will be added to the hub to make it more participatory and informative for members and contributors to use. In addition, a custom theme will be created to make the hub more tightly integrated with Moodle HQ core code and more effective 'market' or publicize the current courses to those who wish to try new courses. Finally, the Hub will be upgraded to new Moodle versions during the courses of the year and additional contributed plugins added on an ongoing basis.

Workshop Module Enhancement

Thomas Robb

44,000 yen

The "Workshop Module" allows peer evaluation of an assignment or task, but while it is easy to download individual submissions, unlike the assignment module, there is currently no way for the instructor to download all submissions as a .zip file. This makes the module cumbersome to use with a large number of registered students. We are developing an enhancement to the Workshop Module to allow the same functionality as the Assignment Module.

Enhancements to the Reader module and Reader block

Gordon Bateson

150,000 yen

The Reader module and Reader block (formerly the ReaderView block) are popular Moodle plugins that support extensive reading among students. This project will improve the functionality and usability of the Reader module for Moodle 2.x and the associated ReaderView block, which will be renamed to the Reader block. The following items will be implemented from a wish list that was recently created by users of the Reader module. (1) set maximum and minimum reading frequency, (2) take action on students who repeatedly fail quizzes, (3) send email from Reader reports, (4) show progress bar for low level students, (5) allow easier error reporting information for teachers and (g) activate incomplete menu items Additionally, this project will add the following gamification features to the Reader block: (a) word counts of top reading students, (b) suggestions for suitable unread books (c) reminders about reading rate, and (d) mini-progress bar Finally, the backup and restore functionality of both the Reader module and the Reader block will be completed in the latter part of 2015.

PoodLL 3

Justin Hunt

183,000 yen

PoodLL is a popular set of Moodle plugins whose chief function is to enable the submission of audio/video recordings and whiteboard drawings as content to Moodle. PoodLL is now relatively old in plugin terms (seven years) and out of pace with modern Moodle and browser technologies. PoodLL 3 is a re implementation of PoodLL using modern apis and html5 technology. It will sport several new features including html5 audio and video recording and external storage adaptors. And it will be built around an api that allows other 3rd party plugins to use PoodLL.

Single Sign On (SSO) and Mailing List Improvement with Moodle

Adam Jenkins Don Hinkelman & Justin Hunt

76,000 yen

There would be two main functions to this project: Improving personalized mails to members with MailChimp and Single sign-on. The Single Sign On (SSO) part of this project would allow participants in the main MAJ site to move to the MAJ Hub site easily with no signing on again. The second part of the project involves improving the mailing list management with MailChimp. Depending on further fund-raising, we hope to integrate the free mailing list management software called “Mailchimp” with Moodle for use with the MAJ and the MAJ Hub mailing list. After a test mailing with MailChimp in December 2014, it was clear that a closer integration was necessary with Mailchimp, so that time-consuming manual processes can be reduced. We wish to use segments, merge fields, and sync course membership with the Mailchimp mailing list. The integration would be used to expand mailing list use to MAJ, R&D and other MAJ communications.

小学校教育における小テスト印刷機能の研究と人材育成

竹内　豊一

275,000 yen

Moodle上の小テストを学習プリントとして印刷する機能を研究開発しモジュールとして追加することを目指す。今回の機能ではレイアウトなどは確定せず、問題と解答のワードへの出力の機能に限定し、レイアウトについては出力後調整することでの対応を考えている。この単純なシステムを利用しながら使い勝手の良いベストな出力形式と研究し利用効果を確認したい。 研究が進めば、現場の教員はすでに準備された魅力的なコンテンツを選択するだけで簡単に学習プリントを作成できる。これはワープロとの決定的な違いでもあり、ＩＣＴ環境が整っていない学校でもmoodleを利用する価値が生まれる。同時にmoodleを利用することによって将来e-learningに対応できる高度な情報技術を持った教員の育成という重要な側面も持っている。

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、Moodle Moot Japan 2016 で成果を発表して頂きます。

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 (Moodlemoot Japan 2016).