!!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

!!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by Sharon Goodson -
Number of replies: 11
I know there's been a lot of discussion (and confusion) over parent roles and capabilities. I've searched, tinkered and tweaked trying to find a solution to this - and I found other questions about the same function, but no solutions....

We're in serious need of a capability allowing parents to grade student assignments. They don't necessarily need to access the course, but they do need to access assignment submissions, then of course, grade them.

At this point, the most I've accomplished is: assign parent role in user profile, parent accesses student profile from mentee block, parent can see there is ungraded (and graded) work on Outline Report, they can see grades on the Grader Report, and... that's about it.

Clicking on the assignment from either location simply brings up the assignment instructions/summary box less the 'edit your submission' or 'view x attempts.' If they use the nav bar to see the assignments page it doesn't show any submissions or any grades (viewing must be in the parent user context)

They can also use the nav bar to access the course, but can only view material (even though at one point I set 'submit' assignments to allow). They'll even be shown the Assignments Submitted Block, which displays submissions by ALL students, but clicking just brings up the static summary (again, for any student).

I've tried countless configurations, even assigning parent to student as a full-fledged teacher with all associated rights, and the above is still as far as it goes.

This is important because we have two groups of students: Students who work primarily with teachers and teachers grade all their work (the standard setup); and students who work primarily with parents and parents do the grading (except quiz/exams). Teachers are available to all students, but for the second group the parent is essentially the teacher.

We're in the process of moving everything from our old (ancient) setup to Moodle. Things are great for graded students, but unless we can figure this out, we'll have to leave the old system in place or lose the other students. The old system is so outdated we can only find two places to park it - and the cheapest (and the one who customized it in the first place) is still four times what our Moodle hosting is - and of course, they're about the only ones who understand the file structure.

So, thanks for listening, and any suggestions, tips or best of luck sentiments would be most appreciated! smile
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In reply to Sharon Goodson

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by Ray Lawrence -
To summarise wink, you need?

Parent access to course.
Ability to grade some assignments

I hope that's not too simplistic (I gave up reading the entire post after a couple of attempts)

I think you'll need to provide parents access to the course (rather than use the user context), probably with a bespoke student type role without the ability to submit etc.

To hide things you don't want parents to see (if that's important) you could use groups/groupings.

Assign the parents to bespoke role for the course and the Teacher role for the assignments you want them to grade (open the assignment --> Locally assigned roles.

Of course, the above is no use if you want parents to only be able to grade their own child's submission (I don't think you mentioned whether that was the case).
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In reply to Ray Lawrence

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by Sharon Goodson -
Wow! Was it that bad? *lol* I'm sorry, It's obviously too late to edit....

I tried to include everything I've done, ran into, why we want what, etc. - inevitably, those questions are asked (or you've already tried what is suggested).

This subject has been thrown out so many times I was trying to cover all (too many) bases tongueout

But, yes, in a nutshell, except it doesn't really matter if they can access courses, just submitted assignments. And yes, unfortunately, we don't want parents seeing or accessing other students' work. Privacy laws.

I can probably expect more Best Wishes than anything else, huh?

I appreciate your effort to read through it, though big grin
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In reply to Sharon Goodson

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Not really possible to do what you are asking for at the moment, although it is an interesting feature request.

I wonder if it would be possible to implement this as a custom gradebook report?

In the mean time, the following might work (but requires a lot of setting up):
1. Change the non-editing teacher role to take away 'Access all groups'
2. Enrol the parents in the course as non-editing teachers.
3. Create a group for each parent/child pair.
4. Put the assignment into separate groups mode.

Then we have to stop parents see any of the forums, etc. in the course.

5. Enable groupings for your site.
6. Put the existing course groups into one grouping.
7. Create a second grouping with just one group, that contains all the students and teachers, but not the parents.
8. Make all the other activities in the course available to members of the second grouping only.

Hmm. Something tells me that that is not a practical solution.
Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by ben reynolds -
Is there a reason the student & parent can't simply be in a classroom alone?
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In reply to ben reynolds

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by Sharon Goodson -
LOL - thanks Tim, it's always nice to know other people go round and round like that too! big grin

I have yet to mess with groups in any way. I guess now would be a good time (or at least an appropriate time). It may not be practical in the long run, but I'd still like to see if it works (I HATE when software tells me 'No' - it turns me into a rebellious adolescent with tunnel vision!)

If it does work, it might give some subtle clues as to a more practical, long-term solution (that is, for programmers ...if you get my drift wink ).

IMHO, it's been discussed enough times to indicate there's probably a larger population that could use this - especially considering the number of home schooled-students continues to rise, and parents are naturally turning to the Internet.

Should we consider submitting the feature in tracker?

Ben - I'm not sure what you mean. If no other students are enrolled in any of the student's classes, that's a perfect setup. But of course, we can't create a separate class for every student. I have the feeling that's not what you meant, though.

What did you have in mind?
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In reply to Sharon Goodson

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by ben reynolds -
Ben - I'm not sure what you mean. If no other students are enrolled in any of the student's classes, that's a perfect setup. But of course, we can't create a separate class for every student. I have the feeling that's not what you meant, though.

What did you have in mind?
 Hi Sharon,
Depending on numbers & pedagogy, I really did mean a separate classroom for each student-parent team.

OTH, if you are doing group work (student interact w/ each other, etc), individual classrooms won't do. Most of our courses require discussion, interaction, etc, so we don't make separate classrooms. But if you've essentially got homeschoolers, why not?
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In reply to ben reynolds

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by Sharon Goodson -
We are trying to create a more social environment, that was one of (many) advantages over the old system. And we have a couple hundred students; and over 200 classes (each class is split into four quarters), so it could get pretty crazy. On a smaller scale that would be a good idea, though...
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In reply to Sharon Goodson

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by ben reynolds -
Well, I'm afraid you have to fall back to Tim's suggestion and use groups.

Your problem, of course, is FERPA & parents don't play well together. The moment you give a parent semi-teacherly capabilities, they'll be able to see other students' stuff.

Going a bit with Tim's groupings idea, I wonder if another module might work. For example, database. You said at one point that the parent doesn't need to see the classroom.

Maybe giving us an example of what you mean by "parent grading an assignment" would help. "Assignment" has a special denotation in Moodle that I don't think you mean.
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In reply to ben reynolds

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by Sharon Goodson -
Yes, that's exactly my problem, keeping other students hidden.

And no, I actually do mean 'assignments' as they are defined in Moodle; online text and upload files.

Attempt at brief but concise explanation: The old system was/is as flexible as board and allows online submission/grading of only multiple choice type items. We use that for final exams; most other work is done on paper or text doc, then faxed/mailed in so we have it on file for accreditation requirements (told you it was outdated).

Parents of non-graded student have accounts allowing access to answer keys and child's gradebook. They grade/ enter grades before sending work in. (These student are on a different tuition scale, but some parents chose this simply because they want to act as the teacher) Graded students simply submitted work via fax/mail or email and teachers grade/enter the work. (Note: certified teachers are available to ALL students during posted online hours.)

In efforts to get graded students into Moodle quickly, we set up exams as Moodle quizzes, and everything else is an online text/upload file assignment. Now that we have all work up, and graded students enrolled (and loving it!), we'll begin the slow task of converting work into other formats and taking advantage of all the wonderful things the modules can do.

As work items become more automated, graded/non-graded will become absolute, but we have a ways to go for that. In the mean time, we have no way to accommodate non-graded students in moodle. (We really need to dump the old system, the expense is killing us and now it's like we're running two schools.)

We could have parents look at the feedback listed in the grade report - since I think they can see that - and email us the answers - I hadn't really though of that...DUH! Think that would work or am I missing something there? There should be a way around that in a system as sophisticated as Moodle, but viewing feedback/emailing answers sound simple enough. (Maybe that's seen only after feedback is entered - even still, teachers could enter 'parent grading' to generate that...hmm..)

I did it again, huh, rattled to the point of confusion blush (do you see my OCD at work here, or ADD - look there's a chicken! *lol*)

I certainly appreciate the input and suggestions here. Who knows - it might lead to a breakthrough for a whole new capability!
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In reply to Sharon Goodson

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by ben reynolds -
So, really, parents are just graders. They score, and they enter the score in the gradebook.

If that is the case, maybe an idea would really be to make a classroom for each set of parent & student that has nothing in it but a gradebook.

Use that gradebook to record all courses? Kind of like a portfolio.

Can you have multiple instances of gradebook in one classroom?

Maybe you don't need a gradebook at all. A spreadsheet maintained by the parent in a classroom is easy enough to extract data from.
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In reply to ben reynolds

Re: !!Need Parent Role That Allows Assignment Grading

by Sharon Goodson -
That's is a pretty good idea! Thanks! I'm going to check out Tim's group settings too, but I've already made a parent classroom and I'll check out some possibilities in there. I like that idea because it also gives parents class email 'folder' (we use eMail List) so they can communicate with teachers. We can also use the class to post resources...might be onto something! Thanks!

I'll post back in a few days with an update big grin

Thanks again all!
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