I'm exploring Moodle 1.5+ to determine if it is a viable Bb 5.5.1 replacement for our University. I've been able to import whole courses via restore (except for Bb quizzes) so I tried importing a question-pool export from Bb 5.5.1. It told me no questions were found. I sure thought this worked in Moodle 1.4* ... anyhow now I'm at an impasse as to whether I can recommend Moodle. Can anyone comment on this issue? I attach the Bb export zipfile.
I found this inside mod/quiz/version.php:
$module->version = 2005060301; // The (date) version of this module
$module->requires = 2005021600; // Requires this Moodle version
I found Moodle's version.php to contain:
$version = 2005060201; // YYYYMMDD = Moodle 1.5 Date
// X = Moodle 1.5 Point release (0,1,2...)
// Y = Interim incrementer
$release = '1.5 +'; // Human-friendly version name
Hi James, we've posted an ungraded version of the BB question pool importer for BB 6.1, it may solve your problems (believe the old one topped out at BB 5?). The importer our programmer, Jeff Graham, developed also maps BB essay questions to the new essay question type we developed, and BB matching questions to the new 'rendered matching' question type. The importer and rendered matching are all available in CVS/contrib. (blackboard_6_pool_import, quiz_renderedmatch_qtype) and we'll have the essay question type there soon as well.
San Francisco State University has also been working on a full BB 6 course importer, we've been beta testing it, it's looking pretty good so far, though they don't currently map the two BB question types mentioned above.
I believe Kevin Kelley (of SFSU) plans to send that code to CVS/contrib as soon as they get a few things sorted out.
San Francisco State University has also been working on a full BB 6 course importer, we've been beta testing it, it's looking pretty good so far, though they don't currently map the two BB question types mentioned above.
I believe Kevin Kelley (of SFSU) plans to send that code to CVS/contrib as soon as they get a few things sorted out.
Michael, that's good news! I will merge your contrib code with 1.5+ and let you
know how it works with Bb 5.5.1. A way to do this in bulk, via Bb course import,
would sure make a transition easier, so I am very much interested in Kevin/
San Francisco State's code. I volunteer to help in any way I can!
I have a year until our BB 5.5.1 license expires (they claim they won't renew it),
and will have to sell the Moodle concept to my CIO! Looks like you've managed it,
and that'll help me. Besides, I don't care much for the alternatives!
Re: contrib - how does one get contributions added?
-- James
know how it works with Bb 5.5.1. A way to do this in bulk, via Bb course import,
would sure make a transition easier, so I am very much interested in Kevin/
San Francisco State's code. I volunteer to help in any way I can!
I have a year until our BB 5.5.1 license expires (they claim they won't renew it),
and will have to sell the Moodle concept to my CIO! Looks like you've managed it,
and that'll help me. Besides, I don't care much for the alternatives!
Re: contrib - how does one get contributions added?
-- James
Hi James, to get write access to contrib, usually you send some code (and your sourceforge username to) you've written for Moodle to Martin Dougiamas and ask for write privs to the contrib directory.
Michael, I discovered that the standard Blackboard import did work
for my test case, but only when I extracted the res00001.dat file and uploaded it,
rather than the zipfile provided from Bb 5.5.1.
The Blackboard_6 format always found no questions in the zipfile upload.
I think I'll take a stab at merging the zipfile handling in Jeff's code,
into the std Blackboard format code. That'll suit our situation better!
for my test case, but only when I extracted the res00001.dat file and uploaded it,
rather than the zipfile provided from Bb 5.5.1.
The Blackboard_6 format always found no questions in the zipfile upload.
I think I'll take a stab at merging the zipfile handling in Jeff's code,
into the std Blackboard format code. That'll suit our situation better!
In reply to Michael Penney
Re: Can't import from Blackboard 5.5.1 ... Moodle 1.5+
by Dennis Sherrer -
Hi,
You guys are awesome. I am a public school teacher who has been trying to get other teachers to use Blackboard for the last four years. I never get very far because of the costs. Now that Moodle 1.5 is out - I have all kinds of interest. I am working with a local education tech support team for learning management systems.
I have been waiting for the essay questions to be added to the quizzes. I installed it last week and it works great. My problem is I have 8 courses in Blackboard 6.0 which have extensive use of quizzes to individualize my teaching. I was so excited to see this Blackboard_6 import.
I believe I installed it correctly - I built a folder in mod/quiz/format/ and built a php file called format from the cvs. It shows up correctly in the quiz import menu. When I try to import a Blackboard quiz file (.zip) I get the follwoing:
Unknown or unhandled question type: "Fill in the Blank"
Unknown or unhandled question type: "Fill in the Blank"
Essay question types are not handled because the quiz question type 'Essay' does not exist in this installation of Moodle
Omitted Question: Round 768,850,387 to the nearest million and write the rounded number in scientific notation.
Unknown or unhandled question type: "Fill in the Blank"
Unknown or unhandled question type: "Fill in the Blank"
Essay question types are not handled because the quiz question type 'Essay' does not exist in this installation of Moodle
Omitted Question: Find the perimeter and the area of this figure. Dimensions are in centimeters.
Can someone help me from here?
Thanks,
Dennis Sherrer
You guys are awesome. I am a public school teacher who has been trying to get other teachers to use Blackboard for the last four years. I never get very far because of the costs. Now that Moodle 1.5 is out - I have all kinds of interest. I am working with a local education tech support team for learning management systems.
I have been waiting for the essay questions to be added to the quizzes. I installed it last week and it works great. My problem is I have 8 courses in Blackboard 6.0 which have extensive use of quizzes to individualize my teaching. I was so excited to see this Blackboard_6 import.
I believe I installed it correctly - I built a folder in mod/quiz/format/ and built a php file called format from the cvs. It shows up correctly in the quiz import menu. When I try to import a Blackboard quiz file (.zip) I get the follwoing:
Unknown or unhandled question type: "Fill in the Blank"
Unknown or unhandled question type: "Fill in the Blank"
Essay question types are not handled because the quiz question type 'Essay' does not exist in this installation of Moodle
Omitted Question: Round 768,850,387 to the nearest million and write the rounded number in scientific notation.
Unknown or unhandled question type: "Fill in the Blank"
Unknown or unhandled question type: "Fill in the Blank"
Essay question types are not handled because the quiz question type 'Essay' does not exist in this installation of Moodle
Omitted Question: Find the perimeter and the area of this figure. Dimensions are in centimeters.
Can someone help me from here?
Thanks,
Dennis Sherrer
Hi Dennis,
The "Fill in the Blank" question types do not have a parser/handler for as I had no instances of that question type in the test cases I had to code from. This code needs to be written.
However, the essay question type should have worked as it sounds you installed everything okay. The detection routine for the question type is probably faulty. I will take a look into this and get back to you.
Regards,
Jeff
The "Fill in the Blank" question types do not have a parser/handler for as I had no instances of that question type in the test cases I had to code from. This code needs to be written.
However, the essay question type should have worked as it sounds you installed everything okay. The detection routine for the question type is probably faulty. I will take a look into this and get back to you.
Regards,
Jeff
Hi Dennis,
The problem with the essay question types has been fixed in cvs/contrib. It was a minor mistake on my part. Line 618 in format.php needed quotes around ESSAY.
I was unable to test this until the essay question type had been converted to 1.5. You can either add these yourself or grab the fixed version from CVS.
As far as the "Fill in the Blank" question types I have no example pool exports that use this question type so I can't write a parser/handler for it. I'm guessing this should map fine to "short answer". If you can provide an example question pool with these I may be able to take a look at writing a parser at it, but that will depend on the priority of my other projects.
There are probably some other problems with the essay question importer so if you happen to run into any bugs please post them.
regards,
Jeff
The problem with the essay question types has been fixed in cvs/contrib. It was a minor mistake on my part. Line 618 in format.php needed quotes around ESSAY.
I was unable to test this until the essay question type had been converted to 1.5. You can either add these yourself or grab the fixed version from CVS.As far as the "Fill in the Blank" question types I have no example pool exports that use this question type so I can't write a parser/handler for it. I'm guessing this should map fine to "short answer". If you can provide an example question pool with these I may be able to take a look at writing a parser at it, but that will depend on the priority of my other projects.
There are probably some other problems with the essay question importer so if you happen to run into any bugs please post them.
regards,
Jeff
Hi Michael,
I installed your blckboard_6 importer and am able to see it in the list of available file formats. However, when I try to load question pools I've exported from Blackboard (version 6.2.3.19) I always get the following error:
Fatal error: Cannot use string offset as an array in C:\Inetpub\moodle15\mod\quiz\format\blackboard_6\format.php on line 352
PHP Fatal error: Cannot use string offset as an array in C:\Inetpub\moodle15\mod\quiz\format\blackboard_6\format.php on line 352
Can you shed any light on what I might try? I've attached a sample export if that helps out.
Thanks!
Ben Trelease
Puget Sound Center for Teaching Learning and Technology
In reply to Ben Trelease
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In reply to Michael Penney
Re: Can't import from Blackboard 5.5.1 ... Moodle 1.5+
by luca marcovati -
Hi Michael,
I'm quite interested in what you wrote...
"San Francisco State University has also been working on a full BB 6 course importer, we've been beta testing it, it's looking pretty good so far, though they don't currently map the two BB question types mentioned above."
My company is trying to migrate from Bb 6 to Moodle (1.5). Do you know If this importer is already available, and how ?
Thank you very much in advance : )
best,
Luca
In reply to luca marcovati
Re: Can't import from Blackboard 5.5.1 ... Moodle 1.5+
by Michael Penney -
SFSU's tool here available for download now as discussed here:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=32049
It's a stand alone jsp (tomcat) app for now, it will produce a Moodle 1.4 course zip which you can import into 1.5.
If you add in our optional essay question type (standard in 1.6) and 'rendered match' question type (avail. here: http://cdc.humboldt.edu/moodle) then you can use our BB 6 quiz pool importer to import BB6 quiz pools to get all your quiz questions into BB.
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=32049
It's a stand alone jsp (tomcat) app for now, it will produce a Moodle 1.4 course zip which you can import into 1.5.
If you add in our optional essay question type (standard in 1.6) and 'rendered match' question type (avail. here: http://cdc.humboldt.edu/moodle) then you can use our BB 6 quiz pool importer to import BB6 quiz pools to get all your quiz questions into BB.
In reply to Michael Penney
Re: Can't import from Blackboard 5.5.1 ... Moodle 1.5+
by luca marcovati -
Thanks, we'll have a look to the tool as soon as possible.
best,
Luca
In reply to Michael Penney
Re: Can't import from Blackboard 5.5.1 ... Moodle 1.5+
by Bhupinder Singh -
Hi Michael,
AT the outset let me congratulate you on the wonderful plugins that you have offerred to moodlers. They all address vital areas for education.
I am having a little problem with the Blackboard_6 when I try to import I get the following :
Fatal error: Cannot instantiate non-existent class: quiz_format_bb6 in c:\program files\easyphp1-7\www\moodle\mod\quiz\locallib.php on line 2659
Can you guide me where I am going wrong.
Garry
We recently installed our Moodle (1.5.2) and encountered the problem importing BB files. I downloaded the blackboard_6_pool_import file and created a new bbpool folder under /mod/quiz/format. Now comes the problem!
Now, whenever I click to upload a file the next moodle page is blank except for the banner across the top of the page. I remove the folder and the page works fine; I see the pulldown list of file formats, everything. I even went into the Blackboard folder, renamed that format.php file as format.old and copied the new format.php file into the folder. Same thing happened! As long as that new format.php file is anywhere under /mod/quiz/format, the upload page is blank! Take the offending format.php file out; rename format.old to format.php and everything is back to "normal".
I have no clue! Any hope would be appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Paul Edwards
When I export a BB 5.5 course and restor it in Moodle 1.5, most of the data is imported, but no folders are found. In the BB course, I had several folders inside the "Assignments' folder, each of these with information, links etc.
In Moodle all the data is shown from top to bottom in a giant list. No organization found at all. Besides looking at every file (there are hundreds per course) and manually creating folders like we had in BB (this will take days for every course, and I have to bring in about 75) is there any way to re-create the course so it looks somewhat like it did in BBoard?
Any help is really appreciated!
Thanks-Steve
I have faced the same problem. I think the solution is to use Adun Hauge's layout editor. I have installed it on my personal moodle (windows with easy php) and used it to rearrange the resources into new topics, and then to drag the topics all around.
I have to convert the course on the production server and then download it, because I never got the xlst (?) to work on easyPHP. But, once you have the BB course rearranged the way you would like, you can restore it on your moodle server.
You still have to rearrange the content of each course separately, but hopefully only once. I decided it was better for me to help the faculty with that than have them take one look and scream "Aggg! What did moodle do to my course?" (After that happened once, I thought I needed to be a bit more careful.)
see:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=30435
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=33229
Not a magic answer, but perhaps it will help!
atw
I have to convert the course on the production server and then download it, because I never got the xlst (?) to work on easyPHP. But, once you have the BB course rearranged the way you would like, you can restore it on your moodle server.
You still have to rearrange the content of each course separately, but hopefully only once. I decided it was better for me to help the faculty with that than have them take one look and scream "Aggg! What did moodle do to my course?" (After that happened once, I thought I needed to be a bit more careful.)
see:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=30435
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=33229
Not a magic answer, but perhaps it will help!
atw