I'd like to do some work on expanding the capabilities around the messaging system, in particular i'm keen to see if roles can be utilised in order to allow messaging to be used for teachers to talk to students and vice versa, but not allow students to message each other. (Basically encouraging peer discussion on the forums whilst allowing teachers to be contacted via messaging for students in need).
What do moodlers think to this idea - from what I can tell its currently not possible in the current messaging capabilites.
I can't really get my head round how you would want to define this.
I think it would need some sort of 'can send message to all' permission which would allow teachers to send messages to students. And then something which would stop students from sending messages to anyone but a teacher. But how do you define 'a teacher' - the person with the ability to recieve messages from restricted users?
This is something that would extemely useful for us at an 11-16 school with a very cautious education authority. In fact, the lack of this feature is the only thing that has prevented me from upgrading to 1.7 as I use a messaging HACK with 1.6
I just got this sort of request last week. Haven't had a chance to look at it though. I'd certainly like to hear what you end up doing!
Has anyone gotten any further with this? I think it would be a really useful hack.