I am using moodle in Engineering courses and the most common type of assignment that we use is a set of problems/exercises. I find the moodle assignment module very useful, but I would like to add some new functionality to it. Here is my wishlist:
Assingment steps:
1. The assignment module I am suggesting would have the following steps (most of them optional):
a. Teacher's set-up.
b. Student's submission.
c. Teacher's marking of the students solution.
d. Teacher's hints and comments.
e. Student's revision (more than one?).
f. Teacher's response (solution), automatically visible when the student reaches this step, or after the assignment's dead-line.
g. Mistake list, depending on assessment type (self, peer or teacher based).
h. Questions and doubts.
i. Grading (teacher based only?).
j. Common mistakes, FAQs and suggestions for improvement.
File uploading vs on-line text boxes:
2. Both forms of interaction (file uploading and on-line text boxes) would be allowed in every step where there is interaction. More than 1 file would be allowed. (In the current assignment version, for instance, the teacher should be able to upload files together with the assignment description, and the student should be able to submit several files and to add comments to her submission).
Comments, hints, common mistakes and questions:
3. Comments/hints list: When commenting the students's submissions I often have to write the same comments again and again. I suggest to use a checklist with all the comments I've written before (editable), and a blank slot to add new comments. When assessing a particular submission, the teacher would only have to check the corresponding comments in the list, and moodle would automatically copy them into the student's comments box. On demand, the teacher would be able to see the statistics of those comments. These comments could be used as hints or suggestions for the next student's revision.
4. Common mistakes list: A list just like the above, to collect the most common mistakes. This list would be filled (checked) by the student, her peers or the teacher (depending on the assessment type). When the list is ready, moodle would automatically set a forum with one entry for each mistake (or for those mistakes selected by the teacher). At step 1j, the teacher would reply to the forum entries with hints of how to avoid making those mistakes again, suggested readings or suggested exercices.
5. Questions and doubts list: After the assignment, the student would use a list similar to the above to ask questions or state her doubts. Moodle would then provide an FAQ forum where the teacher can provide feed-back.
6. The 3 lists above might be pre-initialized by the teacher at step 1a.
7. The list contents and their statistical information could potentially be saved during back-up.
I am ready to invest some effort in developping this (I'm actually trying to convince one of my students to make of this his master thesis
). But I have doubts about how should we integrate with moodle. Should we first develop our wish list as a separate module and test it? Or should we try and develop a common functionality with the next version of the assigment module? Best regards,
Pau