Restricting activities to a subset of students

Restricting activities to a subset of students

by Gustav W Delius -
Number of replies: 7

I would like to propose a new feature for Moodle 1.5 (and volunteer to implement it but only after Moodle 1.4 has shipped): the possibility to restrict resources or activities to a subset of students. This feature would be toggled on and off by a new icon that would appear behind the course module on the course home page in editing mode. Clicking this would lead to a page where the teacher can choose the students that should be allowed to view and use this coursemodule.

Internally this could be handled by an extra table course_module_students with fields 'id', 'userid', 'coursemoduleid'. This table would have to be consulted when deciding which coursemodules to show on the course home page for a particular user. Because this could slow things down a tiny bit there would be an administrative option to turn this whole feature off. This table would also have to be consulted when a module fetches its list of students (replacing get_course_students() by a new get_coursemodule_students()).

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In reply to Gustav W Delius

Re: Restricting activities to a subset of students

by Martin Dougiamas -
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I'm not ecstatic about the idea ... the added restrictions and micro-management might suit some but why is it really necessary to have so much control? 

Let's hear some teaching scenarios where this is essential and can't be done via groups, say.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Restricting activities to a subset of students

by Chardelle Busch -
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Isn't Hugo working on something like this for the certificate module?  This is where I think it would be useful--when a student finishes the course requirements they are allowed access to the certificate.
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In reply to Chardelle Busch

Re: Restricting activities to a subset of students

by Martin Dougiamas -
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No, that's called "activity locking" or "sequencing" and is about restricting access to one activity based on a condition set by another activity. I don't think Hugo is working on it .. it requires lots of important core changes (including a "push-style" gradebook). It's probably one of the most-requested features (generally from people who don't flinch when they say "training" wink ).

Gustav's talking about something analagous to enrolment, but manually created just for one activity.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Restricting activities to a subset of students

by Hans de Zwart -
I have to say that it is not only people that "don't flinch when they say 'training'" that would love to have some activity linking.
My school for example is in many ways moving to more constructivist methods. In an new technology curriculum for example our students make really meaningfull and usefull things. However these are vocational students that (at first) need lots of guidance. They have to make things according to a certain procedure (steps), which is not the same as "training". Activity linking would be ideal for it.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Restricting activities to a subset of students

by David Lamotte -
I have only just started using Groups, so please excuse my ignorance.

We have 2 classes sharing the same course - one is on Monday, the other Thursday. Each class does a weekly revision quizz but as there is no way to have the quizz released at 2 different times we have to manualy unlock it for each class.

We could overcome this by having 2 seperate quizzes (each released for their designated class), but it is not possible to tie each quizz to a designated group.

Thanks
David
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In reply to Gustav W Delius

Re: Restricting activities to a subset of students

by W Page -
Hi All,

Interesting idea Gustav. I could see this in two senarios

  • A teacher may not have a teaching assistant. Like in many NYC schools which practice "inclusion" [I am not knocking it. I am just using this as an example. - BACKGROUND]. It might be helpful by enabling a teacher to develop additional online work or projects to help specific students in the subject matter. Other students would not see this, just the students involved. One of the problems "included" students face is embarrassment. They will not ask for help if needed because of the fear they will stand out.

  • Another situation would be if a student wanted to do a project for which a grade or extra credit might or might not be given. A teacher may want to WIKI just with that student about the project. The entire class does not have to know about the project or be involved in it for whatever reason.

Overall I just feel Gustav's suggestion would provide for more choices in creating individual teaching plans for some students.. It would be interesting to see if this concept led to full individual student "linking" [I know someone has already provided some code to help with general course linking] where an instructor would be able to better tune the learning process to a student by providing some special group and individual activities to build on their individual learning styles so that the entire class may not always be involved or have to know about it and only the activities or tasks applicable to that student show up in the Gradebook for that student...

The issue of the "Certificates" is also interesting and I am sure important to the Business folk. This would also involve some kind of linking [and possible check off of courses] so that a person /individual could complete a course online and then get their certificate automatically generated. Would be a "cool" feature for some Elementary -->> High School classes or parts of classes as well.

I am exhausted now. Will lurk on this one for a while. smile

WP1
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In reply to W Page

Re: Restricting activities to a subset of students

by N Hansen -
Here's another example: I want to offer a course with three units. Students may enroll in a single unit at a time, or all three from the beginning (at a cost less than the three individual units). A student enrolling a unit at a time should still have access to the previous units they have completed. For this reason, I would prefer a structure that would allow me to enroll students in groups each with differential access to sets of activities related to the units (unit 1, unit 1+2, or unit 1+2+3). I might wish to share a glossary between all three units, so breaking this up into three diffferent courses would be difficult, and less streamlined for students themselves. It would also be nice if this variable access were tied to the payment module being developed.
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