Hi all,
All our marking is currently done using Moodle and then we type marks in Assessment Manager. Is it possible for the marks we place in Moodle to be automatically entered into a Sims Marksheet. This way we could analyse the live data instead of either waiting for staff to enter marks into Sims manually or waiting for the admin team to export a group of marks from Moodle into Sims on a regular basis.
Surely loads of schools are using this method for assessment purposes and its seems crazy that teachers must open sims and enter data there after they have marked work.
Any ideas on what is available?
Apparently not possible yet as SIMS don't provide an API for it. I'm told by people who have researched other systems that none of them do this yet.
You could try to export from the gradebook and then import the excel spreadsheet (haven't tried it).
You could try to export from the gradebook and then import the excel spreadsheet (haven't tried it).
I'm actually in a discussion with David Grashoff from Capita ES right now trying to sort out this situation ... They seem a little bound by their licensing arrangments but I'm hopeful something can be done.
Hi Martin,
Have you any news on this as yet? I am VERY interested in this, and would like to know how successful the project has been to date. I am determined to make life easier and a method for integrating Moodle and Sims definitely would!
Have you any news on this as yet? I am VERY interested in this, and would like to know how successful the project has been to date. I am determined to make life easier and a method for integrating Moodle and Sims definitely would!
I've given up for now. 
Firstly they have a strange licensing scheme and no concept of "keys" or any sort of security token that you could put into a Moodle site to access SIMS.net remotely.
Secondly, their API seems to be 100% geared to the Microsoft .net framework (ie you need to be communicate via DLLs on the same server). No concept of web services and so on.
Thirdly there is absolutely no open source anywhere so we can't get hold of anything to play with.
I think this is a bit more than we (Moodle HQ) can take on right now ... I hope someone there in the UK can step up to this challenge (or provide an open source system good enough to completely replace SIMS).
I've attached the technical overview from the specs that I got to give you an idea of how things work ...
Firstly they have a strange licensing scheme and no concept of "keys" or any sort of security token that you could put into a Moodle site to access SIMS.net remotely.
Secondly, their API seems to be 100% geared to the Microsoft .net framework (ie you need to be communicate via DLLs on the same server). No concept of web services and so on.
Thirdly there is absolutely no open source anywhere so we can't get hold of anything to play with.
I think this is a bit more than we (Moodle HQ) can take on right now ... I hope someone there in the UK can step up to this challenge (or provide an open source system good enough to completely replace SIMS).
I've attached the technical overview from the specs that I got to give you an idea of how things work ...
Maybe be interesting to keep track of the SchoolTool project too - http://schooltool.org/
Matt Oquist is working on a proof of concept Moodle integration at the moment
Matt Oquist is working on a proof of concept Moodle integration at the moment
A glimmer of hope shining in the distance is interoperating with the SIF standard (http://www.sifinfo.org/uk/), though it has to be said that this is relatively heavy weight for a 'loose integration' with Moodle.
I've not seen SIMS for some time, but if I recall its possible to import grades from a spreadsheet. In the short term, I think a big win would be possible by someone creating a gradebook export plugin which formats grades exactly in a format which SIMS imports. Thus saving teachers the burden of translating one format to another.
I live in hope that the UK government will force MIS providers to provide access to their data using an open standard such as SIF. It really upsets me that public money funds the continuing development of these tools and the companies go on to limit the options schools have to shop around and work against anything which allows the schools to *access their own data* and move to a better alternative.
I've not seen SIMS for some time, but if I recall its possible to import grades from a spreadsheet. In the short term, I think a big win would be possible by someone creating a gradebook export plugin which formats grades exactly in a format which SIMS imports. Thus saving teachers the burden of translating one format to another.
I live in hope that the UK government will force MIS providers to provide access to their data using an open standard such as SIF. It really upsets me that public money funds the continuing development of these tools and the companies go on to limit the options schools have to shop around and work against anything which allows the schools to *access their own data* and move to a better alternative.
That is true - as long as Capita decide to follow the SIF! There has been talk that Capita are not going to follow the SIF at all, but their own site is rather quiet about anything to do with SIF at all.
I wish that the government's body BECTA where actually given the teeth they need to take on such proprietary giants as Capita. Time and time again BECTA recommend UK school's to look at Open Source as viable alternatives yet we get nothing back to enable us to move away from the proprietary software for our MIS./. The government keep pushing for more and more data reporting directly from our MIS yet provide no real funding into developing a viable open source MIS!
With all the license costs that we have to pay to both Microsoft and Capita; surely money could be diverted from those budgets to fund development on a UK wide, government backed open source MIS?
Anyway; I will stop ranting...
I wish that the government's body BECTA where actually given the teeth they need to take on such proprietary giants as Capita. Time and time again BECTA recommend UK school's to look at Open Source as viable alternatives yet we get nothing back to enable us to move away from the proprietary software for our MIS./. The government keep pushing for more and more data reporting directly from our MIS yet provide no real funding into developing a viable open source MIS!
With all the license costs that we have to pay to both Microsoft and Capita; surely money could be diverted from those budgets to fund development on a UK wide, government backed open source MIS?
Anyway; I will stop ranting...
That is true - as long as Capita decide to follow the SIF! There has been talk that Capita are not going to follow the SIF at all
As much as it pains me to stick up for Capita (
My company is part of the SIF association and i've attended various SIF working groups where Capita are actively participating. It doesn't seem likely that they would participate heavily in the development of the specification if not planning to interoperate with it.
That is good to hear Dan! It would be great to know that all UK education systems where going to use SIF as a means of talking to each other.
As I said, Capita have been somewhat quiet in the public arena regarding SIF, and the last thing I had read regarding it was the blog I linked to (which is rather old, and quite likely out of date now too).
As I said, Capita have been somewhat quiet in the public arena regarding SIF, and the last thing I had read regarding it was the blog I linked to (which is rather old, and quite likely out of date now too).
Also sticking up for Capita and a few other companies working on SIF in the UK (which differs to that in the States it is worth mentioning) is that SIF is not a data rich transfer and might not even transfer everything that schools want from their different systems, whether they be running Moodle, Sharepoint-based systems, Frog, Fronter, etc ...
SIF will be good for hook to keep all systems together, up to date with users and specific user information / details but as for transfering grades back and forwards from different VLEs ... that is going to take more work. What a number of VLE manufacturers seem to concetnrate on is being able to take some data from MIS and use it within the platform to present a richer amount of information / stats.
Someone is going to have to cough up some cash eventually on this ... whether as a buy into SIMS or to develop tools to share data.
SIF will be good for hook to keep all systems together, up to date with users and specific user information / details but as for transfering grades back and forwards from different VLEs ... that is going to take more work. What a number of VLE manufacturers seem to concetnrate on is being able to take some data from MIS and use it within the platform to present a richer amount of information / stats.
Someone is going to have to cough up some cash eventually on this ... whether as a buy into SIMS or to develop tools to share data.
Capita have already done some fantastic work at integrating their systems with Active Directory, with their AD Provisioning system for their Learning Platform. It would be great if I could just buy into that part of their Learning Platform, have SIMS auto-create and disable all my AD accounts and then continue to hook Moodle into my AD with the LDAP plug-ins. To me it seems tantalisingly close, to being able to have the ideal of single point of entry, updating all ICT systems within my institution; yet also just out of reach!
I completely agree with you regarding cash needing to be stumped up!
I have just heard that our LEA is giving each secondary school £10,000 towards developing their on-line reporting of MIS data to parents. In our LEA that totals £180,000. I would love to think that this would could be spent in developing a system for the schools in our LEA that could then be released to the UK schools in general - but I fear it will be spent individually on a proprietary system to enable each school to meet the governmental tick box of on-line reporting to parents.
I completely agree with you regarding cash needing to be stumped up!
I have just heard that our LEA is giving each secondary school £10,000 towards developing their on-line reporting of MIS data to parents. In our LEA that totals £180,000. I would love to think that this would could be spent in developing a system for the schools in our LEA that could then be released to the UK schools in general - but I fear it will be spent individually on a proprietary system to enable each school to meet the governmental tick box of on-line reporting to parents.
As part of the SWGfL Merlin project (not a VLE honest) the first implimentation of SIF from SIMS to Merlin (via the SWGfL ZIS) is underway, and for my sins I have signed one of my schools up to be an early adopter.
http://www.swgfl.org.uk/Learning/Learning-Platforms/SWGfL-Merlin
At the moment this is only provisioning users top Merlin, but will/does/can it help with information from SIMS to moodle, especially grades?
Ever in hope
Andrew
http://www.swgfl.org.uk/Learning/Learning-Platforms/SWGfL-Merlin
At the moment this is only provisioning users top Merlin, but will/does/can it help with information from SIMS to moodle, especially grades?
Ever in hope
Andrew
With SWGfL Merlin the ZIS (Zone Integration Server) acts as a middle ground between the MIS and Merlin.
In this model Data comes from (lets say SIMS .net) and is passed to the ZIS, the ZIS checks that the information is good and where it is destined to go, then the ZIS passes it to Merlin (or wherever).
The ZIS is quite capable of passing the MIS led SIF data out to other apps / platforms than Merlin but they have to be SIF compliant and SWGfL will have to approve it before it is allowed.
Moodle as far as I can tell has no SIF plugin or module as yet but I get the feeling from browsing this forum that this is underway? If schools had a SIF plugin to put into their Moodle, or a newer release included SIF compliance then data could easily come to moodle through the SWGfL ZIS (as long as SWGfL have approved its use). If moodle was SIF capable then platforms interfacing with the SWGfL ZIS should be able to talk to each other and cross over via a single sign on using shibboleth.
As for moving information about grades then it would depend which SIF agent the school were using and what that was capable of. Whilst all of the SIF agents work to the same standards (UK Data model) they will not all pass exactly the same information (although there will be commonalities).
My business in this forum (my first post here) is really to find out whether SIF is scheduled or roadmapped for moodle (either as a plugin or part of a later release) - does anyone know?
Hi Matt,
My business in this forum (my first post here) is really to find out whether SIF is scheduled or roadmapped for moodle (either as a plugin or part of a later release) - does anyone know?
There is not work going specifically into a SIF agent for Moodle core right now.
However, there are a lot of interesting architecture changes going into Moodle 2.0 which make 'the platform' more suitable for creating this agent. Global groups/enrollment improvements will make Moodle more suited to consuming this data. The web services layer may make it simpler to create a SIF agent or at least make it much cleaner to create a 'sif agent' middlewear layer.
I think some third-party providers are working on some such middlewear layers with a combination of enrolment/authentication plugins in Moodle 1.9 so its certainly possible.
I have been participating in the SIF association on behalf of my company and our work with CLEO for some time now. Its possible we may look at a SIF Moodle integration at some point in the future.
Hi,
(My first post as well) We've had a Moodle SIF agent for a while now. If you would like to see how it works, go to http://doc.visualsi.com and select "Moodle SIF Agent" from the right column. If you are going to be at BETT next week, stop by B20 and I can show you it working.
Right now, it only does inbound traffic, but it can create learner accounts (either ones they use to log in with or it can work with AD or Shibboleth) and it can assign them to courses based on
- the year group
- a school group type
- a school group
- a characteristic of a learner (for example, when a learner turns 16, he or she gets enrolled into a driving safety course)
Now, we purposely didn't do Moodle into SIF yet (outbound), because every time we asked if there was a "standard" way that the information was generated (tests were taken), we couldn't get a real good answer. It appeared that Moodle was very flexible (thins is a good thing), but this causes the format of the output to not be very consistent (not a good thing). This would mean that the output would need to be re-mapped to SIF every time the Moodle format changed. If we could get some consistency in the Moodle exam output format, we could do the Moodle->SIF part without all that much difficulty.
So, we would like to see two things happen:
1) some people start to use the inbound functionality (we are starting to see this
2) see some consistency, at least in the format of the output of the data, so that we could make the installation of a SIF agent a fairly simple process.
Does this make sense?
Thanks,
Rob Hutchison
President, Visual Software
(My first post as well) We've had a Moodle SIF agent for a while now. If you would like to see how it works, go to http://doc.visualsi.com and select "Moodle SIF Agent" from the right column. If you are going to be at BETT next week, stop by B20 and I can show you it working.
Right now, it only does inbound traffic, but it can create learner accounts (either ones they use to log in with or it can work with AD or Shibboleth) and it can assign them to courses based on
- the year group
- a school group type
- a school group
- a characteristic of a learner (for example, when a learner turns 16, he or she gets enrolled into a driving safety course)
Now, we purposely didn't do Moodle into SIF yet (outbound), because every time we asked if there was a "standard" way that the information was generated (tests were taken), we couldn't get a real good answer. It appeared that Moodle was very flexible (thins is a good thing), but this causes the format of the output to not be very consistent (not a good thing). This would mean that the output would need to be re-mapped to SIF every time the Moodle format changed. If we could get some consistency in the Moodle exam output format, we could do the Moodle->SIF part without all that much difficulty.
So, we would like to see two things happen:
1) some people start to use the inbound functionality (we are starting to see this
2) see some consistency, at least in the format of the output of the data, so that we could make the installation of a SIF agent a fairly simple process.
Does this make sense?
Thanks,
Rob Hutchison
President, Visual Software
Thanks for the lowdown Rob and Dan, sadly I couldn't make it to BETT but I'll go and look at the website now.
Cheers,
Matt