For some of the applications that I can foresee Moodle being used for, it would be useful for the instructor to be able to see how much time the students have spent on various tasks within Moodle. Naturally, these statistics would need to be taken with many "grains of salt" since students could easily cause access times to appear longer than they were. Nevertheless, I feature that showed who had and had not logged in, the total length of logged in time, and perhaps the ability to see a day-by-day breakdown similar to what one get extract from Blackboard would have its advantages.
Right now, if one views the users' records with administration/view user accounts, one does get a record of the most recent access, but, as you can see in this screenshot, the figures are skewed if the user did not formally logoff but rather, simply closed the browser window.
One would not want to log off users after say, 10 minutes of inactivity, but a separate record could be kept of length of (or starting point of) inactivity and then this figure could be subtracted from the posted number of "last access" hours. Right now, the figures displayed are virtually meaningless.
I might be interested in developing a module that would allow instructors to extract more information of this nature.
(Yes, if Moodle is only used for instruction that conforms to "social constructionist pedagogy" perhaps logs like I have described would not be useful, but I am a language instructor, and some components of the sites that I build will contain practice tasks, that need to be explicitly tracked.)
Well, a discussion about this would be interesting, because a few people have asked for something similar, and I'd like to see some kind of solution.
Firstly, I'll just point out that the "last access" time is really that - it's updated on every access, not just on logout.
Here are some scenarios that I see as problems that make "time logged in" meaningless:
- a student logs in, goes out for dinner, then presses "log out" when he comes in two hours later. Should the system log two hours of work?
- a student logs in, goes to a long paper and spends two hours actually reading it on-screen and taking notes in a Word document, then closes the browser without logging out. They've worked hard, but all that is logged is one access - we have no idea when they stopped.
- a student has a bad modem connection, so they copy resources from the course, and disconnect to work on them offline all day. In the evening they log in again briefly to make a posting or do a quiz. Time logged in might be 10 minutes total.
- a student is subscribed to all the forums and just reads all the posts that come into their mailbox without logging into the web site. With some of them they reply directly via email. Time logged: 0.
- a student mindlessly clicks through the website once a day to make it look like they're attending every day.
Overall, I see a problem with even displaying these sorts of numbers in that people who aren't familiar with internet technology will just assume they are accurate (unsalted!) numbers. I assume this is what Blackboard does and it sounds a bit irresponsible.
I'd be interested to hear more of why you "need" this tracking to assess students and how you would use it, as well as any suggestions from anyone for overcoming such problems.
Martin's scenarios on how log-in stats may not reflect actual study time are spot-on for courses that are focused on reading, assimilating and responding to course material.
I still think, however, that a strong case can be made for stronger record-keeping functionality, not only for logins put also for access to specific course tasks and activities.
Naturally, if one were simply using Moodle as a course tool for motivated, self-disciplined, self-directe adult learners, then login stats wouldn't be useful except to allow the course designer to see which features of the course are being used and which are not, which might influence on-going design decisions.
There is, however, another class of learners, which currently outnumbers self-directed learners -- those who will, for various reasons, only do work when it is required. Such students range from those adults who simply require a source of discipline in order to achieve their desired learning goals, to secondary and even university students, who have many priorities set higher than their desire to learn. Yet even with these students, the instructor has a duty to see that the students learn even when steps towards fostering self-directed learning fail.
I am currently teaching an online course where ten adults have all shelled out their own money, around $250 U.S., to take the course. Each of the activities in the course has a set deadline, and there are a few students who perform the tasks on schedule. Others need pushing. (Naturally there are some due to work or family constraints can do the work on time, but I am not referring to these cases here.)
In order to encourage timeliness I have had to send out a periodic Excel spreadsheet listing the tasks and who has or has not performed/submitted each one -- columns with asterisks for each task done.
We have talked about the value of this spreadsheet in the course, and some say that it is unnecessary, while others say that without the spreadsheet they probably would have delayed doing the tasks or in some instances had either forgotten about or overlooked the task. The existance of the spreadsheet for some builds in some "nervous tension" which is, for them, healthy. And, indeed, there is a spurt in submissions soon after I publish an updated version.
To me, as the facilitator, it is important that students do their assignments on time since many of them involve discussion and interaction which cannot occur when submissions are strung over a week or more.
The most elementary form of tracking student performance is the ability to see who has logged on, and for how long they were logged on. For students bent on breaking the system, there are ways to simulate this, of course, but the vast majority of students do not want to circumvent the system, they cooperate with it.
In my ideal system, the instructor would be able to see on a student-by-student basis what activities had been accessed, how long the activity was on-screen (perhaps with compensation for periods of "non-activity", and for those items which yield a score, what the score is. (Moodle does this for quizzes, etc. already.)
Types of courses
Moodle has been primarily designed as an online tool following the "constructionist model of learning" yet their are many course configurations where this model is only partially applicable.
When it comes to access for language-learning, however, there are four conceivable types of access:
1. Voluntary self-access for the self-motivated student,
2. Guided self-access, where the instructor recommends that the student study specific material for general improvement or to offset certain weaknesses,
3. Required self-access where the instructor requires that specific material be studied outside of class as an integral component of the course syllabus, and finally,
4. Use in an intact class where the entire class meets in the computer room with the instructor present.
In Japan, where I teach classes in both modes 3 and 4 above. For the mode 4 classes, there are many activities that require a web-based platform such as Moodle, but since this is a regular weekly class, I would like the platform to also work as an attendance-taking tool. I already have developed on using PHP & mySQL that records attendance and even marks students as "Late" should they log in more than 10 minutes after the start of class. The instructor can display this data on-screen and even copy and paste it into an Excel spreadsheet. A similar function allows quiz scores to be displayed, as well, in a student x quiz matrix.
Our first-year intensive English class is "Mode 3". classes, The students must access a quicktime-based video activity where the students listen to sentence-length exerpts of the video that they have previously viewed in class and do a cloze (fill-in-the-gap) activity. Here, the total time spent and the number of times each sentence is listened to are important for the record keeping, since the students could easily pull up the entire script and simply type in the answers.
These students are by-and-large NOT self-motivated. They *will* do the work when it is required and when they know that the teacher knows that they have or have not done it. Despite this need for a "big-brother" approach, my research shows that there is a significant correlation between some of the stats that I have accumulated on their online performance and rises in their TOEFL listening scores.
In summary, Moodle is close to the ideal for content-based courses which are discussion-intensive, but with a little more functionality, it could well be extended to these other modes of learning, too.
--Tom
I still think, however, that a strong case can be made for stronger record-keeping functionality, not only for logins put also for access to specific course tasks and activities.
Naturally, if one were simply using Moodle as a course tool for motivated, self-disciplined, self-directe adult learners, then login stats wouldn't be useful except to allow the course designer to see which features of the course are being used and which are not, which might influence on-going design decisions.
There is, however, another class of learners, which currently outnumbers self-directed learners -- those who will, for various reasons, only do work when it is required. Such students range from those adults who simply require a source of discipline in order to achieve their desired learning goals, to secondary and even university students, who have many priorities set higher than their desire to learn. Yet even with these students, the instructor has a duty to see that the students learn even when steps towards fostering self-directed learning fail.
I am currently teaching an online course where ten adults have all shelled out their own money, around $250 U.S., to take the course. Each of the activities in the course has a set deadline, and there are a few students who perform the tasks on schedule. Others need pushing. (Naturally there are some due to work or family constraints can do the work on time, but I am not referring to these cases here.)
In order to encourage timeliness I have had to send out a periodic Excel spreadsheet listing the tasks and who has or has not performed/submitted each one -- columns with asterisks for each task done.
We have talked about the value of this spreadsheet in the course, and some say that it is unnecessary, while others say that without the spreadsheet they probably would have delayed doing the tasks or in some instances had either forgotten about or overlooked the task. The existance of the spreadsheet for some builds in some "nervous tension" which is, for them, healthy. And, indeed, there is a spurt in submissions soon after I publish an updated version.
To me, as the facilitator, it is important that students do their assignments on time since many of them involve discussion and interaction which cannot occur when submissions are strung over a week or more.
The most elementary form of tracking student performance is the ability to see who has logged on, and for how long they were logged on. For students bent on breaking the system, there are ways to simulate this, of course, but the vast majority of students do not want to circumvent the system, they cooperate with it.
In my ideal system, the instructor would be able to see on a student-by-student basis what activities had been accessed, how long the activity was on-screen (perhaps with compensation for periods of "non-activity", and for those items which yield a score, what the score is. (Moodle does this for quizzes, etc. already.)
Types of courses
Moodle has been primarily designed as an online tool following the "constructionist model of learning" yet their are many course configurations where this model is only partially applicable.
When it comes to access for language-learning, however, there are four conceivable types of access:
1. Voluntary self-access for the self-motivated student,
2. Guided self-access, where the instructor recommends that the student study specific material for general improvement or to offset certain weaknesses,
3. Required self-access where the instructor requires that specific material be studied outside of class as an integral component of the course syllabus, and finally,
4. Use in an intact class where the entire class meets in the computer room with the instructor present.
In Japan, where I teach classes in both modes 3 and 4 above. For the mode 4 classes, there are many activities that require a web-based platform such as Moodle, but since this is a regular weekly class, I would like the platform to also work as an attendance-taking tool. I already have developed on using PHP & mySQL that records attendance and even marks students as "Late" should they log in more than 10 minutes after the start of class. The instructor can display this data on-screen and even copy and paste it into an Excel spreadsheet. A similar function allows quiz scores to be displayed, as well, in a student x quiz matrix.
Our first-year intensive English class is "Mode 3". classes, The students must access a quicktime-based video activity where the students listen to sentence-length exerpts of the video that they have previously viewed in class and do a cloze (fill-in-the-gap) activity. Here, the total time spent and the number of times each sentence is listened to are important for the record keeping, since the students could easily pull up the entire script and simply type in the answers.
These students are by-and-large NOT self-motivated. They *will* do the work when it is required and when they know that the teacher knows that they have or have not done it. Despite this need for a "big-brother" approach, my research shows that there is a significant correlation between some of the stats that I have accumulated on their online performance and rises in their TOEFL listening scores.
In summary, Moodle is close to the ideal for content-based courses which are discussion-intensive, but with a little more functionality, it could well be extended to these other modes of learning, too.
--Tom
My first job as a teacher was in the eighties: I as a young guy had to teach adults of 50+.
These teachers came after a hard day's work VOLUNTARILY to this computer literacy course.
At the end of an evening I gave them extra stuff to read.
halfway the course I evaluated the ongoing course:
"Who the hell I think that I was, expecting them to read that stuff if I did not test/check this with a test the next meeting...."
-0-0-0-
Last week I visited a seminar about eLearing at a University: A porfessor showed us a great eLearning setting: "students in control, groupactivities, JigSaw, student where invited to create questions etc..." He had one problem: students took no initiative, they only moved when he forced them......... (= yes, called homework in the old days.)
My advice in these situations: cut an assignment in pieces and let them upload it piece by piece: there you have your prcess-monitoring-timestamps....
If you see Moodle as an environment where the user is in control, not the CBT-machine, why not ask the students?
I can imagine (and would use!) a tool:
- Where the teacher sets next to every task (also for tasks outside the computer!) a time-to-complete-estimation.
- Every student must be able to submit his real time
- would be nice to see your time against the class-average (use the survey-tool?)
So we need:
- a (teacher)field on every task-description-page
- a (student)field on every homework-bring-in-page
- a connection to the survey-tool, somewhere in the neigbourhood of my (as a student) personal-logbook-activities
I've just realised that you may have interpreted the "last access" column in your screenshot to be "time logged in during the last session" (in which case the numbers would look very wrong indeed!).
They are actually "how long ago since the last time they accessed a Moodle web page". Same with the numbers on the "Participants" page.
eg http://moodle.org/user/index.php?id=5
They are actually "how long ago since the last time they accessed a Moodle web page". Same with the numbers on the "Participants" page.
eg http://moodle.org/user/index.php?id=5
Dear Thomas Robb,
Did you find a way of keeping accurate time logs? I would like to be able to do the same, or at least get some activity level, time logged on data.
I am interested in timed quizes for language tests. I think that timing might reduce cheating, reproduce a TOEIC type invironment, reproduce a communication environment even, and anyway my boss wants them. Would you be interested in time tests too? Timothy Ervin in Hiroshima says that he is not intertested since the longer students spend on a test the better. I think that there is an optimum time so the ability to time activities would be great.
Recently I went to a symmposium run by ALC (of dictionary fame) Net Academy, where timing activities (not too long, not too short) was recommend as one way (although not fullproof) of monitoring student activity and hence encouraging learning.
My moodle is at
http://www.eigodaigaku.com/moodle/
I would be interested to see yours.
Timothy
Timothy Takemoto
Yamaguchi
Ps Martin, Feel Free to Ignore This One Please (MFFITOP?)
Actually, when it comes to timing an actual activity, that can be done within the activity using javascript, so the only thing that Moodle would need to do is to record the total lapsed time and the score.
To see how timed quizzes work, please take a look at my university site at:
http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/department/le/english/attendance.html
Login with student number "123456" and password "1225" (=Christmas). Select the bottommost course from the pulldown menu "T Robb Multimedia" and then select one of the quizzes that you see there. These are timed because the purpose is to see that they have sufficiently practiced the untimed versions of these activities which are part of the Passport Online site that I authored:
http://passport.oupjapan.com
There is also a quiz available there, HA-03 which isn't for this course but rather a Business English course. This time the activity is NOT timed because as Timothy Ervin said, the longer they use it, the better.
I'm afraid that I don't have a Moodle site worth showing right now. It is just a bare skeleton with a few activities much like yours.
--Tom
To see how timed quizzes work, please take a look at my university site at:
http://www.kyoto-su.ac.jp/department/le/english/attendance.html
Login with student number "123456" and password "1225" (=Christmas). Select the bottommost course from the pulldown menu "T Robb Multimedia" and then select one of the quizzes that you see there. These are timed because the purpose is to see that they have sufficiently practiced the untimed versions of these activities which are part of the Passport Online site that I authored:
http://passport.oupjapan.com
There is also a quiz available there, HA-03 which isn't for this course but rather a Business English course. This time the activity is NOT timed because as Timothy Ervin said, the longer they use it, the better.
I'm afraid that I don't have a Moodle site worth showing right now. It is just a bare skeleton with a few activities much like yours.
--Tom
Thanks for the quick response Tom,
I tried to access your site (I had in fact tried before, not hacking I mean but having a look).
But I was told that I am not a member of the course. Did I get there too early?
I am using a similar set up myself - a perl program rather like yours with a javascript add on.
You can see it on the "quiztest" link on the left at my blog eigodaigaku.com
Quiztest is from tesol.net. But while I could put Java into a moodle page I have little idea how I would integrate that with the moodle database. Any ideas?
I was impressed with your Passport site too. Are you the author of passport by the way, my gosh?
I would be interested to know what software you are using for both the Passport and your quiz site.
MFFITOP
Student number "123456" is only a member of the Thursday 4th Period Multimedia course. If you attempt to sign in to any other course, you will get the "Sorry..." message. I have tried it and it works.
Note, that you can only take a specific quiz one time, so if it says that you have already taken it, then try another. I'll delete the records if too many of them get tried so that others can also try them.
No, I am not the author of the Passport series, only the website. What software did I use? None. The entire site is pure HTML and Javascript all handcoded, except for some Open Source coding for some of the DHTML aspects. (DynAPI v. 2).
I hope to be able to integrate javascript quizzes into Moodle, but that will take a bit more time, head scratching and cooperation from others!
--Tom
Note, that you can only take a specific quiz one time, so if it says that you have already taken it, then try another. I'll delete the records if too many of them get tried so that others can also try them.
No, I am not the author of the Passport series, only the website. What software did I use? None. The entire site is pure HTML and Javascript all handcoded, except for some Open Source coding for some of the DHTML aspects. (DynAPI v. 2).
I hope to be able to integrate javascript quizzes into Moodle, but that will take a bit more time, head scratching and cooperation from others!
--Tom