Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Rahmat Costas -
Number of replies: 9

Hi there,

I did not find any related topics on this subject.  we would like users to get a certificate for every activity they take within a course. We have more than 100 graded activities (AICC/SCORM modules) within one course and we would like students to get a related completion certificate for every AICC/SCORM activity they take and pass within this course. For example if they take and pass webSphere Developer module, then they should get a certificate that says that they completed and pass this specific module. I have not found an easy way to do this as it looks like that I would have create a certificate activity per activity module within the course. This means creating more than 100 certificates. I know there's a way to link dependencies within a certificate, but linking say 5 activity dependencies means that the student would have to pass all activities to get a certificate. That does not work for my case. I just want a student to complete an activity and get a certificate for it. Is there a way that  I can create one certificate activity and let moodle generate some of the specific variables such as name, activity completed, etc. It would be great if we could use Boolean expression such as and/or within the certificate dependency settings. That way I could list all activities within that one certificate and then specify if I need the student to complete all (AND)/ OR at least one Activity. Of course the certificate would have to be intelligent enough to print the completed activity's title, and other related variables.

Hopefully someone has a workaround for this or the specific functionality in Moodle that it seems to be missing.

Thanks for any assistance.

Rahmat.

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In reply to Rahmat Costas

Re: Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Raymond Fürst -
Off the shelf the certificate module can only print the course name on itself, but I managed to modify the certificate module with an extra database field so I can specify a topic that the certificate refers to. (I also added a multitext field to provide teachers an opportunity to specify the contents of the course in the certificate)

(@fellow moodlers: should I contribute these modifications to Chardelle?)

This way I can use more than one certificate in a course. But in your case that would mean 100 certificate activities for 100 SCORM-Modules. I'm not sure if these certificate activities can be generated.

Other Ideas:
- Is a certificate document for each activity really necessary? Perhaps the grading features of moodle can supply your demands.
- I often encountered third party AICC/SCORM-packages that have their own exam logic and can render a built-in-certificate. Can the creator of your AICC/SCORM-content add such a feature?
- Are all activities optional? At least the mandatory activities can all be linked to one certificate.
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In reply to Raymond Fürst

Re: Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Rahmat Costas -
Hi Raymond,

Thanks for your reply. In my opinion this kind of certificate functionality is needed in Moodle. Although you are right in that grades in Moodle can supply some of these demands, we have the need to print/save a certificate of completion for each user that has completed a gradable activity within the course. Also you are right that some Third-Party AICC/SCORM vendors will be able to supply this functionality for their eLearning Modules, but not all of our AICC/SCORM is third party. we develop a lot of it internally. I would say right now is about 50-50 and we need to consolidate a certificate standard and look and feel for all our completed activities and going to each of our third party vendors in order to match what we have and be consistent could be a headache as well.

Wouldn't be great to have a certificate selection setting when setting up a gradable activity within a course? or at least allow the certificate activity to allow this kind of functionality? As I mention in my original email, Boolean logic would do the trick. I really think that would be a big plus for Moodle.

By the end of thi smonth we will have more than 500 AICC/SCORM modules within different courses some of which are Thrird party and some internal develpment. There's no way I can create a certificate for each gardable activity in our Moodle system. Even if I am abale to do that, it wouldprobably be not efficient at all to do that. Any other ideas thoughts are very much appreciated.

Thanks!

Rahmat.
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In reply to Rahmat Costas

Re: Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Raymond Fürst -
This sounds like a different approach than what the certificate module provides.

As far as I know the certificates are quite static. As soon as a student opens a certificate, much data is written into certificate database tables. Opening an issued certificate later shows the same data as when it was opened first.

I'm not sure if that has changed in the latest version, but in earlier versions there was a warning message, that students should not open the certificate if they want to have a better grade written into the certificate.

I have a few (female) students complaining that the certificate still shows their maiden name although they changed their name after marriage.

You need some kind of dynamic report containing a growing list of activity grades in a printable certificate form. This should be rather developed from scratch instead of changing the existing certificate.
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In reply to Raymond Fürst

Re: Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Nigel Irwin -

The other alternative is to modify the certificate to print the certificate name. See my post here entitled Topic Certificate which outlined the procedure i went through to enable me to print a certificate for an individual topic. It should work for activities as well. Would mean changing the title each time you wnted one for an activity or creating an instance for each activity whoich probably is out of the question seeing the number of activities you have.

I have just created a new instance with a different name and that worked. But not when i changed the name of the instance.

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In reply to Nigel Irwin

Re: Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Raymond Fürst -
Try disabling the "save certificates" feature; if a student reopens a certificate after the name change, then the stored copy is displayed.

There might also remain a previous certificate stored in the browser's cache.

When I develop new certificate types or try different display options, it is very tedious to flush cache and log off an relogin with my test user all the time.
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In reply to Raymond Fürst

Re: Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Xiu Juan Xia -

Hi all,

I have moodle 1.9. There are a few SCORM activities in one course. 

The certificate module is working perfectly. Except that I want to print the name of the SCORM activity instead of the course name. I am thinking I could modify the file of certificate.php to get this point. But I am not sure how to retrieve the name of SCORM activity inside the course.

Any helps appreciated.

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In reply to Xiu Juan Xia

Re: Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Kevin Putman -

As the certificate is not directly associated with the activity, it would take a bit of code to pull the name of the SCORM activity directly. Even if you have it as a linked activity, it still seems like a lot of work to me. However, I had a similar need and here is what I did to achieve this. I added a field to the certificate table called lessonname. I then modifed the mod_form.php file to include a text box to collect this information. Then I modifed the certificate.php file to print this information. I just added an additional line so it printed both the course and the lesson, but you could easily have it print the lesson name rather than course name. This method seems a lot easier than trying to pull the name of an activity that is not directly linked to the certificate.

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In reply to Kevin Putman

Re: Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Xiu Juan Xia -

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for your quick reply. It worked. The only thing I need now is the name of the SCORM activity is too long. How can I put it in two lines and in center.

 

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In reply to Xiu Juan Xia

Re: Automatic student certificate for every activity within a course

by Kevin Putman -

You could borrow the code for the custom text. That is setup to print up to four lines.

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