Comparisons and advocacy

Hi Mike,

I'll answer your questions that I'm sure about.

1. You can see the number of hits a student has made on the server (a better indicator of activity, in my opinion, than time logged on) if you install (free) plugins such as "Most active users".  You'll find it in the Moodle org site - Downloads - Modules and plugins. This is on Moodle 1.9.
2. I believe teachers can get email alerts when students have completed work but I generally turn it off or I'd be inundated with hundreds of emails a day. I find it simpler to go to Moodle regularly and look in the "gradebook" to see a table of what students have done. Actually I export the gradebook as an Excel sheet as it's easier to read that way.
3. You can install a local a fully operational Moodle site on your desktop computer to play with. If you tell us which operating system you have and which version of Moodle you want to experiment with, we can give more detailed advice.
4. It will in fact be running on a server on your desktop so it's exactly the same as an online one. You'll need to create a few fake students to experiment what you can do with making groups, for example.

Have fun!

Glenys

To expand a bit on what Glenys wrote...

>Does Moodle have the capacity to track and report or display the number of
hours and minutes that a student spends in a course?

Moodle logs all student actions, so you can check activity reports to see what and when students do. There are also ways to measure time, a number of such Moodle hacks are posted. This is requested regularly,and if you check forums you find a number of threads discussing that, but the bottom line is that there is no practical way to get numbers that are meaningful.

>When a student completes a test, can Moodle email/send the results of that
test to an instructor?

I believe that Moodle only sends notification of completion. It would be possible to hack it to send results as well.

>If I download the program, can I put it on my office computer (not a
server) to "play" with it and see how it works?

Yes, you can run Moodle on your personal computer. However, downloading the program won't be enough. You may need to install additional programs that are needed to run Moodle. Basically, you need to create a full server environment on your personal computer. Sounds scary but there are turnkey packages that do it for you. Check Moodle installation instructions for your specific system.

>Will not having it on a server limit me in any way in testing it? I would
not be having students using the courses it would have on it.

Moodle will work the same on your personal computer as on the server. As I explained, your computer will de facto be running just like a server. You will also be able to develop course materials and transfer them to the student site.