Looking for a solution: What is the best and quickest way to set up a private dialogue area for teacher and students in a class of 30?
With core Moodle 2.
-Derek
That is exactly what the dialogue module does. The only glitch is that it is not fully compatible with Moodle 2 yet.
Robert, thanks. I was lookng for something that was part of the core. What do people do if they just have plain vanilla Moodle?
Derek,
You can do this with a forum and groups. A little work to set it up to start with, but it should get the trick done. Here's a link to Mary Cooch's explanation: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=118496
Hope this helps!
Scott
Robert, Kim and Scott:
A quick update.
I appreciate your comments. I also found another option here: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=118496 which is using a database. BUT: yet to get a nice, quick, powerful solution. Creating groups is the best, but is not quick for a big class and if people arive has maintenance issues.
I did create a tracker item on this.
After a bit of thought I'm now keen on just a new forum type, maybe called "Private Journal" where the teacher sees all threads, but students only see threads they have started.
Simple, powerful. Not as good as the Dialogue contrib obviously.
There is actually a module called "Journal" which does that. Like dialogue, it is no longer in core.
A new "Private Journal" module the way you envision it is not necessarily one size fits all. As pointed out by others you should be able to create this "new forum type" in the database activity. I'm curious to know whether you find that a certain dialogue functionality cannot be implemented in the database activity.
Hi Derek
Just a quick note to let you know that Troy is polishing up the Dialogue module for version 2.0 now so it won't be far away
Keep an eye on an update CONTRIB-2059 from Troy Williams. Sergey from NetSpot has kindly attached an updated version which Troy is working on with his own updates to ensure clean upgrade, backup and restore etc
Cheers
Teresa
I use the group function and auto create the groups with 1 member per group and then set the forum to separate groups. I have great success with this as I make the students use this forum for all course related communication with me, so I have a record of all conversations between us.
Kim, the purpose of the groups is to make it easier for you see one student's entries at a time right?
My main purpose is to have a private area between each student and myself to carry a private discussion (grades, makeup work, test questions, etc.).
It also does make it very easy to see all conversation between a specific student and myself .
Just a note that ForumNG (the alternative forum module form the OU) has a 'Study advice' forum type that works in exactly this way.
A group per user should probably be a built in feature. I don't know yet how groups work in moodle 2.0 but it may be simple enough to add a couple of virtual group modes to the common groups setting, e.g. 'visible users' and 'separate users', which may be referred to in modules for aggregating contributions/submissions/posts per user without creating 1-user groups.
Hi all - In 1.9 there is a private wiki option & although I've not used it personally, this would have been my first choice to try for a solution here.
I couldn't find the page to link to here on Moodle.org, but in your own Moodle, in the wiki settings dialogue, the help button against 'Type' opens a grid, and under this it shows:
For type 'Student' with 'No groups' set: 'every student has their own wiki which only they and their teacher can view and edit.'
This is also referred to by a respondent in the discussion links given above, but without any further contributing comments. Can anyone tell me if this solution would NOT be a good idea for any reason?
I looked at Randy Owrin's database demo and quite liked that option - can anyone give a comparison of + & - of these two from experience?
Many thanks - Joy
Hi Joy,
Glad that you liked the database from the other forum discussion. I have used both wikis and databases extensively. If you are looking for an easy tool that is a part of core for students to have a conversation with you the teacher, similar to the third party Dialog module, then I believe the database is a much better solution than the Wiki. It allows for multiple discreet entries that are very easy to manage as students don't need to worry about creating new wiki pages for different discussions etc.. The wiki can be a bit cumbersome to use for lots of information, IMHO. With the database module you can sort by individual user and track a particular conversation as a single entity. If the database is configured correctly, you can have the main dialog question from the student and then a response by the teacher and then you can actually use the comments to have a running conversation until the discussion is completed.
Within the wiki you are editing and re-editing individual pages which is a bit of pain and I don't recall that there is any kind of comment feature in the wiki, at least not in 1.9. Within the wiki, students will also need to learn how to add new pages if the conversation gets really long as past experience has shown that long wiki pages take a long time to load.
Given the ease of use, once the database has been configured, I believe that a database activity is a much easier solution to use than the wiki. This is only my experience over the past six years and your experience may be entirely different. Good luck in your search for the best way to accomplish the task at hand.
Randy Orwin
Hi Randy - thanks so much for taking the time to advise me on this. From your comparison I guess you are right & the DB is probably be a better option. I'll test it and add it to my Moodle training programme.
Thanks again - Joy
Good luck Joy.
Hi Tim,
I like the idea of using the ForumNG with "Study advice" for private dialogue. When I tried it out today, I received the error message:
Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 1 in: home/.../mod/forumng/mod_forumng.php on line 1178
Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 0 in: home/.../mod/forumng/mod_forumng.php on line 1178
Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 1 in /home/.../mod/forumng/mod_forumng.php on line 3009
Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 0 in /home/.../mod/forumng/mod_forumng.php on line 3009
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #7 is not an array in /home/.../mod/forumng/mod_forumng.php on line 3082
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #3 is not an array in /home/.../mod/forumng/mod_forumng.php on line 3151
ERROR: Incorrect number of query parameters. Expected 12, got 0.
When I want to subscribe to the forum, the followring error message appeared:
Error writing to database
With kind regards,
Hartmut
If that the Moodle 1.9 or 2.0 version of ForumNG?
It is forumng-M2.alpha, downloaded April 13, 2011 from a shared Google Doc site, tested in Moodle 2.0.3 (Build: 20110505).
Unfortunately it seems that while study advice forums work in the 1.9-based release, they do not work in the 2.0-based alpha release (just as you found). Sorry.
I have logged the bug report against our system. At some point (later this year) we will fix it.
Thanks!
--sam
Hi Sam,
I continued testing ForumNG in Moodle 2.0.3 (Build: 20110505). Regardless of the forum type (general or study advice) with initial subscription, I receive an error message (Error writing to database; error/moodle/dmlwriteexception) when I select "subscribe" to the forum (no discussion threads added).
With kind regards,
Hartmut
I get instance of forumNG but it throwing error you can find it on
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/CONTRIB-3480
provide me some suggestions
Have you thought about using something like Skype-conference-based dialogues? I think it can be a great opportunity to make it simple and portable, but it cause a using of Skype module, that, I heard, some difficult in integration. But what do you think about idea itself? I know, looks sort-of not tied to reality, but...