Comparisons and advocacy

In the latest version of Moodle, 2.1, there is a set of activities you can use based on conditions you set. If a respondent does not meet the basic conditions they cannot get past a point. I am not sure that a timer is included as part of the conditional activity, but asking questions based on information buried in a document can ensure the respondent has read it - therefore spent time in the document.

As for learning Moodle, if you can read, and use a keyboard, which you have already demonstrated above, then you are well on the way to becoming a Moodle expert...  Moodle is like chess, you can pick up the basics in a few minutes of playing with it, but it can take years to truely master.

I know I am a convert, so my opinion here may be a little suspect, but of all the learning LMS I have used, (Blackboard, WebCT - premerger, and other, no longer existing, tools) Moodle is by far the best of them. It provides a range of options others do not and it offers support that is far more extensive than any other tool. It fits almost anywhere, without having to install special environmental tools which means it affords you, or anyone else the opportunity to be as superficial as you like or as technical as you want to be in your use of it.  On the down side, Moodle is not a be-all and end-all tool, it is a tool, so it is limited in some ways and flawed in others, look at the wiki module -ugghh, or better don't. It is brilliant too, look at the book module for concentrated resourses, on-line, offline and uploading of assignment responses. It does not do e-portfolios and some other things, but who cares, there are other PHP Apps that can do those things better anyway and it wont be too much longer when we will be able to integrate these things far more easily. I suspect. Good luck and I hope you find Moodle will do what you need it to.

Big thanks to everyone who has responded to me. You have all been a great help. I love the Moodle community already.

Mike, thank you for referring me to Lectora! You contacted some developers who work with Moodle, and they couldn't even get your course to work under the restrictions even with custom made modules/tools/add-ins? I was hoping to be able to hire someone to make a custom tool for me in Moodle that could help me. I posted a listing on the jobs section here as a small contract job, but no responses so far.

Lectora seems like it would work, but the caveat here is that it is prohibitively expensive. I am a newbie web developer; I have nearly ten years of experience writing code in C/C++, CISC assembly, Java, HTML, and even some obscure languages like Python, but am new to PHP and the web applicable side of Javascript. I unfortunately may have taken off more than I can chew with a client. He's a family friend who knows my strong background in software, and knows I am having to learn some things before I can get the online course up for his defensive driving company. He was kind enough to give me this project, and I accepted as a way to expand my skills and hopefully make some money as a freelance web developer. I foolishly agreed to a small budget before fully realizing all the costs that would go into this project (didn't expect having to pay so much for graphics designers, animators, artists, and narrators). Needless to say, Lectora is way outside of the budget, even if I could get 50% off. If it came down to it, I could try to get him to pay for Lectora, but I'd rather exhaust all other options first. Also, I'd rather use Moodle if I could, as I'd hate to invest the time learning Lectora, only to never use it again. I think I'd be able to use Moodle for future clients, as most online courses don't have the ridiculous requirements that governments mandate.

Tim Hunt, I agree with you completely about how ridiculous the requirements are. Fortunately, the online course isn't required to check that the student has the browser window containing the course focused. I've taken these online defensive driving courses before and actually watched Youtube videos in another tab while waiting for the timer to expire on my current section. As far as your potential solutions, it would seem that your first solution would work, though it would be too expensive for me, I think. Lectora is a SCORM authoring peice of software, but it is too expensive. Your second solution seems like it may be my best bet. I do not currently have the skills to hack the Book module to impose a time limit, but perhaps I could hire someone who does have the skills? Could I maybe contact the author of the Book module? I could only afford to pay a few hundred dollars at most, though, as that's all that's left in my budget. Your third solution sounds like it might be harder to accomplish than the second.

Colin, I will poke around on the General Developers forum.

Robert, I will contact the author of the Timestate Block block.

Again, thank you Colin, Tim, Mike, and Robert for all of your help. I really appreciate it.

Found another old email relating to timing. If you have your customer use Lambda Solutions (a Moodle Provider) they say that "yes, you can time track students within course." erynn.troniak@lambdasolutions.net

She continues;

A Moodle course is usually made up of activities and resources. An activity could be a lesson. Since you posted this in the Lesson forum, I am going to use the word Lesson instead of course (MoodleDOC links are fighting me today so I will just show them).

1) There are (http://docs.moodle.org/en/Adding/editing a lesson") lesson settings under that set a (http://docs.moodle.org/en/Adding/editing_a_lesson#Timed) time limit in the lesson. There is a lesson setting which makes entry into a lesson (http://docs.moodle.org/en/Adding/editing_a_lesson) dependent upon spending time in a previous lesson. There are also lesson settings which can open and close the lesson by a very specific date & time window (which is not what you are asking but this is also a course setting feature).

2) There are logs (reports) which can tell you how long a student spends in a particular lesson page. Someone else will have to point out a report which will summarize the log by student/activity-resource in time.

There is not a database field which gives a running time for each student in a course, or each lesson. The log database notes each event (for example page visited in a lesson) by the time it took place.