This topic is dedicated to the MooTyper plugin. MooTyper is an activity module that helps you learn how to type real fast and whitout looking at the keyboard. For more info visit the plugins page, visit us on GitHub, or simply ask here.
Hello there and thanks for making this module and putting up a forum for it. I would like to try it but when I tried to install it on a 2.3.1 I got the error message as below and I don't know what else to do. I have to tell you however that this is the first contributed module I have tried to install using Git (I followed these instructions but for 2.3 ) so it might well be my fault
Hello again! Well I looked at your wiki and realised the folder should be named mootyper so I manually went into my mod folder and renamed it - and then everything worked fine. Perhaps I gave the wrong path when I was adding it via Git but never mind - I have it now and will experiment, thanks.
Thanks However - at the moment the language isn't the problem - I can't work out how to get it to work at all - nothing I do looks like your pictures here http://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_mootyper - I will have to experiment more tomorrow
Hi Mary,
After you save the settings, you should see a "Setup" link. That will give you a drop down where you can choose lessons. Did you go through those steps?
Jaka,
Thanks for the module. I have tried a couple of ideas on how to do it but have not been able to add anymore lessons of my own. Is that something that can be done?
AL
Yes... that's something that can be done. Exercises can be added one by one.
When you're adding a new MooTyper activity you'll see a link that says: "To manage exercises click here". This takes you to the exercises management area. Here you can click on "Add new exercise"...and than enter a new exercise...
Hi Rob/Jaka -yes as far as I can tell I followed the correct procedure for setting it all up but I can't get it to work. I will give it another go today -maybe I will delete the github version and use the version in the plugins and try again.
Maybe you choosed some exercise that contains some letters that are not supported. You probably selected english keyboard layout - so in that case it won't work if the exercise contains some Slovenian letters ... like č, š, ž, etc...
In short: if the exercise contains characters that are not supported in the selected layout it won't work.
That's also why I recomment using the version in the plugins. It's more stable because it doesn't contain Slo exercises.
For now here's some info about using the plugin: https://github.com/jl2035/moodle_mod_mootyper/wiki/Use
Hi again - I worked it out thanks-in fact both versions, Git and plugins work fine now I understand it a bit better. I made a screencast - hope that's ok.
This was so nice of you...
I don't know how to thank you...
With your approval I would like to add the video link to my README file and also on plugins wiki..
By all means yes add the video - it's a hobby of mine - some people drink; some people watch football, I make screencasts
Nice screencast, Mary!
I think that "small box" can be expanded by clicking and dragging its lower-right corner. Couldn't resist.
Frankie Kam
oh yes I never think to to that - happened to me before!
Hi Jaka,
I have installed Mootyper 1.5, and the error I was getting by clicking "Mootypers" in the activity block has been fixed. However, the URL's listed after clicking the "Mootypers" link throw a 404 error.
The link generated in the list of Mootypers is something like:
http://mymoodlesite/mod/mootyper.php?id=1876
The actual address to the activity is:
http://mymoodlesite/mod/mootyper/view.php?id=1876
We have the activities block shown across the site. Our students use it often to find things in large courses.
I fixed it in 1.6 version. I hope it'll work... I don't have this "Mootypers" link on my Moodle 2.2
You should see this link if you add the activities block to a course. I will test 1.6. Thanks.
Edit - Version 1.6 fixed the 404 error. Also, in the plugin page comments, you had said the module would not upgrade automatically. You must have fixed that too. I was able to install 1.6 without deleting the previous version.
Thanks Rob.
I also tried to upgrade from previous version and bam! It looks like the code in db/upgrade.php is universal. I didn't touch it
But I still can't guarantee that this works ok. If the chanes in the plugin are minimum it may go well, but if any database structure will be changed I really don't know what will happen...
I will specifically let you know if there will be any such version.
Hi Jaka,
I have had some teachers using Mootyper with students over the last month. The feedback I have received is very positive.
One of my teachers asked if the lessons they create can be seen by other teachers. I created a new lesson, and then used a test account with the teacher role, and that lesson was available to the test account. It also looks as though one teacher can edit or delete a lesson created by another teacher. Is there a way to change this?
It would be nice if lessons created by teachers were tied to a specific course. It would also be nice if the site admin could add lesssons that were available site wide.
Thank you again for the contribution you have made to extending the functionality of Moodle.
Rob
Thanks. It is very nice to get positive feedbacks.
For now the lessons are all the same (global), but thinking of them being connected to users and courses makes sense. I will consider it in the future versions..
I just came from vacation... so MooTyper will be back shortly.
Global lessons are fine if I can keep teachers from editing or deleting them. I looked in permissions to restrict the teacher role, but could not find anything. Is it possible with the current release?
Nope...for now every teacher can edit any lesson. It has to be programmed... I'll have to add some database fields in the lessons table. And than fix the queries in php.
So this will require a day or two of coding... also I need to resolve this problem I have with the latest Moodle... I opened a thread about it on developer forums:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=212623
So the best option is probably to wait for another version...in a few days.
BTW this version will also require to remove the existing one. It might screw up the plugin tables since the database structure will be modified.
I'm thinking which way would be better to implement this. Let's say:
...the lesson will contain author ID and course ID. Course ID will be optional. In case of global lesson the course field is not needed...
Lesson will be visible to "The author only" OR "Inside a course" OR "Globally". The user chooses this when inserting new lesson.
And also ... lesson can be edited by "The author only" OR "Teachers from the same course" OR "By any teacher".
So this way lessons could be nicely organized.
There's also a way to implement this logic on the exercises instead of lessons. This way one could have exercises with a different access levels in the same lesson. But that could also cause some confusion. So I'll probably go with option A.
That sounds very reasonable. Would the admin role be able to edit any lesson/exercise?
Hm.. I don't know.. What's your suggestion?
I am often called to help or fix things. If the admin role can't edit anything, I would need to use "Log in as" with the lesson creator's account to be able to help.
Ok now... please download the 1.7 version... it's under the "Download versions" tab (I misconfigured something with the version numbers)...it is not updated on github yet... so let's note this version as 'testing'...
I already see something i forgot: Lessons that are not "visible" to user must also not be visible when seting up the activity. So expect the 1.8 version soon...
Hi Jaka,
I installed version 1.8. I had version 1.6 previously. When I dropped the new code into the mod folder, no upgrade was triggered be visiting notifications. I did see a new settings page, but not plugins check, etc. I had to hack the version.php file to get the module to upgrade.
In version 1.6, the version # was 2012250800. In 1.8, it is 2012090400. I had to make the 1.8 version number greater than that from 1.6. Then the upgrade went through.
The new features seem to work just fine on my initial tests. I will have my teachers report any issues as they use the module next week. Thank you for adding them.
Rob
This version numbers are a little screwed up...in fact, they were all the time but I didn't realize this until now. In my language the dates are allways specified as dd:mm. And that I was doing wrong from the begining.
If you have this issues in the future, try changing the existing version numbers, because from 1.8 on version numbers are fixed.
Since the 1.7. and 1.8 versions were both very buggy, I created 1.9 which has all of these issues fixed (I hope)... 1.8 is no good any more. So again let's do some testing.
I also had some suggestions from Slovenian teachers and partially they are added. I removed the red color (in the text that needs to be typed), because some older people couldn't see it right. There's also a request to connect mootyper achivements with moodle's grades but that will come in the near future as I don't really know how to do that. It will require me to study some more. There will also have to be an option for a student to view his achivements.
So thats it for now... try out the 1.9 version.
Hi Jaka,
I just upgraded to version 2.1. Would you mind sharing what was changed since 1.8 please? I will let my teachers know to provide feedback.
Rob
Hm.. mostly just bug fixes and some small design changes...and a nice keyboard... 
Hi,
Just saw this. Is it compatible with 2.3.x?
To answer my own question, it seems to run fine in 2.3.x.
It doesn't record anything to the grade book, which is probably fine. I'll create a non upload assignment and record the grade I want that way.
Suggestions:
- Display the words per minute to the student after they finish. It's words per minute minus any mistakes. WPM metric. That's a pretty standard way to measure typing speed.
- Let students see their results after they finish and submitted. Students would like to see how much they have improved. Right now, there's no way a student can see what they did yesterday or the day before.
- See this site on how they calculate WPM (http://www.speedtypingonline.com/typing-test)
What are the !!!!! exclamation marks next to a students name?
Another suggestion:
- On the report, allow it to sort by student last name so it's easier to record grades.
Exclamation marks are present if the person typed more than 60 chars in 5 seconds (which is kind of imposible)... or if the exercise took more than 10 minutes or something... so this is to warn teacher about a potencial cheeters...
Thanks for the suggestions...
Another suggestion:
- After a student completes a lesson, there's not much of a sentence at the end that tells them they completed it. It should say ALL 7 LESSONS COMPLETE! THANK YOU! or something configurable ending message.
Hi
I have installed this today. It looks great. When I setup a lesson i dn't notice the show keyboard option. Now I can't seem to go back and change it. I don't get the Setup option, only an opton to manage exercises.
As it took me 3 attemps to get fjfj fjfj correct I don't want to delete all my hard work
Is it possible to modify the lesson to show the keyboard?
Hi Michelle,
I see the show keyboard option after I click "Setup." I don't think it can be changed after the setup is complete. Please create a new Mootyper, and look for the show keyboard check box on the setup page.
Rob
I set a password, yet students don't see a password box when they start the MooTyper.
Now, I created the MooTyper lesson, then I change my mind and re-edited the lesson to add the password. Maybe if I added the password to begin with, it would have worked.
Sorry... passwords are still not implemented.
Hi Jaka,
My teachers are wondering what the exclamation marks that appear in the student grade screen mean.
Thanks,
Rob
"Exclamation marks are present if the person typed more than 60 chars in 5 seconds (which is kind of imposible)... or if the exercise took more than 10 minutes or something... so this is to warn teacher about a potencial cheeters..."
When the student is typing, his progress is instantly reported to server with ajax requests. I had to implement this logic, otherwise he could just refresh the page and start from the beginning if he made some mistakes.
As I'm writing this we haven't been working on mootyper for quite some time. So I'll have to announce some new versions. There are some suggestions from around here, than the suggestions from Jeremy W and also plugin backup has to be implemented (the procedure when the teacher wants to backup/restore course, with all the activities and other stuff). I don't know how and when I will find time for all this but I'm looking forward to at least have something new in the next two months.
Thank you for the reply Jaka. I now see that you had already answers the same questions earlier in this thread. I am sorry for not reading more carefully.
Other features my teachers would like to see are:
- A pause button for students in case they are interrupted while completing an exercise.
- A review page that shows students how they scored on each attempted lesson.
- Teachers would like to be able to change settings like "Show keyboard." After the setup is saved, this cannot be changed.
Thank you again for contributing this plugin to the Moodle community.
For now I uploaded a new version with few new features. I picked the simple ones. Teacher can now sort grades entries and also "setup" can be changed afterwards.
I havent been up to date with moodle lately so we now have MooTyper 2.2 for Moodle 2.2. I don't know what was happening with Moodle 2.3 and 2.4 so I decided to go with Moodle 2.2. This can also be tested on 2.3 or 2.4, but I can't guaranntee anything.
What else needs to be done:
- Backup (priority: 3)
- "Let the students see the results" (priority: 3)
- Passwords (priority: 2)
- Connect Mootyper grades with Moodle grades (priority: 2)
- Show speed in WPM (priority: 1)
- Add some ending message (priority: 1)
- Pause button (priority: 1)
Hi Jaka,
I have tested MooTyper 2.2 this week on Moodle 2.3. Today, I installed it on my production site. I have not had any problems, and the new features work just fine. Thank you for the update.
Thanks... now we'll have 2.3 for Moodle 2.3... funny that...
MooTyper is perfect for my enirvonment. We're really enjoying it, keep up the great work.
My team is excited for the implementation of WPM. We would also like to be able to remove users attempts.
Thanks, Chuck
Wellcome Chuck!
So is there any special trick to calculate WPM... any formula I could use?
My teachers suggest taking hits per minute and dividing by 5.
Ok ... I added wpm to grades and the button to remove attempt.. this two were not a big issue...
here's MooTyper 2.3 for Moodle 2.3
Thank you for the update Jaka. I have installed on my test server and noticed a couple of things. On the copy of my production site, the wpm field does not get created if upgrading from mooTyper 2.2 or previous. It does get created on a fresh installation. I manually created the field, and it was fine after that.
Would it be possible to display WPM to students? Please see the image below.
I also noticed that mooTyper 2.3 has the lesson names in Slovenian. The exercises are in English. It is just the name that is not. Please see the image below.
Thank you again for this module and your ongoing support.
Rob
I would also like to note that the formula for calculating WPM might be off.
Remove user attempts works just fine!
Thank you for the quick update. I still needed to create the wpm column in the grades table. For others upgrading, the column is named wpm. It is set to decimal (10, 0) Null, Null.
The WPM calculation seems to be working. I like that the value now displays for the student. The pop-up after completing an exercise is nice too. I suggest adding "WPM" to the pop-up so students know what the number represents. See below.
As you can see, I am a slow typist. ;)
Oh.. how could I have missed that..
Popup was just there for the testing...you were not supposed to see it
Looks like I forgot to comment it out.
Maybe we should make it this way...display all results in this popup and submit the form after user clicks "OK"... it actually makes sense
Hi Jaka,
I hade a meeting with my teachers today, and they said the WPM pop-up at the end is confusing their students. What code needs to be commented out so it no longer shows?
oh.. it's in "typer.js" file... just delete line 45.....glad you guys are up to date...
I am still getting the pop-up after deleting line 45 in typer.js. I have purged the server cache and my browser cache. Is there more code that needs deleting?
No it's just that 'alert'... the line looks like this: alert(wpm); ... that's the popup.
Try this: In Firefox go into some MooTyper activity and right click -> View page source
From there you can see if the script typer.js is included properly. If you click on it's url you will arrive directly on the script's code. See line 45 if it's there or not..
If the alert is there you still have some problem with cache... if not, there shouldn't be a popup.
Hi Jaka,
My teachers are about to begin a new school year. This means they will be running the reset procedure on their courses. Since mootyper will not reset with the other activities, I planned to erase student attempts from last year by deleting them in the database. Is it enough to empty the mootyper_attempts table, or do I need to delete data from other mootyper tables too?
Also, I recently upgraded my Moodle to 2.4.5+, and mootyper still works.
Sorry Rob... haven't been here for some time.
I guess you want to keep the mootyper activities in that course but delete user attempts as the new students are learning this year. Am I right? Removing attempts from the database is not enough. You have to remove grades to... and also checks, if there are any.
I hope by the next year we'll have backup procedure so teacher will make a course backup in the beginning of the year in than restore it every year.
I've been reading about the Moodle Backup 2.0 in the docs... been three times through that article but it still sounds impossible to implement.
Has anyone used MooTyper in 2.5 yet?
I have been using it some. Not a whole class yet, this school year. Just select individual students and it seems to be working just fine.
AL
How can we limit the time for an typing exercise in exam mode ? Suppose we want to create a typing test for 5 min. duration, How can we do that? Is there any way to integrate this with the Quiz module so that a typing test can be used as a part of the larger Quiz.
Your last question first - There are a number of problems when trying to use the Quiz module for a typing test especially if you want it to be part of a larger Quiz. There is no way I know of that you can set a separate time limit for individual parts/questions in a quiz. You would have to set an overall time limit. You would then have some students who breeze through the regular questions and would then have lots of time for the typing quiz part. You would also have some who struggled with the regular questions taking lots of time and leaving very little for the typing part.
The only way I can even think of doing a typing test using the Quiz Module would be to use a timed quiz of only one essay question. Then it becomes a nightmare for the teacher to grade by looking for the number of mistakes and then manually calculate the accuracy and words per minute rate. Of course, if the student corrects their mistakes as they type, their accuracy so far as you will be able to tell, would be 100%, and their speed in wpm would then appear slower than it might otherwise be.
How can we limit the time for an typing exercise in exam mode ? - You can't. Anyway, why five? Why not six, or ten, or 20? What you can do is to make sure the text you put in MooTyper for an exam is complex and long enough to reveal any weakness of the typist. (If you throw in any numbers, my speed drops drastically, because i HAVE to look. ) When the typist finishes the exam, the teacher can click, View All Grades, and there see all the details including mistakes, time, hits/minute, all hits, precision, WPM, and the time it was taken.
The two biggest shortcomings I see in MooTyper at the moment, is that when a student finishes an exam, he can only see the results then and there at the bottom right. He cannot go back and review the results in any way, once he leaves the exam page.
Also, there is no way to put a grade, even something as simple as pass/fail, in the grade book unless you enter it manually as an offline grade.
This looks like a great tool. Can you indicate if it works on Moodle 2.6.2 if not, any plans to release a version that can? I have to use a external website and link it the URL resource. Unable to track student performance as a result.
I rarely check on mootyper project these days, so I'm sory for late response. I tested the plugin on the latest moodle version (2.7+) and it works.
I recommend using the latest mootyper version from the github repository. If you run on "invalid directory name" issue, just change the directory name from "moodle_mod_mootyper" to "mootyper".
Moodle core had some changes, so I updated the plugin to fit. There's 2.5 version which requires moodle 2.7, so if you are using some old moodle you'll have to play with mootyper 2.4 version.
I changed the depricated calls, and added one feature. Students can now see the results. There might be some bugs, so 2.5 may not be final.
I changed the depricated calls, and added one feature. Students can now see the results. There might be some bugs, so 2.5 may not be final.
Thank you for the updates to Mootyper. One of my Moodle sites will be using the 2.6 branch for the upcoming school year. Is there any chance the update where students can see results will be back-ported to mootyper 2.4?
That is done. Just use mootyper 2.4 (Build: 2014071200). That version also includes these updates in it should work from moodle 2.3 onwards.
Hi Jaka,
Thank you for the version 2.4 update. When I install on a test Moodle 2.6.4, it gives me the error below when I try to go to the setup screen. Also, the lesson names are in Slovenian. Is it possible to get them in English too? The older version of Mootyper 2.4 works fine on my test site for Moodle 2.6.
More information about this error
Debug info: SELECT id,course FROM {course_modules} WHERE id = ?
[array (
0 => '2',
)]
Error code: invalidrecord
Stack trace:
line 1403 of /lib/dml/moodle_database.php: dml_missing_record_exception thrown
line 1379 of /lib/dml/moodle_database.php: call to moodle_database->get_record_
select()
line 7073 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to moodle_database->get_record()
line 221 of /mod/mootyper/view.php: call to context_module::instance()
line 7073 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to moodle_database->get_record()
line 221 of /mod/mootyper/view.php: call to context_module::instance()
Any progress? I have the same error.
I have created a new version 2.6. It contains some updates and this context confusions should be fixed now. It has been tested on Moodle 2.7 and Moodle 2.6.4. I selected Moodle 2.3 for the requrement, so this should also work on older Moodle versions.
I hate that my version numbers are so similar to Moodle's but what can I do?
Just reproduced with Moodle 2.6.4. Sorry but I have no idea, why it does that.. and only with that specific versions of Moodle and Mootyper. I will ask this in moodle development forum.
EDIT:
Did ask here: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=265050
We want to translate "Mootyper" to Catalan and Spanish, and we need some help.
Can you help us?
Must We create only 2 files in folder "layouts"? Or something more?
We have some problems. For example: alphabet "ñ" ang "ç"
Can anybody help us?
Can you help us?
Must We create only 2 files in folder "layouts"? Or something more?
We have some problems. For example: alphabet "ñ" ang "ç"
Can anybody help us?
BugReport.
Pressing "To manage exercises and categories click here" leads to error:
Debug info: ERROR: argument of AND must be type boolean, not type integer
LINE 4: (visible = 1 AND 0) OR
^
SELECT id, lessonname
FROM mdl_mootyper_lessons
WHERE ((visible = 2 AND authorid = 2) OR
(visible = 1 AND 0) OR
(1))
ORDER BY id
[array (
)]
Error code: dmlreadexception
LINE 4: (visible = 1 AND 0) OR
^
SELECT id, lessonname
FROM mdl_mootyper_lessons
WHERE ((visible = 2 AND authorid = 2) OR
(visible = 1 AND 0) OR
(1))
ORDER BY id
[array (
)]
Error code: dmlreadexception
Stack trace:
May be this is because of using postgres? (instead of mysql by default)- line 443 of /lib/dml/moodle_database.php: dml_read_exception thrown
- line 244 of /lib/dml/pgsql_native_moodle_database.php: call to moodle_database->query_end()
- line 764 of /lib/dml/pgsql_native_moodle_database.php: call to pgsql_native_moodle_database->query_end()
- line 122 of /mod/mootyper/locallib.php: call to pgsql_native_moodle_database->get_records_sql()
- line 75 of /mod/mootyper/exercises.php: call to get_mootyperlessons()
Fixed by:
diff -ur ./mootyper.orig/locallib.php ./mootyper/locallib.php
--- ./mootyper.orig/locallib.php 2014-10-23 23:00:58.000000000 +0600
+++ ./mootyper/locallib.php 2014-11-11 11:28:50.700307039 +0500
@@ -109,8 +109,8 @@
$sql = "SELECT id, lessonname
FROM ".$CFG->prefix."mootyper_lessons
WHERE ((visible = 2 AND authorid = ".$u.") OR
- (visible = 1 AND ".is_user_enrolled($u, $c).") OR
- (".can_view_edit_all($u, $c)."))
+ (visible = 1 AND ".is_user_enrolled($u, $c)." = 1) OR
+ (".can_view_edit_all($u, $c)." = 1))
ORDER BY id";
/*
/// This was taken out, because we have some context_module::instance confusion
Does this module work in offline?
Trying to run typing test from browser which have no internet access (but have access to local moodle site) leads to error - text is not shown and test does not start.
Trying to run typing test from browser which have no internet access (but have access to local moodle site) leads to error - text is not shown and test does not start.
Once again about WPM.
How does WPM is calculated? I can't understand it from this forum. Is it just "hits divided by 5"? If so - this is not flexible. There is different word length in different languages.
And little suggestion - not everyone knows abbreviation "WPM", may be write in full form? ("words/min" or "words per minute")
I updated the plugin description, saying that I'm moving away from this project.
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_mootyper
I will try to respond to github issues, but won't have time to check this forum anymore.
I know it has been a while since a new version of this module has been released. One is in the works and we hope to have it ready in another day or two.
I have recently released a couple of new versions of MooTyper and can see from the Stats page, that they are being downloaded. Let me know if you have any problems.
I am starting to get a better feel for what the various parts of MooTyper does and have started working on some enhancements to the activity.
I just finished creating an English(US) keyboard layout, that is now in the master branch at github. There are quite a few changes from the standard English layout version, plus I added in the keys you could not type/use before. I plan to include this layout in the next release. If anyone knows of any errors with the currently available layouts let me know so I can fix them, too.
Any suggestions or problems can be added as an issue at github.
Just to let everyone know, I have a MooTyper 3.1 Beta version that I am doing some final testing on, and would like to see if anyone would like to try it out. It has a number of new capabilities.
Old methods:
Adding Exercises/Categories - In the past you only had three options for adding new categories and exercises. One was to use the built in editor capability and type them into a category, one exercise at a time. Two, you could also copy and paste into the built in editor, one exercise at a time. The third, and least desirable method was to delete MooTyper, add new categories in the correct format into the lesson folder, then reinstall MooTYper so it would add them into the database.
Exporting Exercises/Categories - In the past, if you wanted to make a backup of a category and it's exercises, or give someone a copy of it, you had to recreate the category in a word processor by copying each exercise, one at a time, from the MooTyper editor, into your word processor. Save it as a .txt file, and then you could give it to someone else.
Keyboard Layouts - In the
past there were only a couple of keyboard layouts available, and if you
wanted one for a particular language, you had to figure it out on your
own. Each layout did not have all the keys implemented and did not always have keys in the correct locations.
New Capabilities:
Import Exercises/Categories - I have added a new link in the MooTyper admin block that will scan the lesson folder, and add to the current database, any new lesson name that it finds in there. It will then list what was and was not added. This capability lets you create lessons in any word processor. All you have to do is just make sure it is is the correct format and saved as a .txt file.
Export Exercises/Categories - I have added a new link in the MooTyper admin block to get you to the page that lets you edit lessons. There, I have added a tool button and link that will let you download whichever lesson you are currently looking at. The download will be a .txt file in the right format that you can keep as a backup, or trade/swap with other teachers. They can then use the Import Lesson capability to add the lesson/exercises to their Moodle site.
Keyboard Layouts - I have reproduced new keyboard versions that fill in the gaps of keyboard layouts, added a background, and added many missing keys. Dual keys now show both characters. Since I'm now retired, and this is one of my main hobbies, I am available to help with creating keyboard layouts on an as needed basis.
Future Plans:
Keyboard Background Color Setting - If you want to change the color from the default gray I have set currently, you have to manually make a change in the style.css file. For the next release, I hope to be able to add a color picker to the settings page.
Keyboard Layouts - For the next release, I have plans to make the key code simpler than it is currently which will only matter to me and anyone else who wants to make their own. I also plan to implement a toolbutton or link, that will scan the layout folder and add any new keyboard layouts that it finds. I might just piggyback this check onto the Import Category/Exercise link. Currently, the only way to add a new layout, is to make changes directly in the database, or uninstall MooTyper, add new layouts to the layout folder, then reinstall MooTyper.
Let me know if you want to try the new stuff. I can even let you try it on one of my dev sites, if you want to.
Hi Al,
Just installed it and ran it in moodle 3.1. Seems to be working fine.
Thank you!
Hi Alex,
Thanks for installing and testing the new version. I have also been working on getting a color picker setting for the new keyboard layouts to work, but it is taking me so long, that I decided to leave it out of the current work so I can go ahead and do a release for Moodle 3.1.
Last night while I was testing the BETA code on a Moodle using PHP 7, I realized that I had accidentally rolled things back a little too far to a point such that the lesson export file format is incorrect. Not enough to break anything, just some missing newline codes and two extra blank lines at the end of the file.
I have corrected the code on github for the MOODLE_310_BETA version. if you download a new copy of the BETA code, or just copy the last few lines of lsnexport.php (95 to 107) you will have the corrected code.
Let me know if you have any problems or suggestions for improvement.
Hi Al,
It is is the latest github version I installed and ran.
Standing by!
Alex
Hi Alex,
Thanks for the info. Have you tried Exporting and Importing any lessons yet?
Which keyboard layout do you normally use? Do you need one for any particular language?
I am interested in success or failure of the new keyboard layouts due to the new way I make the keys so they show both the normal and shifted character like actual keyboards do.
AL
Hi,
I love the mootyper plugin, it is exactly what I was looking for. So first of all a big thank you for your work !
I live in Belgium (Dutch speaking part) and we have a peculiar keyboard lay-out (AZERTY , ) and since I'm not familiar with coding (I see php and js files) I was wondering if you could help 'translating' the keyboard. Layout can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY (Belgian - Dutch).
We have a non profit teaching kids new skill sets so your help would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Jelle
skillz vzw
Hi Jelle,
Glad you like MooTyper. I am fairly close to releasing a new version of MooTyper for Moodle 3.2 and higher. For the past two weeks I've been working with a teacher in Spain to get ALL the keys in the Spanish layout working for him and the results of that should make this new one for you go much quicker. I will try to put together a new keyboard layout for you over the next day or two.
It would help to know which version of Moodle and which version of MooTYper you are using. It will also help to know which operating system your students (clients) have on their computers. That way, I know which combination to test the new layout on. Knowing the client is important as we've just recently discovered accent keystrokes do not work if you are using a Linux OS on the client computer.
It will also help if you email me directly, drachels at drachels dot com as from experience I know I will need to discuss question about the new layout, and direct email seems to work better for that.
Hi,
I think it would be helpfull to add also the AZERTY for french keyboard layout. It will approach this AZERTY (Belgium - Dutch), with some differences.
You can find the layout in the AZERTY page from Wikipédia.
I think Windows will be used by most people.
For needed test, i currently use Moodle 3.3.3 with the latest MooTyper (version 3.4.1).
Séverin
Hi Séverin,
If you are willing to help test it, I can create a French keyboard layout for you. It will help if you contact me directly via email. drachels at drachels dot com
Meanwhile, I will start development. Usually the the thing I need the most from a native speaker is what letters need to be type as combined characters, such as the é in you name.
Hi AL,
Sure i'll test it. Thanks for the creation of the french AZERTY layout.
There are good information about how to form combined character on the AZERTY page on Wikipedia, but i'll also help you for what is needed.
The "é", "è", "à" are direct characters on the keyboard (on the "2", "7" and "0" respectivly). You need to press the Shift key to have numeric characters
Séverin
Hi,
Thanks a lot AL for the work done (in private) to have a 100% functionnal french AZERTY keyboard layout, and for other improvments i suggested
Nice you're so quick to improve things.
Séverin
Yesterday, I released a new MooTyper version 3.1.0 for Moodle 2.9, 3.0, and 3.1. It works with PHP 5.5, 5.6, and 7. It has a number of new capabilities that make it worth the upgrade.
Two of the main ones are the capability to download, and/or upload, lessons so that you can now easily backup, swap, and trade lessons with other Moodle sites and users. You can only download lessons that are visible to you, so you cannot download someone else's lesson on the same Moodle site, unless the original creator allows it.
If you want to create lessons in a word processor, look at an included lesson to see the format you need to use. After uploading and selecting a new lesson for use, if the exercise text fails to show up when you are ready to type, you probably have CR or LF errors. In that case, in MooTyper just open the first exercise of the lesson for edit and then confirm, to save the lesson, and that should fix it.
For the adventurous, I already have some more enhancements that are in the master branch on github. I had planned to include a date format setting, color settings for passing and failing grades, a color setting for the marker for suspicious grades, and a color setting for the background of the new keyboard layouts. Unfortunately, I started with the keyboard background and it was taking me so long, I went ahead and released without any of these new settings.
Yesterday, when I decided to bypass the keyboard background color setting for now, I was able to get the other settings working right away. Wish I had started with them. The date format setting will let you use any of the predefined date constants listed in the PHP manual for Date. Three new color picker settings will let you select colors for passing grades, failing grades, and the suspicious results marker, so they "match" the colors of the theme you are using.
I will see about doing a 3.1.1 release soon. Just need to do some more testing of these and hopefully get the last color picker to working.
Are there any plans to implement a course backup ability for MooTyper in the next time?
I'm asking because I'm about to reset courses for the next school year and being able to backup a course with many MooTyper and other activities in one go would be a nice time saver.
Hi Matthias,
I was working on backup for MooTyper just before the QA Testing for Moodle 3.3 started. I have a "partial" backup implemented but have been side tracked by....trying to also develop behat tests for MooTyper (zero so far) and HotQuestion(2 so far), fix a size rendering error when using Boost theme with MooTyper, and building a detached garage/workshop in my back yard (got all the wall framing done and the roof covered in felt today). (Truthfully, I only supervise and step-and-fetch while the hired help is doing the actual work)
The partial backup is working for the MooTyper activity only and seems to work as expected. I have not gotten the capability to include user data working yet.
If you are wanting to do backups without user data, what I have currently should do the trick, but if you want to include user data, it is not ready. If you have a test environment I could let you have a copy to try it out.
Hi AL,
Thank you for your quick response despite being so busy.
The partial backup you describe is exactly what I need, as I don't intend to include user data.
Please let me know where I can find the version you're talking about. Github?
I will gladly test it on Moodle 3.1 and 3.2 and report back to you.
Regards
Matthias
Hi Matthias,
I just pushed a working copy to github that contains the partial backup code: https://github.com/drachels/moodle-mod_mootyper/tree/MOODLE_314_BETA
This code DOES NOT have any of the fixes I've been trying out to get things to "look" right using Boost theme.
Hope it does what you need.
AL
Dear AL
Here are some first results from testing the BETA version under Moodle 3.2.
I first tried to install the regular version for 3.1 via a ZIP file, for some reasons I didn't follow up, it broke the installation (no CSS anymore). When I removed the folder from MOD directory, everything worked again.
Then I tried to install the beta version directly via ZIP file. As expected the keyboard didn't show under the BOOST theme, but switching to the legacy theme CLEAN the English keyboard showed up.
I than added the Swiss keyboard configuration files from the regular installation and it worked.
Finally, after creating some test exercises I backed up the course and restored it without any problems.
In the next steps I will test the beta module on a 3.0 installation. As soon I've done that, I'll give you a short report again.
BTW as the backup functionality also works for a single exercise this solves another problem we experienced, namely get rid of all the students entry which accumulate over time. Now we can just back an activity up and restore it - in case we want a clean slate.
Regards
Matthias
Just to let you know.
The test under Moodle 3.0 was also successful.
This time I first installed the regular version and added some exercises.
After that I installed the beta version (with some additional layouts included from the regular version).
Then I did the backup and restore: Once in the same course and then in another course. It all worked nicely.
Hint for others who want to try it: You have to disable "include enrolled users" in the backup process otherwise Moodle will throw a database error because that feature is not available. (For our school that functionality is not important.)
After the beta version worked with 3.2 and 3.0, I also tried it with 3.1:
It works!
Hi Matthias,
Thanks for all the feedback! Before the day is over, I hope to push another Beta version that also includes backing up user data. I had a "eureka" moment yesterday between sessions of "working" on the new garage/workshop and on MooTyper, and it now appears to be working. Got to do a little more testing on a clean install and a less cluttered Moodle, just to make sure.
For anyone interested, I have just updated the 3.1.4 beta version to include user grade data. I still need need to do some tests to make sure everything is working okay before I create a stable release. I have tested to make sure that it backs up the MooTyper activity when set for lesson mode and for exam mode. Both work and the grades seem to restore correctly. Since I have created other methods for saving and importing lessons, and they are already available site-wide, they are not included in the backup. Keyboard layouts are not included, either.
Hi,
I'm trying your BETA in moodle 3.3 and everything is working now. I found one bug - when I allow continuous typing, when I press "space" it doesn't do nothing (it is not mistake). Maybe it's problem only in Moodle 3.3
Michal
Hi Michal,
There were actually 3 versions of the 3.1.4 Beta pushed to github, and there were some significant changes to the code for continuous typing included in the last one. As a matter of fact, a few days ago, I removed the Beta version and replaced it with a stable version.
The 3.1.4 Stable version is also in the Moodle downloads area.
Having said all of the above...extra spaces have always been ignored. In other words, I can type a space and have it recognized only when the next letter is a space. If the next letter is supposed to be an actual letter and I try to type a space, it gets ignored and not counted as a mistake.
I might consider making that an optional setting in a future release.
Hi Michal,
Had a few moments between rain showers that stopped my work outdoors, so I took a quick look and made a quick test...if you want "space" to count as a mistake in the situation you describe, in MooTyper version 3.1.4 you can comment out lines 151 and 152 of the typer.js file.
The same change will work in other versions of MooTyper, but the line numbers may vary slightly.
New MooTyper version 3.1.2 (Build 2016080700) was just added to MooTyper downloads. It has added some of the missing capabilities you normally expect Moodle activities to have. This release includes:
- Modified the title of the current exercise so that instead of just showing the exercise number, it shows, Exercise number of how many. e.g. The first exercise of Lesson 1 would be, Exercise 1 of 10.
- Added a setting for Recent Activity and the code to make it work.
- Added a setting for Password and the code to make it work. This change also included a new field in the mdl_mootyper database table for the setting. The field for password, though never used before, was already present in the table.
- Added code to implement the use of Open time and Close time. The the database fields and settings have been there for a long time, just no code to implement their use.
- Setting for Lesson export that allows you to automatically add the current GMT to exported filenames so that new exports will not inadvertently overwrite previous versions of a lesson.
I just realized that I did not make a post about changes implemented in version 3.1.1, so:
- Added color picker setting for passing grades in lessons.
- Added color picker setting for failing grades in lessons.
- Added color picker setting for suspicious grades.
- Added color picker setting for keyboard background for new keyboard layouts.
Does not affect old keyboard layout versions. - Added color picker setting for key tops of non-homerow keys for new keyboard layouts.
Does not affect old keyboard layout versions. - Added a Default date format setting for how dates are displayed in the grade reports. The setting recognizes d, M, Y, G and i as well as comma and colon.
To all MooTYper users...I've been asked if it would be possible to change MooTyper to allow a user to continue typing without being forced to enter the correct character, after making a mistake. Is anyone else interested in this capability?
To all MooTYper users...I've been working on a bunch of things for MooTyper. I have a version 3.1.4 Beta at github that now has backup capability for both the activity and user data.
This version was also set to let you type continuously without having to hit the correct key. I have changed that so continuous typing is now an optional item that can be set when you create the MooTyper activity or when an admin or teacher clicks on settings. They can change the setting at any time, but for everyone to see the change they will need to refresh the page.
This version also limits the lowest reported wpm to zero. When someone makes too many mistakes, you used to see negative wpm numbers but now it will just show zero.
If anyone tries this beta version please let me know your results. I will be doing some more code cleanup, code documentation, and testing so that hopefully I can release a stable version in a few days.
Just wanted to report. I've tested MooTyper on Moodle 3.3 on Clean theme. No problems so far!
I didn't see any documentation on how to import new lessons, but figured it out. You have to FTP upload them to the server, then click IMPORT to see them load into the db.
I just released a MooTyper 3.4.0 that was tested on and works on any version of Moodle 2.7 and higher. This makes all the "new" MooTyper stuff added over the past eighteen months, available to users still working with older versions of Moodle.
If anyone has any problems or questions, be sure and let me know, and I will do my best to handle them.
One big change with the keyboard layouts, is that many character that were "missing" and therefore could not be used in lessons, have been made available in the current group of files. If anyone needs a new keyboard layout for your language, just ask. That's how the new Belgium and Spanish layouts came to be.
I have a question about courses I have created. I have uploaded them using the, 'Add new exercise / category'. Yet now as I try to add new categories or exercises it will not let me. It just sits on the screen where you hit confirm and shows me the lesson I am trying to enter.
Does it have a character or lesson limit that you can upload?
Hi Roxy,
Sorry to hear you are experiencing difficulties. Usually, when you get stuck where you are, it is because you are trying to use a character or symbol that is not supported by the version of MooTyper you are using. The unsupported item is usually shown in red, but with my poor eyesight, I do not see anything red in the picture you provide.
Could you tell me which version of Moodle, MooTyper, and keyboard layout you are using, so I can try to duplicate the problem.
Going back and trying again it did have a symbol turned red. It was an apostrophe. ( ' ) I had to look really close at it to see the color change. Which is strange because it hadn't changed any of those previously... At least not that I'm aware of.
I really appreciate your help! I am using the English(V3) Keyboard layout. I'm looking into the other information you've asked for and will edit this reply when I get that information.
MooTyper 3.3.0
Moodle release 3.2.1
Well, this one stumps me as I am unable to duplicate the problem, even when I go back to the very first version (MooTyper 2.7) that I released after taking over MooTyper last year.
The only thing I can think of is that possibly your eins.php file has something wrong with it. In my archived MooTyper 3.3.0, in the eins.php file, the apostrophe is an allowed character. It is in line 151, col 71-75 and appears as '\''. Since apostrophes are surrounding each usable character, there has to be a \ as an escape character for it to work.
I have attached a copy of Lesson 18 that I made while testing this. If you can, place it in the MooTyper lessons folder on your server, and see if it imports okay, and lets you use it. I hope so. If it does work and you need to make other lessons that have character problems, as a worst case scenario, I can give you teacher access to my development server and you can make lessons on it. Spoiler alert - it has the latest MooTyper 3.4.1 code on it an looks much more compact.
By the way, MooTyper 3.4.0 is out and has some new capability, most notably, charts, that will show up for users of Moodle 3.2 and higher. It also has a lot of security enhancements to the code.
So I was able to upload the lesson 18 that you created without an issue. I did notice that it's not all apostrophes but the occasional one and sometimes quotes.
There was a sentence in a later lesson I was trying to upload that it had me remove the quotes and a few apostrophes from but not all of them. For example, with the quotes in one section it had me erase the starting quotes but not the ending, and in the next sentence it was reverse. There were a few apostrophes that it didn't like as well. I just went ahead and removed them all and it worked fine after that. Does it by chance have something akin to a grammar check? That's about the closest thing I can think of.
Thank you for all of the help though! I really appreciate it and have now been able to upload all of the lessons I was trying to, now that I know about looking for the red font.
It is sort of like a grammar check. There is a javascript function that has a loop that checks every character of the exercise you have typed into the text box. If it is listed as a letter of the alphabet, or as a number, it is automatically accepted. If it is any other character, it is compared to the list of allowed characters, and if not in the list, it gets flagged by turning it red and listing everything for you to look at.
That's what has me stumped is that an apostrophe should ALWAYS be accepted. One possible explanation is that it just might be dependent upon your computer keyboard, your operating system, the keyboard driver you are using, and the keycode generated by your equipment. Also, it could be related to the speed of your computer.
If you don't mind, contact me via direct email: drachels at drachels dot com
I have some ideas to try and will need to give you details of how and where to access my development server to see if I can come up with a fix that works for you. I know that early versions of MooTyper would not let you type hardly anything except the alphabet, numbers, periods, and question marks, but since I took over support of MooTyper I have been trying to make sure that you can include just about any character in an exercise.
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Follow up to the apostrophe/quote problem - Roxy's work flow for entering exercises was trying to substitute "Smart" quotes and apostrophes anytime a regular quote or apostrophe was typed. Smart quotes and apostrophes are not supported in MooTyper as they are NOT keys on any of the currently supported keyboard layouts.
Hi,
You can set the close time, but I don't see where it is visible for students on the actual assignment page. It doesn't show in upcoming events either. This makes it tough to warn students about the due date of the typing assignment.
Thanks!
In reply to Sam Mudle
Re: Suggestion - please display close/due date for student view
by AL Rachels -
Just answered in the comments on the downloads page.
I'm attempting to add a new exercise. MooTyper won't seem to accept this:
thank; wand. however, this/or/that parent’s
I even tried it with the following to no avail:
thank; wand. however, this
Any reason why that may be happening?
I don't get any error, either the page will do nothing when I click confirm, or the text will appear above the text box (right below the exercise category) and the page will still not do anything:
Hi John,
If you look closely at your line of text above the text box, you will see that you DO have an error...the apostrophe in parent's is red. Red, in this case, indicates you are not using a standard apostrophe U+0027. The apostrophe you used is curved, and is probably the "smart" right single quote, whereas the standard apostrophe is straight up and down.
By any chance, did you type the exercise somewhere else, then copy and paste it into MooTyper?
If you look three entries above at my Monday, 27 November 2017 entry, you will see this has come up before, and the problem was typing in a word processor, then copying and pasting into MooTyper. The word processor was substituting "smart" quotes for regular ones.
If you use the following line, it should work:
thank; wand. however, this/or/that parent's
ahh! Thanks. Yes, I typed them in Text Edit (on a Mac). Once fixed, that message no longer appeared.
Thank you!
Thanks for the feedback, John. Glad it is now working for you.
Hello,
I'm attempting to setup MooTyper in our company candidate screening tests. Prior to updating MooTyper to the newest version and Moodle as well the typing activity worked flawlessly (it was setup as single activity course). After updating the plugin and moodle upon completing the typing activity in the single activity course it doesn't "submit" the final grade. All characters are green and the last Period in the paragraph is where the cursor stays. When I enter the last period it adds two of them like .. instead of a single one like is written in the paragraph.
Also when I enable "show Keyboard" my paragraph is missing When I disable that setting and hit confirm the paragraph shows again. I did the import lesson/kb layout.
Capture.png shows the paragraph is completed and the double periods however the exam doesn't end.
Lesson01.png shows a built in lesson (in lesson mode) fails to complete and doubles up the last character as well. (Removed)
I attached the student view of my typing exam Keyboard is set not to display however the test still is missing the paragraph. And you can see from the other screen shot it should be there. (Same paragraph was selected.)
Lesson
Lesson 01 already in the database. Nothing to do.
Lesson 02 already in the database. Nothing to do.
Lesson 13 already in the database. Nothing to do.
The Five Paragraph Essay V2 already in the database. Nothing to do.
Keyboard layout
Belgium(DutchV4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
Dvorak(V4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
English(USV4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
French(V4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
German(SwissV4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
Japanese(V4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
Portuguese(BrazilV4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
Portuguese(PortugalV4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
Russian(V4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
Slovenian(V4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
Spanish(V4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
Thai(V4) layout already in the database. Nothing to do.
Hi Davidalen,
Did you select one of the new keyboards to use, such as English(USV4)? When you upgraded to the latest version, it wiped out all the old ones. I suspect that if you turn on debugging, you would see that the keyboard you are trying to use is missing.
Much appropriated! Not sure why my brain didnt click when i saw v2 instead of v4
Don't fill bad. I have done the same thing more than once during testing on all the different versions of Moodle for which I tried to make this version compatible with. Luckily for me, since I don't actively teach anymore, I have debugging on all the time, so I get reminded right away when I forget.
Hi,
I would like to use an entry form to test the hability of a group of students.
It could be possible through MooTyper? And if it is possible, what can I do to use that feature?
Thanks in advance for your support.
Hi Martín,
I am sorry that I don't know for sure what you mean by "entry form to test the hability." If you mean that you want to provide your own text for the group of students to type as a lesson or as an exam, then yes that is possible in MooTyper.
In the MooTyper admin, click on, Add new exercise / category. The first time on the new page, add a Category name and then type the lesson in the, Exercise:, text area. Finish by clicking confirm. If there is an unsupported character, the Confirm will fail and print a copy of your exercise with the offending character/s in red.
If you want to add more exercises in the same category, the next time you visit that page, click the down arrow by, Exercise will be part of, and select the category you just created. Type the exercise in the text area.
WARNING: If you try typing an exercise in a word processor and then copy and paste into the text area, you MUST make sure it is plain text, without any "smart" quotes and apostrophe's that MS likes to substitute for actual quotes and apostrophe's. They are NOT supported in MooTyper.
If you do use a word processor, and after pasting you get a failure when clicking, Confirm, edit the incorrect characters in the text area, then try confirm again.
Hi Rachel
Thanks a lot for your quick response, I mean an "entry form" like this In which there is some text and text boxes to introduce data.
But I guess that in MooTyper we only can use plain text, Is this true?
Thanks again.
Correct, MooTyper only allows plain text.
If you really need to test someone filling in a form, I suggest you try and use the Database activity.
Thanks Al,
I'm not an expert using the database activity, I'll check it.
Thanks again.
Hi, I just updated Mootyper to the newest version (2/21/18),
I'm having big issues.
Nevermind, I just uninstalled the old plugin and installed the new one. Everyone works fine now.
Glad to hear you have a working version. Do you mind telling me what OS, DB, and PHP and what was your old MooTyper version so I can test upgrading it to the latest version. Before releasing 3.4.2 I tested upgrading all MooTyper versions from 2.7 to 3.4.1, without any problems, but it is still possible I may have missed something.
Moodle 3.3.1
I was updating from the August 2017 version of Mootyper to the current one today.
When I updated, I didn't get any of the keyboards. The solution was to just uninstall and then reinstall the plugin. Of course I forgot to back up my lessons... but no worries.
php 5.6.14
Mysqli 5.5.51-38.2
Sorry for the late reply. Was out all day yesterday.
When you update MooTyper, Moodle erases the old MooTyper files and replaces them with the new version. Then when you went to run MooTyper, the old keyboard layout files were no longer there and that was what caused your problems. If you had turned on debugging, you would have seen a message about the files being missing.
At that point you should have ran the, Import lesson / KB layout, and then gone to Setup and selected a new keyboard layout.
By the way, the March 13th release of mootyper fixed a final bug where the keyboard would not show up for my students, but only for me.
Thanks for working on this.
Hi S Moodle,
Anytime you, or anyone else, has a problem, let me know right away and I will do my best to help you out to get it fixed sooner than waiting for a new version.
Just wait until you see what is coming out in a few days. Thanks to some help from Virgo Pihlapuu, the overall look is much more compact, with the text entry area being hidden. The text to type will have new settings that let you set a background color, cursor color, error color, and the whole exercise can be much longer due to the fact the text now scrolls as needed, while the student is typing. Once they finish typing, but before hitting Continue, they can scroll the text up and down to look and see what errors they made.
Another new item will allow you to control how multiple error keystrokes are counted. Let's say the student is supposed to type the letter, k, but types a, d, more than once, say 3 times. (I reverse hands like that occasionally.) You can set it to count that as just one mistake or as 3 mistakes.
All these new settings will have defaults, but the teacher can change each setting for each MooTyper instance. This allows you to color coordinate MooTyper with your theme colors, if you so desire.
The new status bar has also been updated so that it's final display agrees with the grade view and is more accurate. It also gives an in-progess WPM now, instead of waiting to the end of the exercise.
If anyone wants to peek at the new stuff, send me an email, drachels at drachels dot com, and I will tell you where and how to log in. Fair warning, it might appear broken at times while I am finishing up adding the new settings.
Al,
When I upgraded MooTyper, it now prevents students from refreshing the page to reset an exercise! LOL! It's so evil.
In the past, if a student makes a few mistakes from the start, they could simply refresh the browser to restart. Now it forces them to finish it.
Anyway, LOVE this feature!
Thanks!
Actually, the current behavior is the way it is supposed to work. I accidentally broke it a few releases ago. Even though I run debugging at developer level all the time, the way in which it broke never appeared on screen where it could be seen. I just happened to spot it when using, Inspect Element, to debug something else. Glad you like the "fixed" version.
I have just added the new MooTyper 3.5.0 version to the Moodle downloads area.
There are lots of new things in this release, most notably, the text area for typing is now hidden making the activity view more compact than ever before. What a user types is now shown in the text-to-type area with mistakes highlighted. When an exercise is finished, a scroll bar appears and lets the user review their mistakes, before clicking, Continue, and moving on to the next exercise.
Visit the download page to see/read about other new capabilities. Go to http://m3x.drachels.com/ and create your own account to try things out. Or, you can log in as student1, student2, ..., student17, or student18, using Test12345! as the password. Contact me via Moodle messaging if you would like teacher access to help with creating sample content in any of the supported languages. You can also contact me if you need a keyboard layout created for another language.
Hi AL Rachels.
First, congratulate yourself for this module and the effort you have.
I write to ask you if you have considered unifying the results with the qualifications of the course ?.
for example, this would be very helpful for me because, if you have a course with 1000 students, it is extremely difficult to qualify one by one manually.
I leave you a screenshot of how the qualifier registers me.
PDT. My suggestion would be to rate a percentage of the completed with respect to the number of exercises per lesson.
example: if the student completes a lesson 4 exercises of 5 then he will have 80%. and this percentage assign it to the qualifier ...
Hi Profe Harol,
Updating the way MooTyper grades are handled is just one of the many items in my TODO list of projects to try and implement in MooTyper. I hope to be able to give the teacher the same type of rating options used by other Moodle activities, No rating, Average of ratings, Count of ratings, Maximum of ratings, Minimum of ratings, and Sum of ratings.
I have just moved a copy of the list to the website listed on the download page. Go to http://m3x.drachels.com/ and create your own account. You can then access the site suggestion box and add/vote for for an item to be worked on.
We use MooTyper as a Candidate Screening Tool and have noticed that the WPM doesn't calculate for some of them. Two of which I would assume its an issue with the fact that it took them 10min to type 203 words. But the others are pretty close in time about 1-2 min difference.
Grant Johnson was actually done by me and it seems when I type usually the fastest one there it calculates my score but not others. Is this normal for the plugin? What is used to calculate the score? If you take 203 and divide it by the 3min 8 seconds it comes out to about 65WPM at 97% accuracy so not sure how 41.5 was achieved in the overall score.
The 5 min typing test you can take at typing centers I scored 57WPM (so far has been consistent over the last 5 years I've taken them 57-60)
Hi Davidalen,
Even before I took over maintaining MooTyper, I didn't really care for the way MooTyper calculated WPM results. The only change I have made to it in the past two years, is to limit the WPM to zero or positive results. It used to be set so that if you made too many mistakes you would see a negative WPM score, which is meaningless. So, those zero scores you see are a result of making so many mistakes, that when the penalty is applied, it would have resulted in a negative WPM, and a zero is being shown, instead.
I have been investigating the possibility of including both a Gross WPM and Corrected WPM, but other things and priorities have kept me from getting it done. I will see what I can come up with for the next release, but right now I am concentrating on trying to get GDPR code for MooTyper to work.
If are interested, tell me which version of MooTYper you are currently using, and I can tell you how to change it so that you are seeing Gross WPM instead of Corrected.
That would be great. The hiring managers here didn't like me telling them to export the CSV and use excel to calculate that number ha
Thanks a billion again. and Thank you for keeping up this plugin. Its been working great and does exactly what we need for pre hire skills testing.
3.4.2 (Build: 2017120402)
Would the current records reflect the change to GWPM?
Hi Davidalen,
Unfortunately , changing the code now, will not be reflected in current, completed records. When a student hits the, Continue, button the data being shown in the status bar is stored, "as is", in the mdl_mootyper_grades table.
In MooTyper 3.4.2, if you go into the, typer.js file, down to line 60, and change it from this:
var wpm = (speed / 5) - mistakes;
So that it looks like this:
var wpm = (speed / 5);
That will give you a Gross WPM with each new exercise a student completes and place it in the grades table. Unfortunately, it probably will not take long for students to realize they can "game" the program by trying to bang keys as fast as possible without any regard to trying to be correct, thus giving themseleves an inflated WPM.
I will definitely see about having both WPM versions in future releases.
I would assume tapping ! many times would increase the mistakes column though? If not its not a huge deal this is usually one-off testing and I'm pretty sure they are proctored (via video)
Just released a new MooTyper 3.5.1 version that shows both gross (GWPM) and net (NWPM) under a single label of WPM. Gross is on the left and net is on the right, of the separator bar. Only the net value gets saved in the database when you click, Continue. (If you really need to know the gross later, just divide, hits per minute by 5.)
Also, due to numerous requests, this version includes a new, Practice, mode. Set it up like you would Lesson or Exam. Once set and saved, it cannot be changed. As a reminder, the word, Practice, gets added to the exercise name, just above the status bar, and just above the grade table when visiting, View my grades. Once a student has saved their results by clicking the Continue button, they can visit, View my grades, and remove any grade they see, but the next exercise offered will be the one after the last exercise grade posted. In other words, if a student has completed four out of ten exercises in a lesson, and they remove the results for exercise number two, they will be given exercise five, next. If they really want to retype exercise two, then they have to remove three and four also.
When you go to the Export/Edit exercises page, all the lessonames in the drop down, Exercises category, are in the order they were created, which is by the table ID number.
If you create a lot of your own lessons, like I do, they are always added to the bottom of the drop down list. I think it would be much better for the list to be in alphabetical order, which is a very easy, and simple fix.
In locallib.php, in, function get_mootyperlessons($u, $c), down around line 162, change the last line of the $sql definition from ODER BY id"; so that it becomes, ODER BY lessonname";
That's all it takes to make the change. Any comments are welcome. Expect to see the change in the next release, coming soon.
Just to let everyone know, if you downloaded and tried to use the 3.6.0 release, you should replace it with this 3.6.0+ one. I was in a hurry to release before going on a trip, and accidentally included the wrong copy of the typer.js file. The included file had a bunch of console.log entries in it, one of which was breaking the scroll function. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Hello! first of all, thank you for the plugin, I love it!
I have a problem, well, I installed the 3.6.1 version, but I can't use the exam function, since it always choses lesson, no matter how many times i pick the other ones. Could it be that I am using moodle 3.7+? are you thinking about making a working version for 3.7? =) thanks a lot.
Another question, I'd like to know how to access the translations, because spanish version is like half translated. And if you want a hand, you have 2 from me! Ill give you all translations you want!
Thanx a lot!
I have a problem, well, I installed the 3.6.1 version, but I can't use the exam function, since it always choses lesson, no matter how many times i pick the other ones. Could it be that I am using moodle 3.7+? are you thinking about making a working version for 3.7? =) thanks a lot.
Another question, I'd like to know how to access the translations, because spanish version is like half translated. And if you want a hand, you have 2 from me! Ill give you all translations you want!
Thanx a lot!
Hi Marina,
Sorry to see that you are having problems getting MooTyper to work in exam mode. It is bedtime here so I will try to verify this tomorrow. The fact that you are using Moodle 3.7 should not matter, as that is what I am using. It's just that I can't remember if I have verified exam mode on 3.7.
Dear AL
I can confirm the problem for Moodle 3.7.2: As soon as you set up a new MooTyper activity and then try to choose "Exam" or "Practice" the page reloads and you are back at the "Lesson" setting. As Moodle doesn't report a PHP error, there might be something going on with the JavaScript part.
Maybe these two reports from the JavaScript console will help:
@Marina and @Matthias,
Thanks for your notification of this error. I can confirm it on my setup. Until I can come up with a fix, I do have a temporary work around if you have admin access on your site. If you are admin go to the MooTyper plugin settings at Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > MooTyper. In the Options section, change the default Mode to Exam. Go to your course and set up your MooTyper Exam. Go back and set the MooTyper Mode to Lesson or Practice, as desired.
Sorry for the inconvenience. I will try and have a fix release as soon as I can.
NOTE: Another temporary fix if you have access to the Moodle files. Open mod_setup.php. Delete or comment out lines 79 thru 87. Then make sure MooTyper setup works as you want it to. Actually, 87 is the only line that HAS to be eliminated.
79 // Check to see if current MooTyper isexam (mode) is empty.
80 //if ($mootyper->isexam == null || is_null($mootyper->isexam)) {
81 // Current MooTyper isexam is empty so set it to the site default.
82 // $dfisexam = $moocfg->isexam;
83 //} else {
84 // Otherwise use current MooTyper isexam.
85 // $dfisexam = $mootyper->isexam;
86 //}
87 //$modepo = optional_param('isexam', $dfisexam, PARAM_INT); // Display with default or current setting.
These lines of code are for a future enhancement and are not needed by this version of MooTyper. At the time, I just plain forgot about them and left them in. My only excuse was that this was during a very bad time health wise for my wife, and I just did not have the time needed to fully test this version when trying to verify that it would work with Moodle 3.7. NOTE: My wife is much better now and is in complete remission.
79 // Check to see if current MooTyper isexam (mode) is empty.
80 //if ($mootyper->isexam == null || is_null($mootyper->isexam)) {
81 // Current MooTyper isexam is empty so set it to the site default.
82 // $dfisexam = $moocfg->isexam;
83 //} else {
84 // Otherwise use current MooTyper isexam.
85 // $dfisexam = $mootyper->isexam;
86 //}
87 //$modepo = optional_param('isexam', $dfisexam, PARAM_INT); // Display with default or current setting.
These lines of code are for a future enhancement and are not needed by this version of MooTyper. At the time, I just plain forgot about them and left them in. My only excuse was that this was during a very bad time health wise for my wife, and I just did not have the time needed to fully test this version when trying to verify that it would work with Moodle 3.7. NOTE: My wife is much better now and is in complete remission.
Could you tell me where exactly I can find mod_setup.php? I never can find anything. I am using c-panel, should I look in filezilla or something like that? because I have been looking for it but...
You will need to look in your Moodle sever files. e.g.
/yourmoodle/mod/mootyper/mod_setup.php
/yourmoodle/mod/mootyper/mod_setup.php
Thank you for the very fast reply, I allready tried that before texting here. It didn't work.
Sorry to take so long in getting a release candidate ready as I have had a lot going on lately, that slowed down my hobby work.
If anyone is in a hurry, they can go here: https://github.com/drachels/moodle-mod_mootyper/tree/MOODLE_370_STABLE where you can get the version I am getting ready to release, that fixes the mode problem. It has a number of other changes, too. The most visible one is the status bar is now full width to accommodate long foreign language labels. It still might not be until tomorrow before I release the new version on Moodle as I have so many versions of Moodle to test it on.
Over the past few months, I have been developing a bunch of new keyboard layouts. As part of that effort, I found myself having to add a LOT of new Lessons with multiple Exercises in each one, so that I could test each new keyboard layout.
If you have used MooTyper for a while, you know that creating new lessons with multiple exercises in it, would require a BUNCH of mouse clicks. As a LONG time computer user, my mouse finger HATES extra clicks, so I have taken the time to upgrade the Lesson editing in the last MooTyper release. Today, just pushed to github, I have added another piece to the puzzle, by adding a link that lets you go add a new exercise to a lesson, directly from the page which lets you view all the exercises in the lesson.
Anyone who might want to try out this new capability, can do so at http://m3x.drachels.com/
You can visit as guest, which is useless for seeing this in action, or create your own account and request that I make you a teacher of a course.
I've had a request to implement a keypad layout to be used in an accounting course. If anyone else is interested, please let me know and I will let you know where to see it in action.
The new Keypad by itself works just as you would expect and is a great way for accounting students to increase their number entry skill.
The other implementation is a keyboard+keypad layout which still needs a little work to get both keytops to highlight. Currently, only number keys in the top row of the keyboard are highlighted when they are next to be typed. The same number keytop in the keypad does not get highlighted, as it's "id" is a duplicate, lower on the page, and therefore gets ignored since it is not unique. I will work on a fix, as time permits.
I apologize to everyone as I just realized I never came back and posted that the new layouts, numberKeypadOnly(V1) and English(USV6) can be tried out at: http://m3x.drachels.com/course/view.php?id=729
I have just released MooTyper 3.8.2, that has a bunch of new stuff, most notably, time limits and required WPM. With the three modes, Lesson, Exam, and Practice, along with time limits from 0 to 10 minutes, required precision from 0% to 100%, and required WPM rate from 0 WPM to any reasonable rate, there are a very large number of possibilities available.
This version of MooTyper does NOT currently support automatic rollover of the text to type when a time limit is set. It is up to the admin/teacher/manager to ensure they provide an exercise with enough text based on the desired time limit and the fastest expected user/typist. However, if the user does reach the end of the text before the time limit is up, the exercise will end like it always has.
Hopefully, I have not missed or created any new bugs, but due to the large number of changes I have included in this and the previous two releases, (over 65), the possibility exists that I may have overlooked something. If so, please let me know.
This version of MooTyper does NOT currently support automatic rollover of the text to type when a time limit is set. It is up to the admin/teacher/manager to ensure they provide an exercise with enough text based on the desired time limit and the fastest expected user/typist. However, if the user does reach the end of the text before the time limit is up, the exercise will end like it always has.
Hopefully, I have not missed or created any new bugs, but due to the large number of changes I have included in this and the previous two releases, (over 65), the possibility exists that I may have overlooked something. If so, please let me know.
I am currently in the process of testing a new MooTyper 3.8.3, that has a new, Mistake details, list capability, that I have wanted to add for a long time. Expected release will probably be in just a couple of days. The new time limit and required WPM capabilities take up a lot more time in testing now. The new version is available at github now, if anyone want to get a copy now. You can also try it at at the plugin Website URL, where it is already installed.
In previous versions of MooTyper, the only way for the teacher to see what mistakes a student was making, was to "look" over the students shoulder while they typed. The "look" at the mistakes was only available up until the moment the student continued on to the next exercise, and then they were gone. Of course the total mistakes was available, but not the details of which character, and how many times that character was incorrectly typed.
With this new version, the details are shown live, between the status bar and the text to type. Once the student continues to the next exercise, the details are added into the mdl_mootyper_grades, table along with the other data for that exercise. If the teacher downloads the data via the, Export to .csv, button (changed the former link to a button), the mistake details are included.
In previous versions of MooTyper, the only way for the teacher to see what mistakes a student was making, was to "look" over the students shoulder while they typed. The "look" at the mistakes was only available up until the moment the student continued on to the next exercise, and then they were gone. Of course the total mistakes was available, but not the details of which character, and how many times that character was incorrectly typed.
With this new version, the details are shown live, between the status bar and the text to type. Once the student continues to the next exercise, the details are added into the mdl_mootyper_grades, table along with the other data for that exercise. If the teacher downloads the data via the, Export to .csv, button (changed the former link to a button), the mistake details are included.
As always, if anyone spots an error, or would like something new added, please let me know.
Hi, thank you for taking the time to develop and share this add-on
I've been trying out MooTyper and I would like to ask you if I understood correctly the current feature set of this add-on.
- is it correct that right now there is no way for the user to have an open-ended exercise that is always available without having to delete previous grades? I mean that the exercise will be always available upon re-entry, one try after the other.
- Is it correct that MooTyper does not integrate with Moodle's gradebook in any of the operating modes (exam, practice, lesson)?
If the above is correct, is there any particular reason why that is the case, other than you obviously not having the time to implement everything and/or right away?
Thanks again
Hi Stefano,
Thanks for your interest in and questions regarding MooTyper.
Item 1: If you mean that you would like for MooTyper to automatically reset a lesson so the student starts from the beginning of the first exercise upon re-entry, then NO MooTyper does not have that capability right now, as, a. it had never occurred to me to implement it, b. no one ever asked me to implement the capability. However, effectively there is no limit to the number of exercises a teacher can add to a lesson. So, if a teacher wants to, they can keep adding exercises to a lesson, so that you get the same effect without having to modify the code at all. An easy way to implement this would be to do something such as add each of the Aesop Fables as an exercise into one long lesson. Check Project Gutenberg for other suggestions and copyright requirements. Since every Project Gutenberg book I've downloaded to read, and that's a bunch, is available in, Plain Text UTF-8, a large part of all the work is done.
Item 2: You are correct that currently, MooTyper does not integrate with Moodle's gradebook. Eventually, I hope to make it so, but have other priorities, at the moment.
"If the above is correct, is there any particular reason why that is the
case, other than you obviously not having the time to implement
everything and/or right away?" - 3 main reasons. For the past two and half years, my son and especially my wife, have had extreme health issues which has limited the amount of time available to me for code work. The PHP language was invented just about the time I finished my BS and MS degrees, and I still struggle with it. I hate to admit how much of the past seven weeks I have spent trying to get an audio file to record and then playback for a MooTyper dictation exercise capability. The other reason is that, no one has asked for it. 😁
Hello AL,
thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm sorry to hear about your family and I sincerely hope everything will work out just fine eventually, as soon as possible. My gratitudine for putting MooTyper out in the open in spite of the hurdles is even stronger.
Item 1: exactly right - upon re-entry, the student would be presented automatically with a reset lesson.
Item 2: ok, thanks for clarifying that bit.
If I may, I would ask you to please consider adding item 1 on the TODO list for this project. I think it would be really handy for the user to just have a never-ending ready-to-go practice item that just keeps on giving without particular workarounds.
As a workaround for item 1, I was considering adding a MooTyper activity with a single exercise and some impossible to achieve WPM/time-limit target, so that effectively the user won't be able to complete that activity and it would force a retry immediately following a completion. Of course grades would just show as failed but the user won't have to manually delete them to continue with the activity. What do you think of this approach?
As an aside, I would like to contribute the Italian translation for Mootyper some time in the next few weeks (I'm still refining it). Would you accept it? If that's the case, do i just send you a pull request on github or do you prefer some other way?
Thanks again and have a good one.
P.S. Where do you think it's a more appropriate setting for a feature idea/request? This Moodle forum or github issues?
thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm sorry to hear about your family and I sincerely hope everything will work out just fine eventually, as soon as possible. My gratitudine for putting MooTyper out in the open in spite of the hurdles is even stronger.
Item 1: exactly right - upon re-entry, the student would be presented automatically with a reset lesson.
Item 2: ok, thanks for clarifying that bit.
If I may, I would ask you to please consider adding item 1 on the TODO list for this project. I think it would be really handy for the user to just have a never-ending ready-to-go practice item that just keeps on giving without particular workarounds.
As a workaround for item 1, I was considering adding a MooTyper activity with a single exercise and some impossible to achieve WPM/time-limit target, so that effectively the user won't be able to complete that activity and it would force a retry immediately following a completion. Of course grades would just show as failed but the user won't have to manually delete them to continue with the activity. What do you think of this approach?
As an aside, I would like to contribute the Italian translation for Mootyper some time in the next few weeks (I'm still refining it). Would you accept it? If that's the case, do i just send you a pull request on github or do you prefer some other way?
Thanks again and have a good one.
P.S. Where do you think it's a more appropriate setting for a feature idea/request? This Moodle forum or github issues?
Hi Stefano,
Item 1: I will see about what I can do in regards to automatically resetting a lesson and will add it to my TODO list.
Item 2: Grade integration to Moodle is already on my TODO list.
Yes, your proposed work around of using a very high WPM rate will work.
Translations do not need to be sent directly to me. You can go to the translation link up at the top right corner of this page, sign in and add translations yourself. I just looked and there does not seem to be any Italian(it) entries for MooTyper at all, just yet, so they would be more than welcome. (missing 252 out of 252) If you feel that you cannot add the translations, then you can send them to me and I will add them. The good thing about adding translations on Moodle, is you can do just a few at time as time permits. There is no requirement to try and submit a complete set of translated items all at one time.
Feature requests can be added here or on github. I will get them in either place. I imagine more people will see forum entries than they would github ones.
You can also put feature requests on the demo site at http://m3x.drachels.com/course/view.php?id=4 NOTE: While the course allows guest access, you need to create an account to post a feature request or make a suggestion.
Hi is it possible trace grades about Mootyper exams? How I know if students passed or not the exam?
Hi LABS,
Currently, MooTyper does not link to, or use, the Moodle grade system, so a teacher, manager, or admin can check on passing an exam by going into the activity and click on View all grades. If you want the MooTyper exam grade included in Moodle, setup an assignment as an, Offline Activity, and enter the exam grades into it.
As mentioned above, Grade integration into Moodle is on my TODO list, but, sadly, major family medical problems and a death, over the past two plus years have put me way behind.
Currently, MooTyper does not link to, or use, the Moodle grade system, so a teacher, manager, or admin can check on passing an exam by going into the activity and click on View all grades. If you want the MooTyper exam grade included in Moodle, setup an assignment as an, Offline Activity, and enter the exam grades into it.
As mentioned above, Grade integration into Moodle is on my TODO list, but, sadly, major family medical problems and a death, over the past two plus years have put me way behind.
Thank you for your answer...you confirm the solution I founded. It's ok so I know is the right way at the moment. I'll wait for your plugin update ;)
I have started development for what will be MooTyper 3.8.4. The most notable new capability will be dictation exercises.
For a dictation capability, MooTyper will need to have the regular text as always, along with an audio file starting with directions and narrating the text. MooTyper will need to be modified so that the complete text starts out as invisible, and then becomes visible one character at a time as the student types. For beginners, having the keyboard layout visible, will still indicate what letter to type. For more advanced students, the keyboard will need to be hidden.
From the student viewpoint, I have this already working. Just need to finish adding code to eins.php and eedit.php that lets the teacher add or edit the audio file.
To simplify things, I am going to use the audio recording capability built into the Atto editor, so this new capability may be for only Moodle 3.5 and above. Of course, I will check to see if it works with PoodLL audio, as well as just inserting a .mp3 file, but I really like the simplicity of the Atto audio recording capability.
Comments and suggestions from anyone are welcome.
Hello! I updated Mootyper and it doesn't work anymore.
What do you mean by, "...it doesn't work anymore."? Need more information. Could you post a picture?
What version of Moodle? What version of MooTyper did you start with? And then what version of MooTyper did you try to upgrade to?
I really hate to say it, but for the time being, I have dropped development of dictation mode capabilities. I spent months on this, but was never able to get Moodle to create and load an audio file in MooTyper. It would create the file in the editor, but would never play it from the view.php page. I have too many other items that need fixing so, once I am "caught up" I will try again.
It has been a long time coming, but I have finally had enough time to devote to trying to get MooTyper grades to appear in the Moodle grade book. I have also wanted to update the statistics below the tables seen when you click the links for, View all grades and View my grades, Instead of just showing an Average, I have wanted to show Mean, Median, Mode, and Range.
For anyone who would like to see these enhancements in use, I have a Mootyper 3.9.2 BETA branch that includes these plus a bunch of other stuff, installed at http://m3x.drachels.com/ The best place to see this in action is in the Plugin Development course. You can create your own account, and if you contact me directly, drachels at drachels dot com, I can give you teacher access.
The grade book integration currently just updates a students grade to the last completed exercise grade, so it really is only suitable for a MooTyper exam.
For anyone who would like to see these enhancements in use, I have a Mootyper 3.9.2 BETA branch that includes these plus a bunch of other stuff, installed at http://m3x.drachels.com/ The best place to see this in action is in the Plugin Development course. You can create your own account, and if you contact me directly, drachels at drachels dot com, I can give you teacher access.
The grade book integration currently just updates a students grade to the last completed exercise grade, so it really is only suitable for a MooTyper exam.
Made significant further progress so that Grade can be used for Exam mode results, and for Practice and Lesson modes, rating now works. Still have to get the delete to work so that the corresponding items in the mdl_rating table get deleted whenever anyone deletes any entry from the two MooTyper grade tables. (view all and own grades)
Just posted an important notice regarding MooTyper support over in it's download page. In a nutshell, I will only support MooTyper in Moodle supported versions. This means the new upcoming release will be for Moodle 3.5 and higher. It will also need to be using PHP 7.1 or higher.
Hi! I see MooTyper 3.9.4 has been released and I can't wait to try the Gradebook integration Congratulation on the long-awaited milestone!
I couldn't quite understand if deleting grades/ratings is still considered work in progress or if it has been fixed. I read on upgrade.txt on 3.9.2 that was still a showstopper, I don't know if it applies to 3.9.4.
I have two questions about mdl_mootyper_attempts and mdl_mootyper_checks tables. I have a concern about their size. they are now at 250k+ rows (checks) and 80k rows (attempts), while grades are in the 60k+ rows region
- Can they be emptied without consequences? (I understand this deletes in progress attempts)
- As far as i understand, once a grade has been recorded, it does not need any reference to the attempt that lead to it which in turn does not need the checks registered during the attempt (altough I believe checks are supposed to be automatically removed when attempts end and grades are registered). Is this understanding right?
I couldn't quite understand if deleting grades/ratings is still considered work in progress or if it has been fixed. I read on upgrade.txt on 3.9.2 that was still a showstopper, I don't know if it applies to 3.9.4.
I have two questions about mdl_mootyper_attempts and mdl_mootyper_checks tables. I have a concern about their size. they are now at 250k+ rows (checks) and 80k rows (attempts), while grades are in the 60k+ rows region
- Can they be emptied without consequences? (I understand this deletes in progress attempts)
- As far as i understand, once a grade has been recorded, it does not need any reference to the attempt that lead to it which in turn does not need the checks registered during the attempt (altough I believe checks are supposed to be automatically removed when attempts end and grades are registered). Is this understanding right?
Hi Stefano,
Thanks for your interest in MooTyper. Sorry that the upgrade.txt did not make it clear, but yes, delete is fixed and deleting a grade removes it from the MooTyper grade tables, but like other plugins, that does not remove the same corresponding grade from the Moodle grade book.
In reference to your two questions about, "mdl_mootyper_attempts and mdl_mootyper_checks tables."
- You are correct, they can be emptied without consequence. When no one is actively working in MooTyper, those tables should be empty.
- Yes the grade table does not make reference back to attempts and checks tables. It literally is just a text table, from which the two ways grades can be looked at, draw their information.
I spoke too soon in regards to 1. above. You can delete WITH one minor consequence. You will lose any, Suspicion, info/marks when you go to View all grades. Might be worth while to add a suspicion field to the mdl_mootyper_grades table. I will put it on my TODO list.
Further followup to Stefano's question about the attemps and checks table entries.
You should upgrade to the new MooTyper v3.9.5 which fixes a couple of things.
First, the link for the Suspicion check, in atchk.php was broken and causing lots of orphaned entries in the mdl_mootyper_attempts table, as well as in the mdl_mootyper_checks table.
Second, now that the link is fixed, a users entries in the checks table are immediately deleted just as soon as the user completes an exercise. This is the correct and expected behavior.
The users entry in the attempts table remains, but it is just one entry per exercise now, without any orphaned entries. If a users grade for an entry is deleted, the corresponding attempt entry is deleted.
In reality, it is okay to manually go and empty both of those tables. The original reason for keeping an attempt entry, was to have the results of the Suspicion check available when the teacher looks at the, View all grades, table. I plan to try and move that entry from the attempts table, into the grades table, which would then make it okay to change the code and delete the attempt entry instead of keeping it.
You should upgrade to the new MooTyper v3.9.5 which fixes a couple of things.
First, the link for the Suspicion check, in atchk.php was broken and causing lots of orphaned entries in the mdl_mootyper_attempts table, as well as in the mdl_mootyper_checks table.
Second, now that the link is fixed, a users entries in the checks table are immediately deleted just as soon as the user completes an exercise. This is the correct and expected behavior.
The users entry in the attempts table remains, but it is just one entry per exercise now, without any orphaned entries. If a users grade for an entry is deleted, the corresponding attempt entry is deleted.
In reality, it is okay to manually go and empty both of those tables. The original reason for keeping an attempt entry, was to have the results of the Suspicion check available when the teacher looks at the, View all grades, table. I plan to try and move that entry from the attempts table, into the grades table, which would then make it okay to change the code and delete the attempt entry instead of keeping it.
Hi AL,
after your little report, i checked the server's log and I discover a lot of 500 Server Errors from atchk.php, similar to this:
after your little report, i checked the server's log and I discover a lot of 500 Server Errors from atchk.php, similar to this:
"GET /mod/mootyper/atchk.php?status=2&attemptid=6&mistakes=11&hits=91 HTTP/2.0" 500 52 "https://[redacted]/mod/mootyper/view.php?id=257" "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) [omissis UA]"
I tried to empty my big checks and attempts table but the error persisted. Predictably, the error meant that upon re-entry in a Mootyper activity, progress was lost.
So I updated to 3.9.5 and the errors disappeared (HTTP Status Code is now 200) 😀
I also confirmed, through live view of the database, that checks related to an attempt disappear once the attempt has been completed. Progress was also now tracked correctly.
Thank you!
Al,
Thank you for all the hard work you have put in to this plugin.
I apologize if I missed something obvious but is there a quick way make to configure MooTyper as a self taught typing course? I have installed the plugin and can see how to make the lessons but I just want to place something in the LMS that students can use to teach themselves how to touch type. I don't need a teacher to be able to track their progress and so forth.
Thanks for any information or links you or other forum members can provide!
Thank you for all the hard work you have put in to this plugin.
I apologize if I missed something obvious but is there a quick way make to configure MooTyper as a self taught typing course? I have installed the plugin and can see how to make the lessons but I just want to place something in the LMS that students can use to teach themselves how to touch type. I don't need a teacher to be able to track their progress and so forth.
Thanks for any information or links you or other forum members can provide!
Hi Bruce,
There is some documentation here: https://docs.moodle.org/310/en/MooTyper
Also, when you go to the plugin download page, there is a link, More documentation on this plugin.
What you seem to be asking will take a whole lot more work. You will need to set up access restrictions so students cannot try skipping ahead, and mostly use the Practice mode so students can remove results so they can repeat exercises to improve their skill with a particular exercise. Intersperse Exams so they have to prove they are ready to proceed to a more advance Lesson. You will probably need to set both, Required precision requirements, as well as Required WPM requirements. Otherwise, I know from personal experience, students will try to cheat their way through.
There is some documentation here: https://docs.moodle.org/310/en/MooTyper
Also, when you go to the plugin download page, there is a link, More documentation on this plugin.
What you seem to be asking will take a whole lot more work. You will need to set up access restrictions so students cannot try skipping ahead, and mostly use the Practice mode so students can remove results so they can repeat exercises to improve their skill with a particular exercise. Intersperse Exams so they have to prove they are ready to proceed to a more advance Lesson. You will probably need to set both, Required precision requirements, as well as Required WPM requirements. Otherwise, I know from personal experience, students will try to cheat their way through.
Thank you for your detailed response and suggestions!
Thanks for creating (and maintaining!) this plugin!
I installed MooTyper today, and I'm enjoying taking it for a spin.
A couple of requests:
- When there is a hard line break (a.k.a. carriage return), could there be a little more space below the line so that there's a visual cue that it's a hard return and not just another space, in addition to the down arrow? (See attached files for the current view vs. what I'm requesting)
- I tried out the Aesop's Fables lesson. What a great idea for a set of lessons! However, the problem with it as implemented is that it was obviously copy-pasted from Project Gutenberg or the like, without any additional formatting. There are a cumbersome number of line breaks, as well as annoying and unnecessary artifacts such as [ILLUSTRATION]. Those should really be taken out. I've finished editing the first 18, and I'd love to contribute to making it a more usable lesson, but it would be great if some people could help me edit the remaining 160. I might be able to get some people from Distributed Proofreading to come help me, but I was wondering beforehand if you would be willing to incorporate the revised lesson if we submit it to you.
Thanks!
Hi Jennifer,
Sorry for the late reply. Yesterday was a CAT Scan and dental teeth cleaning day for my wife, so we were out and about all day.
1. Since the exercise text is presented in a plain text frame, there is no setting for what you describe. In a text editor that would normally be a line and half or two lines. If you desire, you can go edit the text and add another blank line where needed to help make the visual cue stand out more.
2. Sorry about the Aesop's Fables lesson. I included it by mistake as it has a lot of other stuff that needed to be edited before including it in a release. I would suggest that you delete the whole lesson and all of it's exercises. Then, edit the original text file with something like Notepad++. It will allow you to do search and replace operations. Once you've made your changes, select Import lesson. If you are an admin, you can then edit the Settings for the activity and switch to the new lesson version.
If you want, you can wait on me and I will try to include a "fixed" version in the next release. There are numerous other changes that need to be made, such as, I don't like the titles in all caps, many of the exercises have the first one or two words of the first paragraph in all caps, and many of the exercise separators are not on a line by themselves.
Might take me a bit as my main development computer died on my last Friday morning and I have not got around to fixing it just yet.
Sorry for the late reply. Yesterday was a CAT Scan and dental teeth cleaning day for my wife, so we were out and about all day.
1. Since the exercise text is presented in a plain text frame, there is no setting for what you describe. In a text editor that would normally be a line and half or two lines. If you desire, you can go edit the text and add another blank line where needed to help make the visual cue stand out more.
2. Sorry about the Aesop's Fables lesson. I included it by mistake as it has a lot of other stuff that needed to be edited before including it in a release. I would suggest that you delete the whole lesson and all of it's exercises. Then, edit the original text file with something like Notepad++. It will allow you to do search and replace operations. Once you've made your changes, select Import lesson. If you are an admin, you can then edit the Settings for the activity and switch to the new lesson version.
If you want, you can wait on me and I will try to include a "fixed" version in the next release. There are numerous other changes that need to be made, such as, I don't like the titles in all caps, many of the exercises have the first one or two words of the first paragraph in all caps, and many of the exercise separators are not on a line by themselves.
Might take me a bit as my main development computer died on my last Friday morning and I have not got around to fixing it just yet.
Hey, no worries! I'm sorry about the health stuff going on in your house and your computer! I'm not in any hurry with the Aesop's Fables; I mainly wanted to know if you/I/others could collaborate on fixing it. I've done a lot of cleanup on it already, with exactly the method you suggested -- copy/paste into a separate window, clean up the caps and extraneous features, then paste it back into the plugin's lesson admin.
As you saw on my GitHub post, I found and solved the quotation mark issue subsequent to my post in this thread. Hopefully if we can root out all the weird problems, we can have a nice usable set of lessons, and I'd love to contribute.
What I'll end up doing in the meantime is just delete the lessons that I don't have time to fix up yet, and add them into my install as I fix them.
Thanks for all your work!
As you saw on my GitHub post, I found and solved the quotation mark issue subsequent to my post in this thread. Hopefully if we can root out all the weird problems, we can have a nice usable set of lessons, and I'd love to contribute.
What I'll end up doing in the meantime is just delete the lessons that I don't have time to fix up yet, and add them into my install as I fix them.
Thanks for all your work!
Hi Jennifer,
🤔 I discovered that there were a lot more "things" that needed fixing than I first thought in the fables. However, I think I might have a working set of 12 lessons. I just split the original file into lessons containing 15 exercises, each, although, due to wearing out another mouse, I think lesson 11 has 18 exercises due to a double-click, and lesson 12 has just the remaining 7.
These are good lessons for students to use for increasing their typing precision and word per minute rate due to the inclusion of all the quotation marks, apostrophes, commas, colons, semi-colons, and capital letters scattered throughout the text. Please note that when a teacher checks, View all grades, they will probably see a lot of entries marked as Suspicious due to the number of mistakes and the elapsed time.
For anyone interested, I have attached a zip file containing all 12 lesson files. To use them, just extract the files into the folder located at, yourmoodle/mod/mootyper/lessons. After that, in any MooTyper activity, click the edit cog and select Import lesson/KB layout. The lessons will then be available for use.
If anyone does find another "problem" with any of the text in any exercise, please let me know so I can fix it.
Wow, thank you very much! I'll try it out!
Thanks for all this work.
Can you tell me how to access yourmoodle / mod / mootyper / Lessons ?
I want to import lessons at once and delete the lessons that come by default so that it is easier to locate what I am looking for.
I have used the translator, sorry if something is not understood.
Thanks again
Pablo
Can you tell me how to access yourmoodle / mod / mootyper / Lessons ?
I want to import lessons at once and delete the lessons that come by default so that it is easier to locate what I am looking for.
I have used the translator, sorry if something is not understood.
Thanks again
Pablo
Hi Pablo,
You have to use some sort of program that lets you directly access the files on your Moodle server. Since my desktop computer uses Windows 10 and my Moodle server uses Linux Centos 7, I use a windows program called WinSCP which works on my versions of Windows. It lets me drag and drop files from my desktop to my server and also retrieve files from the server to my desktop. It will also let me open a terminal window session using PuTTY to directly do things on the server such as updating the system, updating my Moodle with git, etc.
So, I start WinSCP. It it's left pane I go to the folder of my computer where I store the lessons. In the right pane of WinSCP, I go to the folder yourmoodle/mod/mootyper/lessons. I then select all the lessons to the left and drag and drop them to the right. Delete any lessons there that you DO NOT want to use. Afterwards, I log into Moodle, go to any MooTyper activity, then select Import lesson/KB layout.
If you already have lessons in MooTyper that you do not want, select Export/edit exercises. Scroll through all the lesson names and select one you do not want. Once it is selected, click on, Delete all from - Lesson Name.
You have to use some sort of program that lets you directly access the files on your Moodle server. Since my desktop computer uses Windows 10 and my Moodle server uses Linux Centos 7, I use a windows program called WinSCP which works on my versions of Windows. It lets me drag and drop files from my desktop to my server and also retrieve files from the server to my desktop. It will also let me open a terminal window session using PuTTY to directly do things on the server such as updating the system, updating my Moodle with git, etc.
So, I start WinSCP. It it's left pane I go to the folder of my computer where I store the lessons. In the right pane of WinSCP, I go to the folder yourmoodle/mod/mootyper/lessons. I then select all the lessons to the left and drag and drop them to the right. Delete any lessons there that you DO NOT want to use. Afterwards, I log into Moodle, go to any MooTyper activity, then select Import lesson/KB layout.
If you already have lessons in MooTyper that you do not want, select Export/edit exercises. Scroll through all the lesson names and select one you do not want. Once it is selected, click on, Delete all from - Lesson Name.
Thank you so much. I have installed WinSCP and i have been able to delete the lessons. but I can't do is upload the lessons by FTP. They are on yourmoodle / mod / mootyper / Lessons site but I don't see them on the web. Any advice? Thanks
Achieved!
The .txt in format UTF8.
The name without spaces or ñ.
Thanks!
Can activities be created from FTP? Now what I do is duplicate them and change the lesson.
The .txt in format UTF8.
The name without spaces or ñ.
Thanks!
Can activities be created from FTP? Now what I do is duplicate them and change the lesson.
I have occasionally created new lessons on my desktop computer using Notepad++. You would need to look at an old lesson to see how to format the new lesson.
However, once you learn how to create a lesson in MooTyper, I find it much easier and faster.
While in any MooTyper activity, click the Edit icon and select, Add new lesson with exercise. On the new page enter a new, Lesson name, the set who the, Lesson is visible to, who Can edit, set the alignment, and finally enter the text of the first exercise. Click confirm to save your work and settings.
At this point you will be on the page normally reached by selecting, Export/edit exercises, from the edit icon menu. If you want to add more exercises, just make sure the to menu is showing the name of the new lesson you just created. Click on the, Add new exercise to this lesson, ID: ###, and you will have the opportunity to add a new exercise.
However, once you learn how to create a lesson in MooTyper, I find it much easier and faster.
While in any MooTyper activity, click the Edit icon and select, Add new lesson with exercise. On the new page enter a new, Lesson name, the set who the, Lesson is visible to, who Can edit, set the alignment, and finally enter the text of the first exercise. Click confirm to save your work and settings.
At this point you will be on the page normally reached by selecting, Export/edit exercises, from the edit icon menu. If you want to add more exercises, just make sure the to menu is showing the name of the new lesson you just created. Click on the, Add new exercise to this lesson, ID: ###, and you will have the opportunity to add a new exercise.
I have just created a new English(UKV5) keyboard layout, French(FRV5) keyboard layout and a lesson, FR_Lesson_01_qsdfjklm.txt, that will be included in the next MooTyper release. This layout, like all the other V5's, separates the Shift keys so that only the left or right one lights up depending on the character that you need to type. You can see and try them out in the, English, and in the, French, course on the demo site.
Hello everyone,
I am currently working on major changes to MooTyper lessons and the exercises contained in them. Right now it is pretty tough to know what is actually in any given exercise because the exercisename field of the mdl_mootyper_exercise table has never been fully developed. Currently each exercise name is just a number, that is not even saved in a lesson file. To me it makes sense to be able to give each exercise a meaningful name, such as, "Home row intro", or "Left hand exercise", etc.
As of today, I have a working prototype that lets me give actual names to an exercise. I've also added the capability to go back and edit the names, in case you make a mistake when creating it, or just want to change it at a later date to something more relevant.
Another item sorely needed, is the ability to edit a lesson name, also in case you made a mistake when creating it, or just want to change it at a later date to something more relevant to the contents of the exercises. As of today, I also have this working in my development prototype.
Right now, I have also implemented lesson export code changes so that exercise names are added into the file right after the actual exercise text.
Next step is to do the same to the lesson import capability, but I have to quite for today. As soon as I get that working, I will make the new code available to anyone who wants to try it out, while I test it to make sure it works properly in all the supported Moodle versions.
Let me know what you think.
Got the new version of lesson import already working this morning. The biggest delay at the moment preventing me from doing a quick release, is that I need to test it in a bunch of Moodle versions, AND I have BUNCH of lessons that need exercise names added.
This new exercise name capability, along with being able to edit a lesson name, is something I've wanted to add for a long time. Right now as I am going through the lessons I currently have, and adding exercise names, I can already see this will greatly aid in setting up MooTyper activities, especially Exams.
Asking for input...
In the next release of MooTyper, cron will be removed as a function in the lib.php file, and changed to the newer cron_task.php file version. Currently there is no actual cron code, just a return. Since I am actually retired from teaching, I do not have a real feel for how various users might be using MooTyper, and consequently, do not know what users might want to implement in the cron code. I am open to suggestions
In the next release of MooTyper, cron will be removed as a function in the lib.php file, and changed to the newer cron_task.php file version. Currently there is no actual cron code, just a return. Since I am actually retired from teaching, I do not have a real feel for how various users might be using MooTyper, and consequently, do not know what users might want to implement in the cron code. I am open to suggestions
Hi AL,
it would be nice for the cron job to periodically delete grades (e.g. keep best grade, grades older than x days, grades lower than x, etc) or to delete checks and attempts (e.g. for a user, for an exercise)
it would be nice for the cron job to periodically delete grades (e.g. keep best grade, grades older than x days, grades lower than x, etc) or to delete checks and attempts (e.g. for a user, for an exercise)
Hi Stefano,
Thanks for your input. I had thought along those same lines but there are some things that would have to be taken into account. For instance, if it is a MooTyper activity in Practice mode, the student can already do the deletes.
If it is a MooTyper activity in Lesson mode, the teacher can do the deletes, but might want to keep all the results for a "paper" trail of the students progress. If the idea is for cron to reset the lesson so all the exercises could be repeated, I think, rather than delete results, it would be better to have another version of the Activity and its lesson, that only becomes visible when the previous activity is completed. This would easily let the teacher keep the student occupied and also "force" the student to repeat a MooTyper Lesson and all its exercises if their ratings were low.
I could see sending a message to the teacher that a MooTyper activity with all its exercises has been completed. Also, maybe send a message to the teacher when a MooTyper activity is set for Exam mode is completed. I can also see that a teacher might want a setting that lets them opt in/out for cron to do these things, based on whether the course is being taught face-to-face or online. That's because a good student could flood the teacher with messages and if it is a face-to-face class, that could quickly become a very annoying thing. I know that when MooTyper first came out, it was a struggle for me to keep adding new Lessons with multiple exercises that would keep my "good" students occupied. They always would rather have a new lesson rather than repeat one.
Possibilities:
Thanks for your input. I had thought along those same lines but there are some things that would have to be taken into account. For instance, if it is a MooTyper activity in Practice mode, the student can already do the deletes.
If it is a MooTyper activity in Lesson mode, the teacher can do the deletes, but might want to keep all the results for a "paper" trail of the students progress. If the idea is for cron to reset the lesson so all the exercises could be repeated, I think, rather than delete results, it would be better to have another version of the Activity and its lesson, that only becomes visible when the previous activity is completed. This would easily let the teacher keep the student occupied and also "force" the student to repeat a MooTyper Lesson and all its exercises if their ratings were low.
I could see sending a message to the teacher that a MooTyper activity with all its exercises has been completed. Also, maybe send a message to the teacher when a MooTyper activity is set for Exam mode is completed. I can also see that a teacher might want a setting that lets them opt in/out for cron to do these things, based on whether the course is being taught face-to-face or online. That's because a good student could flood the teacher with messages and if it is a face-to-face class, that could quickly become a very annoying thing. I know that when MooTyper first came out, it was a struggle for me to keep adding new Lessons with multiple exercises that would keep my "good" students occupied. They always would rather have a new lesson rather than repeat one.
Possibilities:
- delete grades keeping the best ones in a lesson
- delete grades older than x days in a lesson
- delete grades lower than x in a lesson
- reset whole lesson results for someone who has completed all exercises in the lesson
- reset whole lesson for everyone (after x number of days?)
- send message to teacher when student completes all exercises in a lesson
- send message to teacher when student completes an exam
- clean out orphaned/abandoned attempts from the mdl_mootyper_attempts table (would need to move suspicion field to the mdl_mootyper_grades table)
My tendency is to try and take care of items 8, 7, and 6, first, and in that order. The reason 8 first is that the mdl_mootyper_attempts table size can grow quite a bit and most people would not know what is, and is not, safe to delete from it. I know every time I work on anything that involves that table, I have to re-read my notes and "try" things to make sure I don't mess up the table.
Al, all,
I've just installed MooTyper and love it already. I will definitely be using it with my students who are telling me they have virtually no typing skill.
I've run into a little problem though with apostrophes. I searched through the forum here and see the topic has come up mutiple times with 18 instances of the word "apostrophe" but I'm not sure that I understand what I'm doing wrong or what needs to be done to enable apostrophes to be accepted...? In the AeosepsFable1 exercise, I was flying thorough as I tested out the system thinking way back to those days in typing class in junior high school on a manual typewriter (dating myself) and suddenly I ran into:
"so it's all the same"
and got stuck. It won't allow my apostrophe. I tried changing the keyboard layout but I guess that just changes the displayed keyboard? I'm using an English with keypad keyboard. It's a Bluetooth Apple keyboard.
I'm running on Moodle 3.11.6+
Any advice would be most appreciated. I guess my students may not have the same issue...possibly they will have different issues as many will be using Japanese keyboards.
Regards
Jason
I've just installed MooTyper and love it already. I will definitely be using it with my students who are telling me they have virtually no typing skill.
I've run into a little problem though with apostrophes. I searched through the forum here and see the topic has come up mutiple times with 18 instances of the word "apostrophe"
"so it's all the same"
and got stuck. It won't allow my apostrophe. I tried changing the keyboard layout but I guess that just changes the displayed keyboard? I'm using an English with keypad keyboard. It's a Bluetooth Apple keyboard.
I'm running on Moodle 3.11.6+
Any advice would be most appreciated. I guess my students may not have the same issue...possibly they will have different issues as many will be using Japanese keyboards.
Regards
Jason
EDIT - Al, all,
Sorry, I just realized I can go in and edit the lesson. I should have dug around a bit more before posting here. I edited the apostrophe using the one from my keyboard. Whether that will affect my students or not I'm not sure. I will check and see how it goes for them.
Hi Jason,
Well spotted! I just realized I violated my own rule regarding copying and pasting text for a lesson exercise. Namely, I forgot to check for the use of the wrong character for an apostrophe. In this case, probably the person who originally typed the phrase, was using MS Word, whose programmers think the apostrophe should be the cute, little, curly one, that technically has another name. If you use a character map and look at ANY font, the seventh character listed is the apostrophe. MS uses something else which does not match what a users standard keyboard uses.
Well spotted! I just realized I violated my own rule regarding copying and pasting text for a lesson exercise. Namely, I forgot to check for the use of the wrong character for an apostrophe. In this case, probably the person who originally typed the phrase, was using MS Word, whose programmers think the apostrophe should be the cute, little, curly one, that technically has another name. If you use a character map and look at ANY font, the seventh character listed is the apostrophe. MS uses something else which does not match what a users standard keyboard uses.
Now for the bad news...the wrong character is used 19 times in that lesson, and various other times in all the other fables. I will include fixed versions in the next MooTyper release, but meanwhile, if you use the fables for typing lessons, they will all need to be fixed.
I just posted a zip file of the lessons here for download: http://m3x.drachels.com/course/view.php?id=1393#section-0
To use them, you need to delete the ones that are already in your MooTyper by going to the edit menu, click on Export / edit exercises, then for each of the fables, click the Delete all button. Unzip the file and use the new files to replace the files in yourmoodle/mod/mootyper/lessons. Then in a MooTyper activity as an admin, on the edit menu click Import lesson / KB layout, and you will have the fixed lessons and exercises available for use.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Edit: By the way, I am reasonably sure that your students will not have problems once you update to the files with the correct apostrophe character. I have about forty different languages installed on my desktop computer and they all type that letter as the correct apostrophe.
Hate to reply to my own post and I really wish I had "Fixed" the site first that I referenced above, for the zip download, before posting.
If you just unzip the the file with the new version of lessons, replace the ones in, yourmoodle/mod/mootyper/lessons with the new ones, then in a MooTyper activity, click the edit cog, and select, Import lesson / KB layout. Since the file names are the same their contents will replace what is in your database already.
Again, sorry if I have cause an inconvenience for anyone.
If you just unzip the the file with the new version of lessons, replace the ones in, yourmoodle/mod/mootyper/lessons with the new ones, then in a MooTyper activity, click the edit cog, and select, Import lesson / KB layout. Since the file names are the same their contents will replace what is in your database already.
Again, sorry if I have cause an inconvenience for anyone.
Al,
No problem at all. I'm glad I was able to 'help' (if that's even a fair assessment 😀). And no need to apologize for replying to yourself. I do it frequently. ☺️ Thanks for this awesome contribution to Moodle and I'm sorry I just now discovered it. Thanks for the quick fix. I will update everything on my system. Students haven't started using it yet so I'm in the clear.
No problem at all. I'm glad I was able to 'help' (if that's even a fair assessment 😀). And no need to apologize for replying to yourself. I do it frequently. ☺️ Thanks for this awesome contribution to Moodle and I'm sorry I just now discovered it. Thanks for the quick fix. I will update everything on my system. Students haven't started using it yet so I'm in the clear.
Cheers
Jason
Hi Jason,
Actually, I had forgotten how I wrote the, Import, part of the code. It first checks the names, and if it cannot find the file already in the database, then it adds it as a new lesson with a set of exercises. However, if it finds the file name already in the data base, and then detects that an exercise has been changed, then it just updates any changed exercise, without creating a new lesson set. This makes it possible to edit all the exercises in a lesson, at one time. Need to use something like Notepad or Notepad++ so that you wind up with PLAIN text. Something like MS Word creates to much excess baggage, such as those apostrophes and double quotation marks, that are actually named something else.
Actually, I had forgotten how I wrote the, Import, part of the code. It first checks the names, and if it cannot find the file already in the database, then it adds it as a new lesson with a set of exercises. However, if it finds the file name already in the data base, and then detects that an exercise has been changed, then it just updates any changed exercise, without creating a new lesson set. This makes it possible to edit all the exercises in a lesson, at one time. Need to use something like Notepad or Notepad++ so that you wind up with PLAIN text. Something like MS Word creates to much excess baggage, such as those apostrophes and double quotation marks, that are actually named something else.
hello AL Rachels, I ask for help in setting up your plugin.
After updating to the latest version 4.2.0 the tutorials created with
the old version do not work.
Not even the new ones and they have these errors.
Is this a bug already fixed? could you help me?
thank you
Marco
My Moodle 3.8.4+ (Build: 20200827)
Informazioni di debug: Module mootyper claims to support
FEATURE_COMPLETION_HAS_RULES but does not have required
mootyper_get_completion_state function
Error code: err_system
Stack trace:
line 1378 of /lib/completionlib.php: moodle_exception thrown
line 700 of /lib/completionlib.php: call to
completion_info->internal_systemerror()
line 623 of /lib/completionlib.php: call to
completion_info->internal_get_state()
line 1306 of /lib/completionlib.php: call to completion_info->update_state()
line 1194 of /lib/grade/grade_grade.php: call to
completion_info->inform_grade_changed()
line 266 of /lib/grade/grade_object.php: call to
grade_grade->notify_changed()
line 1040 of /lib/grade/grade_grade.php: call to grade_object->update()
line 800 of /lib/grade/grade_item.php: call to grade_grade->update()
line 1273 of /lib/gradelib.php: call to grade_item->regrade_final_grades()
line 378 of /course/modlib.php: call to grade_regrade_final_grades()
line 180 of /course/modlib.php: call to edit_module_post_actions()
line 159 of /course/modedit.php: call to add_moduleinfo()
- - -
Si è verificato un errore durante la scrittura nel database
Maggiori informazioni su questo errore
Informazioni di debug: Data truncated for column 'gradepass' at row 1
UPDATE mdl_grade_items SET courseid = ?,categoryid = ?,itemname =
?,itemtype = ?,itemmodule = ?,iteminstance = ?,itemnumber = ?,iteminfo =
?,idnumber = ?,calculation = ?,gradetype = ?,grademax = ?,grademin =
?,scaleid = ?,outcomeid = ?,gradepass = ?,multfactor = ?,plusfactor =
?,aggregationcoef = ?,aggregationcoef2 = ?,sortorder = ?,display =
?,decimals = ?,locked = ?,locktime = ?,needsupdate = ?,weightoverride =
?,timecreated = ?,timemodified = ?,hidden = ? WHERE id=?
[array (
0 => '383',
1 => '371',
2 => 'Whole mootyper grade for marco',
3 => 'mod',
4 => 'mootyper',
5 => '65',
6 => '1',
7 => NULL,
8 => NULL,
9 => NULL,
10 => '1',
11 => 100.0,
12 => 0.0,
13 => NULL,
14 => NULL,
15 => '0,00',
16 => 1.0,
17 => 0.0,
18 => 0.0,
19 => 0.0,
20 => '118',
21 => '0',
22 => NULL,
23 => '0',
24 => '0',
25 => '1',
26 => '0',
27 => '1655711678',
28 => 1655711807,
29 => '0',
30 => '10830',
)]
Error code: dmlwriteexception
Stack trace:
line 489 of /lib/dml/moodle_database.php: dml_write_exception thrown
line 1564 of /lib/dml/mysqli_native_moodle_database.php: call to
moodle_database->query_end()
line 1599 of /lib/dml/mysqli_native_moodle_database.php: call to
mysqli_native_moodle_database->update_record_raw()
line 253 of /lib/grade/grade_object.php: call to
mysqli_native_moodle_database->update_record()
line 307 of /lib/grade/grade_item.php: call to grade_object->update()
line 278 of /course/modlib.php: call to grade_item->update()
line 660 of /course/modlib.php: call to edit_module_post_actions()
line 157 of /course/modedit.php: call to update_moduleinfo()
Si è verificato un errore nel sottosistema di tracciamento delle attività completate. (L'Amministratore può abilitare il debug per approfondire il problema)
Informazioni di debug: Module mootyper claims to support
FEATURE_COMPLETION_HAS_RULES but does not have required
mootyper_get_completion_state function
Error code: err_system
FEATURE_COMPLETION_HAS_RULES but does not have required
mootyper_get_completion_state function
Error code: err_system
Stack trace:
- line 1378 of /lib/completionlib.php: moodle_exception thrown
- line 700 of /lib/completionlib.php: call to completion_info->internal_systemerror()
- line 623 of /lib/completionlib.php: call to completion_info->internal_get_state()
- line 1306 of /lib/completionlib.php: call to completion_info->update_state()
- line 1194 of /lib/grade/grade_grade.php: call to completion_info->inform_grade_changed()
- line 266 of /lib/grade/grade_object.php: call to grade_grade->notify_changed()
- line 1040 of /lib/grade/grade_grade.php: call to grade_object->update()
- line 2037 of /lib/grade/grade_item.php: call to grade_grade->update()
- line 292 of /lib/gradelib.php: call to grade_item->update_raw_grade()
- line 837 of /mod/mootyper/lib.php: call to grade_update()
- line 932 of /mod/mootyper/lib.php: call to mootyper_grade_item_update()
- line 111 of /mod/mootyper/gcnext.php: call to mootyper_update_grades()
Hi Marco,
I have just replied to the email you sent to me directly. For anyone else who has the same problem, in the MoodTyper lib.php file, at line 71, change the FEATURE_COMPLETION_HAS_RULES: so that it reads, return false, then try it again. This should fix things for now, until the next release.
I have just replied to the email you sent to me directly. For anyone else who has the same problem, in the MoodTyper lib.php file, at line 71, change the FEATURE_COMPLETION_HAS_RULES: so that it reads, return false, then try it again. This should fix things for now, until the next release.
Hello
We are at Moodle 3.9.13 (Build: 20220314).
I have just installed MooTyper 4.2.0 (Build: 2022040300) (2022040300) for Moodle 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 4.0. This is a fresh install and does not build on earlier versions.
When installing, I got the following error, but everything seemed to install correctly:
We are at Moodle 3.9.13 (Build: 20220314).
I have just installed MooTyper 4.2.0 (Build: 2022040300) (2022040300) for Moodle 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 4.0. This is a fresh install and does not build on earlier versions.
When installing, I got the following error, but everything seemed to install correctly:
mod_mootyper
Can't find data record in database table context.
More information about this error
Debug info: SELECT
* FROM {context} WHERE id = ?
[array (
0 => '442269',
)]
Error code: invalidrecord
Stack trace:
- line 1599 of /lib/dml/moodle_database.php: dml_missing_record_exception thrown
- line 1575 of /lib/dml/moodle_database.php: call to moodle_database->get_record_select()
- line 5299 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to moodle_database->get_record()
- line 5738 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to context::instance_by_id()
- line 7286 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to context->get_parent_context()
- line 232 of /lib/classes/event/base.php: call to context_module->get_course_context()
- line 1428 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to core\event\base::create()
- line 2336 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to assign_capability()
- line 847 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 565 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1917 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 713 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
Left the defaults as they were and added a MooTyper activity to a test course. The activity opened with the Setup link (https://XXXXXXXX/mod/mootyper/mod_setup.php?n=1), but when I click the setup link, I get this permission message:
You do not have permission to view the page you attempted to access! The attempt was logged!
When I look at the logs, I see this:
The user with id '4' attempted direct URL access to 'mootyper' file
. 'mod_setup.php' while in the course with id '841487'. (admin login)
The user with id '108473' attempted direct URL access to 'mootyper' file
. 'mod_setup.php' while in the course with id '841487'. (instructor login)
The Event Name in both instances is reported as Invalid Access
The To manage exercises and lessons click here (URL: https://XXXXXXXXXXX/mod/mootyper/exercises.php?id=841487) under the MooTyper Administration > Edit Settings > MooTyper Adminstration returns the same permissions message.
I have checked permissions and they are set to Allow for instructors:
I am apparently missing something, but am not sure what. We were planning on upgrading to Moodle 4.X next July which is why we selected the 4.2.0 (Build: 2022040300) (2022040300) version of the plugin. Should we be using the 3.9.1+ version of the MooTyper plugin or did I miss an alternate step/file?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Susan
What method/steps did you use to install MooTyper?
Hello Al
I downloaded the .zip file from the Moodle plugin directory, then went to Site Administration > Plugins > Install Plugins
I dragged the file into the file dropbox and clicked Install plugin from the ZIP file
From there I pressed Continue when prompted.
It was a very straightforward install.
Hope this helps identify what I did/missed.
I just uninstalled MooTyper from my Moodle 3.9 server, then installed without making any setting changes. I was able to then go to a course and set up a MooTyper Lesson without any problems. Since I am unable to reproduce your problem, I can only suggest that you try to install it again. Just a side note, I think I drove through Cranbrook back in 1993, while on my way home from Alaska.
Hello Al,
Yes, you probably went through Cranbrook if you were heading for either Montana or Idaho. I am on Vancouver Island now, so you would need to travel through Prince Rupert and take the ferry
Have uninstalled and reinstalled the 4.2.0 version of MooTyper. The installation returned the same Debug error information I initially encountered and I am still getting the You do not have permission to view the page you attempted to access! The attempt was logged! error.
Yes, you probably went through Cranbrook if you were heading for either Montana or Idaho. I am on Vancouver Island now, so you would need to travel through Prince Rupert and take the ferry
Have uninstalled and reinstalled the 4.2.0 version of MooTyper. The installation returned the same Debug error information I initially encountered and I am still getting the You do not have permission to view the page you attempted to access! The attempt was logged! error.
Tried the 4.1.1 and 3.9.1 versions of MooTyper and am getting the same Debug error information and permission error.
mod_mootyper
Can't find data record in database table context.
Debug info: SELECT * FROM {context} WHERE id = ?
[array (
0 => '442269',
)]
Error code: invalidrecord
[array (
0 => '442269',
)]
Error code: invalidrecord
- line 1599 of /lib/dml/moodle_database.php: dml_missing_record_exception thrown
- line 1575 of /lib/dml/moodle_database.php: call to moodle_database->get_record_select()
- line 5299 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to moodle_database->get_record()
- line 5738 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to context::instance_by_id()
- line 7286 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to context->get_parent_context()
- line 232 of /lib/classes/event/base.php: call to context_module->get_course_context()
- line 1428 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to core\event\base::create()
- line 2336 of /lib/accesslib.php: call to assign_capability()
- line 847 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to update_capabilities()
- line 565 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
- line 1917 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
- line 713 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
Permissions are set for Manager and Instructor as allow:
Tried setting Plugin Type to Activity Module (mod), but the errors persist regardless of MooTyper version.
I can add the MooTyper to a course as an activity, but every attempt to Setup the MooTyper returns this in the logs:
Other MooTyper Invalid access The user with id '4' attempted direct URL access to 'mootyper' file . 'mod_setup.php' while in the course with id '841598'.
Do you know where the permission to View the MooTyper might be found? I figured I want to try that before playing with the php, but can't find anything in the Define Roles list of permissions .
Hi Susan,
There must be something odd about the way you are installing the MooTyper plugin since you say you have had problems with three different versions. Makes me think that your server doesn't have the correct permissions set. Since we are only a couple of time zones apart, if you would care to do so, you can contact me via Skype, Facebook messenger, team viewer, telegram etc. and I will see what we can discover and hopefully fix. I am usually online until about 2 PM central time, but available anyway via those same accounts on my phone.
There must be something odd about the way you are installing the MooTyper plugin since you say you have had problems with three different versions. Makes me think that your server doesn't have the correct permissions set. Since we are only a couple of time zones apart, if you would care to do so, you can contact me via Skype, Facebook messenger, team viewer, telegram etc. and I will see what we can discover and hopefully fix. I am usually online until about 2 PM central time, but available anyway via those same accounts on my phone.
Hello Al
Thank you for the offer. I will get our server admin to check settings while I am on vacation next week, then if the plugin is still returning errors, I will connect with you.
Susan
Thank you for the offer. I will get our server admin to check settings while I am on vacation next week, then if the plugin is still returning errors, I will connect with you.
Susan
After adding some new lessons into the lessons-folder the exercises are not available. I also have to access the url
http://localhost:8000/mod/mootyper/lsnimport.php?id=116 in my textingenvironment so that the exercises_files are checked and new exercises get installed.
Is there already a way to just add new exercice files and get them availably without to access this url e.g during the update-process of the plugin?
http://localhost:8000/mod/mootyper/lsnimport.php?id=116 in my textingenvironment so that the exercises_files are checked and new exercises get installed.
Is there already a way to just add new exercice files and get them availably without to access this url e.g during the update-process of the plugin?
Hi Andreas,
The method you describe of having to use the lsnimport.php file is the correct way to get new lessons and exercises into MooTyper. I have had a couple of requests for direct upload, but have not had the time to investigate and work on adding that capability. I will also check on having the upgrade process look for new lessons and exercises. I am going to try for a new release in the next couple of days, but I am not sure if I will have the time to include this new capabilities. Might have to wait until the next release.
The method you describe of having to use the lsnimport.php file is the correct way to get new lessons and exercises into MooTyper. I have had a couple of requests for direct upload, but have not had the time to investigate and work on adding that capability. I will also check on having the upgrade process look for new lessons and exercises. I am going to try for a new release in the next couple of days, but I am not sure if I will have the time to include this new capabilities. Might have to wait until the next release.
I have created a new MooTyper v4.2.2
BETA, Don't be fooled by the word BETA, as the program is quite stable. I
just keep finding new things to do and add to the plugin's code, so
until I am satisfied I have not got a bunch of bugs in the code, I will
not do a stable release.Currently, this branch is available at the MooTyper github, for anyone who might want to help bug hunt.
This version of MooTyper has some major new features.
- For the past few releases, within MooTyper's own grading system, you could grade for both precision and WPM, precision only, or WPM only. However, the only grade that got passed into the Moodle grade and/or rating system, was the MooTyper precision. That is changed in this new version. In any of the three modes, exam, practice, or lesson, and in either, whole grade or rating, you can set the grade to both, Precision and WPM, Precision only, or WPM only. You can even set both to 0, but beware, it will enter the activity into the grade book, but will not enter a grade unless the teacher does an override.
- In the grade tables on both the gview.php page and the owngrades.php page, I have added a new grade column base on the above grade/ratings.
- Both of those grade tables can be sorted, ascending or descending, based on the new grade column.
- Currently, the chart bar for series 1, $serieshitsperminute, has been disabled and replaced by a new series 4, $seriesgrade.
- CSVexport of data from the gview.php page, now includes the new grade column.
- CSVexport of data from the gview.php page, now includes the GMT date and time as part of the file name, so as long as they are downloaded at least one minute apart, new exports do not over write the previous export.
Just posted the latest beta version on github and the two sites linked to in the previous post. I keep finding little things that need fixing and then yesterday, I got side tracked by a brain storm and wound up adding a bunch of new data on the MooTyper grade tables, View all grandes, and, View own grades.
I have also discovered a bug with old MooTyer exams created before the recent grade and rating systems were added to MooTper. I have a fix, but REALLY need to verify it before I turn it loose as it does modify the database entry for each of those old MooTyper exams. Basically, right now, with the new code, if someone takes an old exam and makes a passing score, it gets posted as zero. So, it needs to be fixed.
I have also discovered a bug with old MooTyer exams created before the recent grade and rating systems were added to MooTper. I have a fix, but REALLY need to verify it before I turn it loose as it does modify the database entry for each of those old MooTyper exams. Basically, right now, with the new code, if someone takes an old exam and makes a passing score, it gets posted as zero. So, it needs to be fixed.
Just posted the new MooTyper v4.2.2 stable version. If anyone sees any problems, please let me know.
Hi Al, I'm having some issues (assuming I'm doing things right) with my version of Mootyper 4.2 (tested on Moodle 3.11 and 4.1) when trying to grade activities. Let me explain: I would like to prevent access to a Mootyper task until another (lower level) task is satisfactorily completed. To do this, I have established the following:
However, although this "works", I observe that as soon as the students make an attempt (even if it is unsuccessful) in the activity, they are directly awarded a score of 10.
There is something else I want to mention in case it is related: within the Mootyper activities there is a section called "Whole Mootyper grading" and if I configure it with something other than the default "disabled", when I save the task, I get an error message that says something like "Could not modify the database". It forces me to go to the Moodle tables (specifically to the "mdl_grade_items" table) and delete the entry corresponding to this parameter (I believe they start with "Whole Mootyper grading").
I don't know if what I'm trying to do is not possible, or if I'm doing something wrong... I've been testing for a couple of months but haven't made any progress on the solution.
If you need screenshots, I can generate them.
Thank you in advance for your attention.
- In the tasks involved, in the configuration section, I choose the maximum grade type as "score", with a maximum of 10 and a passing grade of 5.
- In the second task, I apply a grading restriction and set the grade to be >=100%.
However, although this "works", I observe that as soon as the students make an attempt (even if it is unsuccessful) in the activity, they are directly awarded a score of 10.
There is something else I want to mention in case it is related: within the Mootyper activities there is a section called "Whole Mootyper grading" and if I configure it with something other than the default "disabled", when I save the task, I get an error message that says something like "Could not modify the database". It forces me to go to the Moodle tables (specifically to the "mdl_grade_items" table) and delete the entry corresponding to this parameter (I believe they start with "Whole Mootyper grading").
I don't know if what I'm trying to do is not possible, or if I'm doing something wrong... I've been testing for a couple of months but haven't made any progress on the solution.
If you need screenshots, I can generate them.
Thank you in advance for your attention.
Hi Miguel,
Sorry for the delay in replying. Was taking some time off for our family pet's terminal illness. Yes, please send pictures, but do it to my email address. You can see it in my profile.
By the way, "Whole MooTyper Grading" should only be used when your are setting up MooTyper in Exam mode.
Sorry for the delay in replying. Was taking some time off for our family pet's terminal illness. Yes, please send pictures, but do it to my email address. You can see it in my profile.
By the way, "Whole MooTyper Grading" should only be used when your are setting up MooTyper in Exam mode.
Are there any considerations for integrating competency frameworks and learning plans?
A database error is thrown when assigning competencies in Mootyper exercises (moodle 4.2).
I guess this is not a configuration error of my installations?
A database error is thrown when assigning competencies in Mootyper exercises (moodle 4.2).
I guess this is not a configuration error of my installations?
Hi Norbert,
Sorry, no, MooTyper did not implement using competencies before I took over maintaining it and I have not yet had time to do so. It is on my TODO list, but I cannot say when I will get to it.
Sorry, no, MooTyper did not implement using competencies before I took over maintaining it and I have not yet had time to do so. It is on my TODO list, but I cannot say when I will get to it.
Hi,
we are glad that a new maintainer has been found, so first of all a thank you combined with an expectant look at what will happen next...😉
we are glad that a new maintainer has been found, so first of all a thank you combined with an expectant look at what will happen next...😉
Hi Norbert,
Just to let you know, I have just pushed MooTyper v4.2.4 BETA to the MooTyper github master branch, that includes five new MooTyper Completion tracking items, plus a lot of other new stuff. Even though it is labeled as BETA code, it is STABLE. I labeled it BETA simply because I have a lot of commented out debug settings in it while I am still doing some testing before making a release for the Moodle download page.
I still have a few other things I need to work on, plus do a lot more testing before I can do a release.
NOTE that this code will add new fields to the mdl_mootyper table and modify the possible size of the mistakedetails field in the mdl_mootyper_grades table, so don't try it on a production server, but it should work fine on a development server.
Just to let you know, I have just pushed MooTyper v4.2.4 BETA to the MooTyper github master branch, that includes five new MooTyper Completion tracking items, plus a lot of other new stuff. Even though it is labeled as BETA code, it is STABLE. I labeled it BETA simply because I have a lot of commented out debug settings in it while I am still doing some testing before making a release for the Moodle download page.
I still have a few other things I need to work on, plus do a lot more testing before I can do a release.
NOTE that this code will add new fields to the mdl_mootyper table and modify the possible size of the mistakedetails field in the mdl_mootyper_grades table, so don't try it on a production server, but it should work fine on a development server.
Hello,
Many thanks for this great plugin!
I have 2 questions.
Firstly, what is the calculation used to obtain the score?
This will allow me to configure the restrictions of the following activities according to the result obtained on the MooTyper exercise.
Secondly, I tried to configure the layout php file based on the Belgium(DutchV5).php file in order to adapt it to learning the French(Belgium) keyboard from the 1st line. However, even though I've managed to activate the colours on the 1st line, once the letter has been typed, the colour doesn't come back. Could you tell me how to do this?
PS: the colours are no longer in the same order as in the MooTyper because the order is not the same as in our lessons.
Many thanks for everything!
Lola
Hi Laurence,
The calculation is automatically adjusted based on the activity settings.
- If you set both the precision and wpm, the calculation splits the grade 50-50 based on the percentage achieved, limited to 100%. e.g. If the precision is set to 90% and the wpm to 40 and the student achieved 97% and 30 wpm, they receive 100% of 50 for the precision (max 100, 97/90*100) and 75% of 50 or for the wpm, (max 100, giving a total of 50+37.5 = 87.5.
- If you set the precision to a number from 1 to 100, and the wpm to zero, the calculation ONLY considers the precision. e.g. If the precision is set to 90 and the wpm to 0, and the student achieved 85 and 30, their total would be 94.4 based off of achieving 85/90*100 with the wpm being totally ignored.
- If you set the precision to zero and the wpm to 30, ONLY the wpm will be used for the total calculation. e.g. If the precision is set to 0 and the wpm to 30, and the student achieves 85% and 25wpm, the 85% will be ignored and the students total calculation will be 25/30*100 for 83.3.
- If you set the precision to 0 and the wpm to 0, neither one will be used to calculate the total, which will be set to null.
You can look at the code for this in the gcnext.php file, starting about line 93, as the actual math takes a few other things into account, and the last time I worked on this I was trying to verify the calculation for precision of zero and wpm some number greater than zero. Have not found my notes on that yet. Life events interfered and still continue, as I was basically almost blind the month of March and half of April. I am doing much better now but do have to limit my screen time each day.
A major upcoming change that should help you with restrictions, is the addition of five new MooTyper completion settings. Everytime I think I have them ready for release, something else comes up.
I have had one or two other users mention using a different key color scheme, and I asked them for an example of one or two lessons, or access to them, but never got a reply. Without that or at least some pictures, I would be working "blind" (pun intended LOL), on what is needed to get your keyboard layout to work. If you can send me something, my email address is in User details of my profile.
Hello,
Thank you very much for your very detailed reply and the work you've done.
I fully understand that you can't work on it regularly. I wish you a speedy recovery and better days ahead.
I'm sending you an email about setting up a specific layout for learning the French/Belgian keyboard.
Have a good Sunday,
Lola
Thank you very much for your very detailed reply and the work you've done.
I fully understand that you can't work on it regularly. I wish you a speedy recovery and better days ahead.
I'm sending you an email about setting up a specific layout for learning the French/Belgian keyboard.
Have a good Sunday,
Lola
Well due to health problems butting in, AND I kept finding new things that needed to be fixed before the next release, after a long delayI have finally released MooTyper v4.2.4 with a LOT of new, under the hood stuff, as well as some that will be readily apparent. The biggest addition is five new activity completion settings, which are, number exercises to complete, complete the lesson holding the exercises, achieve a precision, achieve a WPM rate, and achieve a combined MooTyper grade. The MooTyper grade is explained in my last entry of 11 August 2023. This release also has versions of the German layouts that now handle the "ê é è" characters correctly.
The output table for both, View all grades and View my grades, has been rearranged slightly. Now the MooTyper Grade column has been moved left two columns so that it is arraigned with the two items, Precision and WPM, used in it's
calculation.
Each user now has the option as to which items are visible in the graph below the View all grades and View my grades pages. They are, Hits per minute, Precision, WPM, and Grade.
Thanks to a nice, long, Skype call with Daniel Intrieri in Italy, and the video he provided of a MooTyper intermittent bug, this release fixes the problem. I was seeing and hearing about this bug over the past few months. The problem only shows up when someone makes TOO MANY mistakes and overflows the table field in the database that contain the mistake information. Previously, that field size was only 255 characters. I initially upped that to 1333, but this release changes the field from varchar to text.
The output table for both, View all grades and View my grades, has been rearranged slightly. Now the MooTyper Grade column has been moved left two columns so that it is arraigned with the two items, Precision and WPM, used in it's
calculation.
Each user now has the option as to which items are visible in the graph below the View all grades and View my grades pages. They are, Hits per minute, Precision, WPM, and Grade.
Thanks to a nice, long, Skype call with Daniel Intrieri in Italy, and the video he provided of a MooTyper intermittent bug, this release fixes the problem. I was seeing and hearing about this bug over the past few months. The problem only shows up when someone makes TOO MANY mistakes and overflows the table field in the database that contain the mistake information. Previously, that field size was only 255 characters. I initially upped that to 1333, but this release changes the field from varchar to text.
Hello, first of all my thanks to the creator or creators of this plugin.
A few days ago I decided to install this plugin on my Moodle version 4.0 installation and everything seemed to work perfectly.
I was able to test the plugin by adding some exercises and see it working without a problem within my platform.
Yesterday I tried to add a typing activity to an active course that I had already created and when I tried to save the changes I got the error "error reading database" and it did not allow me to perform any further action.
The course where I try to insert the typing activity is completely corrupted and can no longer be accessed in any way. All the rest of the course topics and activities are equally inaccessible since when trying to enter the course I receive the error "error reading database"
I have searched for information regarding this error and I have not found anything with this specific plugin, but my Moodle works perfectly with the rest of the activities so I think the problem is only in the Mootyper plugin which leaves some fields in the base corrupted data.
Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?
Thank you so much.
A few days ago I decided to install this plugin on my Moodle version 4.0 installation and everything seemed to work perfectly.
I was able to test the plugin by adding some exercises and see it working without a problem within my platform.
Yesterday I tried to add a typing activity to an active course that I had already created and when I tried to save the changes I got the error "error reading database" and it did not allow me to perform any further action.
The course where I try to insert the typing activity is completely corrupted and can no longer be accessed in any way. All the rest of the course topics and activities are equally inaccessible since when trying to enter the course I receive the error "error reading database"
I have searched for information regarding this error and I have not found anything with this specific plugin, but my Moodle works perfectly with the rest of the activities so I think the problem is only in the Mootyper plugin which leaves some fields in the base corrupted data.
Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?
Thank you so much.
Hi Javier,
I replied to you regarding this issue, over in github. If your are interested, I suspect we might need to do a Skype call so we can do a screen share with phpMyAdmin of what you have in the MooTyper database. I realize this might be late in the day for you today, plus I am about to quit for today, so we might try tomorrow from 0900 to 1400 CST.
Hi Al, first of all thank you very much for the trouble you are taking with this problem.
I'm available right now, but if you have to leave we can leave it for tomorrow.
How do you want us to organize the meeting to connect with Skype?
As of right now I am online and available via Skype. It will probably work best if you call me, daniel.rachels, and then you can screen share what you see.
Dear Daniel, thank you very much for your help in solving the problem.
It has been a pleasure to talk to you and see the passion with which you do this work.
You have seemed to me to be a wonderful person and an example that today's young people should follow.
I will keep my promise to send you all the activities in Spanish that I do from now on to improve the Mootyper repertoire.
If you ever visit Spain, here you will find a house to stay in. You're invited.
A big hug from Spain.
Javier.
Dear Javier,
I have also been trying to configure Mootyper for a while in a way that allows me to mark activities as completed for students who meet the criteria for both accuracy and completed speed. I want them to be able to access the next activity through a restriction set on an activity marked as approved.
Before the spectacular update by @AL Rachels, achieving this was not straightforward, as the grading system was somewhat limited. He himself hinted that it would be a great future implementation (now thankfully present for all of us).
With the new update, I have been testing again, and although this time it seems that the necessary grading items are available to meet my needs, I haven't managed to correctly configure two sample tasks for it to work seamlessly (I usually end up with an error in the database grading, which I only fix by deleting it with the Adminer plugin).
I was wondering if by any chance you have done something similar to what I'm describing, and if so, could you make a brief video showing the configuration you use so that I can try to replicate it? (I'm Spanish in case you mentioned it).
Thank you very much in advance.
P.S.: @AL Rachels, I haven't asked you directly because I didn't want to bother you without first making sure that I am doing things correctly (which I suspect I'm not, hehehe).
Hola Miguel, encantado de intentar poder ayudarte.
No se si he entendido muy bien cual es tu problema realmente. ¿Entiendo que lo que sucede es que aunque le marcas unas limitaciones de errores y velocidad al ejercicio no te lo marca como completado aunque se superen estas limitaciones?
Los ejercicios se pueden configurar para que si el alumno no obtenie unas pulsaciones determinadas o pasa de un determinado número de errores no pase al siguiente ejercicio. Así es como yo veo que funciona el programa.
¿Puedes detallarme mejor que es lo que sucede para ver si puedo ayudarte?
De todas formas, estoy seguro que si consultas a @Al Rachels estará encantado de poder solucionar el problema, en caso de que lo haya.
Un saludo.
No se si he entendido muy bien cual es tu problema realmente. ¿Entiendo que lo que sucede es que aunque le marcas unas limitaciones de errores y velocidad al ejercicio no te lo marca como completado aunque se superen estas limitaciones?
Los ejercicios se pueden configurar para que si el alumno no obtenie unas pulsaciones determinadas o pasa de un determinado número de errores no pase al siguiente ejercicio. Así es como yo veo que funciona el programa.
¿Puedes detallarme mejor que es lo que sucede para ver si puedo ayudarte?
De todas formas, estoy seguro que si consultas a @Al Rachels estará encantado de poder solucionar el problema, en caso de que lo haya.
Un saludo.
Hi Javier,
Thanks for the help. Please feel free to answer anything you can. My eyes have been giving me trouble again, so I have been limiting my "screen" time and might be slow to answer due to that.
Please note that MooTyper provides the beats or Hits per minute but only uses them to calculate Words Per Minute. Hits Per Minute does take into account the settings for Continuous typing, Count mistyped spaces, and Count all keystrokes, which of course then alters the Words Per Minute.
Thanks for the help. Please feel free to answer anything you can. My eyes have been giving me trouble again, so I have been limiting my "screen" time and might be slow to answer due to that.
Please note that MooTyper provides the beats or Hits per minute but only uses them to calculate Words Per Minute. Hits Per Minute does take into account the settings for Continuous typing, Count mistyped spaces, and Count all keystrokes, which of course then alters the Words Per Minute.
Hello Daniel, I'm very sorry to hear about your eyes, I hope everything goes well.
I think your message requesting all the information about setting up his exercises from Miguel is what we need.
I will try to help Miguel by carrying out tests on my installation if necessary, without problem.
Thank you so much.
Hola Javier, lo que pretendo es que una actividad A deba ser superada por el alumno tanto en % de precisión como en velocidad WPM, para poder pasar a una actividad B.
El problema me surge porque, para poder limitar el acceso a la actividad B, debo configurar por un lado el tipo de calificación en la actividad A (así como el % de precisión y el WPM) y también las opciones de "finalización de actividad". Y luego, en la actividad B, configurar la restricción de acceso por finalización de actividad o por calificación.
He probado muchas configuraciones pero donde más problema tengo es al configurar la actividad A en el apartado "Finalización de actividad" porque cuando marco algunas de las opciones y guardo los cambios, si vuelvo a acceder se me han desmarcado muchas de las opciones que marqué. Tampoco he logrado saber si los valores son 0 ó 1 (simulando true o false) o pueden tomar más valores (y, en este último caso, si el rango es de 0-10 ó de 0-100).
Adjunto fotos de Actividad A y Actividad B (1 y 2 respectivamente).
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El problema me surge porque, para poder limitar el acceso a la actividad B, debo configurar por un lado el tipo de calificación en la actividad A (así como el % de precisión y el WPM) y también las opciones de "finalización de actividad". Y luego, en la actividad B, configurar la restricción de acceso por finalización de actividad o por calificación.
He probado muchas configuraciones pero donde más problema tengo es al configurar la actividad A en el apartado "Finalización de actividad" porque cuando marco algunas de las opciones y guardo los cambios, si vuelvo a acceder se me han desmarcado muchas de las opciones que marqué. Tampoco he logrado saber si los valores son 0 ó 1 (simulando true o false) o pueden tomar más valores (y, en este último caso, si el rango es de 0-10 ó de 0-100).
Adjunto fotos de Actividad A y Actividad B (1 y 2 respectivamente).
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Hello AL Rachels, what I intend is that activity A should be successfully completed by the student in terms of both accuracy percentage and WPM speed in order to progress to activity B.
The issue arises because, in order to restrict access to activity B, I need to configure the grading type in activity A (along with accuracy percentage and WPM), as well as the "activity completion" options. Then, in activity B, I need to set up access restrictions based on either activity completion or grading.
I have tried many configurations, but my main problem is when configuring activity A in the "Activity completion" section. When I select some options and save the changes, if I revisit the settings, many of the options I marked are unchecked. I haven't been able to determine whether the values are 0 or 1 (simulating true or false) or if they can take more values. In the latter case, I'm uncertain whether the range is 0-10 or 0-100.
I am attaching photos of Activity A and Activity B (1 and 2, respectively).
Hola Miguel, tal como te informaba Daniel en su anterior mensaje donde te solicitaba información de tu configuración creo que el problema puede venir desde aquí:
Los grados de superación van ligados al modo en el que esté publicada la lección de MooTyper tal como te ha comentado Daniel.
Por favor, puedes confirmar esto.
Gracias.
- Are you using Whole MooTyper grading (exam mode)? What Grade setting?
- OR Are you using Ratings (lesson or practice mode)? What aggregate type?
- What Completion settings are you using? Require grade must match whichever of the previous two items you are using.
Los grados de superación van ligados al modo en el que esté publicada la lección de MooTyper tal como te ha comentado Daniel.
Por favor, puedes confirmar esto.
Gracias.
Creo que he probado todas las configuraciones. Por concretar problemas, el que me encuentro y no subsano es (configurando todo en modo examen) al poner como criterio de finalización que el estudiante supere toda la lección (así me aseguro de que cumple todas las tareas con los criterios de superación establecidos), al guardar los cambios y consultarlos nuevamente veo que no se graba como puse. Adjunto ambas capturas.
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I guess I have tried all the configurations. To specify the issues, the one I encounter and cannot resolve is (configuring everything in exam mode) when setting the completion criterion as the student completing the entire lesson (ensuring that all tasks are completed according to the established criteria), upon saving the changes and checking them again, I see that it is not recorded as I set it. I am attaching both screenshots for reference.
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I guess I have tried all the configurations. To specify the issues, the one I encounter and cannot resolve is (configuring everything in exam mode) when setting the completion criterion as the student completing the entire lesson (ensuring that all tasks are completed according to the established criteria), upon saving the changes and checking them again, I see that it is not recorded as I set it. I am attaching both screenshots for reference.
I'm pretty sure that I know the version, but I fogot to ask, exactly which version of MooTyper are you using?
The version is: 4.2.6 (Build: 2023121000)
2023121000
2023121000
My concentration is pretty poor today due to medication. Yesterday I had minor, same day surgery in my mouth. Not feeling any pain, just my thought process keeps wandering off the subject. I am trying to set up an exact duplicate test, and forgot to ask:
- What version of Moodle are you using?
- What database type and version are you using?
My mind wandered off on a tangent for so long that I got logged out and forgot to post this to the forum. I think I am going to quit for the day and watch a movie or you tube videos. Automatic draft saving sure does help. 😂
Hello Al, I hope you're feeling better after your minor procedure. Take the time you need to respond, I've been tinkering for a month since the update you released, and it's not something I urgently need.
I'm attaching a video for you to see the data you asked for and how, by selecting one of the completion options, it then configures others for me. Maybe I'm not interpreting how the configuration of this section works correctly, I don't know.
If you find it helpful and it saves you time, I can provide you with a fictitious username for you to perform any necessary tests within my own course (it's for testing purposes, so there's nothing that could be deleted or lost).
Sending you a big hug.
Hi Miguel,
Thanks for the well wishes. Today I do feel much better. AND, thanks for the video! I think I understand better now what you want, and I think you have found a bug. I don't think I ever tested completion for just completing a lesson by itself. Come to think of it, I did all my testing with all the available completion conditions and I did not realize that I had the code set so that all of them use a default of 1, instead of zero.
Let me work on this a verify if it really is the problem.
Well, I fixed one bug, but have discovered more. It might take longer than I think, because one of the other bugs might be within Moodle.
What happens is that in my development code, I can now force things so that only completing the lesson is selected, but when I save the settings, Moodle is also showing a completion requirement of, Receive a grade.Does NOT show it in the activty settings, but shows it on the course page and the MooTyper view page.
Receive a grade shows as being incomplete after the student completes the lesson because MooTyper, with no Precision or WPM set, does not generate a grade.
I understand what you're getting at. Here's a possible solution that might be easier to implement: to mark the "complete lesson" completion checkbox, Mootyper grading must also be enabled and the grade must be 100%. If Mootyper grading is not enabled when this checkbox is active, a red warning should pop up and the user should not be able to save the settings without enabling Mootyper grading first.
Sorry Miguel, I do not think so as I can fully understand that there would be use cases where someone wants a MooTyper lesson marked as ompleted, but without a grade in the grade book.
I forgot something that was part of the problem with what you were wanting to do. Sadly due to my poor memory it took me a while to remember this: each lesson has to have at least one exercise. So the code is written so that to complete a lesson, you have to also complete at least one exercise. However, since a lesson can have from one to many exercises, you can require one or more exercises be completed without a lesson, precision, WPM, or MooTyper grade also having to be completed.
As I mentioned before, another big part of your problem was that I foolishly had set the defaults to both checked and 1, for exercises, precision, WPM and MooTyper grade. I have fixed that in my development code, but have not pushed it to github yet as I have discovered that there are a couple of functions I think I need to add, and definitly have one or two places where I need to add calls to get_state to update things.
TODO:
- Push the new default settings to github. These changes do let me achieve requiring 1 exercise and the lesson be complete without any other completion setting.
- Check the missing functions and add them if required.
- Not long ago with another user, we discovered there was a possiblity in rare cases where the system could wind up with orphaned grades being counted and used in MooTyper grades, Moodle gradebook grades, and of course, in the Completion indicators. I currently have code so the teacher is notified on the, View all grades page, but will need to see if deleting them also correctly updates the completions. Currently the indicators for Receive a grade and Receive a passing grade are NOT updated.
- When a teacher or student deletes an exercise attempt, the completion indicators for, Receive a grade, and, Receive a passing grade, are not being updated. I have not checked yet, but I'm pretty sure it's due to those missing functions.
I also have about fifty more open tickets that do not impact MooTyper use as they are all additions and enhancments. e.g. (1) If you delete one of the included lesson's and all it's exercises, the physical file is still there, but should be deleted so it does not accidentally get reinstalled. (2) During the initial installation of MooTyper, I would like to give admin's the option of selecting which lessons and keyboard layouts to install. Right now, they ALL get installed, but in reality, very few of them are needed in a typical school. (3) The database field for suspicion is currently in the mdl_mootyper_attempts table but should be moved to the mdl_mootyper_grade table. That's because the attempts table can be emptied and the grades are still there, but if one of the grades was achieved in a suspicious manner, the marker for it can dissapear.
Well, time to get back to work.
A lot of work to do Daniel.
I am convinced that with the necessary time everything will end up being resolved on your part.
I just want to thank you once again for your great work and effort on this project.
Good luck with the code.
Hello Al, thank you for taking the time to respond extensively. On a technical level, I more or less understand what you're telling me (I don't know how to program in PHP, but I can program in other languages like C++ or JS). I see that, although the problem is not major, it does require a readjustment of several parts of the code and involves some work.
As for me, take all the time you need to solve the problem, and you can even count on me for any debugging or testing work. I regret not being able to help with the code, but I haven't dared to develop my own application in the Moodle environment yet (I'm finishing it in a web environment, and somehow porting it to a Moodle extension is my next personal goal). Hopefully, one day I can contribute to this beautiful community of people who help altruistically, as you do.
I am at your disposal and look forward to any updates from your side.
This morning I woke up and had an email from my MooTyper github and now have more stuff TODO on this fix. Someone has reported a problem with some of the completion SQL's when used with PostgreSQL database. Took a while and had to use some AI to get past the first sticking point. Unfortunately, my server for this is a Raspberry Pi3 so it is SLOWLY letting me install another Moodle on it so I can test another version of MooTyper on it.
Good morning AL, I just saw that you uploaded a new version of the plugin two weeks ago. I don't see a detailed changelog, so I wanted to ask if there are any updates regarding the task completion restrictions (just testing it again, not rushing you, hehehe).
Hi Miguel,
Yes, the latest MooTyper 4.2.7 has had a lot of work done on it's Completion settings making it much more responsive and capable.
It is sad to say, but if I forget anything to do with a new release, it is to update the information in the upgrade.txt file. I honestly do not remember ever seeing a changelog in any of the Moodle plugins. The developer documentation does call for an upgrade.txt file. I was just looking and realized that when I make a comment such as, "See the ticket for details," that is good enough for me, but not any of the users. So, don't know when it will be done, but I am debating/working on three options:
- Use the issue system in github - there would be a FLOOD of new entries needed.
- Moving my current ticket system to one of my Moodle sites that is open to the public.
- Be more verbose and add additional details to my current upgrade.txt file.
My preference is maybe to do both 2 and 3, as I've been using the, User Ticket, plugin for Moodle for years and prefer to keep on using it.
Hello again AL, thank you for your work. Regarding the changelog, I mentioned it not to give you more work but to be able to check if you had time to address the things we discussed in January
I've been testing the new update, and I notice that indeed more completion conditions work without using grades from either Moodle or Mootyper (I've tested them and still get some database errors in some cases, but I think it's because I haven't configured both types of grades properly). However, I'm unable to have the "Require lesson completion: Student must complete this lesson to complete this activity" option stay marked (it remains as if I hadn't marked it). While I can use the "Require exercise completion" option by specifying the number of exercises in the lesson, it's cumbersome to set this up for each task instead of being able to use the "Require lesson completion" option.
One last question: when marking the options "Require WPM" or "Require Grade" (together or separately), if it's later deactivated, it can be observed that the task still requests those completion criteria, and the only way to disable it is to mark it again and set a value of 0.
Best regards.
Created a couple of new work tickets and I will see what I can do with both of the problems you have pointed out.
One last question: when marking the options "Require WPM" or "Require Grade" (together or separately), if it's later deactivated, it can be observed that the task still requests those completion criteria, and the only way to disable it is to mark it again and set a value of 0.
That is expected behavior. Here is why. Those activity completion settings are made on the page created by the mod_form.php file. When you save the settings page, the settings for the completion settings are only changed if the Checkbox is checked. Changes are placed in the mdl_mootyper table of the data base in their appropriate completion field. If there is not a check in the box for a particular completion setting, then that setting is NOT processed when saving the activity settings.
e.g. Let's say that I had a required precision of 95% set and do not want to use it anymore:
- If I change the 95 to 0 and remove the check mark, the change IS NOT processed and the database still contains the 95 setting.
- If I change the 95 to 0 and leave the check mark, the change IS processed and database completionprecision field will be changed from 95 to 0. The completion item will no longer be shown for the activity.
For further details you can look at the code in the mod_form.php file for MooTyper, down about line 424 of, public function add_completion_rules(). There you will see an entry similar to this one for exercises:
$mform->disabledIf($completionexercise, $completionexerciseenabled, 'notchecked');
Notice the last item in the line is 'notchecked' which means we are not processing this rule if the box is not checked. Now, if the box is checked and I have changed to 0, indicating I do not want to use this completion rule, the database entry for the particular completion will be reset the way you are wanting them to.
Hello AL, thank you for your prompt response. Now that you've explained it to me, I understand how the checkboxes work: changes are only made to the parameters if their corresponding checkboxes are marked; it doesn't function like a simple on/off toggle for the checkbox.
I'll stay tuned for any updates on the first issue I reported.
Best regards.
Greetings Miguel,
Evidently, my brain was percolating last night while I slept, and I woke up with a probable cause for the first issue that you mention. I wrote the completion SQL's based on how I thought MooTyper should be used, instead of how users such as yourself, actually use MooTyper. That is one of the problems of being retired, working at home, with almost no input from all the users out there, who actually use the plugin.
It's like the recent field size for mistakes fix. If you had not provided that video, I might still be looking for a cause and a fix. Since you need to use MooTyper in a different manner than I had ever thought of, then I need to change those SQL's to work the way end users need them and NOT the way I originally programed them.
Might take me a bit, but I will see what I can do, soon.
Evidently, my brain was percolating last night while I slept, and I woke up with a probable cause for the first issue that you mention. I wrote the completion SQL's based on how I thought MooTyper should be used, instead of how users such as yourself, actually use MooTyper. That is one of the problems of being retired, working at home, with almost no input from all the users out there, who actually use the plugin.
It's like the recent field size for mistakes fix. If you had not provided that video, I might still be looking for a cause and a fix. Since you need to use MooTyper in a different manner than I had ever thought of, then I need to change those SQL's to work the way end users need them and NOT the way I originally programed them.
Might take me a bit, but I will see what I can do, soon.
Hello again AL, my intention wasn't to "keep you up at night" with my report, hahaha. Although I know that many times it's the best time to come up with fundamental ideas to solve some stubborn issues.
I understand perfectly what you're saying. Take all the time you need to modify it. And without any problem, you can count on me for that testing phase or questions to clarify how any part of the program is understood or intended to be used.
Best regards
Hi Miguel,
Sorry to see that you are having difficulties. I need a little more info:
- What kind of lesson and how many exercises are in it. Would you consider sending it to me via email?
- What Time limit?
- What Required precision?
- What Required WPM?
- Continuous typing - yes or no?
- Count mistyped spaces - yes or no?
- Count all keystrokes - yes or no?
- Are you using Whole MooTyper grading (exam mode)? What Grade setting?
- OR Are you using Ratings (lesson or practice mode)? What aggregate type?
- What Completion settings are you using? Require grade must match whichever of the previous two items you are using.
Probably easiest way to answer would be to show a picture of you MooTyper activity settings for, Options, Whole MooTyper grading, Ratings, and Activity completion.
I did not know until recently, that in some countries they are more concernd with beats or characters per minute, instead of words per minutes. Note that MooTyper does not use beats, or Hits per minute, in any way except to calculate Words Per Minute (WPM).
With the help of Miguel Ángel Sanz Sardina, I have been doing a lot of development with the completion code for MooTyper. There a five additional completion settings to go along with standard three built in to Moodle. I have only been able to do basic testing so far, and in my Moodle 4.1.9+ development environment, the completions all seem to work the way I think they should. Here are some details that I will see about adding to the documentation.
Exercise - Can be used independently of the other completions. The teacher can require from 1 to the total number of exercises in the lesson. Must be set for at least one, or the status is immediately set to achieved (green). If the user or teacher deletes the MooTyper results for an exercise, the status is updated just as soon as they return to the view page to the not achieved state.
Lesson - Can be used independently of the other completions. The teacher can require ONLY 1 lesson per MooTyper activity. Must be set for at least one, or the status is immediately set to achieved (green). As soon as a user completes one exercise, the state is updated to achieved . If the user or teacher deletes the MooTyper results for all exercises, the status is updated just as soon as they return to the view page to the not achieved state.
Precision - Can be used independently of the other completions. The teacher can require any precision from 1% up to 100%. When the student completes an exercise, the completion state gets updated. If the current precision average is above the required setting, the state will change to achieved (green). If succeeding exercise results move the average precision below the required setting, the completion state will revert to not achieved and turn gray.
WPM - Can be used independently of the other completions. The teacher can require any WPM from 1 up to any reasonable speed. When the student completes an exercise, the completion state gets updated. If the current WPM average is above the required setting, the state will change to achieved (green). If succeeding exercise results move the average WPM below the required setting, the completion state will revert not achieved and turn gray.
MooTyper Grade - Can NOT be used independently of the other completions. The teacher must also track Precision or track WPM, or track them both. The MooTyper Grade Completion state can be marked as achieved (green), even if Precision and WPM are not achieved (still gray).
Examples:
- Suppose I set Precision to 95%, WPM to 0, and MooTyper Grade to 90. There will be two completion indicators, Precision and MooTyper Grade. As the student proceeds through the lesson exercises, ANY time the Precision Average is 95% or higher, both the Precision and MooTper Grade completions will be achieved (green). If at any time the students Precision average falls in the range of 90% to 94%, the precision indication will revert to not achieved (gray) while the MooTyper Grade stays achieved (green). If the Precision average falls below 90%, both indicators will revert to not achieved (gray).
- Suppose I set Precision to 0, WPM to 35, and MooTyper Grade to 90. There will be two completion indicators, WPM and MooTyper Grade. As the student proceeds through the lesson exercises, ANY time the WPM Average is 35 or higher, both the WPM and MooTper Grade completions will be shown as achieved (green). If at any time the students WPM average falls in the range of 31.5 to 35, the WPM indication will revert to not achieved (gray) while the MooTyper Grade stays achieved (green). If the WPM average falls below 31.5, both indicators will revert to not achieved (gray). The WPM of 31.5 is based on 90% of 35.
- Suppose I set Precision to 95%, WPM to 35, and MooTyper Grade to 90. There will be three completion indicators, Precision, WPM, and MooTyper Grade. As the student proceeds through the lesson exercises, ANY time the Precision Average is 95% or higher, or the WPM average is 35 or higher, they will change state to achieved (green), along with the MooTyper Grade indicator. As long as one of the two indicators, Precision or WPM, is achieved, then the MooTyper Grade indicator MAY be shown as achieved depending on the combined average for precision and WPM. Even if both Precision and WPM are NOT achieved, but their combined average is above 90%, the MooTyper Grade will be shown as achieved!
I am not going to detail how the indicators behave just yet, as I need to do some further testing.
The code for these changes are in git hub as branch MOODLE_428_RC2.
I need to install this new release candidate on my other development servers to make sure all this new code works with them. Especially need to verify it works with PostgreSQL, which I have not done yet. I am betting I will get debug errors complaining about ORDER BY not being used.
Oh well, I think I will take a break and do some house work, or even better since it is so warm here today, go outside and do some yard work.
AL
Thank you for your update, AL. I believe that with this explanation (at least for me), the purpose of each completion parameter is clearer. Since you mention that there is still an issue with PostgreSQL to resolve, and I don't currently have a test Moodle installation set up, I'll have to wait for an official release from you to try it on my production installation (Moodle v. 4.2.6) and avoid the risk of a possible unexpected critical failure. Therefore, when I conduct the relevant tests, I commit to providing you with technical feedback as a user of the plugin.
Once again, thank you very much for your attention, involvement, and development in the plugin.
P.S.: I hope the garden turned out beautiful ;)
Once again, thank you very much for your attention, involvement, and development in the plugin.
P.S.: I hope the garden turned out beautiful ;)
Hi Miguel,
I have managed to fix all the PostgreSQL issues, I think, and at github I have a possible MOODLE_428_STABLE release ready to go. I just have been trying it out on my various versions of Moodle.
Since you say you do not have a sandbox or development site, if you or anyone else is interested, send me an email or private message to let me know what user name you want to use and I will give you student and teacher access to one of my testing sites.
Hello AL, what great news you bring us, knowing that you've been able to make progress.
Yes, I would like (since you so altruistically and kindly offer it) to have a user to conduct tests. In my production site, I have often encountered a database issue, possibly due to some mistake on my part in configuring tasks. Perhaps if I replicate it on your platform, you can analyze it (it's just additional information; I don't think it's related to completion criteria but rather to the types of ratings). I'll send you a private message shortly after sending this.
Best regards.
I hope everyone is enjoying the latest version of MooTyper, without any problems. At least none have been reported to me yet. LOL and knock on wood!
I have been doing a lot of development over at the sample website for MooTyper at https://m3x.drachels.com/. I am in the process of hopefully being able to move it to a dedicated server instead of it's shared hosting location. Should make the site more responsive and not so s..l....o.....w.
The biggest change that is readily noticeable is getting rid of the long scroll page that you normally see when you visit the site. I have converted to continent based categories with country courses which make the front page more compact. This has pointed out to me places I have neglected trying to develop keyboard layouts for.
As part of this process I had to split up the former English and Portuguese courses. As part of the new, England, course, I have created a new layout, EnglishWKeypad(UKV6) that gets used in that new course. Makes it handy to do lessons and exercises that focus on using the number keypad for input. I will do the same in the new Portugal and Brazil courses, when I have time.
A partial reason for doing this is that I do sometimes have individuals who are interested in using MooTyper, on their own initiative but do not have access at any location they have access too.
As usual, please let me know if you have any problems or would like a new feature, and I will see what I can do.
Dear Al, first of all I want to say that I am very happy to see you back and also with news and progress in development.
I am currently on version 4.2.4 (Build: 2023110200) and I see that there is an update to version 4.2.8 (Build: 2024032100)
My installation is on my live Moodle campus and I'm a little afraid that the program will stop working as it should after the update, but I think I'll give it a try.
I assume that all the problems mentioned by colleague Miguel Ángel in previous posts have been corrected.
I'm going to try to update to this latest stable version and run some tests to see that everything works as it should.
Thank you very much for your dedication to this project.
Hi Javier,
I just took a look at the current text I have in my MooTyper upgrade.txt file and I see that there were fourteen (14) trouble tickets fixed since v4.2.4, with a couple of them being pretty major. So, yes an upgrade is in order, but I do understand and agree that testing first is advisable. I have learned over the years, the way I use a plugin, can be entirely different from the way others use it. In fact that was one of the major fixes for v4.28 where I had to completely rewrite the code for MooTyper Completions.
I am currently getting a server ready and for it, I have an idea that might be perfect for users like you. Basically, I have an IOMAD 4.2 site and should be able to fix you up a "school site" on it for you. OR, I can just fix you up a MooTyper Spanish course somewhere and let you try setting up any way you want. Just let me know if you are interested.
I just took a look at the current text I have in my MooTyper upgrade.txt file and I see that there were fourteen (14) trouble tickets fixed since v4.2.4, with a couple of them being pretty major. So, yes an upgrade is in order, but I do understand and agree that testing first is advisable. I have learned over the years, the way I use a plugin, can be entirely different from the way others use it. In fact that was one of the major fixes for v4.28 where I had to completely rewrite the code for MooTyper Completions.
I am currently getting a server ready and for it, I have an idea that might be perfect for users like you. Basically, I have an IOMAD 4.2 site and should be able to fix you up a "school site" on it for you. OR, I can just fix you up a MooTyper Spanish course somewhere and let you try setting up any way you want. Just let me know if you are interested.
Dear Al, thank you very much for the offer.
I have finally taken the step of updating to the most recent version and everything seems to be working as it should.
I just have one question right now that I would like to clarify with you:
How is time limitation on an exercise supposed to work?
I have carried out a test on an exercise with a time limit of 2 minutes and an error coefficient of 95%.
I have performed the exercise exceeding 3 minutes of time but with a correct error coefficient and the exercise has given me it as valid.
Should I be made to repeat the exercise when I exceed the time limit?
I take advantage of this same post to ask another question/suggestion:
If a lesson is made up of 5 exercises, is there any way I can skip an exercise without having to do it? That is, can I start this lesson with exercise 3 without having to do exercises 1 and 2?
Normally in all my lessons the exercises are structured from easiest to most difficult, with the first ones in the lesson being the easiest until we reach the most difficult ones. Sometimes there are students who do not need to do the first exercises of the lesson because they have already mastered this part and I would like to be able to go through these exercises manually to get to the appropriate exercise for this student.
I understand that this possibility does not exist right now and I don't know if anyone has asked you about it before. I leave this suggestion here in case it is of interest to you, although for my part there is no urgency in making this available in the short term.
I once again reiterate my gratitude to your dedication to this plugin and to all of us who are dedicated to being teachers of this wonderful practice of typing.
Hi Javier,
As for the time limitation, it is supposed to just stop the exercise. So, in your example of 2 minutes, the precision of 95% does not matter, and WPM does not either. As soon as the timer exceeds 2 minutes, typing input for that exercise is stopped. If your setup seemed to allow you to keep going, it may have been on the next exercise because the additional keystrokes tell the system to keep on going to the next exercise. If you are already a proficient typist, it is fairly easy to put your brain and fingers into automatic pilot and not catch that end of lesson. I know I've done it on more than one occasion and did it just now when I was checking to make sure the latest version still worked correctly.
If you think that your systems is truly letting you go past the time limit of 2 minutes, please post a picture of what you see when you click on the, Setup, button when logged in as an admin or teacher. That way I can make sure I am testing with the same settings. You may have hit on a setup combination that ignores the time limit setting.
Currently, there is no way to skip an exercise. If your lesson has five exercises, they must be done in order from 1 to 5, otherwise weird things can happen, such as suddenly getting an exercise from another lesson. I hate to admit that I have an open ticket in my system, which I created on December 11, 2023, Need to prevent exercise delete unless it is the last one in the lesson. This is to make it so that weird things do not happen as I just mentioned. Deleting exercises out of order, breaks the lesson. e.g. If a lesson contains 3 exercises, and I delete lesson result number two, then the student can only complete lesson one and will never see lesson three. And, in this scenario, adding more exercises will not show up either. The fix in the example is that you have go and delete exercise 3 results and maybe number 1, too.
I have toyed with the idea of trying to implement a random order capability for completing exercises, but just never seem to find time for it. It would make repeat lessons a little less boring. When I was actively teaching, I just kept hunting for "text" I could use for additional training to try and keep my more advanced students interested and motivated. I don't think that this applies to you, but many users I have talked to over the years, just have not realized just how easy adding more lessons to their setup is. ANY teacher can add lessons, unless an admin has gone and removed permissions.
For instance, I think in the case you present, I would take the lesson you describe, and make a copy of it, leaving out the first two or three easy exercises, leaving just the more difficult exercises. At that point I might even add another exercise or two or more, each one with some more "difficult" text for the student who needs more challenging stuff to type. I would then set an access restriction so that another MooTyper set up to use the new lesson, is not even visible unless the student meets certain grade restrictions from the previous MooTyper activities.
An additional incentive would be to use the V6 version of your countries keyboard layout which includes a number keypad, and add exercises that need to have a bunch of numbers typed. For anyone, let me know if you need a V6 layout with keypad created for your language. Two days ago, I created the two files needed for EnglishWKeypad(UKV6) layouts and include them here.
As for the time limitation, it is supposed to just stop the exercise. So, in your example of 2 minutes, the precision of 95% does not matter, and WPM does not either. As soon as the timer exceeds 2 minutes, typing input for that exercise is stopped. If your setup seemed to allow you to keep going, it may have been on the next exercise because the additional keystrokes tell the system to keep on going to the next exercise. If you are already a proficient typist, it is fairly easy to put your brain and fingers into automatic pilot and not catch that end of lesson. I know I've done it on more than one occasion and did it just now when I was checking to make sure the latest version still worked correctly.
If you think that your systems is truly letting you go past the time limit of 2 minutes, please post a picture of what you see when you click on the, Setup, button when logged in as an admin or teacher. That way I can make sure I am testing with the same settings. You may have hit on a setup combination that ignores the time limit setting.
Currently, there is no way to skip an exercise. If your lesson has five exercises, they must be done in order from 1 to 5, otherwise weird things can happen, such as suddenly getting an exercise from another lesson. I hate to admit that I have an open ticket in my system, which I created on December 11, 2023, Need to prevent exercise delete unless it is the last one in the lesson. This is to make it so that weird things do not happen as I just mentioned. Deleting exercises out of order, breaks the lesson. e.g. If a lesson contains 3 exercises, and I delete lesson result number two, then the student can only complete lesson one and will never see lesson three. And, in this scenario, adding more exercises will not show up either. The fix in the example is that you have go and delete exercise 3 results and maybe number 1, too.
I have toyed with the idea of trying to implement a random order capability for completing exercises, but just never seem to find time for it. It would make repeat lessons a little less boring. When I was actively teaching, I just kept hunting for "text" I could use for additional training to try and keep my more advanced students interested and motivated. I don't think that this applies to you, but many users I have talked to over the years, just have not realized just how easy adding more lessons to their setup is. ANY teacher can add lessons, unless an admin has gone and removed permissions.
For instance, I think in the case you present, I would take the lesson you describe, and make a copy of it, leaving out the first two or three easy exercises, leaving just the more difficult exercises. At that point I might even add another exercise or two or more, each one with some more "difficult" text for the student who needs more challenging stuff to type. I would then set an access restriction so that another MooTyper set up to use the new lesson, is not even visible unless the student meets certain grade restrictions from the previous MooTyper activities.
An additional incentive would be to use the V6 version of your countries keyboard layout which includes a number keypad, and add exercises that need to have a bunch of numbers typed. For anyone, let me know if you need a V6 layout with keypad created for your language. Two days ago, I created the two files needed for EnglishWKeypad(UKV6) layouts and include them here.
Dear Al, thank you very much for your insightful response and clarifications.
I just did a new test with the exercise limited in time and indeed, as you say, the exercise stops and does not allow me to write anymore.
Now, this does not mean that the exercise has not been passed, when moving to the next exercise in the lesson and looking at the statistics, the exercise that has not been completed due to reaching the time limit is registered as valid.
I understand that this is the correct way to work with the program, but from my point of view, having a time limitation should be a requirement to be able to complete the exercise correctly. If a student does not reach the end of the exercise because his or her time has run out, he or she should repeat it again to try to surpass it within this established limit.
I do not know if I explained well.
Just as if a student does not reach the required percentage of errors, they are made to repeat the exercise, they should also repeat it if they do not do it within the stipulated time limit. This is my opinion.
As for your suggestion about the possibility of skipping exercises being a lesson, I totally agree with your solution provided. It is best to create new lessons with more complex exercises for more advanced students. This way they can have a greater challenge and not get bored with simpler exercises. This is what I am doing right now in my lessons, including new exercises suitable for more advanced levels of students.
Thank you very much for your clarifications.
Hi Javier,
I agree that if a time limit is set, then failure to finish the exercise before the time runs out, should be considered a failure. The student should then have to repeat the exercise until they do complete it within the time limit, unless the MooTyper is in Lesson or Exam mode, where you only get one attempt per exercise (lesson) or one attempt period (exam). I just have not had enough time to try and implement it.
A lot of the delay in getting some of these new/different features is simply due to my families health issues for the past five years. Also, I have been needing to update and upgrade my big box server and get to where my main development site is back on something with a little/lot more speed. I've actually made a lot of progress and right at the moment, I am taking a break from organizing the courses where I am going to move my demo site too, in a few days. I will try to make sure I move all the student data too, as I have quit a few people from all over using the demo site for actual typing practice.
My demo site at https://m3x.drachels.com/ is so slow due to being on a shared server, with no opcache, and a couple of other things. All the other servers I have are running on small board computers comprised of Raspberry Pi's 1, 2, 3, and 4, Orange Pi 5's, and 3 different versions of Odroid XU4's. I have them so I can run archived sites and any version of Moodle for testing plugins. I mainly have been developing on an Orange Pi5, which works well, but it still cannot come close to my main big box server.
I agree that if a time limit is set, then failure to finish the exercise before the time runs out, should be considered a failure. The student should then have to repeat the exercise until they do complete it within the time limit, unless the MooTyper is in Lesson or Exam mode, where you only get one attempt per exercise (lesson) or one attempt period (exam). I just have not had enough time to try and implement it.
A lot of the delay in getting some of these new/different features is simply due to my families health issues for the past five years. Also, I have been needing to update and upgrade my big box server and get to where my main development site is back on something with a little/lot more speed. I've actually made a lot of progress and right at the moment, I am taking a break from organizing the courses where I am going to move my demo site too, in a few days. I will try to make sure I move all the student data too, as I have quit a few people from all over using the demo site for actual typing practice.
My demo site at https://m3x.drachels.com/ is so slow due to being on a shared server, with no opcache, and a couple of other things. All the other servers I have are running on small board computers comprised of Raspberry Pi's 1, 2, 3, and 4, Orange Pi 5's, and 3 different versions of Odroid XU4's. I have them so I can run archived sites and any version of Moodle for testing plugins. I mainly have been developing on an Orange Pi5, which works well, but it still cannot come close to my main big box server.