Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Aylwin Cal -
Number of replies: 21

I'm not sure where else to post this so my apologies if this is in the wrong place.

My "problem" has to do with activity completion.  Why is it possible to allow students to mark their own activities as completed but not possible for teachers to do so?  I would think teachers to be more honest about whether a student has actually done something or not.

Is there some plugin or hack that would allow for this?  Or is it actually possible already through some settings?

By the way, I'm using Moodle 2.4.

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In reply to Aylwin Cal

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Mary Cooch -
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Well I suppose that the fact that teachers can set conditions upon which an activity is marked as "completed" (such as, got a certain grade or posted a certain number of times in a forum) would be classed as teacher marking an activity as "completed", even though  it is automatic and not manual, student by student, as I presume you mean?

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Aylwin Cal -

Well, I would still prefer an option for the teacher to manually mark an activity as completed rather than having to rely on the predefined automated criteria.

There could be any number of reasons why, in my opinion, giving the teacher manual capabilities would be more desirable.  Examples:

- A teacher might be more interested in the quality of the a student's posts rather than simply the quantity.  This would prevent students from gaming the system.

- Instead of uploading a report, a teacher might accept a physical model or prototype.

- In fact, there could be other assignment types that are not text input or file upload: classroom presentation, field trip attendance, seminar attendance, submission of physical object, etc.

- it's also possible that for one reason or another the student was no able to take the test on Moodle so a paper test was taken instead.  Assuming the student received a passing grade for that test and the score is not critical to the overall grade which is automatically calculate by Moodle, it would be sufficient to simply mark the test as completed.

We've had a few cases where students are considered to have passed/completed a course even though not all activities where registered by the system as completed.  In such cases, it would be better if we could just manually mark certain activities as completed.  At least it would give us more accurate reports and statistics.

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In reply to Aylwin Cal

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Rick Jerz -
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I appreciate your request, and it might be a nice additional feature.  When you think about its logic, it could be rather complex.  Do you want only teachers to be able to mark a item as complete, either the teacher or student, the teacher, student, or criteria being met, etc.

I thought about your example, and offer some ideas.

"- A teacher might be more interested in the quality of the a student's posts rather than simply the quantity.  This would prevent students from gaming the system."

This can already be accomplished with a rating scale and summing the scores.

"- Instead of uploading a report, a teacher might accept a physical model or prototype."

This can be accomplished by putting a grade in the grade book.  Once a grade is entered, the activity is complete.

"- In fact, there could be other assignment types that are not text input or file upload: classroom presentation, field trip attendance, seminar attendance, submission of physical object, etc."

This can be accomplished by putting a grade in the grade book.  Once a grade is entered, the activity is complete.  I do this all the time.

"- it's also possible that for one reason or another the student was no able to take the test on Moodle so a paper test was taken instead.  Assuming the student received a passing grade for that test and the score is not critical to the overall grade which is automatically calculate by Moodle, it would be sufficient to simply mark the test as completed."

In Moodle, you can have exceptions to quizzes, and you can even leave a quiz as "blank" (in case you decide to let students skip an exam.)  If one wants to show something as complete (even with a score), you can put these items into their own grade book category and give it a "0" contribution to the final grade.  There already is a lot of flexibility in Moodle to do this, much more than in products like Blackboard.

So even though I think one could already handle all of the examples your present, I still like your idea.  I suggest adding it as a "feature improvement" in the Moodle Tracker system, trying to describe as best you can what you want this feature to do, and then encourage people to "vote" for it.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Aylwin Cal -

Thanks for the ideas on the various workarounds.  I'll look into them and see what we can use.

In general, my idea for this feature is that it can be used as an override button for teachers.  

For example, on some courses students are required to complete a survey or feedback.  For completion tracking, the option we use is that the activity is completed when the feedback is submitted.  In this particular case, I don't think simply giving a grade can be used as a workaround.  In fact, I don't know if it's even possible.  Anyway, if the student is unable to complete the survey for whatever reason and the teacher is willing to let it slide then it would be great if the teacher could simply mark the activity as complete.

I've already suggested the feature here: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-37361

Thanks for the support!

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In reply to Aylwin Cal

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Rick Jerz -
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Aylwin, don't get me wrong.  I like your idea and have voted for this on the Tracker.

I too give my students a Survey at the beginning of every course, but I have used the "Quiz" activity for this, including all open-ended questions (like "your preferred phone number", "your work history", etc.)  In this case, since it is a quiz, I have used "Students can manually check as complete" just in case a student wants to go back and change anything.  I give each question a grade of 1 point, and then the student's grade book will also show that this item is complete (graded).

 

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Aylwin Cal -

No, I really appreciate the ideas for workarounds.  Since this feature is unavailable at the moment, we need to make do.

It actually never occurred to me to use the Quiz activity in place of the Feedback activity.  I'll have to look into this to see if it's possible.  We use the Feedback activity for course evaluations where students rate various aspects of the course on a scale.  It produces very good and easy to understand reports.  If the Quiz activity can do this then it's worth considering.

We don't use grades much so I'm not too familiar with all the tips and tricks related to it.  For us, all that's important is that the course is completed according to all the predefined conditions.

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In reply to Aylwin Cal

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Rick Jerz -
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This is interesting, you have not used the quiz for this purpose and I have not used the feedback activity.  I forget, maybe the feedback is anonymous, whereas the quiz activity is not.  For surveys (informational responses), I don't think anonymity matters. At the end of my semesters, I also ask for some feedback by using the quiz activity.  Some people argue that students will not be honest if their names are known, but I don't necessarily agree, especially if the instructor is simply seeking constructive ideas to improve a course.  I also make this activity optional.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Aylwin Cal -

Aha, now I remember why we need to use the Feedback activity.  In our case, we use Moodle in a corporate environment and we need that anonymity.  It's used to evaluate both the course and the teacher.  Since the students will also be evaluating the teacher and they're basically work colleagues, it's better for everyone if the responses are anonymous.

However, because it's anonymous, students tend not to bother with the feedback.  Therefore, we need to make it a mandatory part of completing the course.

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In reply to Aylwin Cal

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Rick Jerz -
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I always feel that the goal for the training/course is to get constructive feedback from students that will allow the instructor to make continual adjustments and improvements, in order for the quality of education to improve. Many of these improvements will depend upon the quality perspective of the instructor, the students, and the organization.

Often times, I find that some faculty don't care about improving; and organization's real goal is to simply create documentation to support some kind of review process that does nothing with the data, such as accreditation. It's used as kind of a checkoff.  Of course, student feedback depends upon the quality perspectives of the student, too.  Are they just blasting through the questions in order to finish quickly, or are they sincerely interested in providing constructive feedback?

Good luck.

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In reply to Aylwin Cal

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Christine Healey -

To allow teachers to check the completion box for their students:

Would you override permissions to let teachers log in as a student? Admin has this capability. Go to the user's profile

and one of the options in the Administration block is 'Login as'

This helpful feature allows you to go in to sort out when a student has got into a muddle,
e.g., I've changed the format of a file in an assignment if they can't work out how to do it, and reuploaded it for them.

Obviously, there are some issues around 'authenticity' to be thought about.

Thanks to all for the discussion about feedback and using quizzes to gather information - very useful ideas

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In reply to Christine Healey

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Kevin McGlone -

Thanks for that, very useful.

We encountered an issue where some students had completed a checklist activity. It was 100% in the activity itself yet the Grade and Progress report indicated 90% and incomplete.

I logged in as the users, unchecked the last box and rechecked, that solved the problem.

The only thing I can think of is that it did not write to the DB fully.

Now to figure out if there is a bulk method for this..

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In reply to Christine Healey

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by IT Daly -

Hi

In a course , some of the module was not registering the course completion  , Then I marked it manually. Now the problems is  user cant generate the certificate . Please see the grades I marked for the particular student and suggest me some solutions

Attachment 1.JPG
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Dave Emsley -

If an assignment is marked by the teacher and has a threshold for completion, as Mary suggests, won't that achieve the same result?


Dave Emsley

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In reply to Dave Emsley

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Aylwin Cal -

For assignments, yes.  The teacher can give a grade and the activity will be marked as completed.  But what about activities where you can't give a grade?  For example, completing a survey or a feedback form.  Apparently, there are also some issues with SCORM as posted by some others.  We don't use SCORM so I don't know.  Or how about Chat, Choice, Forum and maybe a few others?  

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In reply to Aylwin Cal

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Ray Morris -

A new feature to do that would certaily be helpful at times. 

We had a case the other day where a SCORM activity didn't complete correctly and we would have liked to be able to manually mark it complete.  If you submit a feature request on the tracker I would vote for it.

 

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In reply to Ray Morris

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Aylwin Cal -

Done: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-37361

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In reply to Aylwin Cal

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Nano A -

Agree.  This is somethign that would be very helpful.  We just had an issue with a SCORM file not reporting correctly and we'd like the teacher to have the chance to mark it as completed.

Voted in the tracker.

 

Now, is there any workaround to this.  We need the system to show that the student completed 10 SCORM activities.  So we went to the grader report, turned editing ON, and marked the activities with 100%, thinking that this would mark them as completed, but it doensn't happen.

Does anyone know why?  and how can we do to mark it as completed?

 THANKS!

 

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In reply to Aylwin Cal

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Adam Read -

Thanks for suggesting this feature. I'd also like to see this in a future version.

Adam

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In reply to Adam Read

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Stuart Vaughan-Williams -

Here is another situation where this would be useful.

Consider a course where a topic is only displayed when all the activities in the previous the topic are completed.

(1) Some students have already completed differing amounts of the course in other and previous courses (effectively recognition of prior leaning) or

(2) A continuous enrolment course is being transitioned from paper while students are still activity working in the course.

It would be rather handy to be able to mark these previous activities / topics as complete for individual students, to allow commencement in the appropriate topic.

What think you?

(... or maybe there are other techniques I'm unaware of.)

 

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In reply to Adam Read

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by ben reynolds -

I just voted for this in the tracker.

My situation is a student most both post and reply to a post. If the student only posts, the forum is not complete.  They lose time waiting to be told that they haven't done the reply. Then they lost more time waiting for the editing time to expire. In a case where a student expects to work for three or four hours in one sitting, their time can be totally used doing nothing. But it we had the option to maker complete, we could save at least a little time.

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In reply to ben reynolds

Re: Allow teachers to mark activities as completed

by Nishant Pandya -

Hey guys !! My query is same as this question. Is there any solution for this.

Please have a look LINK.

Thanks,

Nishant

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