Hi Folks,
I have an instance of students insisting they have logged onto Moodle with no record of that activity being recorded in site logs.
Are there circumstances where an instance of logging into and using the site would end up with no record of the activity?
We're using the Email-based self-registration with admin confirmation for authentication. There are currently no bugs reported for this plugin.
It's an apache & mysql setup but I don't have access to apache logs.
Cheers, Sam.
They could be lying.
Hi Mary *waving*
Of course they could. Or mistaken or not very bright
I'm interested in understanding where (if any) the failures are likely/unlikely to be so I have something to report back to those who's knee jerk reaction is "Moodle's broken".
If the people running the courses loose faith in the stability and accuracy of the platform then we have a morale problem.
On the other hand if the stability and accuracy of the platform is in question then we have a student expectation management problem.
And on the other other hand, if failure to log activity is vanishingly unlikely then staff can tell students to pull their fingers out with confidence.
Perhaps I should have said all of that upfront. Oh well.
Cheers, Sam.
Sam,
Here's some thoughts. You know the student name, username and id # in the moodle system, right? So, you can do a search through the logs for occasions where that person has logged on and you should also be able to identify the IP address (I think). You can ask the server administrator to send you the combined Apache log that covers the dates of access (should be fairly easy) by email and then you can establish to your satisfaction occasions where moodle is logging access from this person cross linked to the recorded log item in the Apache log file. Having done this you know with certainty that when Apache logs a hit from the IP address it is also getting recorded in the Moodle activity log. Then you can look through the Apache log for access from the IP address through the claimed period of moodle access -- it won't be there.
So you can confirm that Moodle is logging all access without exception (since you've cross checked examples with the Apache log) and therefore a missing access from the Moodle log means that it didn't happen.
In my 10 years of managing Moodle sites I've found that the access logging is totally reliable and is not subject to error.
Perhaps showing the user and Teacher of the course the instances of course access that have been recorded in the log can throw light on where the access did not happen.
Hope some of this helps
Mark
Hi Mark,
That's very useful thanks. I'll take your 10 years of experience of Moodle over my users first one.
Cheers, Sam.