I’m a student at a university of technology on Cyprus and I use the moodle just like other students. From the use of this moodle I have discovered some new ways to improve new functions.
The function that interests me is part of the function of messages. At my university we use the function of messages to communicate between as about a subject, so that we are continuously updated for any course.
The moodle platform gives as the opportunity to connect with any account for example: Gmail account, Hotmail etc… so that incoming messages are sent there .To make it clear, if someone sends me a message and I’m not connected to moodle account I can receive it through my email.
So now I want to propose a modification for the domain of messages, about the function which use a popup window to inform the user for new messages.
Existing Function
When a user has new messages a popup window pops up.
The popup window has two options:
1) Go to messages
When the user presses on the link a new window appears, so from then on he can read his messages. (If he has messages from more than one user, then he must to choose the messages that he will read)
2) Ignore
When the user presses on the ignore link the popup window disappears. But when the user logs in again the popup appears, regardless if he had read his messages from his other account.
Suggestion
What I suggest is to create a third option which is “Mark as all read”.
So I have come to this option after I have researched it with quizzes in my university. The results that I have found are very positive and the student think it will be very useful.
Like we have seen different organizations like google, outlook, etc. they have already added something similar.
What does the function do?
When the user presses on the mark as all read link then the unread messages will get transferred from “message” table (Stores all unread messages) to the “message_read” table (Stores all messages that have been read). The user gets transferred to the Homepage! The next time the user logs in, the popup will not appear except if he has new messages.
Why did I choose mark as all read?
The popup window displays the messages that a user has. If he has more than one message then it displays the total of the messages. The user most likely has read the messages from the other account so the mark as all read option will be useful.
If the user observes that the total messages are more than he has read then he will have the option go to messages, where he will read the message that he wants. The next time that he will log in and the popup appears, then he will have the option 3. If the user hasn’t read all his messages but presses on the option 3 then the message are still in his email account.
The “Ignore” option is very important because it forces us to read all the messages and we were always informed. But many times we read the messages from the other account and not from the moodle account and the number of unread messages increases.
So, I believe that this option is a very good idea and it will be very useful. I would really appreciate any feedback for the new opportunity that I propose.
Thanks in advance,
Koulla.