I've found the tracker link: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-3714
I am aware that Martin Dougiamas has changed the way in which we present the roadmap - this is something out of my control, but perhaps Martin can comment in the forums on these changes to the roadmap.
Nothing so far back on this.
RANDOM STORY ABOUT SOFTWARE. Recently I paid for a professional upgrade to Evernote purely because of the new presentation mode. It has the potential to be great. Type a note, insert pictures, click Present and it will then break it up into slides. The time to create a presentation is then reduced to 1/4 of the normal Powerpoint/LibreOffice/Keynote/Prezi options. But there is ONE BIG problem. You can have ANY FONT SIZE you want in the presentation, Provided it is 17 point. Too small. By far.
I thought, OK, I'll see what's in the forums. Here is what I got back by an Evernote evangelist, who has 7000 posts under his belt, not paid by Evernote, just a pleb:
Evernote really don't (usually) comment on features that may or may not be in development. Until they identify a possible feature they can't know whether it's technically feasible or not - unless it was a completely dumb*ss suggestion, which yours isn't. My only point is that they don't comment. At all. And future development is always under wraps until they're ready for it to be released, like Apple and every other software design house I can think of. Same goes for Ford and car manufacturers, Nikon and camera companies...
I asked to see if Evernote was going to see about fixing the font size or not. In a forum filled with Evernote staff. "We will not tell you if we are going to think about something or not think about it" Sucks. So I move on to something else, and just count my pro subscription a bad deal.
MY CURRENT FEELINGS. Existentially, Moodle.org, MoodleINC, for me, has changed over the last little while. Imperceptably. I read this on the home page:
The Moodle project
Learn more about the Moodle project and our open, collaborative partnerships.
I do not feel now that I benefit from 'Openess' and I see less results of 'collaborative partnerships'. In the interests of full disclosure, I should add a little more.
THE RECENT CATALYST FOR ALL THIS. I have just come back from a wonderful roadtrip to Djakarta and Bandung there I did three Moodle related sessions at three Universities/Colleges. And I am now shortly to teach a course where we use a new system to deliver part of it (System A below).
So this has thrown up three contacts with other LMS's:
- System A: One that is totally proprietary. Has focused on getting course content creation really really sharp. I could create a (Moodle) Lesson like entity with NO help apart from a 5 minute video, but looking like it was delivered with a cool theme like Essential.
In the odd serendipity of life I am co-teaching a course on Literacy and Numeracy soon. Out students will be using this system. Getting in, creating accounts, tracking progress is superb. - System X: at workshop three in Indonesia a guy said "I use X and it is easier than Moodle in every respect except it does not have cloze questions" Again, superb interface, drag and drop where it counts. Drag and drop to insert images, upload video. Paid service, but 2GIG and several courses for free for teachers - so this guy (in a Moodle institution) was using system X with his classes.
When I looked around a little on the site for system X they had a statement "If we get a request for a feature that will benefit 80% of our users, we will provide it". - System Z: I was shown how quick basic things are. Ie not the bells and whistles activities, the core activities like marking, uploading, student management, collaborative work . . . ie the real constructivist stuff that is student centred.
- "Forum post is 'required': here is a list of all the people NOT finished - email them a reminder"
- "Here is your assignment, join a group and go for it".
- "Log in and there are your notices in a nice visible place"
- "Here is your list of course tags you can use for each post"
- "Here is the way you can communicate privately with individuals"
- "Here is the ONE CLICK archive of all student related material for records purposes"
And this person was saying they listened to users. And that they worked from functionality to implementation. People can ask for a feature. When what they really need is a specific functionality that could be provided by any number of different features, and there seems active engagement with users on this with system Z.
These guys have created workflows that help with the common processes teachers actually do and helped make them (ie the workflows) complete.
In comparison, Moodle is still talking about issues that impact on workflows without addressing the issues. So an average teacher has to do a lot of clicks to do basic things. Upload images. Track students. Manage group work. Have notices in a nice place. etc. Workflows in Moodle remain a weakness.
NEW CLIENTS I WORRY ABOUT. It is recently in workshops in Saudi Arabia, Bandung and Auckland I see a new group of people who do not any more need to be convinced that blended learning is worth the effort. I have to say "Sorry, in Moodle you can't click and drag a video to put it on your site, you need to change the extension to FLV and . . . " "and no, embedding video is complicated by having to add a label . . . " "Sorry, if you are making a post you can't click and drag and image . . ." "Sorry, there is no way to communicate individually with students except messages . . ." "Sorry, the course sizes reporting is only in this specific distribution . . ." "Sorry, Moodle doesn't want you to ever print out quizzes . . . " etc. And it is increasingly not good.
Much more than I meant to post. For not the first time since Moodle 2.6 hit the shelves, I am seriously wondering if there is an option that will better suit the needs of the classroom teacher than Moodle. Initially this just started with frustration at the basics, now it has move a little to frustration with no HOPE the basics will be addressed.
As I flew back from Djakarta I had a stopover in Sydney and wrote a few pages in the docs: https://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Curated_list
Basically for a number of years I have specialised in trying to find workarounds for the basic needs I outline above. I wanted to build a list of key things as I could estimate would benefit (say) 80% of users, and find the work arounds and plugins to help. And what I saw several of my client organisations could benefit from. It's suddenly escalated - unless some of these are fixed, I will see people even in my close working associates migrate to their own places (Like system X mentioned above) Compared to Moodle, if you are sorted and organised with your design - it is SO QUICK to create, and a fair bit easier to manage students.
I find ELIS, JOULE, MIS and TOTARA have some of these funtionalities built in with mods and fixes.
Relationships between tracker - developer - forums - users - partners is sometimes a bit fraught (like Bob has mentioned: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=180865#p789406 and other discussions you will know about) and things are not ALL bad. It's just that in my small ambit of the world, there has been a shift in things, and it is starting to majorly affect day to day life with people and Moodle.
NON-CONCLUSION All this started with a complaint about a Moodle Roadmap that was becoming too sparse and unhelpful for me, and no-one responding. And if anyone actually reads this, I hope your brain cells are not too addled.
-Derek
And for the sake of completeness, I have rambled a bit before on this issue, but read at your peril:
And there is this mega discussion: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=180865 "One person's trivial is another man's critical?"