Moodle in English

It seems you are proposing to almost entirely get rid of the admin block, which works well, while leaving the Navigation block, which has never worked well, almost unchanged.

Can you explain in a couple of paragraphs why you think that is a sensible approach?

Before you do that, could we also have a couple of paragraphs (or some bullet points) on what 'problems' you are trying to 'solve'?

What evidence have you looked at to identify these issues. (I am guessing tracker issues, to start with, but is there anything on top of that?)

I just failed to find My Private files as a student. (Why is it not in the user menu?)

Your mock-up is not complete enough for me to see what you intend to do to setting up a quiz (or any other activity). Obviously I would like to know about that.

Simiarly, where do I enrol users in a course, assign roles, check permissions, etc?

I like it...it's my kind of Moodle, although I don't think you have convinced Tim! Lol

Thanks Adrian,

The mockup does look nice. As I mentioned on the dev chat, may be we should consider making the list of links on the profile page pluggable. A couple of examples where potentional plugins might want to add links are:-
# My comments (Displays a list of comments you have made)
# My feeds (Assume something like Igoogle)

Also are there any plans of improving the backend (apis and call backs) for navigation in this project or is it limited to UI changes only ?

Overnight, Ankit made a comment in Moodle developer's chat (https://moodle.org/local/chatlogs/index.php?conversationid=16914 for those wo can see it)

Ankit Agarwal: Though I have a question
Ankit Agarwal: Will plugins be allowed to add links to this page - https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/WY1V3HF9D#/screens/50492466?maintainScrollPosition=false ?
Ankit Agarwal: or is it completely hard coded ?
Adrian Greeve: The user profile page?
Ankit Agarwal: Yeah
Ankit Agarwal: Things like "My blog" etc
Adrian Greeve: At the moment it is hard coded. What sort of things do you envision being added to that page from a plugin?
Frédéric Massart: Ankit, comment on the forum!
Ankit Agarwal: Sort of "My x" stuff. For example say there are more activities like "forum" etc ?
Adrian Greeve: Yeah, I can see that being useful. Though such additions would have to gain approval by my superiors.

This is a valid point, and if you need more specific examples:

• The Open University does not use the standard Moodle forum at all. We use ForumNG instead. Therefore, we should be able to hide all mentions of Forum everywhere (e.g. by configuring capabilities) and show ForumNG in its place.
  
• Similarly, we use OU blog in place of the standard Moodle blog.

Remember that the M in Moodle stands for Modular.

Just for the record, there were two previous threads about this work. The links are:

• https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=233520
• https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=261224

One way to get a handle on what real problems users have would be to skip read through a lot of tracker issues, e.g. a query like https://tracker.moodle.org/issues/?jql=project%20%3D%20MDL%20AND%20%28resolution%20%3D%20Unresolved%20OR%20resolution%20%3D%20Deferred%29%20AND%20component%20IN%20%28Navigation%2C%20Usability%29%20AND%20updatedDate%20%3E%20-500d . However, that is rather a long list, so it won't be much fun. (You can probably improve that query.)

As commented in the previous thread and remains unresponded to:

We might need to come up with an alternative standard metaphor for those modules to use for navigation between pieces of functionality (something like the old 'tabs' in 1.x).

I think this is what is concerning Tim and I agree its a problem. We can't proceed without a solution for this. Find a few add-ons and consider how these 'administration' links would be replaced, in a consistent way.

I agree with Tim that a main issue is the Navigation block, not Admin. It is clunky and vastly lacking in customization.

Looking at the mockup, the first thing I notice is that the user pull down menu in the upper right has some select items on it, but others items are only to be found on the dashboard. What is the rationale for this?

I ask because by far the greatest desire from Student role is 1) to get to their courses immediately and 2) see in one list all the collected activity or due items they need to work on such as Assignments & Quizzes etc.

Related to this, by far the most common complaints I hear from Teachers is they want 1) to see the list of courses they are teaching and 2) to have complete control over the ordering of that list, with the ability to prioritize current courses and hide past courses or shuffle them off to another screen.

Users spend almost no time in their profiles or messages or private files or badges, etc. They spend almost all their time in courses.  So getting into the courses easily should be the priority.  (That's a vast generalisation, obviously, but is my experience across many sites in different industries over the last few years.)

I like the dashboard idea a lot - I encourage you to build it out more. I've thought for years that having strong user dashboard is a key lack in Moodle. But it needs to be much more functional than the My home page which is so limited.

The best use of a dashboard I have seen in an LMS was in Sakai (2.x series).  It has (or had when I worked with it)  a nice user dashboard: it was organized as a screen of placeholders for widgets, so users could easily add or hide/drop any features they wanted to the dashboard, whatever sets of roles they might have had in various courses.

As admin I could make dashboard templates and assign them to users, too. So, teachers or members of one department could get different default dashboard look than students or other departments, etc. While it was very user customisable, widgets could be controlled live by admins too: so I could turn a particular widget on or off for users of a particular named template.

The dashboard was front and center when you logged in but left room for site news and course lists. And it was always just a single click away no matter where you happened to be be on the site or in a course. 

Randy

Thanks everyone for participating in this discussion.

While the points raised will need to be (and will be) answered, it is important for us that you observe the navigation structure exposed in the mockup. As Adrian pointed out, our main (and only) focus was to improve the navigation in the user context. And we need you to tell us if we are doing it wrong.

The navigation in categories, courses or modules has not been looked at (yet) because it was decided internally to split this massive work in two consecutive projects. So while all your comments about courses and modules navigation will be useful at some point, they are not answering our current questions.

The questions with regards to developers API for content injection, etc... will be answered later but rest re-assured that we do not intend to remove functionality, we want to make Moodle a better, easier and even more enjoyable place for students and teachers.

If you could follow the different steps that Adrian enumerated in the first post, and tell us how your experience was improved, equalled or diminished compared to the Moodle that you use everyday that would be very helpful to us.

Thank you!
Fred

Hi Adrian,

Its great that navigation is getting some focus but I have pretty well given up on the Navigation / Admin blocks for students and want to get to a point where we can disable them on our site (for students).

We are starting to consider navigation in three areas:

1. Site (My Courses Front Page, My Home,  persistent My Courses Drop Down)
   
2. Course (Dropdown replicating activities block and some other things like participants)
   
3. User (like 2.8 put links under profile but extend this to include recent posts, blogs, messaging)

You can see what we are doing here:

Our theme is available for download: https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=theme_bcu

If all goes to plan and students seem happy we will not be using these blocks in come August.

Blocks we actually actually added were these:

https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=set&id=68

They work really nicely, better presentation, no spilling down the page (as they scroll), on site pages (My Home) they give an overview of "whats happening" on your course.

Hope that is of some use...

Hi Adrian,

Ok....

As a student:

1. Took time.
   
2. Wanted to use forum search.
   
3. Ok.
   
4. Looked in course first.
   
5. Should be able to find user outside of course.
   

As an administrator:

1. Extremely difficult without Admin block working.
   
2. Ok.
   
3. Could not accomplish.
   
4. Could not accomplish.  No access to calendar.
   

I agree with Tim about the 'admin block', really stupid to remove it.  Actually need a 'control panel' page too.  I think that in reality that:

• The breadcrumb should be fixed such that every element is clickable and goes to where it says it represents.
  
• Some sort of Moodle version of the MS Office ribbon for desktop users, as long as no patents are infringed.
  
• Less clutter and duplication, only put on the screen what is really relevant to that page.
  
• Clearer access to own stuff, improve on the 'My Home' such that becomes a personalised collection of everything that the user interacts with, so grades (rather than the drop down menu), forum posts like a twitter feed etc.

I've been playing around for a short time on an open source install of 'Canvas' and it does have less clutter and more focus.  But it struck me that you need to learn the 'Canvas' way of doing things workflow wise, a bit like working with Maven for software development.  So Moodle needs to improve by only presenting what is needed 'once' but not take away the ability to work the way you want to.  Canvas does provide help though in relevant areas without needing to click on the question mark.  Moodle should do the same but have different levels of visibility: beginner, intermediate, advanced etc. such that the amount of help reduces.

Cheers,

Gareth

It's great to see the issue of navigation getting some more love and attention, thanks for sharing this work Adrian!

I think it is critical (especially being almost 2015) to consider the presentation of any changes in the navigation system on a range of screen sizes. Mobile access is extremely common with my university students, and I find panel-based navigation on smaller screens particularly challenging.

In general, panel-based navigation between courses is more reasonable since students are less likely to do so frequently, but something I still try to avoid. I like the idea of the Dashboard as shown in the mockups. When it comes to navigation within course elements (not the focus yet I know) then panel-based navigation becomes much more problematic esp. on smaller screens.

Based on my own customization (i.e. hacks) work on Moodle, incorporating course element navigation in a menu system is quite beneficial for students on a wide variety of screen sizes, as shown in the previous example provided by Jez. Here is another example, a Moodle course of mine using a menu system for navigation, which is also multi-device friendly: http://iy103-w14.hibbittsdesign.com/

Hope the above is of help. Thanks very much,
Paul

As a student

1. Fine.  Twigged that the dashboard was likely to lead to this.
2. Tedious.  Visited the course site and then assumed I could just click on the forum link or use the search.  3 clicks from the course main page...
3. Straightforward.  Edited my profile.
4. Fine.  Used drop-down menu in top-right hand corner.
5. Tedious.  Had to look un Anne specifically and then click the message link.  Expected to have a block to message course mates on my dashboard.

As an Administrator

1. Gave up - first access to course was easy.  Couldn't locate first access to the site.
2. Straightforward
3. Straightforward
4. I couldn't find this

In summary.  As a student, things were fairly easy.  I didn't like having to locate an individual 'manually' - given that there's a dashboard, could a AJAX-style search facility be built in?

Sorry for going OT... finally ... as requested

As a student:

1) took a while, maybe better if it was persistent in navigation not on my home page

2) pita in that mockup as I had to go through participants, usually (as a student) I would click through names in forum posts. I dont think students use the participants list much.

3) ok, that was clear

4) great addition, having one page for grades is something we want

5) nicer button, liked the popup, it is an improvement

As Admin

1) gave up

2) went through participants list in course

3) liked the links to the outline report etc

4) easy to find under admins profile