We have an issue with staff wanting to use Assignment for large (100M-200M ish) video assignments. Our file-size limit is set much lower than that and I am reluctant just to make it arbitrarily big as it acts as a bit of a sanity check for students with huge Word/PDF files etc.
I really need to come up with some sort of alternative. Any thoughts?
Hi Howard,
It all depends on your facility so this may or may not help. I teach in a computer lab and the way I handle large files like that is that I have a classroom server. When students log in, it is via a roving profile so they can use any computer in the lab. Their profile automatically maps a personal folder from the server to their computer as drive Z. They are taught to put all those large files there, arranged in appropriate sub-folders, and I access them there via my admin account. I use a simple Moodle activity in which they tell me when their submission is ready, and I enter the grade there.
HTH,
AL
Al Rachels comments, i have seen over the years done multi times.
if you raise the limits of apache, php, and then in moodle there are multi areas of how to limit stuff being uploaded.
a couple spots in site admin menu. and then in course settings, and then in some activities / resources you can limit file size.
pending on how computers are setup in your school, if students are required to login with there own username/password into the operating system. before logging into moodle, you might be able to map there account to some network drive for a given class.
not sure but you might be able to limit file size at category level as well?
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if you can get across to teachers to actually set file size limits. on student uploads. then as projects demand they will adjust things. vs leaving it wide open to max possible file size.
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adding to Al rachels comments of a class server can be nice if possible. mnet, LTI provider, and going with different authentication / enrolment. between class server and rest of school. so everything syncs up easily.
some programming classes, 3D software classes, video classes, etc... can get some pretty strange file types and different sizes clear through the entire class (start to finish). personally i like all mystuff together. vs jumping through hoops of various network drives. it seemed like a hassle. and i always remember other students including myself from time to time. forgetting what needed to be done. and how to get it, from one place to the other. if you can keep files in moodle with the course. it more likely make it easier. not always but *shrugs* and on one note.... many times network drives not appearing one minute and gone the next minute... it was enough to cause class to waste a bunch of time. trying to deal with a mapped network drive to load up in windows or linux or the like.
I know how to make the limit bigger, but that isn't what I was asking. If we do, we know it will be abused. There is no chance whatever that staff will set lower limits.
Howard, are you looking for something that collects everything in a single spot. to make it easier to manage overall. such as rapidshare, mediafire, and like websites? and you are looking for something you can install along side moodle and/or integrates with moodle so you can have a set of scripts "admin / system scripts" that checks for illegal uploads, etc...? at same time give some options of limits and like per student, per class / course?
I'm looking for some ideas around what other people do, so that we can decide how to progress with these issues.
Hi Howard,
Using Moodle to manage large numbers of large files will put a higher than reasonable load on your server(s) and can quickly clog up or reach memory limits (PHP isn't designed to serve large files).
Quickest, dirtiest, cheapest solution: Students could open Youtube accounts, upload their videos there, and tag them as "unlisted" that means that they won't show up in web searches or youtube searches; you can only view them if you have exact URL... ...they submit/embed the video URL in the assignment.
If this is likely to be an ongoing requirement, you could look into installing a dedicated free and open source media publishing platform like http://www.mediagoblin.org/ You might be able to use SSO to make life easier or even integrate it with Moodle.
I hope this helps!
Yes, as Matt said, YouTube unlisted works well.
To make your job easier, just install Poodll plugins and everything will be done for you by Justin
Hi Howard,
we developed a streaming video service for this situation:
You can upload the video to our streaming server in HQ via FTP. The videos are optimized for different devices, incl. smartphones.
In Moodle you will have a video repository with access to the videos on streaming server and a filter starting the videos in a video player.
The students gets access to the videos in optimal quality related to device and bandwidth but can change the video quality similar to youtube features. The access top the videos is protected. It will be possible only from Moodle to see the videos.
There i s a German demo course at http://test.moodle2.de/course/view.php?id=21 Login with name: train and password: trainer.
Ralf
Howard
The YouTube assignment submission type was written exactly for this situation. I made it for a christian organisation that wanted their members to record themselves preaching/speaking for approx. 1 hour.
That would be a fairly good out of the box solution.
Howard
The YouTube assignment submission type was written exactly for this situation. I made it for a christian organisation that wanted their members to record themselves preaching/speaking for approx. 1 hour.
That would be a fairly good out of the box solution.
