Moodle Tip: "Time spent" as an activity completion condition

Moodle Tip: "Time spent" as an activity completion condition

by Mary Cooch -
Number of replies: 6
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

This is a 'follow up' tip from a recent post about Time-based activities where we discussed using the "prerequisite" feature of the Lesson activity to specify the length of time a student must spend on a task. Here is not the place to debate the pedagogical soundness of that requirement, suffice to say that the request does crop up on regular occasions  on the forums. Lesson guru Jean-Michel Védrine has improved Moodle's Lesson, such that from Moodle 2.9 (out in May) teachers will be able to set "time spent" as a completion condition for a Lesson. What does this mean in practice?

The School demo site Staffroom course has an example lesson introducing Dyslexia to teachers and teaching assistants. It contains a number of videos, the first one 45 minutes in length, along with questions about the videos and also a variety of texts:

Lesson page example

 With this new feature, you will be able to specify that the student must spend a minimum time in the lesson - 80 minutes here for instance - before the activity is marked complete:

Time spent requirement

So, when a student is presented with (for instance) a video,  if they don't at least stay logged in to the lesson for the required time, they won't get the completion tick/checkmark even though they will finish the lesson. Here's what happens if the student just rushes through the lesson. They receive a message that they completed it in less than the required time and therefore the completion box is not ticked.

End of lesson insufficient time

And here is what happens when they spent the minimum time. Because they have completed the lesson in at least the minimum time, the lesson activity is marked complete:

End of lesson sufficient time

If you're interested, here is the tracker issue: MDL-48715 Coming soon to Moodle 2.9 smile 

Average of ratings: Useful (5)
In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Moodle Tip: "Time spent" as an activity completion condition

by dawn alderson -

OK....watch out am here and not happy again...sorry about that, but I can't ignore what I see, sorry.

Understand the moodle tip.

Issues:  

1. Here is not the place to debate the pedagogical soundness of that requirement, suffice to say that the request does crop up on regular occasions  on the forums.....link to the history surrounding the discussions is be useful for those new to this item, but it also says this forum doesn't do pedagogy-actually to think of it...does it? tongueout

2. The example used there is really old fashioned....re dyslexic child....standing in the dyslexic's shoes.....really, it is a child who has dyslexia....they are a child first and foremost, not a dyslexic child...in other words they are a human being like the rest of us but with a particular need, that of dyslexia.

I don't think this suits Moodle's image as it stands- does it?   

Average of ratings: -
In reply to dawn alderson

Re: Moodle Tip: "Time spent" as an activity completion condition

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hello Dawn. Just to clarify:

  1. Yes, for sure the Teaching with Moodle forum is the place to do pedagogy and I realise my comment was misleading. The purpose of today's tip was to highlight the new feature. I referenced an earlier discussion about Time-based activities in Moodle in which we covered some of the issues concerned with requiring videos to be watched over a specified time. It's fine to continue the discussion; I was simply pointing out that for those who need a time spent condition, it will soon be available.
  2. The screenshot should really be considered in the context of the lesson itself, which contains five videos and which of course emphasises that people are human beings first and that dyslexia "be looked at from a different angle, not as a learning disability but a different learning ability." ( Neil Mackay in Dyslexia: Successful Inclusion in the Secondary School (BDA)).

Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Moodle Tip: "Time spent" as an activity completion condition

by dawn alderson -

Excellent Mary! Thank you for this response, has put a smile on my face smile

OK.  1. fine

2. We still have an issue.  I know that there is a course relating to that topic on moodle.net and or Orange.  And the language used there is not accurate or inclusive either.  (e.g. Dyslexics unite!)  I mean Mary, it is like saying the green man from Mars!  Rather than the men in Mars are green but also have purple hair and orange teeth.....it is about the use of inclusive language Mary.

   Neil Mackay in Dyslexia: Successful Inclusion in the Secondary School (BDA)). Is this an up to date reference?  I mean anything outside 5 years tends to be considered out of date due to a continuous enhancement in policy for practice-to adhere to guidelines including the evolution of related language for a domain, conceptual understanding and so on...

So, I suppose what I am saying is if I am a teacher looking at that blurb in the docs about time spent feature as an activity completion, then I expect those telling me about it to know a bit about CURRENT PRACTICE. 

How about checking those things out Mary? I hope helpful.

Dawn 

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Moodle Tip: "Time spent" as an activity completion condition

by Matt Bury -
Picture of Plugin developers

Thanks for sharing Mary! smile

Does the time spent in the lesson get recorded and reported anywhere? I'm just wondering if rather than setting and recording time on task as a binary condition (to "check the box"), whether teachers can simply observe how long learners are taking to complete lessons.

To me, this seems to be a prerequisite for estimating what a minimum time on task should be (e.g. recording how long most learners take to complete the lesson, variations in reading speed, processing information, and making sense of the learning content) before calculating and setting a minimum time. In other words, gathering time on task data to analyse against learning outcomes to estimate a recommended minimum.

This is a common issue in online learning which usually gets the unsatisfactory answer of "How long is a piece of string?" followed by people citing general averages of reading speeds which may or may not be applicable to a particular cohort of learners or a course. I think it's necessary to get specific data for specific contexts and conditions.

I think it'd also be important to know if learners are spending substantially more or less time on a lesson than originally estimated.

I've hardly used the Lesson activity so please forgive me if I've missed something in the documentation.

Lesson docs: https://docs.moodle.org/28/en/Lesson_module

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Matt Bury

Re: Moodle Tip: "Time spent" as an activity completion condition

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Matt. There isn't anything regarding the time spent completion feature in the documentation yet because this is a new feature for 2.9 and the documentation hasn't been written yet - but I am looking forward to adding it smile Also, I am new to the improvement too and learning as I go along, exploring it. However, the Lesson currently does keep  a record of the time each attempt takes in Lesson administration>Reports>Overview - and when several students have done the lesson you get an "average time taken" (See some old screenshots here -direct link to Lesson overview docs ) which I will update on Monday with newer screenshots of better times.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Moodle Tip: "Time spent" as an activity completion condition

by Riady Santoso -

Hi Mary,

Excellent Moodle improvement. If this conditional activity can be implemented on any other resources / assessments, this can be used to unlock linked resources for a certain period of time.

For example, a student is provided with the resources, the assessment becomes available 3 days after the resources has been read.

I'm wondering whether the time based conditional activity can also be implemented upon student's enrolment time? This will make the provision of resources / activities controllable for individual student. For example, student has been enrolled on 21 March 2015, the first resources is unlocked on the enrolled day, then the successive resources and activities are provided a week later and so on.


Regardless, this time based conditional activities have been very precious for more potential to reate adaptive learning.


regards,

Riady

Average of ratings: -