Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

by Roger Ek -
Number of replies: 8

We would like to have a tool that enables students in a course to select one seminar (or exam etc) event from a few numbers of equal seminars provided.

This would require the teacher to set a limit for each event, i e number of seats, so that when the limit is reached, the next student need to select another event.

While this requirement could be solved also in other modules (appointment or attendance probably), I tried to hack a little in the choice module.

Since I am brand new to this, I am not sure of the procedure to follow, but I post my attempt here for anyone to test it. Be aware that I added some fields in the MySQL choice table, but I did not add code for other DB.

To use the new "limit" feature you need to set a limit for the choices. You may also want to turn on the "Allow update" parameter to allow students to change their choice (within the limits of course..).

I included the choice english language file in the zip, should of course be moved to the lang/en folder.

And, consider it a beta...

Roger

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In reply to Roger Ek

Re: Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Sorry I didn't respond earlier, Roger.  blush.gif 

Thanks for the code ... the modification does indeed sound useful ... it's on my list of code to look at.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

by Roger Ek -

Hope you will like it enough to include in the standard version. wink.gif

After some further testing, found missing help information, so I post an updated help file here. Should be placed in ..lang/en/help/choice folder of course.

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In reply to Roger Ek

Re: Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

by Tim Allen -

I think I could possibly use this modification to allow students to make online student-teacher appointments.  I have made it mandatory that every student talk to me once each semester.

In order to do this, further modifications would be necessary, because the current six different time slots are not enough.  These appointments are only 5 minutes long, so over two hours I would need about 24 slots.

Roger and others, do you think it is possible to do this?

Tim.

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In reply to Tim Allen

Re: Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

by Roger Ek -

hmm.... everything is possible.....but, my view is that such extension of this module would change its behaviour and look too much.

Maybe your requirement would be more natural to include in a module already dealing with time appointments, such as the appointment module?

Not sure of the development status of the appointment module, but I guess it would be possible to use most of my added code here (plus some important parts of the basic code!) and merge it into the appointment module.

The effect in the appointment module might then be to allow teachers to set up an appointment time and then allow students to book themselves into those appointments. Number of students to be allowed per appointment would be a limit figure set by the teacher that in your case would be set to one.

Maybe there are already development plans for the appointment module that more or less cover this requirement?

Roger

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In reply to Tim Allen

Re: Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

by Gustav W Delius -
We too have to make appointments to see a large number of students individually. Have you found a convenient way to use Moodle for this? Has the choice module been extended in the way you suggested? Or is some other module suitable?
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In reply to Gustav W Delius

Re: Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
I agree with Roger that this sounds like a good direction for Ben Pirt's "Appointment" module to develop. Haven't heard from him in a while though.

cvs:/contrib/appointment
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In reply to Roger Ek

Re: Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

by Ger Tielemans -

Roger, do you consider to update your choice modification for 1.2? I gave it a try but there was so many changed...

This modification is very useful - especially for those who want a more social constructivistic way also for course logistics:

  • If you want students choose their own thematic groups
  • If you want students do the distribution of more persons-tasks in a group-project, by applying for a more-person task, just by voting in a modified choice menu etc.etc..)
  • Sheduler is not handy enough for that and your modification does not bite the normaluse of the choice modul
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In reply to Ger Tielemans

Re: Use choice to allow students to select a seminar

by Ger Tielemans -

After my third attempt I give up

  • I now call the changed choice module ekchoice
  • I changed in all the files the word choice in ekchoice.
  • Works, I have now two choice modules, the new one I call Limit
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