Moodle in English: Students cannot track read posts

Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Rick Jerz - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 2:33 AM

I am testing the LMS called "Canvas," and I saw a feature that made me wonder about Moodle.

In the Canvas forums, people are able to mark which specific posts they have read or not read. They do this by clicking a little circle (see graphic). This is similar to what I see in Mac Mail (see second graphic). This made me wonder how students using moodle keep track of what they have read or not read. As far as I know, Moodle doesn't do this. But am I missing something?

I do know that Moodle changes the color of the subject line for posts that are still within the author's editing time.

I wonder if this "marking" of read posts has ever been discussed, and if there might be a Feature Request for it in the Moodle Tracker system.

As the instructor, I can keep track of what I have read by the way I grade each post.

Incidentally, Moodle seems to be the only LMS (among Blackboard, Desire2Learn, and Canvas) that provides the instructor the ability to grade forum posts "in context," what I find to be an extremely powerful feature.

Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Tim Hunt - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 5:21 AM

This was recently added to ForumNG (https://moodle.org/plugins/view/mod_forumng). However, I am a bit sceptical. I think automatic mark-as-read is what you want 99% of the time.

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Rick Jerz - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 9:26 AM

Thanks for your reply, Tim. At this point in time, I don't think that I want to go the ForumNG route because I am not sure about its affect on a simple moodle installation.

Yes, I agree, most of the time one would want automatic mark-as-read, but Moodle doesn't do this right now, does it? Also, how would software know if one has really read a post. Are you suggesting that the act of opening a topic would mark every post as read?

Now that I think about it, maybe a more useful feature would be the ability to "flag" a post, just like students can flag quiz questions. What do you think about this?

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Just H - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 10:27 AM

Putting on my "user" hat I see no positives in having to physically indicate I have read a post ... just more clicks required for little/no gain.

The system showing me there are new posts in a thread (as is the case now in Moodle if enabled) is excellent but ... it would be nice if the individual new posts in a long thread are "highlighted" in some way especially if your individual settings is to view forum posts nested e.g. if I remember correctly, in Drupal a post is annotated as "New" in red at the bottom right of a post.

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Andrew Nicols - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 11:08 AM

They already are. If you look on moodle.org, you will see that these have been highlighted in yellow as I recall. Arguably we can improve the way that this is indicated but it is already indicated in some fashion.

Andrew

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Just H - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 11:50 AM

Ooooooops ... all these years on here and I never even noticed!

Very subtle (particularly if your monitor's colour isn't too good); arguably too subtle but nothing a CSS tweak couldn't fix. Can't say I've actually lost sleep over it, nor had more than a passing thought about it before this thread, but it's always a good day when you learnt something "new"

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Rick Jerz - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 9:28 PM

Andrew, thanks for your ideas. At this point I cannot agree with you about color showing new posts. I am looking at "your" new post right here on moodle.org, and I don't see it as yellow. Here's a screen shot of what I see (below).

But if you are correct, that it is a different color, then I should be able to modify the color (via CSS) in order to make new posts be more visible, right? I looked for the CSS for background color, and could not find it. Any suggestions? Maybe Mary can help.

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Andrew Nicols - Thursday, April 30, 2015, 10:16 AM

Hi Rick,

Is there a chance that the notification for the new forum post has already been sent? When Moodle sends forum notifications, it also marks those posts as read.

Andrew

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Andrew Nicols - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 11:07 AM

Hi Rick,

At present this is not possible in Moodle. There have been a couple of requests to change the current behaviour, but without much rationale or discussion so far (MDL-37669).

An issue has also been opened to add flagging. This has been discussed in MDL-5605, and MDL-39707, along with flags to hide messages, and to mark them as sticky. These are all features I would like to include in the forum. For the most part these are fairly easy to include (well, except for hiding - that's much harder), but they need clearer rationales, use-cases, and UI mockups in order to proceed much further at this stage.

Hope this helps,

Andrew

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Rick Jerz - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 9:39 PM

Andrew, thanks again for your feedback.

I am trying to take the perspective of a student who likes to read posts regularly. He/she goes into a forum on Monday, reads what is there, maybe makes a reply or two. Then, on Wednesday, returns to the forum's topic. How does this student know what they have already read? Yes, they can see that there might be 4 new posts, but I don't see these new posts being highlighted (see my earlier post to you about color.) Which posts are new? Which posts has the student already read? Which posts were of most interest to the student (i.e., "flagged"), maybe worthy of a follow-up post.

As the instructor, if I think that I want to return to a post and maybe make a comment, I will leave it ungraded. This is how I am "flagging" a student's post. If the "grading" feature was absent in Moodle (as it is in other competing products), I would have a hard time knowing what I have already read.

Incidentally (I have probably said this elsewhere), Moodle's ability to grade posts in context is a remarkably powerful feature that does not exist in other products. Certainly keep this feature forever. Whoever created this feature really was a good thinker!

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Just H - Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 10:21 PM

Problem being, I assume, it's theme dependant...too subtle IMHO.

Pro

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Re: Students cannot track read posts - new feature?

by Rick Jerz - Wednesday, April 29, 2015, 11:16 PM

Okay everyone, I was able to do some testing and I think that I now understand what is happening.

First, yes, I do see the heading in "yellow" for new posts. For this to show, in the user's profile, the setting for "Forum tracking" must be set to "Yes". I also think that when one creates a Forum, "Read tracking" has to be set to "Optional", or "Forced." Then this works.

I too have never really realized what is going on (after all these years). I always thought the yellow highlight meant that the posts was less than 30 minutes old, and might still be edited by the author.

Well, I am very glad that I asked about this, and very glad that all of you were able to help.

Thanks much.

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