Controlling the way students order forum posts

Controlling the way students order forum posts

by Dave Stone -
Number of replies: 8

Moodle v2.5

Each year group at our school has a homework forum. Teachers post homework. Students are read only.

Each subject has its own thread. Each reply is new homework. Title is due date.

The only thing that is messing up this system is that:

1) The default order is oldest first. I want Moodle to force newest homework to the top by default.

2) Students can change the sorting and choose something which makes it difficult for them to find newest homework.
    I want the students ability to sort posts to be disabled.

Any help appreciated.

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: Controlling the way students order forum posts

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

I think forum topics are arranged by most recent post to oldest post.

Yes, I know what you mean about fixing the order.  For example, in Blackboard the order is always how I add the topic, so Moodle caught me by surprise.  But I have come to like Moodle's method, but I do understand that it would also be nice to fix the topic order.  In the latest Moodle one can "pin" a topic to keep it at the top, which I really think is great.  But "pinning" multiple topics does not maintain their order from what I can see.  So it might be a nice feature to provide "Maintain Topic Order" as an option when creating the forum.  What do you think?  Let's see what others say.  We can always add this as a feature request.

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: Controlling the way students order forum posts

by Dave Stone -

I've now exhausted all the places in the settings and concluded there is no control over this feature in the version we're using (v2.5).

I don't have access to the server, so hacking the php is also not possible.

So I just put a notice above the homework forums that if students claim not to be able to find homework because they chose a stupid sort order, then they will just get a detention for being wilfully obtuse.

What would be better is a proper system in Moodle v2.5 for posting simple homework notices and attaching relevant files.
The fact that I have to try to adapt forums for this purpose is ridiculous.

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: Controlling the way students order forum posts

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

I think a database activity would be much better for posting homework assignments. With the built in template system, some of the info could be added automatically based just on who was making the entry, such as who made the assignment and when it was posted or modified. The built in search would make it easy to find stuff and the search page also lets you pick which field to sort by. By the way, with the database it is very easy to allow for attaching relevant files. Also, there is a PoodLL database field available which would even allow adding a picture, whiteboard, audio or even video tips, tricks, warnings, or directions for the homework.

You could even go a step further and make another database activity into which the students do/upload their homework. For this one you would want to set "approved by default" to "no" so students could not see each others homework.

There was a very simple two field note taking preset released some time ago that probably could be easily adapted into a nice homework database activity. There is also an Educator Recipes preset that could be adapted/modified that shows the potential possibilities when using the database activity for something like this.

Two really nice things about doing homework this way:

  1.  You do not need access to the server.
  2. It works with every version of Moodle.

Let me know if you would like some help creating a preset. It's one of those things I keep meaning to develop, but I've kept putting it off due to working on other projects. (Right now I am developing a random feedback widget for Generico/Poodll3 filters.)

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Controlling the way students order forum posts

by Dave Stone -


Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take another look at the database module.

One thing I remember from trying it before was that it was as clunky and ugly as hell.

The other thing is that I am not using student course enrolment at all. The courses are guest only.
I'm not sure if the database module would work with guest permissions - most of the modules don't.

I'll take a look next time I get a holiday, anyway.

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: Controlling the way students order forum posts

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

"One thing I remember from trying it before was that it was as clunky and ugly as hell."

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I used to think it was "clunky and ugly" too, until I learned how to customize the layout and look using the List, Single, Advanced Search, and Add templates as well as the CSS template.

The other thing is that I am not using student course enrolment at all. The courses are guest only.
I'm not sure if the database module would work with guest permissions - most of the modules don't.

I just checked, if the course permits guests, they can view a database activity.  In fact in your case, this would be an advantage as you probably will not have to worry about making sure students cannot add an entry...only teachers.

Here is a work in progress List view. Colors are just temporary to make sure I was adapting some CSS correctly.


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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Controlling the way students order forum posts

by Dave Stone -

Sorry, I never got around to thanking you for your reply. Thanks!


Am I correct in saying that the file attachment process isn't as nice as the forum attachments though?

You have to create a field for each individual file uploaded, don't you, rather than just dragging/dropping  bunch?

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In reply to Dave Stone

Re: Controlling the way students order forum posts

by Russell Waldron -

Moodle has a Calendar which automatically displays Events, Assignment dates and Quiz dates in sequence. 

To exploit this staff could

  • Create a Group Event for each homework task.
  • Create an Assignment or Quiz for each homework task. 

Students can subscribe to a Calendar using their mail/calendar software or Gmail. (This possibly encourages more attention to task-scheduling than a Forum can provide.)

Staff will be able to get some clue about student load in the calendar, as it will be obvious when several deadlines coincide.

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In reply to Russell Waldron

Re: Controlling the way students order forum posts

by Dave Stone -

Thanks for your suggestion Russell.

I've tried the assignment and calendar route. I'm sure it suits some situations, but culturally I just couldn't make it work in our school.

The teachers just would not do what I asked/told them to do in order for the system to work.

Eg. something simple like naming assignments/events: [class] [subject] [teacher initials]

When you have items going into children's calendar and upcoming events feed that are just called 'homework' with no clue who wrote it or from which course it came, or someone posting a paragraph of instructions in the title field instead of the body, you just give up the will to live after a while.

Same with enrollment. We use LDAP for login, and there is no way on earth that I could convince the techs to put all the cohort, group and enrollment information into the list. I tried my best using CSV uploads, but the feature just isn't powerful enough in V2.5. And again, trying to get the children and teachers to manage their own course subscriptions was like herding cats - stubborn, horrible cats that want to make your life a misery, even though it's not your fault that management decided that everyone should post mostly redundant homework notices just because a handful of children can't be bothered to keep themselves organised and use their planners properly.

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