Teaching with Moodle

This is not possible in standard Moodle, and your MoodleCloud site does't allow you to install plugins. (There is a journal module which goes part of the way to doing what you want but it is a contributed plugin, not standard.)

You can set up several assignments as online text assignments -these are assessable and can have a word count. Of the workarounds, I suggest this one might best fit your needs. See the documentation on Assignment. If you enable the advanced feature of Portfolios then students can download these to an external space such as Google drive or simply as a file download, html website etc.

Alternatively you can use a forum which also has a wordcount and can be rated by the teacher,

Both these options have the time the student did the work.

You can give them individual wikis which they can add to a bit like a blog -but these cannot easily be graded.

Hello,

You could get quite a few of your objectives with the database activity. There is a simple journal for each week database preset in Moodle.net that is very simple but might give you an idea or two.  

Here's what I can think of having worked with that simpler one. These are brainstorms from what I know.  

1. I want each entry to be word count limited. 

• --Not possible as far as I know. (There is a word count plug in for Atto that would allow students to see their word counts after/during their answering. No link to the database module as far as I know. Also not in MoodleCloud)
  

2. I want each entry to be accessible (as an option). 

• -- If by accessible you mean for other students to see it, you can change the settings on the edit settings page so that other students can see.
  

• The one I used had the following entries to make it so that no other students could see another student's entries

  Entries before viewing: 50
  Maximum entries: 16
  Required entries:  16
• To make the entries accessible to other students changes would be:
  • Entries before viewing: either 0 or 1
  • Approval required: Yes (will prevent other students viewing before teacher says it meets criteria) 
• If you do not want students to rate, view ratings, comment, view comments, you will need to change the permissions in the database... once you have made one like this, you can import from one course to another.

3. I want quiz results to appear in the journal.

• -- not possible as far as I know, though if you are just talking grades, the students could copy and paste their info from the quiz when they check their scores. If you wanted all feedback and answers, I wouldn't even try.

4. I want them to be able to download the Journal after they have finished with the whole course and be able to use this as credible evidence of what they have gained from doing the online course. (nice format would be nice!) 

• Teachers can download all entries into spreadsheet.
• Students cannot download but they can copy their entries off the course page and paste into a Word document which may be saved.

5. I would like each entry to be date time stamped when last edited.

• Time added and Time modified can be added to the templates in the Database. I believe the Time modified will show the last time modified, but I haven't used this in a while so may be mistaken.

6. I would like editing of each entry to be closed off when (and if) an assessment has been made.

• This can be done.  Settings:
  • Approval required: Yes
  • Allow editing of approved entries: No

7. My learning objective is for this Journal be reflective and evidence of curiosity sparked by the topics and student perceptions recorded before and after completing each topic.

• Should be evident in the database as the entries can be searched for single student and all displayed together so that the instructor or student can see their growth.
• Can use scales for ratings which can also show evidence of growth if created well.