My Review of Moodle 3.2/3.3 and wish list.

My Review of Moodle 3.2/3.3 and wish list.

by Melissa . -
Number of replies: 3

I just started to really use Moodle to create my courses, and there are somethings that I love with Moodle and some things that are really annoying me.  

Things that should be in the top of the priority list of "there should never be a software bug in this area" are the most complex unintuitive areas of Moodle.

Using Moodle: 3.2

Images, Video, Audio files:

The whole point of using an electronic version of a learning system instead of just using Microsoft word and saving the document is that ability to manage images, videos, and audio files.

I keep having to upload the same image over and over and over again.  When I upload a file, I should be able to easily indicate if I want to save this file at the site level, the category level (department), or the course level.  If I am a student, I should be able to indicate if the file is being stored as a personal file, available in all of my courses, only available for a specific course.

I can't specify that own personal wiki is the repository of choice for images, video, and audio files.  I have already found and uploaded a lot of my files into a personal wiki that is outside of Moodle.  Trying to connect to that ... it should be three lines in the settings (url of wiki, username for wiki, and password for the wiki).  Done.  But right now I have wasted over an hour trying to make a whole new plugin, and then trying to actually get the file picker to see that wiki.

Atto text editor:

If the Atto text editor has features (indent and outlining), those features should work as expected.  I had to switch my editor back to TinyMCE to get this functionality.

Bring back the ability to add topics in the settings.

That is the reason why I am sticking with 3.2 until this feature comes back or course format editors are able to add this feature in their courses.  I add topics by day, and there are 180 days in a school year.  If I decide break up a course by semesters, that means that I have to add or delete 90 topics.  Not going to happen.

Other

I can say a bunch more items, but those would go into the category of wish list items.  Right now Moodle never claims to be able to handle these items, but they would be nice.

1. Ability to autolink (as a Glossary does) of an outside personal wiki installation.  I have already added a majority of vocabulary words to my own personal wiki, and I don't really look forward to having to retype them into Moodle.  Why repeat the same stuff in two different places?

2. For labels, add the ability to indicate if the text should be RTL or LTR text.  I had to change the core code to get this to work.

3. Add templates for the editors where the user can change the text and pictures.  I saw this feature on a different elearning system.  If this core functionality was setup, then teachers could create different page templates that users could install.

4. Ability to mass copy activities.  For example, I have an activity "Touch Typing Lesson 1".  There are 50 lesson in the book, and I want the students to be able to do 1 lesson per day (topic).  That means that I have to copy it 50 times.  I wish I could just say "Copy" -> "Touch Typing Lesson #" -> Auto increment number by 1 -> Add one item per topic.    Then select save.   Something that now takes 20 minutes would take 10 seconds.

5. Ability to easily add repositories for major CMS systems (Druple, Joomla, mediawiki).  

6. Ability to easily add images the way that Mediawiki has for adding images.  

Melissa





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In reply to Melissa .

Re: My Review of Moodle 3.2/3.3 and wish list.

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

HI Melissa (have you thought about changing your name from GamerHeadman by the way? Your choicesmile) Some interesting comments there which I'll leave for more experienced users to respond to but I was interested in a couple of them

  • I keep having to upload the same image again and again - I note you have made a new plugin based on Mediawiki - how is it better than Private files or Recent files? If you upload an image into your Private files you can link to it from other places in the Moodle site. Alternatively, once you have uploaded an image directly (not into Private files) you can retrieve it from Recent files another time you want to use it, so you shouldn't have to upload it again and again.
  • Ability to easily add images  -if you use Atto you can drag and drop images onto the course page or into the editor. (Or are you referring to images on an online site, rather than your computer?)
  • For labels, add the ability to indicate if the text should be RTL or LTR text. That's an interesting one -why do you need this? Is this for a particular learning task?  I am just curious, because I'd have thought if you are using English you would naturally expect the text to go left to right and if you want right to left you would be using a different language, such as Hebrew, when the editor would automatically work like that.

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: My Review of Moodle 3.2/3.3 and wish list.

by Melissa . -
I want to be able to do markup on any textarea as simple as the creole

markup language.



{{Image.jpg|title}}





I don't care if it is creole markup or mediawiki markup.  I just want to be

able to put my images in a repository of some kind in bulk, and then

reference those images as easy as above.



Drag and drop is fine when you are dealing with a single image (or even 10

images), but when a person is dealing with 1000 - 5000 images, drag and

drop to add images does not work for the initial referencing of the image.



1. I have already added about 1000 images to my own personal wiki.  I can

add categories (tags, keywords) to the images in mediawiki, so it is

organized in a way that makes sense to me.  Plus I need the images in

mediawiki for my wikipages.  I would have to download all 1000 images, and

then upload all 1000 images.  Not to mention that I would lose the ability

to categorize the images.  I would also have to add the image in multiples

places whenever I wanted to add a new image.



2. I have not figured out how to use drag and drop into Atto.  Plus, it

goes back to the issue that I have 1000 images in own personal wiki that I

would have to download and upload, etc.



3. My website is a website that contains a mixture of Hebrew and English

text.  Hebrew text is RTL text.  I can all html to labels, but it would be

nice to just select a button and have the label automatically added.  But

most sites are usually all English or all Hebrew (Arabic).  Very few are a

mixture of the two languages.





My website deals with teaching Hebrew language across all course areas from

preschool - 12th grade.  So I am dealing with words as simple as the names

of animals to words as complex as the Hebrew word for "factoring

polynomials".



On Sun, Aug 20, 2017 at 12:40 PM, Mary Cooch (via Moodle.org) <
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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: My Review of Moodle 3.2/3.3 and wish list.

by Melissa . -
Spelling error above.



My website is a website that is designed to teach Hebrew to English

speakers.  So a majority of the text is English, but for a lot of items I

need Hebrew, especially when I am doing exercises where it is "match the

Hebrew word to the English word." or I need to add words in a glossary as

either Hebrew words or English words.



Moodle is designed to handle websites that are 100% English or 100%

Hebrew.  It is when the two languages are both needed in the same website,

same page, and even same quiz question, that things become an issue.  I

changed the code in the library in the quiz plugin directory so that all

"edit" boxes are "textedit" boxes.  That solved the problem for quizzes,

but now I have to do the same thing for the glossary (and any other edit

box where I want Hebrew text to be typed in).
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