Obtaining attendance and grade records form backup files

Obtaining attendance and grade records form backup files

by Evan West -
Number of replies: 3

Hello,


I was wondering if there was a way to recover attendance/grade records from a Moodle backup file.


My institution is now using a different LMS, and there are concerns about our ability to access certain bits of student data from Moodle backup files.


I expanded the backup file, and get a string of XML that does not seem to have any readable identifiers for students for grade history, gradebook, and attendance XML files.


I also set up a Moodle server from my laptop, but when I restore the backup files, I can't get record of attendance or grades.

Any ideas?

Evan
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In reply to Evan West

Re: Obtaining attendance and grade records form backup files

by Colin Fraser -
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So to save room on your Institutes server, they have wiped Moodle altogether. That's clever. If they had any concerns about this data prior to changing, then they would have made contingency for just this purpose. The short-sightedness of educational leaders, <sigh>. It is possible that the courses were reset prior to backup. Is there any student data in the backups? If there is, then were the backups set to include grade data? Were users anonymized? Can the grades be reconstructed from the work that should be stored in the backups? I'm sure comments were made by the Teachers grading the work so we can safely assume "Excellent" means an "A" and "you gotta be kidding me" means an "F" How do you reconstitute the grades of work done off-line? Paper based assignments I mean. 

Just out of curiosity, what did they change to?  

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In reply to Colin Fraser

Re: Obtaining attendance and grade records form backup files

by Evan West -

Hi Colin,


That actually it TOTALLY not the case. We are a LOT more careful than that.


We still have our Moodle instance up with all of this information, and will for a little while longer.


We also have backups of all courses, with student data. The backups are not anonymized. 


My question is basically asking the best ways to retrieve this information from backups files.

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In reply to Evan West

Re: Obtaining attendance and grade records form backup files

by Ken Task -
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What was included in a backup determined by backup preferences chosen by admins.   Teachers could also override by stepping through the backup process to and selecting/deselecting what to include in the backup.

If backups were automated there is no indication in the backup file name but if backup preferences were set to 'no user' then one will see a 'nu' in the backup file name.

Does your entity have a full site backup of server - code, DB dump, and moodledata?   If they do, you might be able to install on local PC - perhaps best if in same environment, however.   It's easy to spin up stuff if entity using virtualized servers.

With a clone one can change the backup preferences etc., etc. for the backups such that *everything* pertaining to that course is included - that's if modules contained in the course had backup included in code (you haven't said what version of moodle).

Doubt, BTW, that if that data exist, it will be easy to import into other LMS.

And I am curious also .... what LMS is your entity moving to?

'spirit of sharing', Ken



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