Moodle for private music lessons?

Moodle for private music lessons?

by Jeff M -
Number of replies: 12

I am amazed, and also overwhelmed, by Moodle. I am setting it up to use with my private music students. I need the online interface because I teach students who live near to and far from me. I am using Moodle to distribute materials for the piano method I created, so I have to build this from scratch.

Near as I can tell, standard Moodle usage is in classroom settings, or when several students are all progressing through a course together. I need to adapt it to fit my needs which are bit different, and I would so appreciate some experienced help.

I have created course categories, which are actually skill levels. The idea: when a student "graduates" from all the courses in the Level 1 category, they'll be promoted to the Level 2 course category, and so on.

Private teachers like myself don't primarily teach in group settings; we teach one student at a time, and each student is doing something different at any given time. In a traditional piano method, a teacher might have 5 students all in "book 1", but Student A is working on page 13, and Student B is on page 6, etc... you get the idea. In my Moodle, I envision a dozen or so students in each level at one time, but none of them have the exact same assignments each week. Each is progressing at their own pace, with their own personalized assignments each week.

Currently, I publish a Google Sheet for each student that is their Assignment List. I update it each week after their lesson, and they view it online. The Google Sheet is cumulative; in a list, it records assignments that are finished (written in strikethru) and as new assignments are added to the bottom of the list, new instructions are included with them.

Because I've always used Joomla in the past, I could easily set it up so that when each student logs in, they each see only their own Assignment List. I'm having trouble understanding how to replicate this function in Moodle. Near as I can tell, I can publish announcements/assignments/whatever to a course, which would mean all students enrolled in that course see them. I don't see how to let multiple students enroll in one course (because they're working at the same skill level), but track and publish their assignments individually.

Perhaps Moodle does have this function, or a similar one, or a plugin for it... but I just can't find it? Or, maybe there's a way to simply embed my current Google Sheets I already use into an HTML block... in which case I need to know: how can I make the block only show each student their own assignments?

In case it's relevant: if I understand correctly, the "Site Home" is where everyone sees the same thing, but the "Dashboard" is where the view is customized for the user... is that right? So, would I publish each student's assignments somehow in their Dashboard?

I have pored over tons of Moodle docs and watched lots of Moodle tutorial videos. I'm still in the overwhelmed stage where everything I read/watch answers one question and leaves me with three more. I went through this with Joomla and eventually got the hang of it, so I'm not worried. However, time is of the essence for me because I must be able to use Moodle by the beginning of the school year. Please help and thanks!

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In reply to Jeff M

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

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

Hi Jeff,

Would it be possible to see a sample of one of your Google Sheets? There are multiple ways to place information so students can see and or use it, on a Moodle site. If we can see a sample, it might help us make better recommendations for your setup. It also might make a difference in recommendations if we knew what version of Moodle you are using. Might need to use some plugins that do not necessarily have versions for every Moodle version.

As for controlling when a student can see "things" in a course, I would probably use groups and groupings to control access/visibility of assignments and topics.

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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

by Jeff M -
Thanks for your response! Attached is a screenshot of a fictional student's assignment list.

And the mention of groups is very helpful... I assume you're suggesting that I set up each student in a group by themselves?
Attachment Screenshot_20190719-151618.png
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In reply to Jeff M

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

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

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the picture. I think you could use competencies to represent your mark through to show completion.

One way I would try to replicate your worksheet would be to use a checklist which would require installing the Checklist plugin. Students at the same level could be in a group. together. Students would see only THEIR checklist, while you would be able to see and check off items for everyone.

It could also be done as a label resource with a separate label for each student with access and visibility controlled by group restrictions. Each student would be in their own group.This would take a LOT more work on your part I think, as you would need to go through each label and do your strike through to show completion.

You did not mention which version of Moodle your have. Also need to know if you can install plugins. That's important to know, because there is a very comprehensive, Music Theory, question type that allows you to make many different quiz questions regarding music. Depending on a students computer setup, supposedly you can even add questions that allow for midi input to provide capability for students to "play" an answer.

For those things you list as, Practice, you could use database, assignment, forum, or journals, and have the student provide audio recordings of their practice sessions.

The Maple Leaf Rag, I presume is sheet music for them to print and use for practice. Could use page or label resource for that.

Be looking for a message from me. Got a couple of questions to ask in private and can give access to a site where I can demo these and other suggestions, if you want me to. Don't want to make the info public.


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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

by Jeff M -

Thanks very much for your helpful reply!

Sorry I neglected the Moodle version: 3.7.1. And, yes, I can install plugins.

The Checklist sounds very interesting!

I am aware of the Music Theory plugin... I already planned to use it; it looks really cool. smile And, I do understand already how to use most of the "activities/resources". There's a lot there. I already installed H5P and I intend to use it extensively.

I got your private message! I'll be answering you soon. Thanks again!

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In reply to Jeff M

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

by AL Rachels -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
For anyone interested, it has been a busy two months and Jeff now has a great looking Moodle site for he and his students to use. The reason for the two month delay in posts is Jeff only has one free day per week to work on developing his site. It was a real adventure getting a Moodle external tool setup for use with Noteflight, which we manged just yesterday and this morning.
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In reply to AL Rachels

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

by alfonso sanchez -

hello! i'm in the same ship, trying of modeling moodle for private music lessons, i already made group of 1 for my students, in my case have one big piano room maybe soon will be separate on adult/kids piano room but i honestly can't figure several things probably cos my biases on google classroom.

Like Jeff we work on differents approaches per student, modeling the study program with the student's interest.

Please i trully appreciate your expertise.



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In reply to alfonso sanchez

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

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

I never really discussed with Jeff how he was teaching music lessons prior to setting up his Moodle site. I just helped with adding a Zoom plugin and setting up a link to Noteflight from within Moodle. I do know that he has put a LOT of time and effort into his site and resources. So far as I know, he uses Zoom to teach lessons and does not use a "piano room" at all.

We also did a "Moodle setup and upgrade lesson" via a shared screen Skype call.

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In reply to alfonso sanchez

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

by Jeff M -

Hello there! This is Jeff, the original poster. I'd love to help you with any questions if I can. smile Fire away here, or you can send me a private message if that's more appropriate. AL Rachels has been VERY helpful to me through this journey. I'm not nearly as technically savvy about Moodle as he, but I have figured out some ways to make Moodle work for me as a private music teacher. So any questions along that route I'd be happy to answer the best I can.

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In reply to Jeff M

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

by alfonso sanchez -
Hello!! thanks for writing, indeed i'll be very gratefull if you can share some of your experience.

I'll write you a private msg!
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In reply to Jeff M

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

by Jeff M -
I'd like to share how I solved the problem I described in the original post: that Moodle isn't really optimized to let teachers distribute individualized content to each student enrolled in a course. I would love to see the functions I described above incorporated into Moodle. It is so jam packed with amazing features... it's really like a wonderland... but in this one area I see room for lots of development: tools for anyone who educates one-one-one: tutors, private music teachers, personal trainers, etc.

Here's what I'm doing right now (there are perhaps better ways, or other plugins that do this, but this is what I was able to put up quickly and without a huge learning curve):

1) I still use the Google Sheet assignment lists (see my other post in this thread for an example). I have one for each student. It tells them exactly what their individual assignments are for the week. The nice thing about this is that Sheets are accessible even outside of Moodle... the student can simply bookmark it in their browser if they like.

2) I hunted through plugins and found the one that would solve my problem: Links (https://moodle.org/plugins/block_links). After installing and reading its documentation, I opened its Settings. (I don't remember if the Settings automatically opened the first time? But it's always accessible from Site Administration > Plugins > Plugins Overview > Additional Plugins > LInks > Settings.)

The Title is of course whatever you choose; I titled it My Personal Data, because I told my students, "This is where you'll find YOUR stuff. No one else sees what you see here."

The Profile Field is defaulted to Institution. That was fine with me because I don't use that field for anything else. You can choose another option if you need to.

Link Target, your choice. I like New Window, but whatever. Then of course, Save Changes.

3) One at a time, I opened the Edit Profile page for each student. I headed to the bottom and twirled down Optional. At the Institution field (since that's what I chose in Step 2), I gave each student a unique value in that field. Do whatever works for you: perhaps just their FirstLast name, or a student ID number, etc. To state the obvious: if you changed from the default Institution field in Step 2, you'll need to enter the identifier in that field instead.

(OF COURSE, this entire step is much easier done ahead of time by simply uploading users with a CSV file (they could all be done at once), but I didn't know I would be doing this. So... I did it... one... at... a... time.)

4) With Editing on, I added the Links block to the Site Home (pick whatever page you like). There it was: a block called "My Personal Data". And because of my admin role, I also saw "Add/Edit Links" in the bottom of the block.

5) I clicked on "Add/Edit Links"... then "Add a new link." In the "Link text" field, I entered (Name)'s assignments (for the first student). In the URL field, I pasted the Share URL to the Google Sheet assignment list for that student.

I usually just ignore "additional text" and leave "show by default" as is. Do whatever you like with those.

Here's the important part: Clicking Additional Settings > Category shows a drop-down list of all the unique identifiers that appear in any student's Profile: Institution (or whatever you chose). Here, I chose the Institution value for that first student. This guarantees that only the user whose Profile: Institution matches that "category" will see that link in the block when logged in.

6) Repeat Step 5... one... at... a... time... for each... individual... student. Yes, very tedious. I'm just a single man operation (private piano) so it's not like I have hundreds, but since I'm full time, it's still a lot for one guy. I only had to do it once, though, and it has made my Moodle run like a machine for me ever since.

The Links plugin is great, and a real life saver for people like me. I can see how useful it can be for lots of other uses besides mine. I just have to hope that it never gets abandoned, because that function isn't in Moodle Core and I would be up a creek.

The only drawback is the one at a time thing. For someone like me, you just power through them, and get them done. If someone had similar needs to me, but hundreds or thousands of accounts to set up, yikes. I guess they would also have the staff for it. It would be cool to see this plugin make it possible to add multiple links for different users all on one screen. That's just for convenience; it does its job well already.

What I REALLY would love is to see Moodle itself support use cases like mine: the need to distribute individualized content (not just links, but assignments, announcements, activities, etc.) to individual students, even though they're all enrolled in one course together. Someday? EVEN BETTER: I would LOVE to discover that I'm wrong !!! and that Moodle can do all this, but I just don't know how. That would be a joyous discovery.
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In reply to Jeff M

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

by alfonso sanchez -
Thanks so much for been so specific and dedicated with this post, will be useful for sure to many people on this.

pd. we are testing 2 platforms right now: moodle and BandLAB for educacion https://edu.bandlab.com/ 

check it out! it's free (suspicious haha) it's designed to private lesson and groups as well.
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In reply to alfonso sanchez

Re: Moodle for private music lessons?

by Jeff M -
Glad to help!

I'm honestly not a Moodle expert by any stretch... I have just figured out how to make it work for me. I think that maybe the "groups" and "groupings" features in Moodle may have worked for me somehow. It was a year ago when I built the Moodle site. All I remember is watching several tutorials on it, reading documentation, trying it, and eventually deciding that the "groups" thing wasn't what I needed. I don't exactly remember why.

And I actually used Bandlab for Education before. You're right, it is a bit suspicious that it's free, and so is its other product Cakewalk... I've used them both. Honestly, that's the main reason I didn't continue using them. I honestly would rather pay for something: then you are guaranteed support and have a right to expect that it will work consistently. I've used too many free things and gotten frustrated because when you need help, you may not get it. The only exception for me is really big open source projects like Moodle: free but also dependable.

Like you, I just have a hard time trusting Bandlab. That free thing really is suspicious to me because they are getting money somehow. I remember getting nonstop emails from them that I didn't really want.

I have actually started using Soundtrap for Education instead, which is just like Bandlab (also very professional and full featured) but I believe it existed first (not sure). Also it has podcasting tools. And I happily pay for it and I get support without lots of marketing emails. I guess everyone can pick their poison so of course use whatever you prefer. smile

There are so many cool tech tools out there for music teachers. Overwhelming.
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