Better activity completion to for reading documents

Better activity completion to for reading documents

by Suzanne Diz -
Number of replies: 6

I'm running Moodle 3.6 and have been asked to find a solution that will allow me (admin) to track who has read a course file. Adding a quiz that would ensure comprehension and understanding is not an option. 

For example, we have a procedure for rolling hose. All employees must read the procedure and I will track who has/has not read the procedure. Simply setting activity completion for "Student must view the activity to complete it" doesn't prove anything as the user can open and close the file immediately. Is there a plug-in or another solution that might work? I have been asked to have a required password at the end of the document, not to open it. Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I'm stumped. 

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In reply to Suzanne Diz

Re: Better activity completion to for reading documents

by Tim Hunt -
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Why not set a quiz that tests the key points made in the document?
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In reply to Suzanne Diz

Re: Better activity completion to for reading documents

by James Steerpike -
Create the text in a short answer question,  and add a question at the bottom - which city is mentioned at the bottom of the text? Add a city name, duplicate your question with different cities and select one question randomly from the question bank. That would be something like a required password at the end of the document.
Which would  prove very little - except they read the name of the city and the question.
Pretty much a stupid solution to a stupid requirement - but sometimes we are compelled to do stupid things.
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In reply to James Steerpike

Re: Better activity completion to for reading documents

by Suzanne Diz -

Thanks for the idea James, I will give this a try. It drives me nuts and an Instructional Designer to have to do this but as you said, sometimes we have to do stupid things even though we have proven it means nothing.

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In reply to Suzanne Diz

Re: Better activity completion to for reading documents

by Richard Oelmann -
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So they've opened the document, scrolled to the bottom, read the password (the first thing they'll do as soon as they realise there are passwords in each document) and 'completed' the task...

Maybe, dependent on the size of the document, but possibly migrate it onto pages, or a lesson, or something that allows you to track opening separate parts of the document - User Experience will be horrible, but so is the requirement.

Unfortunately, the requirement you've been given appears to effectively rule out any kind of checking whether they have read the content, rather than simply opened it and scrolled through it.

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In reply to Suzanne Diz

Re: Better activity completion to for reading documents

by Stefan Scholz -
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Hi Suzanna,

I had a very similar requirement recently; what we ended up doing was setting up courses with self completion; each course was then either using topics format, reduced to one topic with a label (for short contents) or a single activity format with a book (for longer contents). This at least makes both creating those contents as well as "learning" them as straightforward and easy as possible.

Just another idea you can think about...
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In reply to Suzanne Diz

Re: Better activity completion to for reading documents

by Joost Elshoff -
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Hi Suzanne,

In itself, reading a text or article isn't much of a learning activity until you have added something to process the material the student had to read. Without a processing task for the students, that you can track by collection results (in the widest sense), you can only track that a user has accessed the Page or Book resource. With the Book resource, you can also track which pages the user has accessed and when, but that's about it.

I'd recommend adding a well designed learning activity to the reading material, such as the Quiz Tim already suggested, but you could also use one of the following activities that are trackable:
- Assignment, type Online text submission: ask students to reflect on the reading material by writing a 200 words essay
- Forum, type Q&A or single discussion (marked completed when a student has either posted or replied)
- Lesson, adding the reading materials in various lesson pages, alternating with questions aimed at making the students reflect on what they've read

Any learning activity added should at least be a meaningful task, and should not just be there to track whether the text has been read, IMHO.
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