Moodle has had the 'Turn Editing on Button', like forever... Some think it should stay, some think it should definitely go and there are also others who want to hide it.
In reply to Hina Khan
Re: Vote now! Is it time to say goodbye to the 'Turn Editing On Button'?
by Tim Hunt -
I have to say, this is a ludicrous poll. What are you proposing? You must be changing other things, not just removing one button (since then there would be no way to edit courses). Tell us what you are acutally proposing to do, and then we can have a meaningful vote.
In reply to Tim Hunt
Re: Vote now! Is it time to say goodbye to the 'Turn Editing On Button'?
by Noel De Martin -
I think the proposal is to remove editing mode altogether and allow users with capabilities to edit any time. This is mentioned in the UX-123 issue: "Remove the need to turn editing on to reduce number of clicks and in keeping with modern applications. Currently, teachers must turn the editing on and it is a barrier for new teachers who find it unintuitive and often forget this extra step."
In reply to Noel De Martin
Re: Vote now! Is it time to say goodbye to the 'Turn Editing On Button'?
by Hina Khan -
Thanks for the clarification Noel! Yes, one of the main aims of 4.0 is to look at and reduce the number of clicks a user has to make to make task completion more efficient and less cumbersome.
Hi Hina,
Many thanks for investigating how to make course editing easier for teachers. Reducing the number of clicks sounds great!
One thing that concerns me though, if editing is always on, is the possibility of accidentally changing stuff when you don't want to, for example when the teacher is sharing their screen on an interactive whiteboard. In the Moodle Tracker, sometimes I want to copy some text but somehow manage to end up editing the field! I hope that if editing always on is implemented in Moodle, we can avoid these problems?
That's interesting Hina - Helen's post has made me think about the "switch role to .." feature. Do we have any feedback on how intuitive that is for teachers? I assume if editing will always be on, then teachers will want to use the "switch role to.. " feature more often, to check how their course will display for students and (again, possibly, when sharing their screen to show students what they should be seeing.)
Helen and Mary neatly summarise what my concerns are about this proposal:
- If editing is always on, you have to do a lot of work to ensure people don't accidentally break their courses, e.g. while scrolling on a touch screen. I guess the dangerous ones are accidentally moving activities, and accidentally changing the group mode.
- Teachers need to be able to get a good student's-eye view of their course. (I'm not saying current editing mode off is a perfect answer to that.)
- I would be really interested to see some analytics: (What are the ethics/legality of you extracting large-scale statistics from Moodle Cloud?) What percentage of time, after a teacher first enters a course, do they then click 'Turn editing on' within a short period of time?
(Oh, but one mouse click you have my whole-hearted support for removing: Please don't make my click an 'Advanced' link just so I can add a bulleted list to my forum reply. Please can reply inline just give you Atto from the start.)
A cannot recall any other LMS with turn editing button (apart from the ones based in Moodle, of course) nor any modern web application. In fact, the only "accidentally changing" action that came to my mind is when a teacher drags and drops an activity. The rest of the actions require some clicks to perform (which would be like stabbing yourself six times and declare it was an accident 😉).
I think a good solution for those accidental actions would be simply to add an undo button which, by the way, it is something many teachers will welcome. In case an action cannot be undone the system should show a confirmation dialog to prevent accidental data loss.
It is just a personal preference, but I am more in favor of adding a new "presentation mode" to the courses in case they want project the course in the classroom (removing all the unnecessary elements) than penalize all teacher's usability because of some specific uses.
This forum needs a 'Like' rating scale. I want to like Ferran's post.
I think, as others have said, we don't really need a 'Turn editing off button'. We instead need a 'View as student' button - to get a good student preview - better that teacher view with editing off.
At the open university, we implemeted a 'View as student' (and also 'View as non-editing teacher') system like this: When the button is clicked (to explain this, let us suppose, in course C101), the system looks for a user account called 'C101 example student'. If that user does not exist, they are created, and enrolled in the course. Then you use Moodle's 'Login as' feature to log the user in as that account. That gives them a good preview of the course. (Actually, because we use seaparate groups mode a lot, it needs ot be a bit more complex than that, but that is the general idea.)
I think, as others have said, we don't really need a 'Turn editing off button'. We instead need a 'View as student' button - to get a good student preview - better that teacher view with editing off.
At the open university, we implemeted a 'View as student' (and also 'View as non-editing teacher') system like this: When the button is clicked (to explain this, let us suppose, in course C101), the system looks for a user account called 'C101 example student'. If that user does not exist, they are created, and enrolled in the course. Then you use Moodle's 'Login as' feature to log the user in as that account. That gives them a good preview of the course. (Actually, because we use seaparate groups mode a lot, it needs ot be a bit more complex than that, but that is the general idea.)
I'd like to second Tim's request for a "like" scale.
However, I would also like to point out that as a teacher I can use my moodle courses from three entirely different perspectives:
Teacher as designer: Typically common before the actual start of the course, but also quite frequently while the course is already open. This is where I set up the overall structure and add resources and activities.
Teacher as student: To check what the course in its current state actually looks like to any student.
Teacher as teacher: To interact with students in forums regarding the course's subject matter, to check for assignments and/or grades etc.
I find the purposes of the "Teacher as designer"-mode and the "Teacher as teacher"-mode inherently different to the extent that I personally am distracted by all the design markers that will inevitably appear in such a course mode.
Why not turn each elements icon into a kind of "hidden turn-edit-on-switch". In order to change the settings of any given section, activity or resource, the user with adequate permissions could turn on the editing mode for this single activity and turn it off again once the changes have been made.
Regards,
Andreas.
Andreas.
I think not having an edition mode it is not incompatible with those three perspectives you mention.
- For the main perspective ("teacher as teacher" ) the only thing needed is a less distracting interface than the current edition mode (which BTW seems quite easy to accomplish) and an interface that prevents accidental modifications (I will go deeper in this in the "teacher as a designer" point).
- For "teacher as a student" (aka. teacher mental sanity checks) the user can go to the "switch role" option and the problem is solved. In my opinion, this is a very limited solution because most teachers want to see the course as a specific student (especially with groups and access conditions), but it is something that can be improved in the future.
- Finally, for the "teacher as a designer" what she/he wants is also a not overwhelming UI that does not require a trillion clicks to manage more than one activity. Having an explicit edit mode creates dozens of dropdown menus, buttons, and options all over the page, and not only in the part the teacher wants to edit. I think the key to getting this right is to have a way to select activities/sections and display the edit options only on the elements the teacher wants to manipulate. For example, drag & drop controls can be hidden unless the activity is selected, add activity button should be available only under the selected sections, an so on. It won't be easy to implement but I believe this will make the designer experience much better.
- For the main perspective ("teacher as teacher" ) the only thing needed is a less distracting interface than the current edition mode (which BTW seems quite easy to accomplish) and an interface that prevents accidental modifications (I will go deeper in this in the "teacher as a designer" point).
- For "teacher as a student" (aka. teacher mental sanity checks) the user can go to the "switch role" option and the problem is solved. In my opinion, this is a very limited solution because most teachers want to see the course as a specific student (especially with groups and access conditions), but it is something that can be improved in the future.
- Finally, for the "teacher as a designer" what she/he wants is also a not overwhelming UI that does not require a trillion clicks to manage more than one activity. Having an explicit edit mode creates dozens of dropdown menus, buttons, and options all over the page, and not only in the part the teacher wants to edit. I think the key to getting this right is to have a way to select activities/sections and display the edit options only on the elements the teacher wants to manipulate. For example, drag & drop controls can be hidden unless the activity is selected, add activity button should be available only under the selected sections, an so on. It won't be easy to implement but I believe this will make the designer experience much better.
I agree with Ferran that teachers purely teaching get distracted by all the edit menus, and the notes on visibility and groupings / groups etc.
Some sort of simple icon for turning on editing for one activity at a time would be good for the teachers.
Then for designing/building the entire course there could still be a holistic editing capability available.
For the "switch role to" / presentation ability, we need to be able to choose the group as part of the process to make this useful.
Most of our activities disappear when viewed as a student not in a group. The only way of getting a presentation view is by logging in as a student. But giving teachers this ability is a concern because it lends itself to security breaches.
Thanks Ferran and Naomi for your feedback. We are currently working on how best to solve for this problem.
We are looking at taking a lot of the noise out of the UI which will help with fewer editing tools on the page overall.
We are also looking at a preview and/or display mode (although this may have to wait until the next round of improvements) that will allow teachers to preview showing hidden activities and also the concept of a display mode that can be used when teaching that will show a clean course page with no editing tools/hidden activities, notes on groups.
Cheers,
Hina
Moodle UX Team
We are looking at taking a lot of the noise out of the UI which will help with fewer editing tools on the page overall.
We are also looking at a preview and/or display mode (although this may have to wait until the next round of improvements) that will allow teachers to preview showing hidden activities and also the concept of a display mode that can be used when teaching that will show a clean course page with no editing tools/hidden activities, notes on groups.
Cheers,
Hina
Moodle UX Team
I'm totally with you there Ferran. We've been using the Snap theme and that's one of the decisions that led us to make the switch.
Accidental changes can be solved by adding undo. It will be a lot of work, but if it solves the problem of accidental changes, and course authors find editing easier and more forgiving, then it might a path to explore.
I would be really interested to see some analytics
I second that. This proposal seems to come out from an assumption that teachers spend most of their time editing the course contents. It may or may not be right assumption. There are courses whose contents is fairly finished and teachers spend most of their time facilitating students - such as providing feedback in assignments, discussing in forums etc.
Why do we need to choose anyway and force that way to everybody. Why shouldn't the Moodle site itself make a clever decision based on the user's behavior patterns, for example. The site has a way to determine how often the user has the editing mode on, whether it was on when the user logged off last time etc. If a teacher / course designer is working on a course contents, it makes sense to find the course in editing mode on when she logs in again tomorrow morning. Once the course actually starts and the need to edit the course is less frequent, it makes no sense (to me) to have the UI occupied by editing control widgets.
I can't stop comparing this to Wikipedia. Just because it can be edited, does not mean people should read it in the editor interface.
I'm totally ok with David's point of view and proposition!
Hi Tim,
About your last point, perhaps you could look at MDL-66729 (Create an option in user forum preferences to allow user choose between simple or complete editor by default).
Séverin
About your last point, perhaps you could look at MDL-66729 (Create an option in user forum preferences to allow user choose between simple or complete editor by default).
Séverin
Generally: no (in my opinion).
It is our job as UX designers and developers to give users interfaces that just work for them straight out of the box (in almost all cases). Building a bad interface, and the allowing users the 'privige' of tweaking all sorts of options to make it slighly less bad, means we have failed.
It is our job as UX designers and developers to give users interfaces that just work for them straight out of the box (in almost all cases). Building a bad interface, and the allowing users the 'privige' of tweaking all sorts of options to make it slighly less bad, means we have failed.
I beg to disagree with Tim and agree with Severin. The beauty of Moodle is the options available. I very much hope Moodle doesn't become like Apple and say "we know best. This is what you are going to get". I personally would much prefer an option to choose.
Thanks for your feedback Helen.
I agree that it is a fine balance and we need to get it right!
Currently we have a few ways to edit within Moodle, there's inline and then there's Edit settings via the menu. However, these are invisible and the user is required to turn the editing button to see the options. So, really by removing the edit on mode we are are allowing the user to see what they can do on the page straightaway.
Editable areas are also well defined, eg., they will be restricted to areas of text and or images - so there will still be boundaries and that's where reducing the UI clutter will also help.
Hina
In addition to Helens comment.
If a teacher shares the screen to students during an online session elements that are hidden for students should be hidden. Actually this is possible only in 'switch role to student' mode.
In reply to Hina Khan
Re: Vote now! Is it time to say goodbye to the 'Turn Editing On Button'?
by Nathan Lind -
Hi all!
I did want to say I hope we don't lose "auto-linking" where Moodle automatically links to an activity/resource when you type the name of that activity/resource. For instance, typing, "Be sure to read the attendance policy in the syllabus." makes the word "syllabus" automatically link to the Syllabus page in the course.
Super helpful when referring to a future writing assignment too, that may take numerous weeks to write, and refer to it by name numerous times. Or referring to common directions for forum posts.
I just have not heard others bring this up so did not want us to be surprised if this or something else that is counted on but perhaps taken for granted by others suddenly disappears during some future update. Thanks for listening! Well, reading!
Nathan
I did want to say I hope we don't lose "auto-linking" where Moodle automatically links to an activity/resource when you type the name of that activity/resource. For instance, typing, "Be sure to read the attendance policy in the syllabus." makes the word "syllabus" automatically link to the Syllabus page in the course.
Super helpful when referring to a future writing assignment too, that may take numerous weeks to write, and refer to it by name numerous times. Or referring to common directions for forum posts.
I just have not heard others bring this up so did not want us to be surprised if this or something else that is counted on but perhaps taken for granted by others suddenly disappears during some future update. Thanks for listening! Well, reading!
Nathan
In reply to Nathan Lind
Re: Vote now! Is it time to say goodbye to the 'Turn Editing On Button'?
by Andreas Schlenger -
Hi Nathan,
IIRC, you can turn auto-linking off in the course settings.
Andreas.
IIRC, you can turn auto-linking off in the course settings.
Andreas.
In reply to Tim Hunt
Re: Vote now! Is it time to say goodbye to the 'Turn Editing On Button'?
by Candice Diemer -
Tim,
If you are needing further explanation from my team on their questions and/or ideas, please could you ask for this in a respectful and professional manner. Regardless of what anyone chooses to share in our UX space, no-one has the right to call anyones work ludicrous. It sets a poor example to the rest of the community and does not encourage openness, creativity and trust - all of which are essential for product design.
Please keep language constructive and respectful.
Many thanks,
Candice
If you are needing further explanation from my team on their questions and/or ideas, please could you ask for this in a respectful and professional manner. Regardless of what anyone chooses to share in our UX space, no-one has the right to call anyones work ludicrous. It sets a poor example to the rest of the community and does not encourage openness, creativity and trust - all of which are essential for product design.
Please keep language constructive and respectful.
Many thanks,
Candice
In reply to Candice Diemer
Re: Vote now! Is it time to say goodbye to the 'Turn Editing On Button'?
by Tim Hunt -
Apologies if it came across like that, which I guess it might well have done. Sorry.
In reply to Hina Khan
Re: Vote now! Is it time to say goodbye to 'Turn Editing On'?
by Przemek Kaszubski -
Thank you, I have voted - perhaps too late anyway, but that's OK.
My problem with editing, and POST-editing, of Moodle courses is essentially this:
1) The "Turn editing On / Off" button disappears from sight when I scroll down a longer course page. It should remain sticky at the top (cf. Fordson theme), so I can use it any time.
2) After clicking it, the page reloads and and I land at the top of the course again, while I should return to where I was when clicking.. (again cf. how Fordson works, or worked, with this)
3) I would absolutely love a quicker in-line editing option for Labels (and maybe for section summaries, though this is less crucial). Tweaking text input directly on the course page is what slows me down a lot - I still remember the relief when first being able to adjust the section and activity titles straight on the course page, without having to open any settings sub-page..
With no course editing on/off button there, I too have some concerns whether teachers will not start messing up their courses if they operate them in the edit mode all the time. Would their decisions be logged, like they are now? Helping people who have done something wrong will be more difficult. I also wonder about server load if we deploy Ajax everywhere... Will this be thoroughly tested? Gradebook currently has the option to use or not to use Ajax on the gradebook report page. Maybe the admin of a Moodle 4 site should have a global switch for re-enabling the "Turn editing button", if their site if facing performance issues.
Also - this "Turn editing on" button has its equivalents on the Dashboard page ("Customise this page"), in other contexts. Are these all bound to be dropped..?
Regards,
Przemek
My problem with editing, and POST-editing, of Moodle courses is essentially this:
1) The "Turn editing On / Off" button disappears from sight when I scroll down a longer course page. It should remain sticky at the top (cf. Fordson theme), so I can use it any time.
2) After clicking it, the page reloads and and I land at the top of the course again, while I should return to where I was when clicking.. (again cf. how Fordson works, or worked, with this)
3) I would absolutely love a quicker in-line editing option for Labels (and maybe for section summaries, though this is less crucial). Tweaking text input directly on the course page is what slows me down a lot - I still remember the relief when first being able to adjust the section and activity titles straight on the course page, without having to open any settings sub-page..
With no course editing on/off button there, I too have some concerns whether teachers will not start messing up their courses if they operate them in the edit mode all the time. Would their decisions be logged, like they are now? Helping people who have done something wrong will be more difficult. I also wonder about server load if we deploy Ajax everywhere... Will this be thoroughly tested? Gradebook currently has the option to use or not to use Ajax on the gradebook report page. Maybe the admin of a Moodle 4 site should have a global switch for re-enabling the "Turn editing button", if their site if facing performance issues.
Also - this "Turn editing on" button has its equivalents on the Dashboard page ("Customise this page"), in other contexts. Are these all bound to be dropped..?
Regards,
Przemek
In reply to Hina Khan
Re: Vote now! Is it time to say goodbye to 'Turn Editing On'?
by Diane Soini -
Our issue with the turn editing on is that instructors who copy and paste from a course with editing on tend to copy and paste the UI controls. Then when they save, there are phantom UI controls that confuse them. Instructors who copy and paste text from a course that has editing off will not accidentally copy UI controls.
My worry is that if editing is always on, they then will copy and paste the UI controls by accident more frequently.
So if you remove the editing on/off then you really should add something to the atto editor's clean paste function that strips out anything UI-related that shouldn't have been copied.
We do try to train people not to copy and paste from one course to another but instructors do not always listen. It's easier to them than doing an import from a previous course.