Icabad's Moodle Wish List

Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -
Number of replies: 35

In a previous life I used Icabad as a nickname. If you ever want to know the story, it's a little funny...

Anyway, I keep running into little things when I use moodle (often for many many hours on end) that bug me, or where I think " gee, if we could only ..." and so I thought I'd make a list here of those things, since it makes more sense than keeping it on my computer.

I know that some of these things belong in the bugtracker, but I don't see them so much as bugs but as tiny feature requests (tfr's) and would rather get some others to eyeball them before submitting. I'll hope to come back here and edit/consolidate now and then. If this belongs in another forum, let me know. For the record, our school is unlikely to look kindly on non-standard items, so even easy customizations are really not easy if they are not core.

So here goes:

  • USABILITY/FLOW issues with the forums:
    • Want to be able to grade and give feedback on forums as easily as in assignments. Quick solution idea: have a "Save and reply" button so you don't have to save the grade and then reply. It would save the grade, then spawn the reply window.
    • Want to be able to cycle thru a series of discussion posts and do this with each- so once done I still have to scroll back to the top of the thread, and go back to the forum page and then pick the next student. What a pain after the 200th time (I kid you not - 4 classes, 5 assignments a week, 16 weeks). Quick solution idea - have a "next thread" button or something like that. This could easily be displayed alongside the "continue" link that appears while the auto-advance is ticking. If you're at the end of a thread and you've graded and replied, why would you ever want to go back to that same page? Another quick solution- put the nav list (aka breadcrumb but not really) also at the bottom of each page. There seems to be some standard wasted space anyway.
  • Forums allow students to write text AND post attachments. Why don't assignments? It's either or, and provides no way for students to comment on their attachments (i.e. "had trouble saving as ...")
  • Assignments allow inline replies. Why don't forums? Quickfix - just have an "include text reply" button that pastes the text you are replying to into your reply window.
  • Submit buggy question link on quizzes. I love that we can edit questions right from the preview pane- but when we have 20 random questions out of 100, and they are buggy, there's no easy way to see all 100 and fix the bugs. If students could "flag" a question it'd be easy to find and fix. Also would lead to better questions. A link next to each question could script an email to the instructor with a hyperlink to the ID fo that questions (so it could be clicked liked the one in the preview).
  • Mod to GIFT import that would scan (and fix or at least warn) of HTML or code characters. I teach HTML and java, and all the special stuff like {, < =, etc... causes problems with the importer or the display, or both! Ideally the GIFT filter could do some basic checks like count the = or something...
  • Links to person/assignment from gradebook. Blackboard has this, and it's the ONLY thing (along with 3000 buttons) that they have that I can think of better than moodle. You click on  a grade in the gradebook and it takes you to THAT specific item (i.e. that test for that student, or that assignment for that student). Ungraded items are shown with an ! so you can click on it to go and grade the thing. VERY useful when you think you've graded everything and missed one or two.
  • While I'm on grading... REALLY need a way to see grades in forums. I grade everyone, and have no way of knowing I did, except to either check the gradebook (partway solution, since some haven't even submitted yet, and no way to know from there), or do what we do now, which is to reply to every graded post with something like "thanks Joe!" or whatever. Where feedback is expected or necessary that's normal, but often it's not. This ties to the other things about forum grading above.
  • God a copy resource (or activity) feature would be nice. There's a whole thread on this, so I won't belabor it. Even just a copy LABEL would help me a lot...
  • Move items might could be (southern slang) tweaked to be more like moving files in the file manager. Not as slick as the little arrows, but would allow a lot more flexibility. Arrows are fine for a few things, but when you realize you need to move a 16 week course into an 8 week framework... boy it's tedious.
  • Lose the section labels and just put in a default label at the top of each section. Having them specifically as section labels wreaks havoc when you append to a course, not realizing that the section notes won't carry over...
  • When you add to a course, deleting it first, it ought to actually mod the settings, so your weeks/topics count, and other such things match the course you brought in.
  • I hear that essay questions are coming as part of quizzes... so won't mention this again (I guess I just didsurprise ) - but even though you can just do that portion as an assignment many non-moodlers looking at adoption are very concerned. I'll need to go back and look at when it's coming.
  • Tab order- couldn't a forum have the subject be the first item and the text area the second before going to every single toolbar item and the tips to the left (which anyone reading the first time doesn't need the 16th)?
  • dropdowns are evil. Yeah, I know this is subjective. Unless you like them, in which case you are evil. Developers love them because they allow big long lists. But for items with 3 or even 4 choices, you can go with radio buttons and then selection becomes 1 click instead of a click-hold-drag-release motion. Even more so with yes/no items (like make visible to students on activity settings pages).
  • Thread subscriptions. What if ther are 50 students, and they each have to post one thread as part of an assignment. They want to know when anyone gives them feedback, but not if anyone gives feedback to the other 49 posts. Either you subscribe or don't, but wouldn't it be cool if you could just subscribe to the THREAD instead of the forum? You post to yours, and then are involved with yours. Not terribly social- but my java class last summer generated 1415 emails. Not terribly friendly to students, but necessary if they want to see their feedback on the forums without having to check back all the time.
  • A pseudo Back button... it wouldn't do what the browser does, but rather take you back to where you think back would have been - bypassing any posts and redirects. Back button functionality is an important part of web design, but doesn't work well with submissions (forms n' such).

So this is a first cut. I realize it's messy and not organized. I guess a wiki would be better for this- but not as direct as this forum here. Please give some feedback or add to the list. Eventually if there seems to be some support, I'd look at putting it in the bugtracker- but don't want to if something's just my personal pet peeve list.

For the record, when I pitch moodle, which I do a LOT, I point out how when I want to put a simple notice on my BB front page (say, "School cancelled due to snow") it takes 7 steps. Moodle takes (assuming editing is on) about 2. I'd like to help make everything as simple (or simpler) wherever possible.

D.I.

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In reply to D.I. von Briesen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by A. T. Wyatt -
If I may be so bold as to add to your excellent list, I would request dropdowns in certain areas!  Grading dropdowns are problematic, but I like ordering dropdowns.

I would dearly love to have dropdowns to at least order topics quickly.

I would like to have digest email options per forum.

I would love to have most of the things you list here, ESPECIALLY copy! 
atw
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In reply to A. T. Wyatt

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -

AT: I agree that dropdowns are a critical item in the inventory of web forms... they are not however as friendly when it comes to small numbers of choices (like yes/no/maybe, on/off, or red/green/blue). They are really the only game in town when it comes to long lists (like countries, states, or dynamically retrieved lists from databases whose size varies a bit).

Dropdowns for ordering seem to be a fairly common metaphor - so long as the logic to deal with conflicts (if you give two items the same number) is worked out. It'd get tricky with moodle however- my courses have about 25 items per week, and 16 weeks. Easy enough to order WITHIN the section, but not at all across sections.

When you ask for digest options per forum, you mean beyond what you already have with your profile (where you can ask for digest emails)? Could you clarify?

I hear rumors that copy will be in standard, but cross your fingers, say a little prayer, make a donation...

Thanks for your support!

d.i.

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In reply to D.I. von Briesen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Michael Penney -
hey are really the only game in town when it comes to long lists (like countries, states, or dynamically retrieved lists from databases whose size varies a bit).

Not sure about this, I think they are best when you have more than two choices by less than ~10. The browser has to load all the potential choices in a drop down menu while rendering the page, so if you have a large number of drop downs on the screen (for instance remember in assignment 1.4 or now in quickgrades) it can take a very long time to load the screen.

Now if you'd like assignment to have more than 100 points, your page load times grow a great deal.

What we did in assignment was add the option of numerical entry, so we can have 1000 maximum point assignments (I think our actual highest grade is 350) without the phrohibitive page load time.

For me, for states, I'd rather have a search box where I can type Ca and get it prefilled with California (well, Cal isn't to bad, but retrieviing USA from a drop down list of countries is kind of a pain--if I didn't know that I could type U to get there, but many folks don't and when confronted with a huge drop down scroll patiently through all the choices ---once their browser renders them).

Then take multiselect boxes (like in groups or grade exclusions), these are great for advanced users, but many new users don't realize they can do a multi-select and instead move people into groups one at a time.

Ahh well, IME interface design is one of the hardest parts of development to get right, as it is so different depending on who the main users of the interface are--another example: see workshop vs. Virginia Tech's peer review tool, similar purpose, but vastly different interface, with the VT peer review module being much easier to figure out how to get started with.
www.manastungare.com/publications/powell_2006_online.pdf


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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -
Michael-
Glad to hear another perspective on this. I don't actually like drop-downs ever, so you kind of validate my agenda (grin) but I'm glad to learn about the other issue. I do think radio buttons are OK for 3 or even more items if they're laid out horizontally (like a question in moodle) so they don't use any more space than a drop-down. I too like being able to type the first few letters... can you point to JS that'll do this with a webpage dropdown? Very common in client GUI's... I know that I can do the first letter, but NC is always about 5 or 6th on the list. I wou'dnt mind if it was ALWAYS fifth, but never seems to be...

You've reminded me of another thing for my list. I want to have the points on the test reversed, so that when you type in the number you want, you're more likely to get it to jump. So for example, if I want 20 pts, or 80, I just type 2, or 8. Currently it gives me 29, 28, 27, etc... So for folks who want oddball numbers (like 73 pts) they can have it, but don't make the rest of us work for it. I'm half inclined to make everything 1pt less just to get around this and to be evil. So my labs will be 19 pts intstead of 20, and then I just have to hit 1 twice... 29 would let me just hit 2 once....

I just read https://gettingreal.37signals.com/samples/37s-interface-first.pdf and that hit a nerve with me... all too often I've seen developers save the front for last... and then the tool is never used because the front ends up being designed around the convenience of the developer, not around the needs of the user. Putting the barn before the horse to extend the cart metaphor.

d.I.
PS: in terms of your numbers (free form) the ideal would be to put both the drop-down and the field to the right (or left of it). Then again, why would anyone WANT a drop-down instead of entry? Ahh... yes, it's that separate but connected thing... OK, then, that for that, and free form for numbers.... with a javascript validation on exit.
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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -
Michael- I think Steve mentioned the peer review tool, but I didn't find any posts about it under his name. Are screen shots posted on this site anywhere?

Also, since you disagree with dropdowns being the only game in town for large selections, what's the alternative? Obviously you can hard-code things like states (harder with countries I suppose) and numbers... but what if you need very large lists pulled from the database?
Mind you, I don't like 'em, but not sure of any alternatives.

d.i.
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In reply to D.I. von Briesen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Michael Penney -
what's the alternative?

http://demo.script.aculo.us/ajax/autocompleter

smile.

Info. about the VT peer review tool:

www.manastungare.com/publications/powell_2006_online.pdf

I've sent you a message with a teacher login for the demo site.
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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Josep M. Fontana -
Hi Michael,

I don't understand what you mean with the link to http://demo.script.aculo.us or the question "What's the alternative?".

Anyway, thanks for allowing me to peek into your demo site. I haven't had time to do a thorough examination but what I've seen looks very promissing. I'm happy you are working on this.

Have you guys had chance to have a look at some of the ideas I threw out here: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=28426&parent=185390

For big groups of students, being able to assign reviewers automatically (and randomly) would be a big timesaver. Also I scanned through the VT peer review article and I saw a reference to the need to "review the reviews". Here introducing some of the statistical measures I suggested would also be a big help for instructors with big groups of students. Having for instance standard deviations for the different reviews would enable instructors to spot "problematic" assignments (or problematic reviews) more easily and thus save a lot of time. The instructor could opt for leaving the evaluation of the non-problematic cases as is and concentrate on those cases where there is more disparity among reviewers. Anyway, I hope you give some consideration to some of my suggestions. I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about this and I think some of the ideas could yield some interesting/desirable outcomes for this module.

Keep up the good work.

Josep M.
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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -

Granted that you know what value you want, I agree. I'm not sure that there is an alternative to long lists when you DONT know what you want...

Since ruby on rails might be a stretch for us here, let's talk about:

http://www.mattkruse.com/javascript/autocomplete/ -

Boy, I'd kill to have this... ok, not kill, but tickle my kids til they pee themselves...

way cool that this example has the dropdown NEXT to it so you get both options... and the javascript seems to be not all that beefy...

D.I.

PS: I'm amazed as always by the community here... I thought the whole discussion would just be me... and it grows.

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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Brecht De Cooman -

On the whole, without falling into blind belief in new buzzwords, I think it would be worth considering the thought of implementing some of the AJAX techniques into future Moodle developments, especially where a teacher can edit things.

For example, where you have the tiny icons to toggle some options (e.g. groups options, visible/not visible, etc.) besides the elements of a course page, one click always causes the whole page to reload with the new option set.

Another example could be found in the quiz module, where clicking on a button to submit one answer also reloads the whole page with the correction of that one answer ...

As far as my humble brain understands it, AJAX would allow to just "reload" or adapt the part of the web page involved (here for example the option you toggle or the answer you want to be corrected).

Watch out : I'm not aware of the recent developments in Moodle 1.6 or the plans for version 2.0, so if changes in this direction are already planned or implemented, Sorry ! glimlach

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In reply to D.I. von Briesen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by A. T. Wyatt -
Right now, I think digest is per course or maybe for every single thing you are subscribed to in multiple courses.  I am pretty sure I have received moodle digests with posts from two separate courses, at least 6 different forums, all together within the same email.  In fact, I had these digest email going to my gmail account and they were so long that gmail truncated them!  That didn't work so well.

I would like to have one email per day with all the posts from one forum.  Then I could have a second email with all the posts from a second forum.  Well, maybe you think that is ridiculous, but it depends on how active the forum is!  The main thing is to have choices, I suppose.
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In reply to D.I. von Briesen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
This so belongs in either the bug tracker or your Moodle.org blog. smile
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Michael Penney -
D.I.'s got a moodle.org blog? Cool, where is it?

Hey I want a moodle.org blog, how do I get one?thoughtful
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In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -

Yeah, where is my blog anyway... that's almost as annoying as realizing you got paid and not being able to find the check!thoughtful

d.i.

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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by A. T. Wyatt -
Sorry to offend.  I was answering this question:

When you ask for digest options per forum, you mean beyond what you already have with your profile (where you can ask for digest emails)? Could you clarify?

by D.I. von Briesen - Thursday, 9 March 2006, 03:08 AM

But there were a lot of intervening posts, so mine probably looks like it was completely disconnected (i.e., rant).  I did not mean that at all.  But I took your advice and filed it as a feature request in the bug tracker! smile

Oooo, that will be incredibly interesting to have a moodle.org blog!

atw
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -

Martin, I'm reluctant to put things in the bugtracker that are just my pet peeves, and don't know how to find out if they bother others without putting them out here for a feel. Kind of like raising the flag to see if anyone salutes.

For example, I can't help but think a bugtracker entry about replacing 2 or 3 choice drop-downs with radio buttons would just be seen as a trivial or personal opinion, whereas maybe it's important to a lot of people - but people are more likely to voice things here than there.

I do think a blog or wikimedia-like interface would be GREAT for this sort of thing... in fact, I'd love to just have a plain 'ol moodle wiki within using moodle we could work on.... waittaminute... is there one? Even if so unlikely that its a wish list...  I guess I could break the things down into each category... but again, don't want to raise the flag if it's just chat...

My agenda is that daily i confront the blackboard users (who sadly and oddly are often blackboard haters) who feel like the evil they know is better than the potential they don't. I want moodle to be SO much better than BB that it's just not even open for debate. Right now it is open for debate simply because there are a few key features that moodle lacks that BB has (mail students - penney's quickmail, the menu option, penney's menu, and the view/complete grade thing). That's not to say the moodle doesn't have scads more that BB can't touch, but they think about what they know, not what they don't.

4 stage of knowledge:
unconscious ignorance (i didn't even know such a thing existed)
conscious ignorance (wow, I need to learn about htat)
conscious knowledge (wow, I know that)
unconsious knowledge (i know it so well I don't even have to think about it)

cheers!

d.i.

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In reply to D.I. von Briesen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by N Hansen -
I disagree about dropdown lists. Radiobuttons require more hand eye coordination. You must first move your mouse to a tiny spot and click it. I find selecting something from a dropdown list to be easier.
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In reply to N Hansen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by David Scotson -
It's worth bearing in mind that if radiobuttons (or checkboxes) are set up correctly then you should be able to click anywhere on the accompanying text to activate the control.
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In reply to David Scotson

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Samuli Karevaara -
Wooa, the label magic works (at least in Firefox) without any scripting! Maybe it's a bit of a "stealth" feature as the cursor doesn't change and people aren't used to it (yet). Thanks David, it's 9 am and I'm learning new web stuff already! smile Moodle could use this a lot more than it does...

Edit: Just realised, the cursor does behave differently: with normal text it changes to the I-beam, with the label field it stays the same (pointer).
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In reply to Samuli Karevaara

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Josep M. Fontana -
Sorry Samuli, but where does this 'label magic' come from? I've checked other messages in this thread and I don't see any reference to this label magic you are talking about.

Whatever it is, it sounds like something I might be interested in checking out, so that's why I'm asking smile.

Josep M.
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In reply to Josep M. Fontana

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Samuli Karevaara -
David mentioned that correctly set up radio buttons and check boxes can have a clickable text. So I tested

<form>
  I'm a<br />
  <input type="radio" name="male" id="male"><label for="male">male</label>
  <input type="radio" name="female" id="female"><label for="female">female</label>
</form>

...and magic, you can click on the text to set the option smile
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In reply to Samuli Karevaara

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -

That's neat. Just saved it as a webpage and tried it out way cool. Image attached so others understand...

since the shot didn/t get the mouse/cursor, it was just over the 'e' in the word 'female'... that is, far from the button itself.  Thanks for this- validates my thoughts on radio buttons being friendly.

di.

Attachment rbshot.png
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In reply to N Hansen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -

I'll vehemently disagree with your disagreement. evil

The muscles need to use a drop down far exceed those for clicks, particularly since you need your clicker muscles to be in a tension position WHILE MOVING THE MOUSE... this is a reason why javascript popouts can be so annoying... if you move the mouse out of the necessary range, the popout (or dropdown) disappears... and if it's  long one, you have to figure out how to scroll all while still holding the mouse button.

Not that it resolves it, Krug has a cartoon about this in his don't make me think book- very funny and all about this discussion...

d.i.

PS: My scientific study shows that your opinion leads though. A google search for "drop downs evil" gave only 1.2 million hits, while "drop downs good" yielded well over 6 million

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In reply to D.I. von Briesen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Petr Skoda -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
My scientific study shows that your opinion leads though. A google search for "drop downs evil" gave only 1.2 million hits, while "drop downs good" yielded well over 6 million

"drop downs not good" scores 147,000,000 big grin
Average of ratings: Coolest thing ever! (1)
In reply to D.I. von Briesen

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Brecht De Cooman -
Having installed the 1.6 development version I took a look at the standard course configuration page, and noticed some new options are added to the growing list.

Talking about user interfaces, I see two "problems" (or should I say things that are less good knipoog) :
  1. now that new options are being added, I had a thought about the order, and noticed that some options who belong together are really seperated (if not so "scattered") all over the page
  2. this page (and maybe others in the the configuration family) may benefit from a regrouping operation, as can be admired in the site configuration page. I mean, why just don't group some options that clearly belong together in a seperate "group" box?
I did some quick tweaking, and you can take a look at a dummy page here

Having read the above discussion about radio buttons, I also implemented some radio buttons in the same dummy page and created a second version with some radiobuttons (for "yes/no") and text fields (for inserting numbers, although looking at the strange values accorded to the numeric options of a select-tag, this might be tricky to develop). Probably some more changes / simplifications could be added ...

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In reply to Brecht De Cooman

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by David Scotson -

You might want to have a look at the section on Fieldsets in the forms and interaction chapter of Joe Clark's Building Accessible Websites (though the entire chapter, and book are good reading too) which suggests ways to split and group forms in a way useful for all users, rather than depend on old-fashioned HTML tables.

Though probably these problems can and should be solved by an automated form creation library, of which there has long been talk of adopting. In this case individual developers would only have to list the kind's of information they require from the user and the HTML code creation along with all necessary accessibilty, usability, and error checking would be generated automatically. I'm not sure whether any suitable project has been found for this use yet.

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In reply to David Scotson

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Brecht De Cooman -
I see. I think you have a point. I wasn't too familiar with the <fieldset>. I went on experimenting with the interface and came up with the following dummy page, which now uses the <fieldset> & <legend>-tags (for the caption of each fieldset).

Attention : some improvements for accessability and standards compliance still can be introduced ...

Anybody else has some more remarks ?
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In reply to Brecht De Cooman

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by David Scotson -

Some tiny issues to think about:

  • I personally wouldn't use the colon at the end of each input name, it seems fussy and unnecessary to me, though I'm personally a bit minimalist
  • Boolean choices (Yes/No etc.) could also be expressed as a checkbox e.g. show grades? [tick]
  • the gap between the control and it's label is large enough that the blank space becomes visible itself. Reducing it might return focus to the foreground and better 'connect' the two visually.
  • you might want to think about internationalisation, as not all languages are as compact as English (right to left text might be an issue too, though I don't have much experience with that) so erring on the side of simplicity with ordering might be necessary
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In reply to Brecht De Cooman

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -
Captions are cool... would really like to see radio buttons WHEREVER there are 3 or less options.. .so no dropdowns. I also feel like the help buttons are only useful the first few times, and making us tab thru them is aweful once you know what's going on. Would there be a cookie option to alter tab order? For example, it's nasty that the tabs take you thru every control button on the editor... pretty much defeatss the tabs for anyhthing BUT disability issues.

also, wrapping of labels is bad, and I'd love to see everything more tightly spaced... way too much scrolling throughout. Look at cool elegant apps, and you don't have all the scrolling- just a nice tab tab from field to field.

Finally, when something is a binary option, the checkbox seems to be the way to go... Wonder what is clearer?
Allow Self-enrollment [ ]
or
Allow Self-enrollment? egg yes  egg no

I suppose the first is more elegant, the 2nd clearer

Keep it up... I'd love to see a "tighter" version with less white space, and submit buttons between (or to the right of) each section.

d.i.
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In reply to David Scotson

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by Brecht De Cooman -
"probably these problems can and should be solved by an automated form creation library"

I don't know if I fully understand this : do you mean some kind of "software" or script that helps Moodles core & module developpers to easily produce forms who follow strict "Moodle" rules (accessibilty, usability, and error checking) ?
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In reply to Brecht De Cooman

Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by David Scotson -

Yes, exactly that, a PHP library for creating forms that (because it is shared between projects) has had enough time and effort expended to iron out all the kinks.

You can see an example here: Pear's HTML_Quickform (just an example, not a firm recommendation)

You can also search the Using Moodle forums for 'quickform' to see some previous discussion on this topic.

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In reply to D.I. von Briesen

Some more... was: Re: Icabad's Moodle Wish List

by D.I. von Briesen -
Little things keep popping up... I'm 6 weeks behind on grading, and it's taking FOREVER, and so nothing like slowing it down more by posting here about how we could speed it up:
  • would like to have submit buttons in multiple places on a page. You shouldn't have to scroll down to the bottom every time on every page. This exists on some pages, but not on many (like the discussion forums).
  • I want a way to include the original poster's name in the subject line. I reply to Jon H, who wrote "Lab 4A" in his subject line, and I edit it by appending "Jon H. Lab feedback" to my reply. Would be neat to have a default that would put the name in the subject line, since in fact his name woudl not otherwise be evident, and so those getting an email that says "Thanks Jon, nice job." really have no idea what's going on.
  • I've realized that I could do a single simple discussion instead of the "each person..." option to make grading much easier, but think there ought to be a way to still view them all on one page without making one discussion.
  • In my feedback session, students want a way to know what they've done. I've echoed Martins' query about what "done" really means, but one workaround would be to give a block that lists everything, and allows the user to check what they want, and ideally put a note next to it (like, took quiz once, redo later..., or submitted, but was late and not sure if it'll take).
  • When I go thru and want to grade chronologically, I have to go to the forums page (or assignments) and scroll wayyy down (since I have about 5 forums a week for 16 weeks). Not sure how this could be improved, but am thinking to hack it by putting my own menu at top and anchors in first forum of each week to make jumping down easy. These things are not noticable until you really get a big honking course (which mine has become).
  • There's really no easy way to see what needs to be graded (either chronologically, or by category). This is a must. Currently I rely on the email ticklers, which are filtered into a "to be graded" folder.
  • Would love to be able to make assignments visible to the class... (as an option).
  • in creating activities, would be cool to have your own template... such that if my weekly forums are always one way, (i.e. 10 pts, graded, no due date, etc...) I could just build one like it. This would be addressed by the copy feature we've all been begging for.
  • did I already mention the forum averaging thing? Need to have an option to take highest score, so when I TA or teacher overrides a previous grade, it can be overriden, as opposed to averaged.
  • If I didn't mention it already, gradebook needs the "view-complete" thing BB has, where things that have been submitted show up in gradebook as question mark or something that yhou can click to grade.
  • Really need some kind of way to make student inactive, without withdrawing them from the class. If you withdraw and its a mistake, it's a mess. If you withdraw, you can't track work done if you need to go back and review. This could tie to a setup where an instructor could even mark students as inactive if they've not participated in a certain amount of time... like forcing them to go to a special screen (like the original login option).
Probably enough for now!
back to grading!
d.i.
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