Advice needed on which type of plugin to develop

Advice needed on which type of plugin to develop

by Christoph Künkel -
Number of replies: 2
Hi there,

I'd like to develop a plugin (or some kind of moodle extension) that shows students their progress in configuring some devices (part of a training kit) as they work through a moodle book.

Some background: we have been using a Moodle 1.9+ based derivative for many years and are quite happy with it.  We've done a lot of modifications to it (brute force, directly in the code).  Now we feel it is time to switch back to the standard moodle 4.2, of course keeping all the features we have added to our moodle before.

We do training for and on some electronic devices that the student has at hand, and we have a system that monitors the configuration of these devices in real time.  The workflow is such that the student works through a (fairly standard) moodle book that explains how to configure said devices.  At the same time, a page is displayed (usually in a separate browser tab) that shows the student's detected progress in configuring the devices, as well as any errors they have made.

In our Moodle clone we have integrated this as a new tab in the Moodle user profile (called "my devices").

This "page" needs to be integrated with moodle because

  •     it needs to know which book the student is currently working on
  •     it also needs to know which devices the student is using (stored as user data per course)
  •     The intermediate results should be displayed tightly integrated with Moodle (ideally on the same page as the book) so as to not confuse the student
  •     The final grade needs to be fed back into the gradebook

I am pretty unsure what kind of plugin (or set of plugins) would do the trick?

Any advice would be appreciated!

Christoph
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In reply to Christoph Künkel

Re: Advice needed on which type of plugin to develop

by Gareth J Barnard -
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Dear Christoph,

Does the M4.2 completion functionality and organising your courses not do this already for you?

Gareth
In reply to Gareth J Barnard

Re: Advice needed on which type of plugin to develop

by Christoph Künkel -
Dear Gareth,

thanks for responding!

I have to admit that I don't have practical experience with 4.2 (as opposed to massive experience with 1.9+). All I know is from reading the docs so far.

However, my understanding is that completion tracking is based on the completion status of certain activities. I could probably create a new activity type (say, "device status checker") and have it somehow announce its completion status. However, the point were I get confused is that the student would need to work on an instance of this activity type in parallel to an instance of a book-type activity (and ideally display both on the same type). Is that feasible?

Regards, Christoph