Moodle for Mobiles - Second Developer Workshop

Moodle for Mobiles - Second Developer Workshop

by Don Hinkelman -
Number of replies: 22
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
On June 2nd, the second developer workshop for the Moodle for Mobiles Project was held at Sapporo Gakuin University in Hokkaido, Japan.  In attendence were representatives of five universities plus lead programmers and a Moodle Partner.
  • Jamie Pratt, Lead Programmer
  • Narumi Sekiya, Lead Programmer
  • Gordon Bateson, Kanazawa Gakuin University
  • Don Hinkelman, Sapporo Gakuin University
  • Bob Gettings, Hokusei Gakuen University
  • Bill Burgos, Manabu3, Moodle Partner
  • Osami Okuda, Sapporo Gakuin University
  • Andy Johnson. Sapporo Gakuin University
  • Tim Takemoto, Yamaguchi University
  • Chris Houser, Kinjo Gakuen University
  • Pat Thornton, Kinho Gakuen University
Of the six mobile phone modules projected to be completed by this time, four are now finished (MFM Quiz, MFM Feedback, MFM Quickmail, MFM Hotpot).  Two others (Attendence Slip and Lecture Feedback) are still in process.  These modules are demonstrated at the MFM Developer Workshop course on http://ept3.sgu.ac.jp.

Note that all MFM modules require moodle version 1.6 to operate, and that these modules are targeted for the Japanese mobile phone market.  Attached is a report I wrote on the first developer workshop.  See the following posts for further background on the MFM Project.
The main result from this 2nd workshop is the need to target students with email capabilites (99% of student body in Japan) rather than web capability (50-80%).  So our new programming initiatives will focus on mail-delivered quizzes and messages--sometimes called SMS.  We hope to kick off the discussion of this functionality here on this forum and welcome others to join us with your ideas (small funding contributions welcome as well).  Cheers!   Don   smile

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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Moodle for Mobiles - documentation on work done so far

by Jamie Pratt -
Hi all,

I've made a start on some documentation for the Moodle for Mobiles project. Have edited / added the following pages on docs.moodle.org :

I've not added details of Narumi-sensei and Gordon's work. Others might want to add to what I've written.

Jamie
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Mail Quiz Module

by Jamie Pratt -
As Don said in his post as part of the Moodle for Mobiles project we're interested in creating activities which students can interact with through email which 99% of Japanese students have available on their mobile phones. One activity that we're considering is a 'Mail Quiz'.

Mail Quiz


This will be equivalent to the quiz module but will work through email.

I'm very excited about the idea and feel that this module is a great extension to Moodle which will be of use to users inside and outside Japan. Email probably has the most reach of any internet application. Delivering quizzes by email and allowing answering of quizzes through email will allow us to reach many more users on all kinds of devices, not just Japanese mobile phones but PDAs, phones and other devices all over the world!

Initial Thinking

Below is my initial thinking on how the mail quiz should work (rather long and detailed skim it now and come back to read more later if you're busy). Look forward to all your comments  :

  • A site participant may list a second mobile / other device in their personal profiles page and will have seperate controls for this email address to control what character set emails are sent to the device in eg. Shift JIS, UTF-8 etc.
  • A teacher can set up one or a number of mail quizzes in his course. Mail quizzes have start and stop dates and reminder periods, all of these are set by the teacher at the activity level. If a students doesn't answer within a certain period of time (reminder period) the question is resent.
  • I'm not sure of whether this should be a different activity module than the quiz module. It would be nice for the student to be able to have the choice of doing the quiz through email on their phones or other devices, or on a regular broswer.
  • Emailing students :
  • All student participants of a course are emailed to either there mobile phones or in the case that no mobile phone address is registered for the user then email their regular email address.
  • All participants of a course take part in the mail quiz.
  • The bouncing emails system wide are caught by the system (emails to invalid email addresses are bounced by the receiving mail server to detect invalid email addresses we need to process the emails bounced back to us from the mail server) and when a student with a bouncing email logs in they are asked to supply a new email address. (Martin Langhoff already implemented this it needs to be set up on the mail server). We need to look at extending what Martin did to cover bounced emails from mobile phone.
  • A teacher can go to a special page to see which students in his course have bouncing email addresses as part of a status report / alternatively teacher is emailed a list of students with bouncing email addresses periodically as part of a status report. (Useful for announcing in face to face classes.). Also listed is which students have not registered a keitai address.
  • Advantages :
    • system is self checking. Bouncing email addresses immediately detected and dealt with.
    • Fits in well with development direction of Moodle.
    • System will work on a wider range of Moodle systems where quick mail is not necessarily installed.
    • Good chance that this will be included in the main moodle distribution??
  • Mail quiz can work through a mobile phone address or through a normal email account. Teacher selects whether to email students through their mobile phones or their normal email accounts or both.
  • First question is sent out to all participants then next question is sent out with feedback if any on the answer to the last question when the answer to the first question is received.
  • Students can forward their questions to another email account and continue the quiz from there! This will change their registered email address, teachers will be notified of such changes as part of the activity module status report.
  • A teacher may also send out a 'question' where no answer is required using the existing quiz 'label' question type! Students reply to this 'question' in order to see the next 'question'. A quiz could consist purely of labels for mail text applications. Or I thought a very interesting option we might think about is to have a 'mail glossary' activity where a category of a glossary is emailed to a student one item after the next in random order or in an order specified by the teacher with the student just needing to reply to one push glossary email to receive the next item.
  • Students email back their answers to a question. Their email answer is the start of the body of their email and might be for example :
    • a, b, c, d, e, f etc (for a mutliple choice question - single selection)
    • a combination of a, b, c, d, e, f, etc (for a multiple choice question - multiple selection) eg. abcf or a
    • For matching questions 1a 2b 3d 4c or that kind of thing. Where the question lists the items to match as 1,2,3 and 4 and the items to match to as a,b,c and d.
    • For short / long text / essay question answers the body of their email is their answer.
    • Any more question types needed??
  • Maybe in a second phase of this project we can look at : Since we can send out html in emails we can support all kinds of media in questions even mp3 playback (I think we can just include the mp3  but initially for mobile phones we will recommend not using questions with non .gif large pictures in them or mp3 playback controls. gif pics and text should be ok and even urls.
After setting up an activity a teacher can view a status report that tells the teacher :
  • Which student email addresses are bouncing. The report lists bouncing mobile phone and non mobile phone addresses.
  • How many questions each student has completed. Times taken for a student to respond to each question.
  • Which students have forwarded their mail quizzes to another email address.
  • Grades so far?

A little more backgound on what Martin L's incoming email processing code (link is to Moodle docs article) does :
  • It processes emails that are bounced back to it and handles telling the user that they need to change their email address. We need to extend this for emails sent to mobile phones as well.
  • Martin L's code can generate special 'reply to:' email addresses which include what module the email has come from and which can refer to the user id of the user as well as other information eg. mail quiz instance id and question no. So when a user replies to an email address we know what user has replied and to what question. These email addresses are difficult to forge since the address is encoded and a check sum added so this is a fairly secure system.
We need to remember that the time taken for an email to negotiate its way to a users phone is highly variable to some phones and in most cases emails will be instantly received but in some cases emails can be delayed by several hours. Mail Quizzes should be open for at least a few days in order to allow students to answer all questions even if their emails are delayed in the network.

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Mail Quiz Module

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Jamie,

I am really excited these possibilities and I would suggest we use the Modified Quickmail block (MFM Quickmail) that Narumi Sekiya built as a base or at least a model for a platform for Mail Quiz, Mail Text, Mail Sound, and other Mail activities.  The interface is so easy for a teacher like me to use and has verification of addresses built in (is the system you propose similar?).  

Initially, we do not need interactivity with Moodle database, just sending texts out to students has proven popular and instructive (see Thornton and Houser's research).  So a simple story, divided into bits, and sent in pieces to students can have a useful role.  Second, we can add non-interactive quizzes.  By that I mean, that a question would be posed, then a student would scroll down several lines to see the hidden answer.  Or receive the answer in a followup email message.  Third, we would then move to quizzes that actually interact with the database in ways you have outlined.  Links within the text sent via email may also be a way to force interaction--student would click on a link which would take you directly to an MFM Quiz or MFM Feedback (and thus avoid the clumbersome mobile phone web navigation to get to an activity.

Onto that platform, we would build two tools:

Mail Text Author
A screen with a series of text boxes to quickly insert pieces of text or questions to send out in various formats.  A teacher could place up to 50 short "lessons" or "questions" to send to students in a sequence.  Then the sending would be timed by the Scheduler tool.

Mail Scheduler
A grid of checkboxes laid onto a month calendar, allowing one to four emails to be sent per day.  In language education, short, simple texts or questions in the target language sent frequently is valuable base to reinforce new words and grammar patterns used in collaborative and project-based work.

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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Modified Quickmail

by Jamie Pratt -
I've a few questions about the modified Quickmail :

  • I can't find where to enter a mobile phone email address on the ept3 mfm test server how is this done?
  • For the quickmail block do we have independent control of the charset by which emails are sent to mobile phones. Is this important?
  • Where is the code for this block?

Importantly is it important to be able to select within a course which individual course participants will be sent the texts or sent invitations to do the quizzes? Surely everyone in the course or possibly within one group in the course should be sent the texts or quiz invitations.

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Modified Quickmail

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Jamie,
  • A mobile phone number is entered by the student in their profile, in the final optional field called "address".
  • Sorry I don't know.  If Sekiya san does not reply here, you might ask him by private mail.
  • The code is on the ept3.sgu.ac.jp site, probably in the block folder.  It appears to be working fine on version 1.6 now, so I assume Sekiya-san replaced the standard Quickmail folder with the Modified Quickmail.
I think for quizzes, in general all course participants would receive it.  But for announcements and reminders and (heaven forbid) scoldings, the individual selector is handy.  It may also be possible that one group would have a different type or sequence of Mail Quizzes/Text.   The "Check-All" button for each column of Quickmail is really handy.  I would not be opposed to a separate interface for Mail Quiz, however, a single interface combining Quickmail and Mail Quiz has advantages of ease-of-use and training of teachers.
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Modified Quickmail

by Jamie Pratt -
Hi Don,

I think for quizzes, in general all course participants would receive it.  But for announcements and reminders and (heaven forbid) scoldings, the individual selector is handy.

It sounds like the mail quiz and mail text then should be a seperate application. What does a single quickmail interface offer us? It is good for sending out messages to a few selected students but the mail text and mail quiz will be for all students in a course.

Tying the mail quiz and mail text to the modified quick mail block will restrict the use of the new functions to those who want to use the quickmail block.

It seems like the functionality for the quick mail block email address checking is available through a special mymoodle page that Sekiya-sensei also wrote?

Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Modified Quickmail

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
It sounds like the mail quiz and mail text then should be a seperate application. What does a single quickmail interface offer us? It is good for sending out messages to a few selected students but the mail text and mail quiz will be for all students in a course.

Yes, I think the Mail Quiz will be for all students in a course or a group.  Let me ask other teachers what they think.

Tying the mail quiz and mail text to the modified quick mail block will restrict the use of the new functions to those who want to use the quickmail block.

I understand a little.  If a single interface makes more problems, then we should avoid it.

It seems like the functionality for the quick mail block email address checking is available through a special mymoodle page that Sekiya-sensei also wrote?

Oh, yes.  I remember now about Sekiya's MyMoodle page for mobile phone address checking.
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Mail Quiz Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Mail Text Author
A screen with a series of text boxes to quickly insert pieces of text or questions to send out in various formats.  A teacher could place up to 50 short "lessons" or "questions" to send to students in a sequence.  Then the sending would be timed by the Scheduler tool.

Will we send out just simple text or shall we look into what kind of formatting will work on phones. Do most phones support some chtml in messages. Can we include url links?


Mail Scheduler
A grid of checkboxes laid onto a month calendar, allowing one to four emails to be sent per day.  In language education, short, simple texts or questions in the target language sent frequently is valuable base to reinforce new words and grammar patterns used in collaborative and project-based work.

What is the grid of checkboxes for? For the ammount of email to send on each day of the month? I guess the text segments are sent out in radomn order or in the order they were entered by the teacher depending on the choice of the teacher. Or would it be better to have the teacher able to select what text segment to send out on each day?

Would it be easier for teachers to be able to just select how many text segments to send out every day?

Should the text messages be available for viewing by the students in a normal browser for their reference?



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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Mail Quiz Module

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
All good questions that I don't have good answers for.    mixed    My ideas are not so clear, so I believe a skype call is getting to be needed.  How about today at 5:00pm Japan time?

My general feeling is that a teacher would not plan and prepare the mails day-by-day, but rather week-by-week, monthly or a whole semester.  They would need a way to mass upload and arrange the texts/questions.

The more formatting we can do the better.  I think Chris Houser showed that a lot can still be done with no formatting, just simple text.  So I don't mind starting there.
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Mail Quiz Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Thought I'd summarise what Don and I discussed by Skype for the benefit of others following this discussion on the forums :

  • We feel that we can immediately go ahead and start on a 'Mail Quiz module' instead of a 'Mail Text' module. Reasons for this where :
    • 'Description' question types (which we previously erroneously referred to as label question types) can be used to send out segments of text that require no answer. Thus the Mail Quiz module will be able to do what was required by Mail Text module. A quiz can consist entirely of'Description' question types questions or we can mix description and quiz question types.
    • I'm confident that we can produce a Mail Quiz module beta within 8-12 weeks which will fit Sapporo Gakuin Uni's schedule.
  • There is great interest amongst language teachers in scheduled sending out of questions. Ie. sending out questions/text segments 3 per day etc. But we also felt that it would be good for students to be able to do more questions if they wanted to. So we thought that :
    • a teacher should be able to send out emails according to a schedule  eg. 3 / 4 per day (we will send out emails in daylight hours according to the time zone that the student says they are living in).
    • But there should be a way for a student to go ahead and answer more questions when they have time to do so. When they answer one question the next question will be sent to them. If they answer this then the next question is sent etc.
    • Reminders about the next question to answer are sent out according to the schedule that the teacher sets up.
    • It is imagined that a teacher would set up a quiz for a week with for example 50 questions. The student would be sent out a reminder 3 times per day for example. Some students may answer 1 question per reminder thus answering 21 questions in the quiz other more enthusiastic students might answer more questions.
  • We'll send out emails to all students enrolled in a course to their normal and their mobile phone email addresses.
  • We'll not use the modified quickmail interface to select which individual students to send out emails to. The quickmail block it was decided was probably not useful since we won't need to select individual students who will take part in the activity.
    • The mymoodle functionality programmed by Sekiya-sensei for students to verify that mail is reaching their mobile phones may be useful though. It is essentially a seperate module and the mail quiz module will not depend on this being installed.
Jamie
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Mail Quiz Module

by frank weissman -

We are thinking about an SMS format quiz for mobiles directed at professionals. This service should contain simple format questions about a bussines subject. 3 to four answers and a feedback

Person can activate sms quiz

Person can set amount of SMS to recieve

Person will get SMS questions

Answer is replied to database

Persons recieves Feedback on answer ( correct, fasle because)

Frank Weissman

 

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In reply to frank weissman

Re: Mail Quiz Module

by Jamie Pratt -
This sounds very similar to our ideas for a Mail Quiz module. Maybe we can find some way to work together. The only difference in our code it seems would be that we would be sending email and you would be sending and receiving SMSs through a sms gateway.

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In reply to frank weissman

Re: Mail Quiz Module

by Jamie Pratt -
Are you thinking of making your sms quizzes some kind of extension to the quiz module functionality or will you code the thing from scratch as a seperate entity?
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Mail Quiz Module

by Bob Gettings -
My understanding is that the various quiz question formats can now be used by other modules.

Shouldn't it be possible to connect the mail quiz module the current question formats that are available independently of the quiz module?

As for text messages, would it be possible to think of them as the "Label" quiz question format?
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In reply to Jamie Pratt

Re: Mail Quiz Module

by Jamie Pratt -

After more consideration, some discussion here and a talk with Don, here is my current thinking on the 'mail quiz' module.

'mail quiz' module


A 'Mail Quiz' activity is a parallel interface to a regular quiz activity. A student can take a quiz through email by replying to emails sent out to them with the answers to their questions.

Teacher Point of View

  • Teacher sets up a regular quiz activity in a course as normal. They can choose to :
    • Randomly order questions or not.
    • Use many different question types.
    • Use existing questions.
  • They should be aware of the limitations of the phones they are sending questions to :
    • They shouldn't use large pictures of incompatible file types.
    • We won't be able to send questions with embedded mp3 players yet.
  • The teacher can choose to make this quiz activity visible or not. In this way they can allow or disallow students taking the quiz in the regular way with a browser on their desktop. Problem here though that grade book will not display grades to students for activities that are invisible (although teachers are able to view grades even for invisible activities). Needs some thought. Maybe all mail quizzes should also be accessible through the regular moodle interface as a normal quiz.
  • The teacher then sets up a 'mail quiz' activity. The 'mail quiz' activity is a parallel interface to the quiz activity which has already been set up. The set up of the mail quiz activity configuration just involves :
    • selecting which quiz activity this activity is an interface for. The quiz has already been created through the regular quiz interface.
    • setting up a mailing schedule (or no schedule if only the first question should be sent out).

Student Point of View

  • They receive an email from Moodle with the first question in the quiz. They either :
    • ignore the question
    • or they send a reply to the email. In the email body they send back the reply to the question which might be for example :
      • anything at all (description question type).
      • a short piece of text (short answer / essay question type).
      • '1234' multiple choice answer, multiple selection.
      • '1' multiple choice answer, single selection.
      • '3214' matching question.
      • may not support other question types.
  • Depending on feedback settings that teacher set up a student will receive an email telling them how they did with the quiz question.
  • In the same way that feedback for a quiz question may be shown a user immediately after they answer one question in the regular quiz module (ie. if it as an 'adaptive' quiz) then feedback will be sent back to the user including possibly a grade (this depends on the teacher's configuration of the original quiz).
  • Whatever, when the student replies to a question the next question will be sent to them.
  • Despite being sent the next question they can continue to reply to a previous emailed question to resubmit answers.
  • The whole quiz is considered closed if a student sends back a reply 'finish' or the equivalent in their language to any question.
  • Scheduled questions sent out are :
    • The next question after a previously unanswered question.
    • In the case the student answered one or more questions which were previously sent out as part of last scheduled email push then they will be resent the last unanswered question.
  • At any time if a teacher has allowed this the students can log into Moodle and continue answering questions in the normal way that a quiz is answered. Quiz progress data will be shared between the normal quiz and the mail quiz. So answers to questions answered by email will be displayed in the regular quiz module.
  • If a teacher or student clicks on the "Mail Quiz" activity they will see a status page. A student will see what emails have been sent out to them and see what their progress has been through the quiz.

Behind the Scenes

  • Moodle is generating reply-to email address for the emails it sends out and encoded info in the email address refers to which student this is taking the test and what question and quiz module this question is from. So a student just replies to an email to send back their answer to Moodle.
  • We will extend question type classes adding methods to process incoming answers from email and sending out questions as email. We will reuse question type methods that handle session tracking of questions and storing grades.

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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Moodle for Mobiles - Reply to forum by email

by Jamie Pratt -
There is a good deal of interest in Reply to forum by email

Maybe that is something we should be looking at as part of Moodle for Mobiles. It could be fairly easily done now with Martin L's incoming email processing functionality. And it is a fairly short step from having reply to forum functionality to allowing students to contribute to forums using their mobile phones. We would have to cope with issues like whether phones could cope with html and the restricted size of posts that a phone could recieve still but wouldn't it be fun for students to be able to have discussions with each other through email on their phones - great English practise possibly.

Jamie


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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moodle for Mobiles - Second Developer Workshop

by Bob Gettings -
Some thoughts on the whole thing.

1. You guys are amazing! You generated 10 pages of discussion in a few days!!

-----------------------------------

2. I wanted to add a different approach to the discussion - to try a new approach at generating a concept of what we might accomplish so I'd like to suggest a new name for the development project: the "M4M Mail Push-Pull InfoBits Block"

I was thinking about what makes our concept different form other Moodle plugins - especially the quiz module.

At the heart of the concept is the idea of push-pull. Not waiting for students to go searching for info or an activity but pushing something out to them on a regular basis. At the same time push alone = SPAM! Students need to have the opportunity to control the flow of information - responding with some kind of pull - so that the next push is enabled.

Another central concept is delivering small amounts of information - not necessarily connected to each other = InfoBits. Infobits can be text or a question but infobits are inherently diferent than a quiz which usually presents a long stream of information in the form of many questions and which usually is overlayed with concerns about security, evaluation, cheating and timing of feedback.

Why block and not module? A module usualy is experienced by the user as a link on the course page. A block is more often an area where the current status of something is displayed (e.g. how many InfoBits you have waiting for you) or you can click on a link to manage something (wether you want to unsubscribe or sign up for more InfoBits).

Mail would be the main form of user interface but I think that for some people being to survey and manage their InfoBits in a homepage would be useful thus both Mail and Block in the title. The block could also displaty the titles of the InfoBits they hadn't responded to yet - and give them a chnce to respond by html rather than mail.

The InfoBits page for students might also give them a list of InfoBit "courses" that they could subscribe to, set their email preferences and let them override teacher decisions about what hour of the day InfoBits might be delivered by mail.

----------------------------

3. Where would InfoBits come from? The teacher adminsitration block would allow the teacher to select (steal) InfoBits from an existing Quiz, a Glossary or maybe another database of short texts.

-----------------------------
Mainly I'm looking at this from the student interface side. What would the students experience? How would they be able to manage when and how often they were pushed or had to pull?

Bob
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In reply to Bob Gettings

Re: Moodle for Mobiles - Second Developer Workshop

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
I think you are right-on, Bob.  This past weekend I have running a lot and that gave me time to think about these designs, and you and Jamie have put it into words here.  We have a lot to thank Chris and Pat for sharing their ideas on emailed bits of text and phrases and questions.   Their research shows small, frequent bits of target language have an impact, and can be implemented easily with present technology at low cost to students.  Also Bill Burgos just emailed me saying his clients are more interested in email-based activities, rather than mobile-web activities, which appear to be a cost issue for students.

So I think we have two modules developing, and Jamie originally thought that they may be separate.  Now I am beginning to think that is right.  For now let's call my Mail Text or Bob's Mail Infobits as, "Mail Bits" and the other "Mail Quiz".   Here is what I see are the differences...

Mail Bits
Mail Quiz
block
module
non-interactive
interactive
not connected to database
connected to database
non-assessed broadcasting
assessed participation
no interface on main course site
multiple interfaces for the same quiz (mobile email, mobile web, web)
auto-scheduled (eg:  3x per day)
next quiz/question conditional upon successful response
separate authoring screen
authoring with main moodle Quiz Data Bank

Now I think Bob is right that Mail Bits would be a block, not a module.  I think the Modified Quickmail interface is tremendous from a teacher's point of view.  It is sooo easy and intuitive.   Go to the MFM Demo Site-Quickmail Block if you are not familiar with this.  We could add an easy authoring screen and a scheduling screen there.  Then, a teacher would have the option of sending to all mobile phones, all school email addresses, or BOTH.  big grin

As for student control, I think that could come, but we may wait on that feature for now. First of all, the teacher provides the bits as part of the lesson--an important part of the course, not an option.  I think students can choose to ignore the Bits, but the stream of bits is like a textbook (and those without mobile phones can go to their school email to see the Bits-Textbook).   Eventually, we can have standalone Bit Streams that students can subscribe to, but we might hold on the subscription feature for now, in order to simplify and focus the module for this coming semester.  Let's solidify our thoughts this Friday in Bob's office for a Teacher/Learners Design and Requirements Workshop.  See you there, or via skype!
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moodle for Mobiles - Second Developer Workshop

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
Today four of us (Sekiya, Johnson, Gettings, Hinkelman) had a design workshop for Mail Bits/Mail Quiz for language teaching and then continued with three others via skype (Okuda, Pratt, Burgos). 

Some general design considerations:
  • mail delivery (not web) to provide regular exposure to target language
  • delivery can be forced (more teacher control) or subscribed (more student control)
  • focus on "units" of mail messages on a project-based or content-based topic which would reinforce 1-2 weeks of classroom lessons (blended learning approach)
  • each unit would include 20-40 messages sent either in sequence or random
  • messages would be non-interactive for study (some could also be interactive as well)
  • messages would be either 1) words, 2) stories, 3) questions
  • word-focussed messages would be like flash cards, for review of vocabulary
  • story-focussed messages would be like a book, divided into reading segments
  • non-interactive questions could work by having a 5-10 blank lines to scroll down to see a correct answer
  • collocations not considered, but need to be (see Collocation/Corpus Module)
Development Strategy
  • begin with non-interactive messages and move toward interactive
  • begin intensive use in classrooms by end of September this year
  • for word messages, glossary is too defined and not configurable--we need to use question engine or database module for entering content
  • if question engine is base, new question types need to be created for handling multiple field word glossaries, multiple field stories
  • sending screen might use parts of Modified Quickmail Block--send to mobile phone email (all/some/none), send to school email (all/some/none)--show student name, photo, subcribed/not subscribed
Unit Authoring of Email Messages
  • mass upload for quick authoring of short bits--via Excel?
  • various templates for sending which could include single or multiple records and/or single or multiple fields
    •  template 1:  word in target language, 7 blank lines, word in native language
    •  template 2:  word in context sentence
    •  template 3:  question, answer1, answer2, answer3, 7 blank lines, correct answer
  • easy or automatic sequencer/scheduler over 1-2 weeks
Word Messages--Possible Fields
  1. Unit (content topic, project topic)
  2. Word--Target Language
  3. Word--Native Language
  4. Word--3rd Language
  5. Word in Context 1
  6. Word in Context 2
  7. Word in Context 3
  8. Image/Photo
  9. Definition in Target Language
  10. Definition in Native Language
  11. Trivia Comment
  12. Other Descriptors for Sharing
Story Messages--Possible Fields
  1. Unit Topic
  2. Story Title
  3. Story Part 1
  4. Story Part 2
  5. Story Part 3
  6. Story Part 4
  7. Story Part 5 and so on
Question Messages--Possible Fields
  1. Unit Topic
  2. Question
  3. Answer 1
  4. Answer 2
  5. Answer 3
  6. Answer 4
  7. Answer 5
  8. Correct Answer
  9. Link to Word Record 1
  10. Link to Word Record 2
  11. Link to Word Record 3
  12. Further Comment (why one answer is better than others)
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moodle for Mobiles - Mail Study Context & Interface

by Don Hinkelman -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers
Context

Mail Study is emerging as the name for this current project in MFM (Moodle for Mobiles).  It is primarily a language learning module for streaming words, translations, sentences and words in context to student mobile phones as a companion to a full Moodle course.  It is designed for learners and teachers of second languages, but other subject teachers may be interested as well.  It assumes a project-based or theme/content-based method of teaching a language.  It is not intended as an independent way to learn, but a support for collaborative learning.  For example, in project-based learning, groups of learners research and prepare a presentation on theme, such as "Global Warming".  As students begin their projects, Mail Study sends a sequence of  messages (stream) to the students' mobile phones in very small bits such as single words, translations, phrases, questions--eg: "deforestation", "Japanese-translation-of-deforestation", "deforestated lands", "What makes deforestation?" a. tree planting, b. overgrazing, c. moodle using), several times a day or times a week, to prepare or reinforce the projects and classroom activities.  Initially, it is non-interactive and non-assessed, but interactive portions or interactive integration with the Question Engine are possible and are being considered.  Mail Study uses unicode and the Database Module for its operation, thus requiring Moodle version 1.6.


Components & Terminology

Mail Study or MailStudy= the name of this development project.  It is intended for study to prepare or reinforce classroom/website activities and assessments.  Mail Study is not assessed, but is a "pushed" mail system that students can subscribe to or that teachers require.  The messages go to mobile phone email addresses, but can also be copied to a student's main email address.  Therefore a student without a mobile phone (<1% of Japan student population) could use the Mail Study system.

Stream=   a set of messages sent out to a student (forced or subscribed). Usually the stream fits a single topic or week of learning activities in a Moodle course.
Message=  a single email message sent out to a student. 
Block=  a portion of an email message.  Typically, a single field selected from the Unit Database.
Unit= a set of database records on a single theme.   For example, some themes we are using for projects are: Hobbies, Kyoto Restaurants, Slavery in America, My Summer Vacation.  For sharing in repositories, each unit might have a unique name, such as:  [projectname-authorname-date]. 

Usually a Mail Study Stream accompanies, reinforces or prepares for a Topic/Week/Unit of Learning (UOL) on the main course site.  A topic might span one or more weeks in a Moodle course--but might be longer or shorter.  We imagine most Mail Study Streams will be designed for period of week or two.  At three messages per day, a Mail Study Stream thus might be 20-40 messages.  Note: UOL is a term used in IMS-Learning Design and other international e-learning standards.

Mail Study Stream=  A stream is an activity in that it has a pedagogical goal or a single theme.  Mail Study includes at least three forms of study: 1) Word, 2) Story, 3) Question.   Each form of study has a different database record with different fields.  At first, we would not mix the databases in authoring a single Mail Study Stream, but allow parallel streams simultaneously (a Word stream, a Story stream, a Question stream) all during the same week.

Mail Word= focuses on a single word, its translation, and a variety of other dictionary/glossary information about usage of that word.  A Mail Word record will be bilingual, not multi-lingual, as sharing of sets of words will be in pairs of languages (eg: English-Japanese, French-German, Japanese-Korean).  Note that English-Japanese sets would be different from Japanese-English sets.  One question I have is whether the Word record will also have phrases?  compound words?
Mail Story= focuses on a story, or series of related texts.  Could also be a series of student postings to a forum or a journal.
Mail Question= focuses on a question, and a limited number of possible answers.
Mail-something-about-Collocations= needs to be thought about, perhaps later.

Mail Template=  Messages in the stream will have varying formats.  Each format is called a "Template" or "Mail Template".  A Template is composed of Blocks which a automatically pulling content from the Unit database.  The messages are sent out automatically (in order of entry or randomly) and do not have to be individually composed.  Thus a teacher or student (if given that authoring role) could design a Mail Study Stream quickly, simply by defining a single Mail Template and entering a list of words in the Unit Database. 

We can also provide multiple Mail Templates in order to send out a variety of message formats.  For example, an initial template could include the following Blocks:
Mail Template A
  • Block1:  single word in target language
  • Block2:  set of six blank lines
  • Block3:  translation of word above into native language
Thus this Message would serve as a kind of flash card.  A student views the new vocabulary word (in a foreign, target language) in the mobile phone screen, thinks about it, and then scrolls down to find out the meaning in his/her native language.  This could be followed by another message in a different format,
Mail Template B.
  • Block1:  single word in target language
  • Block2:  set of six blank lines
  • Block3:  explanation of key word in simple target language
And then, a few hours later, another Message goes out with a third format,
Mail Template C.
  • Block1: single word in target language
  • Block2: same word in a sentence.
  • Block3: same word in another sentence.
And so on, with a theoretically unlimited variety of templates.  Thus we need a interface to order the emails sent out. We need to select from within database the fields that will be sent out and a template to use to create an email to send.  See Bob's authoring interface below as an example...


Interface and Screen Designs

Bob Gettings has prepared some notes on interface and sample screen mockups to help the discussion along.  See here...
http://www.ipc.hokusei.ac.jp/%7Ez00398/MFMpush/index.htm
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moodle for Mobiles - Mail Study Context & Interface

by Paul Daniels -

I would like to help out with any part of the MFM project if needed. Especially the mail quiz since I am already using a seperate quiz outside of Moodle for this purpose http://www.hokulele.us/test/. Now there are only beginner questions entered into the database. If the code could be helpful, it is at: hokulele.us/downloads/mobile_content.zip

Yesterday I was trying to install MFM with Moodle 1.6.1 and get this error message:

Warning: main() [function.main]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/course/mfmbuttons.php) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/daniels/:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/tmp) in /home/daniels/public_html/cms/course/lib.php on line 2

Warning: main(/course/mfmbuttons.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: Operation not permitted in /home/daniels/public_html/cms/course/lib.php on line 2

Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening '/course/mfmbuttons.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/daniels/public_html/cms/course/lib.php on line 2

I am note sure if the problem is that the 'mobile' scripts are in the wrong place, or that I am using Moodle 1.6.1 or that I am on a hosted server. Any ideas?

Paul D.

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In reply to Paul Daniels

Re: Moodle for Mobiles - Mail Study Context & Interface

by Jamie Pratt -
It looks like you have everything in the right place Paul. But perhaps you've not followed all the instructions in the readme.txt

php seems to be having a problem with this line (which you added to course/lib.php) :

include_once($CFG->mfm_dirroot.'/course/mfmbuttons.php');

This seems to indicate you've not edited your config.php as instructed???  Seems like $CFG->mfm_dirroot is not set as expected.

Jamie
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