Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Steve Jeaco -
Number of replies: 14

I'm fairly new to Moodle and the whole open source - community thing.

I must say I love everything about it so far.  And Moodle is great.

I've noticed that moderators on the Using Moodle Forum often get a little impatient with users who fail to search the site adequately before posting up their question.

I do understand that moderators are getting more and more busy as Moodle gets more popular.  As a language teacher myself, I am aware though that if you have a problem like "blank page", there are several different words you might try ("empty screen", "nothing appears", "missing webpage") and anyone without the right jargon (or knowledge of English) may find it hard to find stuff quickly.

I wonder whether there could/should be an alternative Using Moodle Lite forum (I'll leave someone else to work on a better title) where a custom scale is used for rating the posts.

If something like this was set up...

Forum Redirector
Go to documentation, Search forums, Search bug tracker, Search feature tracker, Add as new forum topic, Add as new bug, Add as new feature

Moderators could choose feedback from a drop down list and everyone would see the quick response.  They read the posts anyway, so this would save time typing "Try searching the documentation..." or "Please report this as a bug" etc.

Just an idea.

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In reply to Steve Jeaco

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Art Lader -
Hello, Steve,

I think that your idea has merit. Thanks for posting it.

Regards,
Art
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In reply to Steve Jeaco

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Julian Ridden -
Having just 're-pointed' htree users I am now feeling rather guilty. black eye

I think the custom scale is a great idea and saves from lots of those 'do this', or 'search here' style posts.

Cheers
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In reply to Steve Jeaco

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Frances Bell -
Sounds good to me too wink
Perhaps you would like to add it to Issue Tracker on Moodle front page.
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In reply to Frances Bell

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Julian Ridden -
Shouldnt need that. Cant you just create a new scale? Instead of using the existing (cool, very cool, etc), we create a new scale for use with those new terms included (Go to documentation, Search forums, Search bug tracker, Search feature tracker, Add as new forum topic, Add as new bug, Add as new feature).

Should be quick and easy to do and at least trial out.
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In reply to Julian Ridden

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Frances Bell -
I can do that though I (mistakenly) thought that Steve was suggesting an automated posting generator rather than a posting rater.
Last time I used verbal (rather than numerical scales) there was a sort of weird 'averaging' effect where the comments were deemed to be in a ranked order on a scale rather than the discrete alternatives that we will have here.
Anyway I will set up the scale and we can try it out on Steve's orginal post say.
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In reply to Frances Bell

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Frances Bell -
OK, I have set up a scale as Julian describes, and applied it to a new temporary forum (so as not to disrupt the rating already done in this forum).
Please could Julian and others put in a couple of postings and we can apply multiple ratings to see what happens.
The limitations that i noticed (apart from 'averaging' issue) are that ratings only permits text so there is no opportunity to put in urls (but I will see if auto-text links work); and that we can only have one rating scale per forum.
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In reply to Frances Bell

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by A. T. Wyatt -
I, too, thought the idea also made sense for the posting to be automatically generated, not the rating.

I have gone to rate the post in the temporary forum. Isn't it merely going to show the last rating applied? What happens if the next reader goes in and rates it differently? This is interesting, because I don't use student ratings and therefore do not know quite how they are going to work!

atw
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In reply to A. T. Wyatt

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Lesli Smith -
"I, too, thought the idea also made sense for the posting to be automatically generated, not the rating."

Ah ha! That would be an interesting feature--available only to teachers and above, I assume??
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In reply to Lesli Smith

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by A. T. Wyatt -
Well, moderators. With roles, we can have all kinds of permutations, yes? smile

atw
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In reply to A. T. Wyatt

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Lesli Smith -
moderators--right. oops, am still thinking in old-roles terms, but that's what I was thinking, too. smile
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In reply to A. T. Wyatt

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Julian Ridden -
Hmnmm, yes. I am also seeing the issues with the 'averaging' of remarks.

I thought it only as a 'quick fix' that would require little moodle.org hacking to implement. Not sure if it is the right way to go now sad

Any other ideas?
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In reply to Julian Ridden

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

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
Yes, a series of statements is not necessarily a *scale*...

IMHO most people's typed redirections are a lot more useful and friendlier to newbies than a rating could be anyway ...
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Frances Bell -
I agree, it's nice to have a personal answer. I will close down the temporary forum to posts. I thought I would delete it too so please tell me if I shouldn't.
This has been quite interesting though. Using a discrete set of comments could be useful in teaching. My son was in a very large research Methods class at University and the lecturer had numbered all the typical comments he ever wrote on research Methods assignments and numbered them so 23 meant 'publisher missing from book reference' (I made this one up!). Where the error occurred the marker put 23 on the student's work, and the student consulted the list to see what the error was. It would quite nice to put sort of post-it notes on a student's work shere we could pick comments from a preset list. What do you think? Useful? impossible?
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In reply to Frances Bell

Re: Using Scales and a new Forum for "Using Moodle Lite"

by Lesli Smith -
Yes, Frances. I agree. Do go ahead and delete the temporary forum. It was very useful to me, though, so thanks for posting it. For instance, I just looked at it as a guest and learned that guests don't see ratings at all, for instance, which is helpful to me since I use the "guest" mode to allow parents to peek in on my course (if they can remember the correct key code for their child's section, anyway). I don't remember if that's always been the case or not. I have to admit--keeping up with all the variables involved in just the three standard course roles so far has been a challenge for me. As much as I'm looking forward to the roles flexibility in 1.7, I know I'll have to have a better system for keeping track of these variables at that point. Some kind of chart or something to keep handy just to remind myself who can see what when. smile
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