Moodlers,
I work for a trade school where our main interest in a LMS is not for distance learning, but for creating a centralized system for course resources, and student assesment of our onsite attendees.
I've downloaded Moodle, and I'm very close to thinking its the way to go for us. My hesitation is in how to handle the course configuration and enrolment of students. Our school is structured differently than most others, so if you're up for a challenge... read on!
The easy part is that all of our students go through the same 30 week long program. The overall program consists of 12 graded courses of study which are spread out over the 30 week program.
The catch we have is that we are not a typical semester based program. We have a cyclical system where we start a new group of 48 students every three weeks. This means that there are a total of 10 different start dates active at one time, each at various stages of the overall program. In addition, each starting group of 48 is divided into four 12 member "families". Our maximum class size is 12 students, so on a given day there are 10 classes being taught, with each class being given 4 times (one time for each family).
My thought would be to create a child course for the start date with all 48 students, and then have meta courses for the 12 courses of study. I would use groups to divide the 48 students into the four families. The biggest problem I'm running into, is that group assignments don't get passed to the meta courses. This means that every three weeks the groups and student memberships would have to be configured. Is there a better way to handle this?
I'm also a little concerned that if I create a child course for the start date with 12 meta courses, there would be 130 courses active at one time. Is there a way to limit the course view so only the courses a student is enrolled in appear in the left column?
Thanks so much for this forum!
-Brock
Your "time-table" is the most unusual I've seen! Anyway I'll take a try.
Let's first get the terms right.
- group: 48 students who started on the same day. There are 10 (active) groups on a given day.
Question: Does this mean that a given group attend your institute for 30 weeks (3 x 10) and then leave?
- family: each group is divided into four families of 12 students. They sit in the same classroom.
The first question is what do you want to deliver through the LMS?
Specifically: Is your group a "class" like in a school or is it the family? In the sense a) they "see" each other b) are all in the same stage of the curriculum c) what exactly they get from the teachers is unique (the same subject in another class is not necessarily identical in the way it was conducted, different teacher, different students)
The second question is: What do you want to share amoung the students, what do you have to repeat, in the LMS? I mean, does everybody go through the same curriculum or do they lead to different "certificates" or whatever?
Let's first get the terms right.
- group: 48 students who started on the same day. There are 10 (active) groups on a given day.
Question: Does this mean that a given group attend your institute for 30 weeks (3 x 10) and then leave?
- family: each group is divided into four families of 12 students. They sit in the same classroom.
The first question is what do you want to deliver through the LMS?
Specifically: Is your group a "class" like in a school or is it the family? In the sense a) they "see" each other b) are all in the same stage of the curriculum c) what exactly they get from the teachers is unique (the same subject in another class is not necessarily identical in the way it was conducted, different teacher, different students)
The second question is: What do you want to share amoung the students, what do you have to repeat, in the LMS? I mean, does everybody go through the same curriculum or do they lead to different "certificates" or whatever?
Thanks for the reply!
>>>Your "time-table" is the most unusual I've seen! Anyway I'll take a try.
Yes, it has made it a challenge to find tools that work with our format. In another respect, our system is simply microcosm of a typical grade school. We have 10 grade levels. Each grade level is divided into four seperate classes, in different rooms, with different teachers, but all classes at the same grade level are being taught the same material. The big difference is that a student is only in a grade level for 3 weeks, before graduating to the next grade level. I think, this should answer your first question.
>>>Question: Does this mean that a given group attend your institute for 30 weeks (3 x 10) and then leave?
Yes.
>>>The second question is: What do you want to share amoung the students, what do you have to repeat, in the LMS? I mean, does everybody go through the same curriculum or do they lead to different "certificates" or whatever?
In answer to your second question, all students go throught the exact same material, and everyone ends up with the same certificate of completion. We break each "grade level" into 4 seperate famailies so that we can keep the instructor/student ratio small. With Moodle, I want the option to allow students at the same grade level, but from different families to interact with each other (forums etc). Moodle's group feature looks like it will accomodate this.
Conceptually I want to build all the resources for a particular "group" across the entire 30 weeks into a template course. Every 3 weeks, I'd like to simply copy that template course for the new start date. A simply approach that seems to work well, is to create a course in the Weekly configuration, and make it 30 weeks long. A big problem I've run into with it, is that the assignment start/end dates do not retain their relative position to the weeks in the course. This means that once the template course is copied for the new start date, over 70 assignments would have to have their dates changed. Doing this every three weeks does not seem too fun!
Thanks,
-Brock
Hi obert,
A solution to your dates dilemma may be to make one course for the template and copy it for new weeks as you suggested, but ask a moodle partner to hack the reset function so that it will set all the dates to the correct points relative to the start date.
I imagine that this would be quite trivial (cheap) to achieve, especially as you know in advance that the dates will always be the same relative to the start date.
Matt
A solution to your dates dilemma may be to make one course for the template and copy it for new weeks as you suggested, but ask a moodle partner to hack the reset function so that it will set all the dates to the correct points relative to the start date.
I imagine that this would be quite trivial (cheap) to achieve, especially as you know in advance that the dates will always be the same relative to the start date.
Matt
It might be simpler to create a template course, make a backup, and then restore it from backup as a new course each time you need to start a new course. You then set a proper start date for this course and don't have to worry about having to remove any students and their data from the old course. This will also allow you to retain the old course for some time, making it simply hidden.
You may also want to look at the conditional activities forum. They allow you to set up sequences of activities based not on dates but on completing other activities. Basically the followup activities are locked until student meets the set criteria.
You may also want to look at the conditional activities forum. They allow you to set up sequences of activities based not on dates but on completing other activities. Basically the followup activities are locked until student meets the set criteria.
I can't say whether Moodle is the best platform for your purpose, but it seems to me that you can use it in your situation without too much ado.
Your idea about metacourses is right except I would do it the other way around: make the 12 courses that start together as normal courses and a metacourse that has all of them as members. This way, each of the individual courses is open only to the specific group of students and their teachers, whereas all of them have access to all common materials and activities. The families can probably be set up as Moodle groups.
Groups are course-specific, so right now groups are not passed to metacourse.There is no standard option to show students only the courses they are in but it is a simple hack to add it.
Your idea about metacourses is right except I would do it the other way around: make the 12 courses that start together as normal courses and a metacourse that has all of them as members. This way, each of the individual courses is open only to the specific group of students and their teachers, whereas all of them have access to all common materials and activities. The families can probably be set up as Moodle groups.
Groups are course-specific, so right now groups are not passed to metacourse.There is no standard option to show students only the courses they are in but it is a simple hack to add it.