Keeping on top of student activity

Keeping on top of student activity

by Tim Allen -
Number of replies: 6

Hi moodlers,

I have what is for me a very important question and a serious problem.

I consider my role as a teacher to extend beyond the syllabus into being available to students on a more personal level - for me teaching is about the whole person and not just the intellect.

Two weeks ago someone sent this private message to a dialogue:

HI~~
how do you feel today?

I'm very bad...
because, someone words caused me a lot of pain.
My heart is broken.
I felt very sad.


It's so hard that I like someone
and I wanna express my feeling.  sad

I never saw the message, and just today the young man came to my office still distraught.  I feel very bad that I didn't respond to his initial cry for help. sad  Part of the problem is due to the fact that the dialogue module doesn't send emails out for the first message, only subsequent ones. 

However, I have decided to post about this issue here and not to the dialogue forum for two reasons:

  1. I've had no response from anyone about how to solve this via coding (I need help I can't do it alone I'm afraid  shy)
  2. There is a broader issue involved of how to go about tracking so much student activity, especially in forums and dialogues

Often I login and find that I become preoccupied in one course, and then don't have time to check other courses' activities.  Because I have five separate courses I need to visit all five in order to track all the latest activity.  The situation is a little better now that the latest activity is taken per course and not for a site login, but it is still awkward and often feels inefficient.

If I have this problem, I wonder how on earth Martin can follow so much activity here at moodle.org!  How on earth do you do it Martin?  approve

I am wondering if an full RSS feature would solve this problem by putting all posts together on one page.  Otherwise what are any strategies to oversome this problem?  If anyone has any tips or advice or thoughts on any aspect of these issues I would love to hear from you.    smile

Tim.

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In reply to Tim Allen

Re: Keeping on top of student activity

by Martin Dougiamas -
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The best answer is email.  Subscribe to importnt areas and then your email client contains a time-linear view of everything.  You can then use your email features to manage the information, in Mozilla for example I have automatic coloring of messages, flags, tags, sorting, searching etc.

That dialogue bug does need fixing.  Note the dialogue module is not part of Moodle distribution because I'm planning a different instant messaging module that will cover the same areas.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Keeping on top of student activity

by Peter Sereinigg -

Hi,

Tim, thats one of my problems I tried to discuss this several times, but my english is not good enough, therefore maybe I am not be able to describe this in that way ...traurig

I do agree with Martin, with his idea of a new instant messaging modul - but what is in meantime ... I loose although sometimes a week informations übel, I have organiced moodle not only as LMS but although at project-organising - plattform (POP Breites Grinsen) where students have rights as "teacher" to lead and manage. That means I have "moodle-mania", one system for a lot of possibilities and lot of success with this.

A central RSS option (there is a RSS possibility of "asking" a Host, via RSS if there are RSS options) maybe a quick solution which helps a lot, RSS for Forum and Dialog. A list of all forums and dialogs of moodle, with the oportunity to swich on/off RSS, E-Mail, a little bit if statistic , ... not only in one course ...

hmmmm when is christmas for such a which ...
hmmmm Martin, I have birthday in Juny ...maybe there Breites Grinsen

Thanks
Peter

Martin: presentation was successful at university....cool

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In reply to Peter Sereinigg

Re: Keeping on top of student activity

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
You guys have seen the recent activity page, right?   If it isn't currently enough  - how could it be working better?

(Glad the presentation went well!)
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Keeping on top of student activity

by Peter Sereinigg -

A kind of "managment summary", only things which have to be done, which need reaktion ...not just a listing of the statistic.

I have 200 Students in several courses and sub courses ...

Is this a little bit more clearly?

Peter

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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Keeping on top of student activity

by Tim Allen -

An idea, not fully thought out.  thoughtful

This is most relevant for teachers teaching multiple courses or admins teaching multiple courses.  Would if be possible to have a recent activity page for all courses together?  Then one could check items that have been "processed" in some way by the teacher.  Checked items are removed from the "to do" list, while unchecked ones would remain.

The overview would make it much easier to manage a site with many courses, and to notice items which deserve some kind of action.

Tim.

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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Keeping on top of student activity

by Marc Dastous -

As I have stated before Martin, email is not always an option. Many parents do not want their 12-14 year olds to have access to email.  I can't explain their reasoning, but that is a fact of life for elementary and secondary educators.

I have a tremendous task every year convincing parents to allow their students access to the internet (much easier this year because of Moodle).

One way to solve this issue would be to create a form and use the attached mailer.php.  This would make it easier to include email for all students.  Granted an interface would have to be built to facilitate customization of the fields (email address of recipient, etc.), but this might solve some issues.

Just a thought.

Marc 

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