Course completion tracking...options?

Course completion tracking...options?

by Brian Maynes -
Number of replies: 2

Hi all,

I would like to know what you all think is the best way to track course completion in Moodle. Let me explain exactly what we are looking to do...

We develop most (if not all) of our content in .html/.swf using Dreamweaver/Captivate/Flash and then link to each module of the course using Moodle course resources. For example, "Course A" may have 4 separate modules, each accessed separately as a resource under Course A. We do not use meta-courses. The problem we are having is that we seem to have no way to track who has actually completed a course/module...we simply see "actions" listed in the course statistics and course reports, such as "view", "update", etc. These actions mean nothing to us since they only tell us who clicked on a module, but they may have never actually viewed its content.

What we have been doing (ineffectively so far) is to create a survey/questionnaire that includes a single checkbox question. We link to the survey/questionnaire as a course resource, just like the individual modules. Participants are instructed to check this box to "acknowledge" they have viewed the course content, but since there is nothing forcing them to view the content, it's kind of a useless means of tracking completion.

I hope this makes sense. If anyone can enlighten me on better ways to track course completion using Moodle 1.7, it would be greatly appreciated. Perhaps we're just missing some nice feature of Moodle, but for the life of me, I can't find anything. I find the reporting and statistics to be of virtually no use, so if anyone can provide effective alternatives, I would be grateful.

Thanks,
Brian

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In reply to Brian Maynes

Re: Course completion tracking...options?

by bill c -
I'm interested in this as well. We have a similar setup and were planning on creating short exams that the students have to pass so that we can track their progress. Not a great approach. Hopefully someone will have a better solution.
-B
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In reply to Brian Maynes

Re: Course completion tracking...options?

by Rod Ward -

Brian,

Your need would appear to be a good fit for using SCORM packages. If you are currently using Captivate, you can turn on SCORM features under the QUIZ settings. I currently create all manner of SCORM courses in Captivate (2 and 3) and track them in Moodle (version 1.8.3).

I advise you to only use SCORM 1.2 at this stage as Moodle's SCORM 2004 tracking does not appear to work with Captivate (at least I could never get it to work).

If you create your course lessons as separate SCORMs and then upload them into your Moodle course as SCORM activities, Moodle will track when they were viewed and completed by each user.  If you create quiz questions in Captivate for your lessons, Moodle can also record scores against these down to the interaction level.

If you want a more adventurous approach, you can try creating your lessons in Captivate and then amalgamating them as a multi-SCO SCORM course package. Then you upload this (usually as a zip file) into Moodle and create a SCORM course for it. But this requires some hand-coding of the imsmanifest.xml file, so it's more for advanced users. The advantage of this approach is that learners will see a menu in Moodle's SCORM player that records (using ticks and crosses) which specific lessons they have done, passed or failed, as well as scores in the Grades area.

The Moodle website shows the SCORM plugin as being suitable for any version of Moodle, so you should be able to use it with version 1.7.

Search the forums for posts on how to set up Captivate SCORM lessons so that they are tracked properly in Moodle.

Hope this helps

Rod Ward

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