I'm using moodle to teach a computer course with 11 enrolled students. Each student must finish 40 assignments and I´m using the assignment module to handle that. During this course I've noticed that few small modification would improve the assignment module when handling courses with large number of assignments for each student. Here are my suggestions.
- On the assignment index page it's easy to see all the assignments ordered by weeks/topics and I can also see how many students have finished each assignment. In my case it would be an improvement if I could also see how many of the assighments have been graded (or feedback has been sent). In this case I could see that f.ex. 9 students have handed in assignment 1 and I still have to grade 3 of them.
- When grading or giving a feedback on an individual assignment it would be an improvement if I could have a dropdown menu in the top right corner (like in the assignment view). This way, when grading or giving feedbak to multiple assignments it's easier to jump from assignment 1 to assignment 2 and so on. Currently I grade and give feedback for assignment 1 and then I must backtrack and find assignment 2 in the list of assignments.
It would also be great if I could give students feedback using some markup in their own text and return the file to them using the assignment module. I know this has been discussed so I would dwell on it.
Finally I have an idea. I don't know how difficult it would be to implement it but what if the feedback for each assignment would not be a simple static text like it's now but instead a conversation thread or discussion. That way the student could interact with the teacher on the current assignment (perhaps he would like some further explanations). I personally would benefit from such a feature and I belive the students would do so as well. This would also encourage more interaction between teacher and student wich I believe is very importand in a distance learning situation.
Thanks,
S.Fjalar