I think I'm going to have to give up on moodle. It just FLOODS me with unwanted mail because the forum tracking that sends me email copies doesn't focus on topic threads but sends me the whole forum.
Of course I wouldn't mind helping others when I learn myself. Ive been part of lots of help forums. But getting 100 emails a day of unwanted stuff is no joke. My users wont like it either.
One nice solution to the "spam" problem raised by Shan Jayran would be a system similar to that of the WebCT Forums.
In the WebCT Forums you can subscribe to each thread separately, by clicking the Notify Me button. If any further messages are posted to that post you get an e-mail message. Of course you can also unsubscribe from a subscribed thread by clicking the Unsubscribe button.
In Moodle this would mean adding to the Subscription drop-down list 2 options:
- Send me email copies of posts to this thread
- Unsubscribe me from this thread
Anyway, I don't think that getting messages (even lots of them...) from a forum to which one has voluntarily subscribed can be called "spam".
Joseph
This is really my only major problem with Moodle. In fact it was one of the reasons I delayed using it so long as I do not appreciate recieved 60 to 100 emails a day. I really think it is necessary to change to a subscribe to thread mode. All major message boards do that, phpBB, invisionboard, Yabb, etc...
I do see that having the teacher being able to automatically subscribe all students to the news forum as useful, but for the rest of the forums there should be options
I do see that having the teacher being able to automatically subscribe all students to the news forum as useful, but for the rest of the forums there should be options
- subscribe to thread
- subscribe to forum
- no subscription
I sympathise with Shan on this one. We have used Moodle for a year now, and very active forums do present something of an issue with regard to the volume of email generated. For this particular forum, I turned off emails long ago, preferring to check manually on a daily basis - that won't suit all though, and the same is true of the digest facility. Moodle excels at providing choice, and flexibility is key here. One size won't fit all requirements.
I personally like the thought of an optional/additional facility where I could subscribe to a thread that interested me, but I would still need to visit the forum regularly in order to determine which new threads interested me in order that I could subscribe to them.
If subscribing to threads were considered, then I would suggest that another option be offered at the forum level - 'new threads only'. That way, I would receive new threads by email, and I could then subscribe individually to those that interested me. Obviously, code would need to be included to ensure that multiple emails weren't sent in the case of forum AND thread level subscriptions.
I agree that thread-level subscriptions are the way to go. In the mean time, are you aware that it is possible to subscribe to a forum as an RSS news feed. That means that the you read the postings on your blog reader (I use http://www.Bloglines.com but there are a number of them.) instead of having them pile up in your email inbox.
For a one step solution, try clicking on this: 
-- Russ
I had this problem in the beginning as well, and I believe the problem is that the default settings are set to receive messages. I had signed up for Moodle, but not posted for a while. Then once I started posting, I suddenly started getting emails. I didn't understand why. I figured out finally that there was a default "I wanted email copies of posts to this forum" at the bottom of my posts. This is illogical, because one shouldn't get all posts from a forum when they are only posting to one thread. Once, I figured this out, I still had to manually change the choice each time I posted. Sometimes I would forget to do this, and got more posts from more forums. It was not easy to figure out how to shut this off on a forum by forum basis, and it was only later that I realized I could stop this default by changing my profile settings, which seem also to be set to a default receive posts. I would rather see the default be no email, as I think that would solve part of the problem.
There is a link in each mail "Unsubscribe from this forum".
Well the link is not there sometimes - when the teacher forces the subscription. I remember once enrolling to some French course, the link was missing and I could not find the right link on the course web pages to unenroll me (because I do not speak French and the langueage menu was missing too)
IMO there should be one page for managing of all my current subscriptions, there could be a link in each email to "Manage my subscriptions".
skodak
Well the link is not there sometimes - when the teacher forces the subscription. I remember once enrolling to some French course, the link was missing and I could not find the right link on the course web pages to unenroll me (because I do not speak French and the langueage menu was missing too)
IMO there should be one page for managing of all my current subscriptions, there could be a link in each email to "Manage my subscriptions".
skodak
I find that email is rarely the right medium for reading forum posts ans so simply turn it off.
> IMO there should be one page
> for managing of all my current
> subscriptions, there could be a
> link in each email to "Manage my
> subscriptions".
Great idea!
-- Art
> for managing of all my current
> subscriptions, there could be a
> link in each email to "Manage my
> subscriptions".
Great idea!
-- Art
Shan, why post duplicates?
Martin I wouldn't normally post duplicates but this was just so overwhelming and I thought something that on its own was demotivating me from using moodle was important to flag up. Ive since spoken to other online educators elsewher and apparently this issue was vital in choice not to use moodle. Forum software has been tried and ytested by Yabb and PhBB etc so I don't think it's good to make radical changes or cut out bits w/o very good reason.
The other big turnoff is the poor navigation eg no Back to top link at bottom of all pages so lots of tiresome scrolling. Moodle is v pretty but confusing to navigate which won't be apparent to lots of established users here but boy is it frustrating to a newcomer. Mainly the lack of a side menu with standing access to all main zones. See Atutor which does this pretty well - and has Back to top, forum thread tracking etc
I have to put up with moodle because I'm contracted to an agency that uses it but for my own community I'll use Atutor which has an import export facility so I'll design in Atutor and transfer to Atutor. Sorry love I can see the hard work here but I have to put my students needs first.
And I only just discovered the ruddy default at foot of each message that threatens to dump all the forum on me again. One tired overlooked slipof not undoing the default and I get inbox flooded again. Lawksamercy.
The other big turnoff is the poor navigation eg no Back to top link at bottom of all pages so lots of tiresome scrolling. Moodle is v pretty but confusing to navigate which won't be apparent to lots of established users here but boy is it frustrating to a newcomer. Mainly the lack of a side menu with standing access to all main zones. See Atutor which does this pretty well - and has Back to top, forum thread tracking etc
I have to put up with moodle because I'm contracted to an agency that uses it but for my own community I'll use Atutor which has an import export facility so I'll design in Atutor and transfer to Atutor. Sorry love I can see the hard work here but I have to put my students needs first.
And I only just discovered the ruddy default at foot of each message that threatens to dump all the forum on me again. One tired overlooked slipof not undoing the default and I get inbox flooded again. Lawksamercy.
Why not just post your proposed improvements as feature requests, Shan? Here - http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=55
Best regards,
Art
Best regards,
Art
You do not understand Moodle at all so please stop your blind criticism. I do like both very much, but each of them is suitable for different things.
ATutor course is electronic book with some added functionality (links, discussions, tests, etc). Students are expected to read the book and pass the tests. That's all. Students usually work individually. This is the traditional SCORM based training approach.
Moodle course is very flexible and really different. Courses can be divided into sections or weeks, each of them consists of individual activities. There is no 'main' activity such as book in ATutor. With Moodle you can use any teaching method you like
The sidebar is great for books, but Moodle courses are usually much longer and more complex. Some activities should have sidebar, some can not have sidebar: imagine tests or Moodle lectures - students would not be concentrated on the current activity. IMO sidebar is great for orientation inside individual activities (see my book module). For navigation between activities is used upper menu.
The main problem with ATutor is that it strictly follows the standards, you can not innovate the teaching process. I like Moodle because I can experiment with teaching methods. It is very easy to create new activities or tweak the existing ones.
Finally look at some proposed features for ATutor here. It seems to me they want to catch up with Moodle
ATutor course is electronic book with some added functionality (links, discussions, tests, etc). Students are expected to read the book and pass the tests. That's all. Students usually work individually. This is the traditional SCORM based training approach.
Moodle course is very flexible and really different. Courses can be divided into sections or weeks, each of them consists of individual activities. There is no 'main' activity such as book in ATutor. With Moodle you can use any teaching method you like
The sidebar is great for books, but Moodle courses are usually much longer and more complex. Some activities should have sidebar, some can not have sidebar: imagine tests or Moodle lectures - students would not be concentrated on the current activity. IMO sidebar is great for orientation inside individual activities (see my book module). For navigation between activities is used upper menu.
The main problem with ATutor is that it strictly follows the standards, you can not innovate the teaching process. I like Moodle because I can experiment with teaching methods. It is very easy to create new activities or tweak the existing ones.
Finally look at some proposed features for ATutor here. It seems to me they want to catch up with Moodle
In particular the "forum subscribe" feature. LOL 
I just received mail that ATutor 1.4.1 was released.
New features are:
New features are:
- polls (=choices)
- course language property (=force language)
- shared downloadable themes (=themes)
- source code repository (= Moodle CVS)
What is the point here? Are you talking about using Moodle or using Moodle.org? When you install and run Moodle on your own system/site, you are in charge of how you set up your courses for your students, including the number of and types of forums you have. Key points here:
- The Using Moodle course here at moodle.org has dozens of forums and thousands of users. If that is typical of the courses you are going to be running using Moodle, then the forum issue could be a problem, if not, then it is a non-issue.
- You have the ability to give your students good instructions for using the courses, e.g. navigating through the topics and resources, and about being automatically subscribed to forums in which they post.
- In most online courses, the whole point of having a forum is for the students to be involved in the issues being discussed, and getting copies of the posts via email is a good way to make sure they get and stay involved.
And for Skodak:
IMO there should be one page for managing of all my current subscriptions, there could be a link in each email to "Manage my subscriptions".
I know you must be good at programming because of your work on the Book module. Maybe you can work on this for us?
See this thread as a place to start: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=7209
Sincerely,
Chardelle
I have started implementing page with listing of all subscriptions, then I
noticed that there is already list of all forums in given course - just
click on the to 'Forums' link:
Using Moodle -> Forums -> General problems -> Moodle spam
Maybe it could be changed in mails to
Using Moodle -> Forums (manage subscriptions) -> General problems -> Moodle spam
or there could be another link at the end of the post.
What do you think?
Hi Petr!
My thoughts.
WP1
My thoughts.
- I think this type of page should be connected to a link from the "MyMoodle" page.
- A link named something like "Forum Management".
- I do not think it should be in the "breadcrumb" navigation line.
- Also, line at the bottom of the e-mail posts to enable one
to unsubscribe would also be nice but only when subscription for
specific threads is coded into Moodle.
WP1
Hi Skodak,
Yes you are right, by clicking on Forums you can subscribe/unsubscribe fairly easily, although it isn't very intuitive to click on the Forums link to do this.
What I was thinking of was something more "personal" to the user--rather than a list of all of the forums in a course--a list of all of the courses they are enrolled in, and the forums they are subscribed to. Also, I was hoping to have a place where users could also not only unenroll and unsubscribe from their courses and forums, but also a way to "cancel" their membership from the entire moodle system--as of now I am not sure a user can do this.
Oh, I see WP1 has chimed in--hi--yes, something along the lines of a My Account (MyMoodle) type of page that gives a little more control to the user than the profile page now does.
Thank you
As I said I already have some listing code, but I do not know what should the "nice personal forum management page" exactly look like. If somebody does some visual design I can program it
steps to design new page:
steps to design new page:
- save the most relevat page to disk using your browser's function "Save Page As..."
- edit the page in some HTML editor, you can combine html from several pages too
- make a screenshot (please check the file size)
- post it here
- I will do the programming if people like it
May be something like the groups: two collums, left a list with available course/forum and a button "subscribe selected", right a collum with subscribed course/forum and a button "unsubscribe selected".
I'll make a screenshot tonight (no time at the moment , but would already share the idea)
I agree that a personal MyMoodle page would be very interesting. Right now we do not have one. I think a manage forums link at the bottom of every e-mail would be a good and simple workaround solution. I will propose this as a feature request in the bug tracker.
- You have the ability to give your students good instructions for using the courses, e.g. navigating through the topics and resources, and about being automatically subscribed to forums in which they post.
I teach 200 students, if each of them writes 1-2 messages per day (my requirements) then they will be swamped with emails. The problem here is that email providers in Korea only give email boxes with a maximum of 1mb storage, it is easily foreseable that thier quota could be filled in a couple of days just on moodle traffic alone.
The forum subscription format as it stands is poor at best and is in dire need of improvement.
Blinger man -- Suppose you have the ability to subscribe to topic threads, as opposed to the entire forum. How will you decide which threads to subscribe to? You will have to browse the forum regularly to find new threads. (If you argue that there will only be a few threads, then if you are subscribed to only those threads, and you require your students to post 200-400 messages per day, you will still be receiving boatloads of email.) Therefore, you may as well unsubscribe from the forum email, and visit the forum daily (or semi-daily) to keep up with your students' posts.
How would you design the forum?
How would you design the forum?
for myself in this case of course I have to be subscribed to the forum, but do my students really need to get that much email every day? they should only be subscribed to threads that they start or reply to, or choose to be subscribed to.
I do not think that big groups having discussion on the internet is a sensible anyway.
Have you thought about assigning your students to groups? If the teacher then sets up the forums correctly students will only receive e-mails from their own group members (and only see messages from their own group member when they look at the forums). This probably provides for a better learning atmosphere.
Have you thought about assigning your students to groups? If the teacher then sets up the forums correctly students will only receive e-mails from their own group members (and only see messages from their own group member when they look at the forums). This probably provides for a better learning atmosphere.
Re: Using Forums
There have been some really good ideas and questions brought up here about this. Maybe it would be good to move this to a topic under the Teaching Strategies forum. Some topics of interest may be:
- Deciding which options to use for a forum. E.g. When is it appropriate to use forced subscribe, or limit it to one topic only.
- How to engage learners in discussions and encourage sharing.
- How to limit discussions that get "out of control".
- Where to post discussion rules and how to enforce them.
- Using groups in discussions.
- When to use the dialogue module versus a forum.
P.S. to Blinger man: this last topic maybe also be a tool you can use for limiting emails in your courses. The add-on dialogue module keeps all of the "discussions" online and users have the option of choosing whether or not to receive an email notifying that a post has been made to the dialogue. You could "pair up" your students so that they carry on a required discussion with another student, or you can open a dialogue with groups.
Hi Chardelle,
I agree with your assesment and solution. Maybe a thread within the "Teaching Strategies" forum. or even a special forum called "Take control of your forum" would be helpful. This does seem to be a problem that should be addressed.
Teachers have to remember that what may seem simple to us (those who are supposedly trained to take in varied infomation and coalesce it into something that another can understand and learn from) may need some help ourseves in "Forum Management" just like "classroom management". Both seem intuitive yet people take expensive courses to learn how to manage a classroom, therefore, it seems natural that there should be either a course or something on how to manage a forum. Afterall in e-learning is this not a form of classroom, at least even classwork. The only issue here again is what Moodler has the background to be in charge of the forum, monitor the forum and give good advice while the rest of us chime in???
I am going to begin a thread >> Please provide tips and tricks on how you manage your Moodle forums. Let's see what folks have to say about it. Martin may decide to move it somewhere else. Let's just get the ball rolling on it since it seems to be a quiet concern of some Moodlers.
Breathless again!!! Back to "lurking" . 
WP1
I agree with your assesment and solution. Maybe a thread within the "Teaching Strategies" forum. or even a special forum called "Take control of your forum" would be helpful. This does seem to be a problem that should be addressed.
Teachers have to remember that what may seem simple to us (those who are supposedly trained to take in varied infomation and coalesce it into something that another can understand and learn from) may need some help ourseves in "Forum Management" just like "classroom management". Both seem intuitive yet people take expensive courses to learn how to manage a classroom, therefore, it seems natural that there should be either a course or something on how to manage a forum. Afterall in e-learning is this not a form of classroom, at least even classwork. The only issue here again is what Moodler has the background to be in charge of the forum, monitor the forum and give good advice while the rest of us chime in???
I am going to begin a thread >> Please provide tips and tricks on how you manage your Moodle forums. Let's see what folks have to say about it. Martin may decide to move it somewhere else. Let's just get the ball rolling on it since it seems to be a quiet concern of some Moodlers.
Breathless again!!!
Back to "lurking" . WP1
I think this issue really boils down to choice. Myself, I prefer almost never to get mail from forums (although in certain situations I do), I prefer to browse through when I come to a moodle site. Others may find the emails useful reminders and don't mind zapping mail that doesn't interest them. Nothing wrong or right about either postition.
The point is that at the moment I have to remember to click 'I don't want to subscribe' at the bottom of some messages to keep from getting mail. Its not much of an issue for me, I'm used to moodle now and I understand what's going on. However, for a student who likes to work the way I do, its a big issue because they don't realise that by default they are being subscribed to some forums they post in. They see all that email as spam and they may not even realise they can turn it off. The argument about whether it is or isn't spam isn't important, they see it as spam, they don't know how to stop it, so its a problem (I have a yahoo account and I found a message from one of Przemyslaw's courses in my spam folder so someone on yahoo must have marked his moodle emails as spam). I can see the advantages of 'nudging' students to take part in a forum by having them subscribed to the forum but I think the disadvantage is this perception of the emails that they might have.
IMHO it is student centered to have the choice about subscribing available but to have a default towards not subscribing to forums. Not because thats the way I work but because I think its better for us to develop students skills by getting them to work in the forums first then introducing them to subscribing.
Richard
In reply to Richard Treves
How to change your profile setting so you don't subscribe by default
by Martin Dougiamas -
User profile setting. There is a user profile setting for this. In the user profile, there is a setting for this. Change the setting in your user profile and the default setting for your subscribing will be changed. In the profile. Setting. It's there. Have a look. I'm not lying.
In reply to Martin Dougiamas
Re: How to change your profile setting so you don't subscribe by default
by Richard Treves -
Oh yeah, I see...
Richard
In reply to Richard Treves
Re: How to change your profile setting so you don't subscribe by default
by Martin Dougiamas -
I forgot my smiley I think, sorry.
because I think its better for us to develop students skills by getting
them to work in the forums first then introducing them to subscribing
I also prefer the forums to work in that way - the forum
autosubscribing feature being off by default for users - they can be
told about it later and can always turn it on, but some are put off by
the volume of mail. Real example - in the "Teaching Online with Moodle"
course we had quite a lot of comments from confused (and even
panicking) participants.
What I usually do is to go to the mdl_user table and change the default of the autosubscribe field to 0 (zero) - I try to remember to do it for every new installation of Moodle
(I actually forgot to do it for the "Teaching Online with Moodle"
course, and I'm sure Richard remembers what happened). This means that profiles have "don't automatically subscribe me to forums" unless it is consciously changed by the user.
HTH,
Przemek
> Richard
Totally agree with your previous post, especially your conclusion "IMHO it is student centered to have the choice about subscribing available but to have a default towards not subscribing to forums."
> Martin
Thanks for reminding us about the Forum auto-subscribe setting in User Profile!
>Przemyslaw
"What I usually do is to go to the mdl_user table and change the default of the autosubscribe field to 0 (zero)" : a commendable initiative!
Joseph R.
Unless you are using frames which would allow you to keep the sidebar visible at all times no matter the length of the page, well-designed page content should not require a side-bar at all times. Why? Because it is bad web design to include so much content on a page that one must scroll down a long way to see it. And if you do put a lot of content on a page and it doesn't have frames, your sidebar will scroll away from you anyway, so what is the benefit of it? Keep your contents on a single page short, and you don't need the facilities you describe. If you are talking about forums, you can set the maximum number of posts that will appear on a page to a small number, that will also keep the content of your page short.
Hello All!
There are two forums going with this issue "Moodle Spam" [BTW, I want to say upfront I feel this is a very unfair way to describe the issue although it is "eye catching".]
General Problems (Here)
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=9959
Installation Problems
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=9960
I hope most will gravitate over to this forum since this forum is for general problems and and appears to be a problem that people adjusted to and were not really happy with.
I think one has to keep in mind that Moodle.org is the home of Moodle software and provides a place for developers and users to post, interact and discuss issues relating to the software. This is not an exact example of the educational environment we are going to use the software in, therefore, I am having problems seeing the number of e-mail as a problem in an educational setting where the teacher is determining the number of forums and how they are to be used.
Priorities must be decided upon and, strenthening the infrastructure of Moodle at this time (which is what the MoodleMaster programmers seem to be doing right now) is more important so the software has a stronger base to move forward to better built modules and features in the future. There is a limited number of programmers who contribute to the Moodle software we all enjoy. Being human, they can only do as much as they can and not as much as we want. The solution for getting what you want when you want it is to "dip" into your pocket.
I would like to see some changes in the forums as well. My suggestions center very much on customization issues. One must also keep in mind the different types of hosting situations Moodle users are in and what type of bandwidth and data transfer they have available to them.
One of the things I suggest to new Moodlers is to learn PHP. Yes, I am also a new Moodler. It is not easy but if I want to get involved in e-learning, having some knowledge in PHP from what I can see is essential. It will allow me to customize code and contribute.
Had my say. Will go back to "lurking" mode.
WP1
There are two forums going with this issue "Moodle Spam" [BTW, I want to say upfront I feel this is a very unfair way to describe the issue although it is "eye catching".]
General Problems (Here)
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=9959
Installation Problems
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=9960
I hope most will gravitate over to this forum since this forum is for general problems and and appears to be a problem that people adjusted to and were not really happy with.
I think one has to keep in mind that Moodle.org is the home of Moodle software and provides a place for developers and users to post, interact and discuss issues relating to the software. This is not an exact example of the educational environment we are going to use the software in, therefore, I am having problems seeing the number of e-mail as a problem in an educational setting where the teacher is determining the number of forums and how they are to be used.
Priorities must be decided upon and, strenthening the infrastructure of Moodle at this time (which is what the MoodleMaster programmers seem to be doing right now) is more important so the software has a stronger base to move forward to better built modules and features in the future. There is a limited number of programmers who contribute to the Moodle software we all enjoy. Being human, they can only do as much as they can and not as much as we want. The solution for getting what you want when you want it is to "dip" into your pocket.
I would like to see some changes in the forums as well. My suggestions center very much on customization issues. One must also keep in mind the different types of hosting situations Moodle users are in and what type of bandwidth and data transfer they have available to them.
- Option to use a "Quote" feature when a poster wants to use it (Art brought this up somewhere)
- Navigation
at the bottom (with the dropdown window to the other forums) as well as
at the top. (Someone else broght this up, I think Blinger)
- Ability to subscribe to an entire forum or specific thread with RSS/Atom (?) feeds for each.
- Ability to unsubscribe from a specific thread and and entire forum (which is already built in) from an e-mail message.
- Continue with choice for HTML or text e-mail.
- Continue with choice of individual e-mails and digest (with option of user determining when digest should be sent out to them not just the admin). Admin should have ability to determine if option for a mail digest format should be presented to users with a default time or a time that can be adjusted by the user.
- Additional choice of e-mail notification to be notified only once and the user needs to visit the site to see if there are aditional e-mail in a specific thread. This again should be determined by the Admin if this option should be made available to users or made a default for the site or specific forum by the Admin.
- I want more
- I want more
- I want more, I want it NOW and I want it for FREE
One of the things I suggest to new Moodlers is to learn PHP. Yes, I am also a new Moodler. It is not easy but if I want to get involved in e-learning, having some knowledge in PHP from what I can see is essential. It will allow me to customize code and contribute.
Had my say. Will go back to "lurking" mode.
WP1
Hi W,
" want more, I want it NOW and I want it for FREE"
made me
Here in the UK we have a radio program here called 'feedback' on a talk radio station (radio 4). People get in touch to say what they think about the other programs, someone sent a very funny message in once taking the mickey of everyone elses messages:
"WHY can't I hear more of exactly WHAT I want to hear, exactly WHEN I want to hear it than you broadcast at the moment. Come on Radio 4, you can do better than this."
You're completely right, there's only so much that can be changed at once given limited programmer resource and I appreciate what everyone does here for free.
Have a good weekend everyone
Richard
Hi Richard,
Thands for the support on this one. Your example was right on the mark.
WP1
Thands for the support on this one. Your example was right on the mark.
WP1
This is a lively topic, so I thought I would offer my opinion for what it's worth.
I am very new to Moodle so I have not contributed much (actually, I have not contributed anthing) in terms of advice or suggestions, I have only asked questions - and by the way, each time I have had my problems solved in a very practical, friendly and timely fashion, thanks!
I think perhaps our friend Shan is missing the point a little.
It is my understanding that as a FREE COMMUNITY based project the idea of MOODLE is for evrybody involved to SHARE their ideas. It seems to me a function allowing for subscription to single threads would only be useful for the shamelessly selfish. That is, people who only want to see the repies to their OWN threads and those threads in which the INDIVIDUAL is personally interested. For those people a 'Please help me with my problem, and by the way, don't waste my time with other people's questions..' kind of facility would be perfect. But I think that for most of us interested in learning and sharing via the very commendable social constructionist approach and open source principle it isn't really relevant.
Anyway, I hope this particular discussion winds up soon as it seems to be getting a little negative.
Let's keep it possitive, friendly and SHARED. Qualities I fear this thread seems to have mislaid.
Thanks to all.
Simon
> Let's keep it possitive...
Exactly right, Simon.
-- Art
Exactly right, Simon.
-- Art
Hi everyone,
WP1 has started a discussion under the Forum Module:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=10070
Please refer to this discussion to talk about employing and managing student interactions within Moodle. As for managing external communications from Moodle--well that issue needs to be addressed somewhere also.
Thanks,
Chardelle
It is my understanding that as a FREE COMMUNITY based project the idea
of MOODLE is for evrybody involved to SHARE their ideas. It seems to me
a function allowing for subscription to single threads would only be
useful for the shamelessly selfish. That is, people who only want to
see the repies to their OWN threads and those threads in which the
INDIVIDUAL is personally interested. For those people a 'Please help me
with my problem, and by the way, don't waste my time with other
people's questions..' kind of facility would be perfect. But I think
that for most of us interested in learning and sharing via the very
commendable social constructionist approach and open source principle it isn't really relevant.
I take offense at your suggestion that what I am requesting is a way to avoid helping others. I do not want my students to be subjected to recieving tons of email. Additionally not everyone has time to help on support forums - I will help where and when I can, but it is not always possible when one has a full time job, taking a full-time graduate class, and raising a two year old child while living in a foreign country. Just because you can help others, does not mean everyone else can or should be obligated to.
Let me reiterate, I want to primarily reduce the amount of email that my students will be subjected to. In Korea the popular email providers only give 1mb of storage (don't ask why they are popular) and with the volume of emails my students would be subjected to they would easily have their quota achieved inside a couple of days.
Lastly I do appreciate all the work that others have put into this great software and will continue to use it regardless of whether this forum deficiency gets fixed or not. Once I finish graduate school, I will probably donate money to support moodle, but at this point I do not have much disposable income.
Chardella,
Thank-you for your suggestion I will look into that as soon as I have a little more free time. The dialogue module sounds interesting.
Hi Blinger,
Just out of interest. Can individuals in Korea get "Yahoo" mail.
Recently Yahoo has increased the amount of free mail to "100MB". Also you can get additional features such as "Briefcase" which allows for 30MB of storage.
Google will be offering a free e-mail service in the "near" future which will be offering "1GB" of mail storage.
Maybe it would not be so "tight" if your students could at least access Yahoo now.
Hope this helps a bit.
WP1
And I should have also mentioned that there is a wiki module under development--it is fairly stable-- as well as a sitewide blog activity -- which I just tried to install but had some errors so it still is under development but you should keep an eye on it. I think that these two add ons will make it much easier to have student interactive communications that stay online and do NOT INVOLVE EMAIL. It seems that this might solve a lot of problems with large numbers of student "communications".
Hi Chardelle,
Please post any problems you had with the "Blog" module in this thread,
Simplog Discussion
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=7934
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=7934
Daryl is working very hard to get all the bugs out.
Suggestions:
- Upload a fresh Moodle (without blocks directory) but do not install yet.
- Get a fresh "blog" ZIP from here, http://moodle.org/download.php/modules/blog.zip
- Unzip the "blog" ZIP
- Open the "blog" folder
- Upload its contents to the server (it contains a blocks directory that has been coded with the "blog" in mind.
- Then, install Moodle as usual.
This is what I have to do presently so I do not get errors in attempts to install the "blog" after installing Moodle.
This mod is worth another try. Hope this helps.
WP1
I apologise.
As I said. This discussion was tending towards the negative. Words like SPAM are not appropriate for this forum. We are all voluteers and we optionally subscribe. etc, etc.
AS For your students. I think you are absolutely right that students should not be subject to the masses of mails posted by developers and teachers.
Why not set up seperate forums for your students?
Si.
Hmmm... Discussion in this thread is getting pretty heated. I guess this is because Shan has tapped into something that has really been annoying some Moodlers.
But isn't this really just a discussion about how to tweak the forums? We have these discussions all the time, right?
What we seem to have said so far is that mail sent by the forums is sometimes perceived as spam, that the volume of emails received is sometimes a problem, and that it would be helpful if we could customize the subscription feature to choose how the forum mail is sent.
Unless I have missed something important, it seems to me that this boils down to a couple of feature requests.
Well, maybe some of us could chip in a little money and ask for these features at Moodle.com. I know that I would be glad to give ten or fifteen dollars toward seeing the thread-based subscription feature implemented. It would make Moodle even more user-friendly than it already is.
-- Art
But isn't this really just a discussion about how to tweak the forums? We have these discussions all the time, right?
What we seem to have said so far is that mail sent by the forums is sometimes perceived as spam, that the volume of emails received is sometimes a problem, and that it would be helpful if we could customize the subscription feature to choose how the forum mail is sent.
Unless I have missed something important, it seems to me that this boils down to a couple of feature requests.
Well, maybe some of us could chip in a little money and ask for these features at Moodle.com. I know that I would be glad to give ten or fifteen dollars toward seeing the thread-based subscription feature implemented. It would make Moodle even more user-friendly than it already is.
-- Art
Hi Art!
Good synopsis of the thread posts.
BTW, I have downloaded and am trying out the "Avant Browser". Interesting alternative.
WP1