Martin Dougiamas

Getting there!

A few thoughts:

It might be easier if the icon showed the CURRENT state of the link (but the tooltip showed the ACTION of the button).

Also, it would be cool if the the whole link text became dimmed when it is inactive.

Finally, the icons aren't too bad, but possibly you could have a open eye and a closed eye ...

Option 2 would be better. There is no need to modify each module - you can just modify the function get_all_instances_in_course() (in datalib.php) to take account of the new flag. For teachers, though, it should behave as it does now.

Well, yes, I agree that other types of ratings could also be useful (see http://slashdot.org for an extreme example) and you are of course free to use whatever rating system you want. I personally might debate your choice of fact vs opinion given how mixed they almost always are! But this is not quite the point I wanted to discuss in this thread.

See, my aim with Moodle is not to build a completely "value neutral" system (if there is such a thing) that is ultimately flexible in the hands of educators (although of course there is plenty of that in it) but to build certain pedagogical ideas into the code that actively helps teachers and students become good online educators. I try hard to choose features that have sound reasoning or educational research behind them. The idea (and this is central to my work) is that software can guide people in the right directions so that they don't have to spend years reading relevant research about online learning. I'm thinking particularly of the many people who are new to internet-based education.

Obviously a balance needs to be struck - I certainly don't want to overpower Moodle with ideas that force a strict regime, but I do want to create an environment that gently pushes this philosophy of pedagogy. I'm also very aware of my own particular Anglo-male-centric perspective and I try to be sensitive to cultural differences while thinking about what pedagogy/andragogy means - obviously the more feedback I get the better.

So we come to the separate/connected ratings. Much time and research has gone into selecting this particular method for the very particular effects I've seen it achieve, but I'd still like to hear feedback about how it is or isn't working in other teaching situations.

Yes, that's right, but there's no need to do that with the new version I just posted.

This code should be a little more generic (no changes needed).