Ray Morris

For people who find this thread by searching, see the Attendance Register module:

http://moodle.org/plugins/pluginversions.php?plugin=mod_attendanceregister

PS - we're currently running 2.2.1, but I'd greatly appreciate hearing about any procedure, or any relevant links, for any version 2.x.  We can adjust or patch for any differences between 2.2.1 and 2.2.3 for example.

In another thread, I was told that you have to make a new copy of a course any time you have a new enrolment period, such as a semester.  So some schools, for example, have three semesters per year and therefore each year they duplicate the same course three times.  That's kind of yucky, especially after a few years.

But how do you handle it if your institution allows continuous enrolment, or even say monthly enrollment?  Make a new copy of every course every month?  So that an institution offering 100 courses has SIX THOUSAND copies after five years?  There must be  better way, right?

Why make a new copy, one might ask, why not just keep enrolling students in the same course?  Primarily because some people need to take the course more than once. Same fail and retake, for others licenses and certifications require that they take the course every three years or whatever.  Unfortunately the Quiz and SCORM modules don't like it when someone is enrolled in the same class a second time - they aren't allowed to take the quiz again because tey took it three years ago, the last time they took the class.  So what do you do?

I figured the simple answer is to fix Quiz such that if they are enrolled again, they can take the quiz again, and I submitted the code for that option. It seems tey aren't interested in that simple fix without a grand new global plan for handling semesters differently throughout Moodle, though, so how do you handle this?  

Is having 6,000 copies of 100 courses really the best Moodle can do?

Gradebook has the history and you can choose to import the old information or not. The Quiz module doesn't do anything with that option, though, so if they are allowed a limited number of attempts at a quiz that will be a problem.  

For example, if it's set where they get one attempt at the quiz, that means one shot FOR LIFE, even if tey enrol in the class again three years later.  If that matters to you, if you'd like Quiz to respect the choice to not import old information, you can express your needs here:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/user.php?id=1468589&mode=discussions

We have a fixed verson are the discussion is whether or not the fix should be accepted into Moodle.

> My head is already spinning just thinking about all the possibilities.

Are the two options they are already have not enough?  I see two possibilities to allow an instructor, the ones that already work for other modules - resume, or start anew. Those are the possiblities that are shown now, termed "import old grades?"

If the instructor chooses not to import the old information, I don't know that they need to be prompted at that point to delete all records of the previous attempt.  I'd say deleting historical records is a completely seperate operation from enroling a student.  That is, if they want to add an enrolment, that's one operation.  If they want to delete the records of some other enrolment, they can do that seperately.

Am I missing some new option that Quiz needs which isn't used elsewhere, such as gradebook?

If so, must any of those new options be implemented before Quiz can be adjusted to work with the existing choice that people are already using  (import old or not)?   Eventually a grand redesign would be good, but must it be done prior to allowing the existing option to behave as expected?