Itamar Tzadok

Hi,

I've prepared a q&d solution for you. It involves a database activity which allows you to add an entry with the category hierarchy definition and then create Moodle xml code which you dump into a text file and import to the questions bank.

So,

1. the preset is attached.
   
2. Create the database and apply the preset.
   
3. Then download the html file from my next post and upload it to your site/course Files.
   
4. You will need to set the html file's path in the Javascript template of the database you've just created.
5. Then add an entry and in this entry in the category hierarchy field you enter the category list as an indented bulleted list. For example:

6. cat0 cat1 cat2 cat3

   
   
7. Then you select this item in the list view and click the 'Generate Moodle Xml' button which will open a pop up window with the xml code.
8. Copy the code from the popup and dump it into a txt file.
9. In the question bank
   
   1. go to import tab
   2. select file formatting: Moodle XML
   3. clear 'Get context from file'
   4. make sure 'Get category from file' is selected
   5. browse for the xml file you've just created and upload it.
10. With some luck it will work (it worked for me but of course I didn't took it to the extreme)

Hope this helps.

The gradebook items, yes, but not the grouping activities, which is, I think, the desired effect. So suppose you have 2 quiz assignments A and B and two groups 1 and 2. If you want each group to have different instances of these quizzes you will have {A1,B1} for group 1 and {A2,B2} for group 2, set with the grouping so that each group sees only its quizzes. So in effect you have 4 quizzes all appear in the gradebook and hence in the student's grades report. Now, what I'm suggesting is that if you hide these quiz items in the gradebook they will not appear in the student's grades report. In their stead you create two gradebook items, A and B, which will appear in the student's grades report, as it should be because every student is assigned two quizzes. Now, you set item A's grade to be A1+A2; and item B's grade B1+B2. But since the students take only one quiz in each pair, in principle (because I haven't tried it yet ) they should see in their grades report exactly the score of the quizzes they took.

Of course, if this works at all (and I will have to try it soon) it will work in cases where there is a uniform set of activities for all groups but different instances.

Since we are talking about the database module I assume that by class journal page you mean the list view. The list view allows you to modify the sort settings and these settings override the default you set in the fields tab but only for that session. If you log out and in the default sort settings should be restored. Note that during the same session changing the default sorting (in the fields tab) won't have any effect on the list view. You have to log out and log in or simply change the sorting in the list view accordingly (once for that session). This is how it works in my environments. If it works differently for you then there may be some related site settings with which I'm not familiar yet.

Sure I'll post it soon. By the way this idea is probably more a teaching tip and trick then a teaching strategy so perhaps it should be moved to the "Teaching tips and tricks" forum. At any rate I have a couple of more TYCDWDIYOFGERTDTs which I'll post sometime soon next to this thread wherever I find it.

This one is a "progress report". In this particular case each entry is a module under development and each module has three components. Each component may be assigned the following statuses: Not_Started, In_Progress, Completed, Maintenance. The main point here is the visual effect in the list view. The effect is produced by adding to the css template css classes with the statuses as class names and background-color definitions (e.g. .Not_Started {background-color:#ff6666;}), and adding to the td element in the table of the list view the class property with the fields value (e.g. <td class="||item1Status||">||item1Status||</td> (|| stands for square brackets))