Thomas Hanley

Hi Tim,

Thanks for explaining that this is being thought through by the Moodle development team. I will follow what is happening in the forum you suggested and contribute where I can as I am particularly interested in (and have experience of) user-centred design issues.

I like Moodle and am particularly interested in it being used in UK primary schools where teachers do not often have all of the ICT skills that you may find more readily in secondary or tertiary education. They also do not have alot of time to go through too much of a learning curve when using software or websites. So this is why I think it is so important that Moodle follows web usability conventions.

I can understand that Moodle is a massive undertaking with a distributed team and that this must make unified, holistic issues such as navigation more difficult to address. Look forward to seeing what Moodlers can come up with in improving Moodle's navigation mechanisms.

~thomas

Hi,

I would second the point about navigation. I am relatively new to Moodle and am sure this issue has been raised alot in the past.

I feel that navigation is the single most important usability issue that needs to be addressed. The whole psuedo breadcrumb trail debate highlighted for me that there really needs to be more focus on the navigation issue. Using a non-standard navigation mechanism was (is?) really confusing. Moodle is a fantastic in terms of the learning tools and functionality but I feel it is let down by its poor usability.

There is a certain irony in that Moodle is talked about as being designed from the outset with teachers in mind however, by not offering a navigation mechanism that is consistent with the rest of the web it makes it harder for teachers (and all humans!) to use. I am relatively new to Moodle but have found it disheartening when talking to some people (including Moodle partners) who have used the argument that as Moodle is a VLE it is different to a website and that users will have to learn how to use it! To my mind this is flawed thinking. Teachers see anything in the web browser as a website. Labels such as VLE, Moodle etc should not matter. As far as humanly possible the technology should be invisible.

I believe that this issue detracts significantly from the experience of using Moodle and is (potentially) a major obstacle to the widespread adoption of Moodle. Asking time-pressured teachers to deal with the quirks of Moodle's navigation is just going to result in frustration and alienation about Moodle. It is good to see that there are people on here who acknowledge that Moodle is not the most usable environment. I do think that the majority of the Moodle community need to acknowledge this and work towards changing things. I am not sure to what extent this is acknowledged. Reading today about the approach of Drupal's founder about the importance of usability I feel that this is the kind of approach that is needed to improve Moodle's usability:

http://buytaert.net/mark-boulton-to-help-with-drupal-7

Summary of the above is:

"Drupal's steep learning curve filters out far too many smart, motivated people who could benefit from Drupal. We see it all the time in the Drupal.org forums, in my "State of Drupal" surveys, on Twitter, when talking to customers, and on the web"

"we need to create a user experience that makes it easier for people new to Drupal to discover all of its richness and power".

Which makes me ask to what extent are the Moodle development team asking for the kind of feedback Drupal have picked up on about usability?

To what extent are are the Moodle development team (and community too) prepared to acknowledge that Moodle's navigation mechanisms are not the easiest for users to understand?

~thomas

Hi,

Can you use language editing to change the name of a field in the Data Mapping section within the external database page?

For example the City / Town field is less useful to me than a field labelled "Local Education Authority".

city / town
country
language
description
web page
ID number
institution
department
phone 1
phone 2
address

I have looked within the language editing files, but it doesn't appear that you are permitted to do this.

If you cannot in fact do this by using language editing, is it then possible to change these field labels by altering the underlying database table? Or would this have possible unintended consequences and therefore not be a good idea?

Many thanks

~thomas

Environment: Moodle 1.93

Hi,

I am trying to setup authentication of users through the 'external database' option.

I have been playing around here:

Administration ► Users ► Accounts ► User profile fields

I have added a profile field which I have called 'User Type'. This is a text input box which is blank by default. In the external database I would also have a field called user type and it would be filled with one of 5 options.

If I look here:

Administration ► Users ► Authentication ► External database

...in the Data Mapping section at the bottom I do not see my user profile field listed here. Is it not possible for this to happen?

Should I just use another field within data mapping to store user type?
For example I could use the 'description' field.

What if I wanted a user profile field not listed under Data Mapping? For example I am in the UK and I might want to differentiate users depending on what their local education authority is (there are 212 different choices here!).

Can I use language editing to change the name of a field in the Data Mapping section within the external database page?

For example the City / Town field is less useful to me than a field labelled "Local Education Authority".

Many thanks

~thomas

Environment: Moodle 1.92

Hi Ann and Itamar,

Thank you both for your very helpful responses. I now have a better understanding of how Moodle works.

I have many happy hours of CSS dabbling ahead of me

All the best

~thomas