Moodle plugins directory: Course dedication | Moodle.org
Course dedication
NOTE: This plugin has a new maintainer.
Thanks to the University of Canterbury for sponsoring the upgrade work to support Moodle 4.0 and the new report builder API.
Introduction
This block allows to see the estimated dedication time to a Moodle course by the participants of the course.
How dedication time is estimated?
Time is estimated based in the concepts of Session and Session duration applied to Moodle's log entries:
- Click: every time that a user access to a page in Moodle a log entry is stored.
- Session: set of two or more consecutive clicks in which the elapsed time between every pair of consecutive clicks does not overcome an established maximum time.
- Session duration: elapsed time between the first and the last click of the session.
Features
This block is intended to be used only by teachers, however the block can be configured to show dedication time to students too.
Teachers can use a tool to analyse dedication time within a course. The tool provides three reporting methods:
- Dedication time of the course: calculates total dedication time, mean dedication time and connections per day for each student, which you can filter by course group if required.
- Dedication of a student: detailed sessions for a student with start date & time, duration and ip.
- Report builder source: The plugin includes a custom report builder source to allow for site-level reporting to be generated.
Credits
Original developed by Aday Talavera, CICEI at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University
Updated to support Moodle 1.9 - Moodle 3.X by Borja Rubio Reyes.
Support for Moodle 4.0 was sponsored by the University of Canterbury.
Useful links
Screenshots
Contributors
I have installed the plugin and now I see the block say:
Dedication
Time spent calculation task has not run yet.
What should I be doing now in order to have this task run and generate the report?
Today I updated my Moodle from version 3.10 to version 4.0 and I see that the plugin does not look the same as in previous versions.
Now only the session start and session duration appear in the session duration report, but not the student's connection IP.
To see the IP information you now have to enter the total report of all entries, but it is not represented in the classic way that this module did in previous versions, but rather in the form of Moodle reports.
On the other hand, when downloading the report in Excel, the entire session record does not appear. I have realized that when applying filters they do not work correctly, since when checking the option to filter only sessions with a login, many sessions that do have a login disappear from the list, that is, there are 10 sessions in the list with login date and time but the filter does not detect them correctly and removes them from the list.
I don't know what could be happening, but I would like to know what I can check to know that the plugin is configured correctly.
This is another thing that I have discovered that has changed, now the plugin configuration parameters only allow you to configure 3 elements: ignore session limit, session limit and history retention time.
Has this plugin changed so much in Moodle version 4.0?
Thank you
Hi Dan, first of all, thank you very much for your clear and quick response.
It is a real shame that this plugin does not have the necessary support to continue its development. I have been using it for years and it has always worked perfectly.
The truth is that I never imagined that an update would mean a regression in its functionalities.
Unfortunately I do not have the necessary knowledge to be able to develop the plugin and leave it at the same level as version 3.10.
Is there a possibility to install an older version of the plugin in Moodle 4.0? I suppose this will not be possible, but right now if the plugin does not perform at least the same actions as in its previous versions it is almost useless or at least difficult to use.
It is true that I have not stopped to look at all the changes to the plugin before proceeding to update my Moodle, but when I saw the screenshots that appeared the same as in version 3.10 of the plugin on this same website I thought that the plugin would continue functioning the same as always, with the same options and in the same way as always.
Does anyone know if there is a good alternative that fulfills the functions that this plugin did before?
I hope that the programming community can take up this project and continue its development.
All the best.
We definitely have plans to continue further improvements to this plugin - I have a long list of things I'd like to see achieved (see the github issues tracker for more info.) - however feature development/improvements are usually funded by our clients or by other developers sending us pull requests.
Validando block_dedication ... Erro
[Erro] Versão do Moodle requerida [2022041904]
Instalação abortada devido a falha de validação
Alguém poderia me ajudar, a versão do Moodle que estou usando é 4.0.2
I have installed the plug in and set the cron job but I still have the error "Time spent calculation task has not run yet", how can i fix the problem?
Thank you
I am a Moodle administrator and I have encountered the following problem these days... After the last update of the 'Course dedication' plugin 2023112000.
When I try to download an Excel with the connections of a specific participant (View session duration report), it shows me the connections of the authenticated user instead of the consulted user.
Can you help me please? I have not touched any of the code since the last update 2023112000.
Thank you very much for your help.
Where did you get the picture of that screen called course dedication configuration with dates, list of participants?
Besides records participant by participant doesn't have any time frame so is pretty unuseful too.
I just wonder why take the time to create an upgrade which entirely destroys the goal of a plugin...
or the plugin also includes a report source that allows you to build your own site-level report with the columns you would like to see:
https://docs.moodle.org/403/en/Custom_reports
You are a gentleman and a scholar Sir, thank you very much for such a speedy reply. Much appreciated.