Course dedication

Blocks ::: block_dedication

Maintained by

Dan Marsden,

Catalyst IT

This block allows to calculate estimated dedication time of participants within a course.

Latest release: 5 months

6812 sites

1k downloads

209 fans

Current versions available: 5

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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

Source control URL

Bug tracker

Discussion

Screenshots

Contributors

Dan Marsden (Lead maintainer)

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Catalyst IT

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Borja Rubio Reyes: previous author

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Aday Talavera: previous maintainer

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Comments

Philip Sasso
Tue, 9 June 2020, 7:28 AM
Can I use this to limit or block the amount of time a student spends online in a class?
Steve Radford
Mon, 6 July 2020, 4:16 PM
We're finding this plugin really useful, thank you. Just wondering if you have any plans to update it for Moodle 3.9?
Aday Talavera
Tue, 7 July 2020, 1:42 AM
I expect to update this to Moodle 3.9 ASAP.
weimei xiong
Tue, 4 Aug 2020, 11:12 AM
What are the database tables related with this plugin? Does it create any new table in the database? Many thanks.
Ricardo Caiado
Tue, 18 Aug 2020, 4:20 AM
Is it compatible with 3.9+ version of Moodle?
Steve Radford
Tue, 18 Aug 2020, 11:02 PM
Aday Talavera, is there any way this report could be configured so that it could show total site dedication time (time spent on all courses / site pages) within a specific time frame in addition to the current functionality? If that's currently not possible, I would be willing to contribute financially towards any development that would make that possible in a future release.
Roberto Medina
Wed, 26 Aug 2020, 4:24 AM
I urgently need to use this block in my site..... I have tried to install it in my 3.9 moodle site but I only get a maintenance screen as result.

Could you please tell me about an approximate date of deployment?
Aday Talavera
Wed, 26 Aug 2020, 9:15 PM
I tested the last version of the plugin (Moodle 3.x+ (2020041000)) with Moodle 3.9 and everything is working. So I enabled the compatibility with this version.
If some of you have more problems, probably is not related with this module.
Ricardo Caiado
Fri, 2 Oct 2020, 8:47 PM
Hi,

is it possible to track not only the students, but also the teacher activity?

Ricardo
Steve Radford
Fri, 2 Oct 2020, 8:58 PM
Ricardo, we are using the plugin and it seems to do that by default
Ricardo Caiado
Fri, 2 Oct 2020, 9:10 PM
Steve, thanks for the reply.

In my installation users with "editingteacher" role are showing on the list.

I could only find "block/dedication:addinstance" and "block/dedication:use" and they are set to "permit".

I´m using the latest version.

Any idea?

Ricardo
Steve Radford
Fri, 2 Oct 2020, 9:12 PM
Sorry Ricardo, no idea. In our installation (Moodle 3.8) non-editing teachers show in the list too
Ricardo Caiado
Fri, 2 Oct 2020, 9:16 PM
That´s weird....

# Participants: 65

But the "Dedication Block" only shows 32 (????)
Ricardo Caiado
Fri, 2 Oct 2020, 10:01 PM
Ok!. Look what I´ve just found...

All the 32 participants that are showing in the Dedication Block belong to a group!!!

Tested with another course with 200 Participants and the Dedication Block shows all of them (no groups)

It seems to me that this block does not work correctly when there are groups in the course.
Steve Radford
Fri, 2 Oct 2020, 10:07 PM
Ricardo, we have been using the block successfully with groups. When all students belong to a group, the list of students includes a 'group' column whch shows which group each student belongs to. However, we haven't testeded it when some students belong to a group and others do not - perhaps that's your issue? Perhaps check whether you (the teacher) also belong to one of the groups too, and if so try removing yourself from all groups (or adding yourself to all groups) to see whether that changes which students yu can see in the list.