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:
6812 sites
1k downloads
209 fans
Current versions available: 5

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.

Screenshots

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Contributors

Dan Marsden (Lead maintainer)
Borja Rubio Reyes: previous author
Aday Talavera: previous maintainer
Please login to view contributors details and/or to contact them

Comments RSS

Comments

  • Ricardo Caiado
    Wed, 14 Aug 2019, 7:06 PM
    Hi,

    Any updates to Moodle 3.6 or 3.7?

    Ricardo
  • Albert R.
    Fri, 29 Nov 2019, 3:39 AM
    When a teacher uses the tool, they can see all the students enrolled in the course from all groups. Is there any way to show only the students in the groups that the teacher is enrolled in?
  • Kerry Watt
    Thu, 12 Dec 2019, 12:33 AM
    Hi

    Echoing the query about any updates planned to Moodle 3.6 or 3.7!
  • Cycle Touring in Portugal
    Fri, 31 Jan 2020, 12:50 AM
    Any updates planned for Moodle 3.8?
  • Cycle Touring in Portugal
    Tue, 31 Mar 2020, 8:07 PM
    This plugin seems to be abandoned by the authors, no update since July 2018 & no reply to a multiple messages in over a year.
    I really think a feature like this should be part of the Moodle Core, it's so frustrating to have to rely on plugin authors who've lost interest.
  • Cycle Touring in Portugal
    Tue, 31 Mar 2020, 8:08 PM
    This plugin seems to be abandoned by the authors, no update since July 2018 & no reply to a multiple messages in over a year.
    I really think a feature like this should be part of the Moodle Core, it's so frustrating to have to rely on plugin authors who've lost interest.
  • Steve Radford
    Thu, 9 Apr 2020, 5:29 PM
    Does anyone know if this plugin will work in Moodle V3.8? I know this shows that the plugin only works for V3.5, however we are using in in V3.6 without a problem but we're about to upgrade and don't want to lose this functionality.
  • Aday Talavera
    Sat, 11 Apr 2020, 12:20 AM
    I have uploaded an updated version of the plugin to support up to Moodle 3.8. However, I must say that the module was working with Moodle 3.8. without doing any change.
    I only do a minor change to support themes based in Bootstrap 4. If you have any issues don't hesitate to publish them on Bitbucket issues tracker.

    Also I must remember to everyone that this is a free project and I accept any help in form of pull request to solve the issues reported on Bitbucket issues tracker. Usually the plugin updates were sponsored by the CICEI center. Borja and me worked in the CICEI for few years. But for the last 4-5 years, I updated the plugin whenever I have been able to do it.
  • artur santos
    Sat, 11 Apr 2020, 12:28 AM
    Hello!
    Please, can you upgrade this block so that it can be used in the site page or in course pages?
    Thanks in advance.
  • Joseph Liaw
    Sun, 12 Apr 2020, 1:25 AM
    Hi Aday:

    Thank you for volunteering your time and sharing your helpful work with the Moodle community! Very useful tool for instructors and for students--many times a student is unaware of their work habits and the Course Dedication tool provides this useful metric. For any future versions, I was wondering if there was a way to track students based on meta-course enrollments (for example, if they were enrolled in a medical program and had meta-enrollments or cohort enrollments in a group of courses, to track their time across those cohorts and/or meta-enrollments).

    Thank you again for your contribution, and I wish there was a way we could get you more support and funding!
  • Aday Talavera
    Sun, 12 Apr 2020, 2:56 AM
    Hi, the best way to achieve that right now is to export dedication time to Excel sheets and track there the dedication time.
  • Jas Green
    Thu, 16 Apr 2020, 9:42 AM
    Hello, is there a way to increase the "Limit between clicks (in minutes)" above 150?
  • Aday Talavera
    Fri, 17 Apr 2020, 2:56 AM
    Edit dedication_form.php and change 150 to your desired max value in this fragment of code: for ($i = 1; $i <= 150; $i++) {
  • António José Araújo
    Tue, 21 Apr 2020, 9:31 PM
    Hello,
    One student spent 3 hours of his time in Moodle, but only counted 53 minutes. The "Limit between clicks (in minutes)" setting is 60 minutes.
    What's wrong, can you please help?
    Regards,
    Antonio
  • Nacho Ruiz
    Thu, 14 May 2020, 7:16 AM
    Hola Aday. Se tiene en cuenta el tiempo dedicado dentro de los paquetes Scorm? Gracias!
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