NED - Mentor Manager

Blocks ::: block_fn_mentor

Maintained by

Fern Oliveira

Part of set NED.

With this block, the admin (or designated user) can assign mentors to students. Mentors can then access easy-to-read “progress reports” for their mentees. The admin (or designated users) can also create automated notifications that are sent to teachers, mentors or students based on pre-selected criteria (example: notification is emailed to mentor and student if student has not logged in for 7 days).

Latest release: 7 years

249 sites

41 downloads

79 fans

Current versions available: 3

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This block provides a user-friendly way of pairing mentors with students. Currently, Moodle does not have an effective way of managing the mentor role. By using this block, parents, tutors, or other “helpers” are able to track the progress of particular students across multiple courses. The block exists at the site level. When a mentor logs in, his/her mentees (students) are listed inside the block. When the mentor clicks on the name of a student, a progress report is shown. This report includes grades, submissions, feedback, etc. from all relevant courses. Along with defining mentors and mentees, administrators can also create “notification rules” that are automatically sent (email or SMS) to teachers, mentors or students based on pre-selected criteria (example: send email notification to mentor and student if student has not logged in for 7 days and grade is less than 50%).

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Contributors

Fern Oliveira (Lead maintainer)

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Fernando Oliveira: Original maintainer

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Comments

Fernando Oliveira
Thu, 30 June 2016, 12:10 AM
Hello Rui, would you mind adding this issue to the Github list: https://github.com/fernandooliveira/moodle-block_mentor/issues. We are hoping to deal with all remaining bugs by the end of the week.
Network Administrator
Fri, 29 July 2016, 6:17 AM
Hello,

I am interested in using block, but the links provided for the installation and usage manuals are not valid. Can anyone let me know where I can find these documents?

Thanks,
Nathan
David Boggs
Sat, 17 Sept 2016, 3:17 AM
Great plug-in. What could make this even better is adding an Assignment Submitted option for notifications on Assignment activities. This would enable the mentor or manager to potentially grade the assignment by granting them permissions. In a corporate setting that puts the level of effort on the mentor and/or manager not on a teacher or instructor. Thoughts?
Clay Burell
Wed, 12 Oct 2016, 9:07 PM
Great plugin. Any way to allow Mentor to see Mentee's full daily calendar so s/he can see full-courses' Homework assignments for each day?
Clay Burell
Wed, 12 Oct 2016, 9:11 PM
Also--I'm in China. The notifications system applies only to US/Canada carriers. Can we set up mobile notifications outside of those two countries? Thanks
Don Schwartz
Wed, 12 Oct 2016, 11:12 PM
Trying to allow Mentor to grade assignments and quizzes for their Mentees. Any ideas on settings for the role(s)?
Fernando Oliveira
Wed, 12 Oct 2016, 11:48 PM
Hello Clay, this plugin currently doesn't have any calendar-related functions. If other people share this need, I could add it to the "wish list" (http://ned.ca/plugins/#group). As for the Cell carriers, you have to enter the carrier details for your respective country. Thanks.
Fernando Oliveira
Wed, 12 Oct 2016, 11:51 PM
Hello Don, the Mentor Manager doesn't provide any grading functionality. Its main purpose is to allow mentors to check on the progress of individual students.
Orlando Acevedo
Thu, 13 Oct 2016, 3:50 AM
Hi Fernando Oliveira,

This plugin is suppose to be one of the BEST plugins that I have installed in my Moodle. I wanted a plugin to send reminders to students when they no login (or no activity in the course) during several days. Unfortunately the plugin is not working as expected. I created the Mentor-System and Mentor-User role. I assigned a mentor to a mentee to test the plugin, then I created a course with several activities in it. I created several rules in the NED Mentor Manager block selecting the course in which is enrolled the mentee. I configured the rule to send notifications to mentor, mentees and teacher when the mentee "No login / No activity for 1 day". The mentee has been absent from the course during several days, but no message has been sent. I clicked the "Run now" button with the same results: "No messages were sent." The Moodle version is 3.1.1+ and NED Mentor Manager version is 3.1.5.

Any suggestions of what I am doing wrong?

Thanks!
Fernando Oliveira
Mon, 17 Oct 2016, 9:54 PM
Hard to tell why your notifications aren't working. I'd be happy to take a look if you can give me access to your site.
Betsy Springer
Wed, 2 Nov 2016, 11:50 AM
This is such a useful plugin for us. However, when teachers click the Open Progress Reports, the drop down menu lists every student in the program, not just that mentor's students.
Evan Donovan
Wed, 9 Nov 2016, 1:12 AM
This plugin was working great for us at first, but then we started to add more mentors/mentees. Now the Mentor Manager block's "Show all mentors & mentees" & "Manage mentors" pages take over 10 minutes or so to load, if they load at all - for the users that are privileged enough to see the full list.

For mentors with less than 10 mentees, load times were fine before I upgraded to the latest version of the plugin, but now the plugin block is not displaying anymore for anyone except for the most privileged users.

I checked the permissions on the block, and it says that Mentors have the "View block" permission on it in the System context.

I am using Moodle 3.1.1+ and the 3.1.7 version of this plugin.

In regard to the first issue, it seems to me that there must be something about the way that the queries are written that makes them not scale. In regard to the second, I don't know why the block is not showing since that is a new issue with the upgrade.

If you could let us know how to resolve these issues, it would be greatly appreciated. I don't know of any other plugin providing this incredibly helpful functionality.
Jason Long
Tue, 14 Feb 2017, 10:25 PM
Hello! We can't get this plugin to work at all. We installed it according to the instructions pdf, but we can't see any way to get to anything in the "how to use" pdf. There are no blocks visible to anyone for anything related to this plugin. As an admin I can add a Mentor Manager block on the frontpage and tell it to "display throughout the site" but nothing ever appears for any user. I have tried adding users to the mentor role but this doesn't change anything. How do you assign mentees and otherwise access that block? Thanks!
Fernando Oliveira
Tue, 14 Feb 2017, 10:48 PM
Hi Jason, hard to tell what the problem is. I'd be happy to take a look, if you can send me login details via private message or via the contact page on http://ned.ca
Jason Long
Tue, 14 Feb 2017, 11:14 PM
Thanks for the reply! I managed to get the block to appear by messing with the permissions and deleting the block and re-creating it as an admin. It now shows properly for mentors and the admin user on the front page, and mentors can add it to their dashboard pages as well. More questions, though: we still can't figure out how to get to the reports (Generates student “progress reports” that can be seen by teachers, mentors and students; Generates an “All students” report that shows progress of all students in all courses) - where are those accessed? Also, I wasn't able to add the mentor manager block to a course as a teacher (or a mentor), even when I tried to add that permission to the teacher role, although I could add the "mentees" block. Is this possible? Finally: we have two people listed as mentors who aren't assigned the mentor role in the system. Do former mentors always remain on the mentors list or was that possibly just a weird artifact from all my permissions experiments? Thanks again for the help!