Moodle plugins directory: Point of view - Feedback | Moodle.org
Point of view - Feedback
Moodle plugin « Point of View »
Quentin Fombaron - October 20th 2020, Astor Bizard - October 11th 2021
Centre des Nouvelles Pédagogies (CNP*), Univ. Grenoble Alpes - University of innovation
The plugin Point of view offers the possibility to react and give difficulty levels to activities within a Moodle course. Students know the difficulty of an activity (estimated by the teacher) thanks to color tracks. They also have the possibility to react via emojis, each representing an emotion, a feeling. It is fully customizable.
This plugin is developed by Quentin Fombaron and Astor Bizard. It is initially developped for caseine.org. Do not hesitate to send your thinking and bug reports to the contact addresses below.
Contacts:
- Quentin Fombaron
- Astor Bizard
- Caseine
* The CNP, set up as part of the IDEX Training component, brings together the DAPI, PerForm and IDEX support teams.
Point of View as a block
The Point of View plugin is a block. For general information about how blocks work, see Moodle documentation on blocks.
Usage
Once configured (see Configuration below), the block enriches the display of course modules with difficulty tracks and reactions.
Difficulty tracks
The difficulty track is set by the teacher for each module. It appears on the left of the module name.
By default, Green track, Blue track, Red track and Black track are available. These colors are customizable.
Reactions
Reactions are a way for students to express their point of view on a
module. The reaction interface is displayed on the right of the module
line.
The total number of votes for the module is displayed, as well as a
preview of reactions that have been voted for. A green dot indicates
that the user has voted.
Hovering the reactions or clicking on them reveals the different
reactions, allowing the user to vote for a reaction by clicking on the
associated emoji.
By default, the available reactions are "Easy!", "I'm getting
better!" and "So hard...". These texts and their associated emoji are customizable.
Only one vote per module is allowed for each user. Users can freely
change their vote, or remove it (by clicking again the previously
selected reaction).
Accessing reactions details
Teachers can access detailed information about reactions by clicking the link in the block content:
This leads to a table with information about votes for each user and each course module:
Information about reactions votes is displayed as percentages by
default. This can be toggled to number of votes by clicking on the
reactions:
Clicking the arrow on the right of a row allows access to detailed information about each user's vote on the module:
Configuration
Once added to a course, the Point of View block needs to be configured.
Enabling reactions
To enable reactions in the course, the following option needs to be set to Yes:
Once enabled on block level, reactions can be enabled or disabled for each course module by checking the "Reactions" checkbox:
Reactions can also be enabled or disabled for all course modules of one type:
...or for all course modules in a section:
Enabling difficulty tracks
To enable difficulty tracks in the course, the following option needs to be set to Yes:
Once enabled on block level, difficulty tracks can be set for each course module with a dropdown menu:
Customization
Reactions emoji
Custom emoji can be defined to be used as reactions pictures. This
can be done either at the site level (in plugin administration
settings), or at the block level (on the block configuration page).
Note: Only 3 different reactions ("Easy", "I'm getting better" and "So hard" by default) are available.
Site administrators can define custom emoji to be used as reactions pictures site-wide:
11 files are needed: 3 emoji, 7 emoji groups (all possible groups from 1
to 3 emoji) and 1 neutral emoji meaning no vote on the activity. Please
stick to the specified names.
| Emoji | Emoji group | No vote emoji group | |
|---|---|---|---|
| File names | easy.png better.png hard.png |
group_E.png group_B.png group_H.png group_EB.png group_EH.png group_BH.png group_EBH.png |
group_.png |
| Preferred size | 200x200 | 400x200 | 400x200 |
| Extension | PNG | PNG | PNG |
At the block level, teachers can choose which
emoji to use, as well as using their own custom emoji. The requirements
are the same as above.
At the block level, custom text to be used for reactions can also be defined.
Difficulty tracks colors
Site administrators can define custom difficulty tracks colors. This
is useful if your site uses a theme where one of the default colors
renders badly.
Note: Only 4 difficulty tracks (Green, Blue, Red and Black by default) are available.
Useful links
Screenshots
Contributors
A suggestion for a future release ?
Best regards
Vincent
Thank you for you nice feedback ! This idea has been discussed and will likely be implemented in the future - how distant is that future, I sadly cannot tell.
Best regards,
Astor
Thank you for a very useful plugin. There's one thing that slightly bothers me and my colleagues: the plugin shows sad face emoji as the default (meaning it's the only emoji shown to the student before actually giving the feedback). Could the neutral face emoji be set as the default?
BR,
Antti
The default emoji shown is either:
- The "neutral" one (described by the group_.png picture if you set a custom one), in the case no votes have been cast on the activity yet,
- A combination of emoji, representing the set of votes that have already been cast on the activity.
If you want the default emoji to show on any case, you can either:
- Uncheck "Show other users reactions" (this will completely hide what other users have voted),
- Set all group emoji to a neutral one (but this will leave the neutral emoji even when the user has voted).
Best regards,
Astor
This is odd. The default emoji we see is the sad face. No feedback has been given yet. Maybe this has something to do with the Moodle version (3.9) or the course settings. I need to take a closer look at this from our side. Thank you for a quick answer!
BR,
Antti
Are you sure it is not the grayed combination of the 3 emoji you are seeing? This is the default when no votes have been cast.
And, you may find that it looks a little too much like the sad face. In that case, you can design your own default emoji, and register it in the plugin administration settings as group_.png.
Astor
Thanks again for the quick reply. I think the default emoji looks exactly like the sad face emoji. But this is not a big issue, and we'll try to solve the issue by designing our own emoji.
BR,
Antti
Best Regards,
Synnac
Thank you for your suggestion, I will add it in my list for future versions
Comments really seem a nice thing to have, the next release should be adding them - but I cannot provide you with a release date yet.
Best regards,
Astor
I´m trying to get the difficulty of each module directly from the DB, where can I found them?
Thank you,
Mikel.
It is a kinda tough job (though, feasible).
Difficulty for each module are stored as block configuration data.
Block configuration data storage is standard across all moodle blocks, and is stored within the block_instances table. There, the configdata field contains a base64-encoded string of the block configuration data.
I hope you will get this sorted out.
Best regards,
Astor
I am not sure I understand your use case.
This plugin only allows a single block instance per page (ie. per course).
Please note that in block configuration, you can set which activities can be rated. In addition, if you have a notion of course progress, you can restrict activities access based on the completion of a previous activity ; this will lead to a natural flow in your course, as well as preventing ratings on activities that have not been unlocked yet.
I hope this answers your question - if not, feel free to refine your demand ! :D
Best regards,
Astor
First of all I have to send a big congratulations for this plugin. I love this fast and feedback for course activities.
But I have a big question. As I see this plugin collect the student names on the reactions details page. Can I set up shomehow that, this page hide the student real name? So can I set up that the data collection will be anonym?
Thank you your help
Jenő