Course Contacts Block

Blocks ::: block_course_contacts
Maintained by Mark Ward, Richard Oelmann
The Course Contacts block displays a list of users on your course, various methods for communicating with them, and their current activity status.

Course Contacts Block 3.0 for Moodle 3.0, 3.1

Note This plugin version is no longer available here in the plugins directory.

Me at the Moodle Moot NZ11
Stuart Mealor
ថ្ងៃសុក្រ ទី21 ខែមេសា ឆ្នាំ2017, 9:09 AM
Usability
9/10
Accessibility
8/10
Technical
9/10
General comments
The Block can be configured to show contact methods including: Email, Message, and Phone number, the user Profile picture and online status - similar to Skype, Facebook Messenger, etc.Due to the fact that the Block displays personal information from Profiles (email and phone number in particular) it should not be used in Courses that allow Guest access for obvious privacy reasons. The developers make this clear - good :-)It might be possible to replicate/access the functionality of this Block in...
Usability
The Block is extremely easy for Students to use - requiring nothing more than a 'point and click' approach.It's good that the Teachers are listed above Students in the Block.If used, the Phone number is displayed from the Phone field of the user Profile.  I'm nit sure is the Mobile phone number would be a better choice?  In a perfect world the plugin should probably give the Moodle administrator to choose which of these could be displayed, or both perhaps ?
Accessibility
In my testing, using the Clean Theme in Moodle, the Block does have some display elements that appear slightly odd.  The font / heading used seems very large, and the icons for the Email, Message, and Phone don't really hang together well with the core Theme icons.  This results in the Block looking somewhat 'out of place' within the wider styling of the Course and other Blocks..  These are relatively small issues and don't affect the functionality, but a little more work in these...
Technical
I have not reviewed the coding style and readability of this plugin.  However, there are some very experienced developers maintaining this plugin, which have contributed and maintain several other well respected Moodle plugins - so we can expect the standard to be very high here :-)Development of this Block originally started back in 2011, so it has 'stood the test of time' in terms being updated regularly to continue working with new releases of Moodle.I haven't noticed any performance iss...