Moodle Plugins directory: Stash | Moodle.org
Stash
Frédéric Massart ⭐The stash block is a good way to encourage more interaction with activities and is invaluable for teachers looking to gamify their course.
This plugin introduces a block that shows students items that they have picked up through the course.
The teacher can create items and then place them in activities and resources for students to find.
Items can be set to be collected once and encourages exploration of the course material. It is also possible to set an item to have an unlimited supply from a set location. This could encourage students to return to specific areas to collect more items.
You can also check out this video:
Quick start
We've crafted a sample course for you to try, it is the best way to see what this plugin has to offer. Please accurately follow those steps:
2/ Install the three following plugins (without exception)
- This plugin (block_stash)
- The availability plugin (availability_stash)
- The filter plugin (filter_shortcodes)
4/ Restore this backup file as a new course
5/ Enrol a student in the new course
6/ Now, login as that student and try the course
Important note
In order to make this plugin easier to use and fully featured, please also install:- The availability plugin (availability_stash)
- The filter plugin (filter_shortcodes)
- NEW! The tinyMCE plugin (tiny_stash) -- Greatly improves the experience of creating and inserting items and trades.
They are highly recommended.
Screenshots
Contributors
It's possible change the image of a object if any students has already been picked up.
Thanks in advanced.
PS: Thanks for the last answer Adrian Greeve.
I hope you are well, it's been ages. Stash appears to work on Moodle 5. Could you update the supported extension on your end to Moodle 5 so that it installs automatically each week when we update our Moodle instance? It saves us so much time. Cheers.
The scarce, limited, "rare" item feature is AWESOME--finally implemented it in my course and students are motivated to be the first to unlock and find the rare items in a fun, competitive way!
Question: I was wondering if there is a way to "reset" the Stash for a course so that we can reset the gamification for another semester?
It looks like Course Reset won't clear out the Stash, and I'm thinking that would also effect the scarce/rare items not being available to future students since they were already claimed (workaround would be for the classroom teacher to just add to the scarce count, but that would get potentially very confusing!).
Thanks again for sharing your FANTASTIC work with the Moodle community!
Thanks for your kind words about our plugin.
I'm sorry to say that we don't currently have a way to reset the stash. I take it that you only want to remove all of the items that students have collected? You can reset each users stash individually in the report page, but this does become impractical with any meaningful number of students in a course.
Ah yes--a teacher could reset the stash manually for each student, but as you pointed out not practical at all!!
Follow up question: I was actually trying to see if there was a way when a Course Reset is done at the end of the semester when a teacher is clearing out a course to be a "fresh" instance for the start of a new semester in which Moodle unenrolls students, clears out the gradebook, course completion logs, etc. if Stash could also reset and clear out old students.
This would be important especially for "scarce / rare" items, since that is a cool gamification feature you implemented that actually motivates some students!!! For example, I hid some scarce / rare "unicorn cheetahs" throughout my first unit that only the first few students to get over 90% on certain core assignments and earning a "golden certificate" could also snatch one of the rare cheetahs! One of my students was annoyed that his friend got one during his lunch, and was motivated to beat his friend for the next unit!!
Thanks again for sharing your great work with the Moodle community and supporting student learning around the world!!
I'll release it at the same time as the next release (October 6th).
Being able to reset all items will help teachers "reset" the game for each semester, and again, "THANK YOU!' for sharing such a great tool for gamification between hiding items, setting up trades, and offering scarce / rare items--the sky's the limit for people to get really creative!!!
Follow up question for the future (no hurry): is there a simple way to clear out old students from the Stash report? Your new feature of resetting Stash items will help for setting up the gamification for a new semester, but it looks like old students are not cleared out from the Stash Report. Is this a limitation of Stash being in a Block vs. Activities? Either way, Stash is still one of the BEST tools for gamification and some of my colleagues have gotten really creative with it--one class even made custom T-shirts for the class to wear based on the crazy treasure items and trades one of my colleagues made for a Modern Physics unit (think trading Geiger counters for donuts, x-ray machines, and other chaotic fun!!!)
Some requests are easy to implement and others are not. So something that might sound simple may actually be complex to implement.
I'd like to learn more about old students. At the moment block stash lists everyone that is enrolled in the course. How do you determine who is old and who isn't?
I had some courses that I did a full course reset so that I could use them "fresh" for my new school year and start of the semester, but I noticed that in the Stash block report my "old" students from last year were showing up with my current "new" students.
You are correct that Moodle does not distinguish currently enrolled students from unenrolled students. So it appears that the Course Reset teachers normally use does not reset students in the Stash Block....
...and I completely respect that "simple" feature requests are not always that simple to implement depending on the architecture and data storage structures plugins need to "talk" to!!!
Thanks Adrian again for all your help, and already what you have shared with the Moodle community is an awesome plugin with a ton of potential, especially for some really creative users out there!!!
I had some courses that I did a full course reset so that I could use them "fresh" for my new school year and start of the semester, but I noticed that in the Stash block report my "old" students from last year were showing up with my current "new" students.
You are correct that Moodle does not distinguish currently enrolled students from unenrolled students. So it appears that the Course Reset teachers normally use does not reset students in the Stash Block....
...and I completely respect that "simple" feature requests are not always that simple to implement depending on the architecture and data storage structures plugins need to "talk" to!!!
Thanks Adrian again for all your help, and already what you have shared with the Moodle community is an awesome plugin with a ton of potential, especially for some really creative users out there!!!
I had a closer look at the code that generates the report and it seems that a decision was made a long time ago to show unenrolled students and students with revoked permissions. I can see that if an unenrolled student had a scarce item then you'd want to be able to see that. If use this new reset then it will remove all user items and these old students won't show up in the report any more.
Maybe we also need a filter or visual clue that a user has items but is unenrolled. What do you think?
I believe what would be most useful to most instructors would be a full "reset", where all students are removed when the course is reset, and all Stash items cleared out and "returned", that is if they are scarce / rare items they are put back in their original locations.
This would be like one of those "escape room" situations, where after a group solves the escape room and puzzles, the owners usually have to "reset" it before the next group arrives so that the next set of customers can have fun trying to escape Alcatraz, a mummy's tomb, etc.
So for the teachers of a course, they could just "reset" the Stash items and students so they have a "clean slate", ready for another group of intrepid students and explorers to go for it!
Hopefully that makes sense! Thanks Adrian!
I believe what would be most useful to most instructors would be a full "reset", where all students are removed when the course is reset, and all Stash items cleared out and "returned", that is if they are scarce / rare items they are put back in their original locations.
This would be like one of those "escape room" situations, where after a group solves the escape room and puzzles, the owners usually have to "reset" it before the next group arrives so that the next set of customers can have fun trying to escape Alcatraz, a mummy's tomb, etc.
So for the teachers of a course, they could just "reset" the Stash items and students so they have a "clean slate", ready for another group of intrepid students and explorers to go for it!
Hopefully that makes sense! Thanks Adrian!