Moodle plugins directory: Hot Question

The first Moodle activity for a physical classroom. The idea comes from Purdue University's hotseat.

Some possible uses:

• Students can post questions in "real" time during a face-to-face class.
• Students can post questions 24/7 in a course.
  
• Can be used as a "Suggestion Box" in a course.
• Can  be used for student analysis of any kind of data placed in the description.
• Can  be used for student analysis of a video placed in the description.
• Can be used for quick polls.
• Can be used for classroom auctions.
  

Inside or outside a classroom, students can post into this activity from any device which can access the Moodle site. Students can also apply Heat, (vote) on other users posts, so that the hottest post will be popped up to the top of the list. Teachers can set a priority, either positive or negative, on selected posts, which overrides the Heat. Teachers can also control visibility of student entries, with an approval setting for each individual entry.

Some new items in this version:

• Setting to show or hide the Priority column
• Setting to show or hide the Heat column
  

Other recently added new capabilities:

• Groups
• Grouping
• Group members only
• Confirm delete entry
• Confirm delete round
• Changed Delete round icon
• Open and Close dates now show in the Calendar
• + release is to fix Open Calendar regression
• Modified the ordering of the fields in the CSV Question downloads, to make reading the results in a spreadsheet easier, by placing Content last. This helps with readability as that column is usually very wide.
• Added the Teacher priority and Heat (votes) to the CSV Question downloads.
  
• Made the SQL for the CSV cross DB compatible so it now works for PostgreSQL database users.
• Implemented width and height styles to the thumbsup and thumbdown icons used for teacher priority and heatas with Moodle 3.6 they switch from gif to svg and with the styles setting, they are huge.
• Provided a separate language string for the "Post" button so Hot Question is not sharing a core string. The new string now shows as, "Click to post." Makes it possible to customize the button label, without affect a Moodle core language string.
• Modified the Behat tests to account for the new language string used on the Click to post, button. Also fixed a few other Behat steps that worked in previous Moodle versions, but not in Moodle 3.6. Tests now work as expected.
• Fixed a problem where the initial Teacher priority of zero would not be shown, and you would have to manually make it go positive, before you could go to negative number. It depended on the various combinations of Moodle, PHP, and database in use, but now works reliably in all versions of Moodle.
  
• Added code for GDPR compliance.
  
• Added a setting that allows the teacher to set a priority rating for each question.
  
• Added an approval setting for each question so the teacher can hide inappropriate questions.
• Added groups capability.
  
• Added 12 Behat tests.
  
• Added setting for, "Display description on course page."
• Added settings for open and close Availability dates.
• Added setting to allow changing, "Submit your question here" to whatever the teacher wants when creating a Hot Question activity.
• Included an optional icon for this activity, that is more "activity purpose" neutral than the light bulb.

General capabilities:

• Site admin, teacher, or manage can show or hide Priority or Heat columns depending on need.
  
• Site admin, teacher, or manager can delete individual questions.
• Teacher or manager can download questions from the classroom Hot Question activity.
• Site admin can download questions from Hot Question activity for the whole site.
• Site admin, teacher, or manager can delete any round they are currently viewing including any questions and votes in the round.
• When anyone clicks on the Hot Question link in an Activities block, depending on the group settings they see a list of all Hot Question activities in the course along with how many unique users, and how many unique questions were posted the current round.