Category: Announcements

Hack/Doc at Centre College

 

People seated around a table
A busy day at the Centre College Hack/Doc.

CLAMP held its Winter Hack/Doc Fest at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, from January 8-January 11, 2018. This was CLAMP’s first visit to Centre. The event began with a half-day “Sprint Day” on January 8 and concluded on the afternoon of January 11.

Moodle 3.4

The group kicked the tires on the new Moodle 3.4 release and didn’t find any major problems. The most noticeable change is that the “Participants” list and the “Enrolled users” page have been merged. On non-Boost themes such as Clean and More both links still exist, but they now go to the same page. This may require some tweaks to existing documentation but on the whole it worked as expected.

Joe Burgess from Butler University evaluated the new Analytics functionality. Analytics API shows how to use predictive models.  Moodle HQ is asking for individual institutions to submit data to allow them to create better models, but will maintain anonymity. To contribute data visit Moodle HQ. Currently they will need to be coded by the individual institutions.  Reliability is difficult to assess as the models require time to pass so data can analyzed by the AI.

Charles Fulton (Lafayette College) and Kevin Wiliarty (Hampshire College) finished work on the Moodle 3.4 version of the Liberal Arts Edition and published updates to the Filtered Course List and CLAMPMail blocks.

Discussions and presentations

Lunchtime presentations continue to be big part of Hack/Doc. On Tuesday Jason Simms from Lafayette College reported out on his experiences at the US Moodle Moot, which was held November 6-9, 2017 in Miami, FL. Major highlights:

  • Moodle’s mission is expanding to: “empowering educators to improve our world”
  • Focus on introducing new functionality rather than refactoring existing features
  • Heavily targeting emerging educational, non-profit, and corporate training spaces
  • A strong emphasis on mobile and offline access to Moodle
  • Emergence of MoodleNet, with a goal to connect educators and user of Moodle globally

On Wednesday Andrew Reuther from Swarthmore College demonstrated the latest version of his PDF accessibility tool. The plugin runs whenever cron is set to run and evaluates the newest files first. Working on a small amount of files each time, it shows if the PDF is an image or text. It also evaluates scan quality. The database table keeps the content hash of the PDF, whether it was checked, page count, and OCR status. Teachers may add a block to their course to see a summary of their PDFs. Discussion focused on future improvements, including automatic OCR of files.

Wednesday afternoon we took a break from Moodle, as our host Kristi Burch led a tour of a new experimental classroom space at Centre. We explored features available in the room such as multi-point displays and the eBeam smart board, and discussed the uses of smart technologies in the classroom and the pedagogical implications of such tools on student learning.

Finally, on Thursday, the group discussed the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation. This regulation governs the use of personal data for EU citizens, and could potentially affect US colleges with foreign students. The consensus was that evaluating compliance was a matter for college counsel, but that we should be prepared to act. Moodle HQ has announced a plan for supporting the GDPR and is publishing a guide for site administrators.

Bugs and features

No Hack/Doc is complete without bug reports and feature requests. Issues that came up at Centre included the following:

  • MDL-50763: add official support for a preferred pronoun.
  • MDL-61174: accepted file types does not update on focus change. Discovered by CLAMP while evaluating Moodle 3.4.
  • MDL-61161: grace period when displaying “In progress” courses. CLAMP will incorporate this feature into versions 3.3 and 3.4 of the Liberal Arts Edition.
  • MDL-61175: “Remind me to grade by” date does not roll on course restore with new start date
  • MDL-61200: Grade export defaults do not always apply as expected.

Announcing Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, Winter 2018

Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, Winter 2018 will be held Tuesday, January 9 through Thursday, January 11, 2018 at Centre College in Danville, KY. A pre-Hack/Doc documentation and coding sprint will be held Monday, January 8, 2018.

The lodging deadline is Friday, December 22, 2017. The registration deadline is Friday, December 15, 2017.

CLAMP Moodle Webinar: Friday, September 22

Please join CLAMP for a webinar presentation which will be held Friday, September 22, from 10:30-11:30 am (CST) in Zoom (https://zoom.us/j/630284326).

Sonya Johnson PhD, professor of Religious Studies at Beloit College, will share about her experience coming to Moodle, anxieties and expectations she had, challenges she faced and how Moodle helped her meet those challenges. She will also share about the ways in which Moodle, the quiz module in particular, supported her pedagogy. Sonya will finally share lessons learned/take-away’s and her future plans for her courses in Moodle.

Future sessions will consist of a faculty member presenting a 20-ish minute session about a particular method or tool they utilize within Moodle for their teaching. Faculty from each of the 30+ CLAMP schools are invited to lead these sessions as we continue with the series.

Each of session will be broadcast live via Zoom for participants at other schools to watch synchronously and hopefully gather faculty for discussion after the presentation. Sessions will also be recorded for those who cannot make the live session, and posted on the CLAMP YouTube channel. Our hope is that members of the CLAMP community are able to schedule a shared viewing of these presentations, whether live or recorded, with members of their own faculty to use as a springboard for discussion of how the presented material could be used at each of your respective institutions.

New members for the CLAMP Steering Committee, 2017

The CLAMP Steering Committee is pleased to announce that it has selected Carleton College and Wesleyan University as its new members. They replace Connecticut College and Union College, whose terms ran 2014-17. The new schools’ terms run 2017-2020.

About the Steering Committee

The CLAMP Steering Committee is composed of representatives from four-year liberal arts colleges or institutions. The current members are Beloit College, Carleton College, Centre College, Kenyon College, Lafayette College, Occidental College, and Wesleyan University.

Hack/Doc at Hampshire: Day 3

Accessibility discussion with Rob Eveleigh
Accessibility discussion with Rob Eveleigh, Five Colleges, Inc. Accessibility Coordinator. Photo credit: Sarah Ryder

The last day of Hack/Doc, as usual, was a bit shorter due to attendee travel plans. We wrapped up around lunch time after some discussions about Moodle 3.3, Boost, upgrade plans, and accessibility.

Moodle 3.3, Boost, and Upgrade Plans

The Hack/Doc group didn’t have major concerns with Moodle 3.3; some CLAMP schools are planning to upgrade to 3.3 for the fall semester and others are sticking with 3.1 or 3.2 for now. A few notes from the discussion:

  • The ability to choose a different document converter is nice.
  • The course overview bug is a concern, though it’s likely to be remedied in 3.3.1.
  • The expansion of user group and overrides is nice for students needing accommodation.
  • Review of the poster plugin functions as advertised, which helps some of the Boost concerns about a lack of a home for blocks.
  • One consideration of going to 3.3 is that it requires PHP 5.6.

Who is using or planning to use Boost?

  • One school is using Boost already and the feedback from faculty so far has been positive, but they just made the switch in May.
  • Another school is planning to roll it out in July.
  • Some other schools are considering it, but no solid plans to make the move at this point.

Accessibility

Rob Eveleigh, the Five Colleges, Inc. Accessibility Coordinator working with Hampshire, Amherst, Smith, and Mount Holyoke Colleges, joined us for a lively discussion around accessibility. Some of the items mentioned were:

  • Using semantic markup effectively
  • Providing alt text for images
  • Using descriptive and unique link text
  • Choosing colors with sufficient contrast
  • Captions, transcripts, and audio description
  • Clarity of language and layout
  • Ensuring accessibility of non-HTML content, such as PDFs and
  • Form labels
  • Skip navigation
  • Data table headers
  • ARIA
  • Javascript
  • Moving, blinking, or scrolling content and ensuring that the user can control the functions
  • Validating HTML
  • Forced file download is the most accessible setting for visually impaired users because they can use their system viewer rather than embedding it.
  • Ensure media players are keyboard navigable
  • Ally is an automated scanner and fixer of uploaded documents purchased by Blackboard and may be made available for other LMSs eventually

Some websites that provide information on a variety of web accessibility goals and strategies:

Some free tools to help evaluate web accessibility:

Andrew presenting about a file scanner.
Andrew presenting about a file scanner. Photo credit: Sarah Ryder

File Scanner Demo

Andrew Ruether from Swarthmore College worked on a tool that scans PDF files in Moodle. The local plugin runs whenever cron is set to run and evaluates the newest files first. Working on a small amount of files each time, it shows if the PDF is an image or text. Andrew created a block for Moodle to show a summary of the PDFs in the course for teachers. The database table keeps the content hash of the PDF, whether it was checked, page count, and OCR status. It might include scan quality down the road. It could potentially include the ability to spell check the OCR document. Ideally, it’d be nice if the non-OCR file could be converted on the fly.

A Little Bit of Git

Kevin Wiliarty from Hampshire College spent some time going over git techniques with other folks. One of the best aspects of Hack/Doc, in my opinion, is the ability to collaborate with and learn from others while feeling like you’re part of a supportive community. Thanks to everyone who attended and participated this week!

Git info on the whiteboard
Hack/Doc Whiteboard. Photo credit: Sarah Ryder

Posts from Moodle Hack/Doc Fest, Summer 2017 at Hampshire College: Homepage | Sprint | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3