Category: Hack/Doc Fest at Lafayette

Hack/Doc Fest V: Day 2 Report

The Day 2 report won’t be as comprehensive as the first one; I’ll just hit the highlights:

  • You can follow our code development on Twitter: @clamptwit
  • We setup a UStream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/hack-doc-fest-v
  • “Editing Your Moodle Profile” documentation is up on CLAMP-IT.org. Read the documentation.
  • We worked on the Groups & Groupings documentation.
  • We’ve streamlined our SVN structure considerably. We now have two primary branches:
    • /branches/1.9.7-LAE1.0dev – for development of our next release.
    • /trunk/moodle/current – for our current LAE release.
  • The “Extra Time” student role has been documented and is in the Doc workflow; hopefully we’ll have it on the site soon.
  • Blackboard->Moodle Migration Documentation: We’re looking at three methods of moving data from Blackboard to Moodle (BFree, the LSU migration tool, and the built-in Blackboard course parser in Moodle), comparing strengths and weaknesses and explaining how to move stuff.
  • Moodle 1.9.7 Roadtest: We’re continuing to explore Moodle 1.9.7; there may be some problems with backing up and restoring gradebook data that we need to look at more.
  • Luther College Gradebook Changes: We began testing Luther College’s gradebook changes to see how the math works out in complex scenarios (different aggregation methods, drop lowest grade, extra credit, etc.)
  • Simple File Upload and Assignment ZIP are feature complete and are now being rolled into the next production release of the Liberal Arts Edition (Moodle 1.9.7+LAE v1.0)
  • Bugs were fixed involving:
    • An obscure issue with wikis and groups.
    • Inability to scroll through the Moodle chat history
    • Quickmail’s “can receive” role.
  • Import/Backup/Restore issues are being reviewed and worked on by a number of participants. Check redmine tracker for details.
  • We’re looking at Single Topic Backup/Restore.

Hack/Doc Fest V: Day 1 Report

Here’s what the Hack/Doc crew at Lafayette College worked on during Day 1 of the event:

Courtney Bentley, Lafayette College: Went through the Documentation tracker in Redmine and updated all the queues. She posted “Moodle Roles Explained” to CLAMP-IT and is working on a supplementary document on on creating a “unlimited quiz time” role for students.

Sarah Ryder, Hampshire College: Quickmail: Found the can receive bug (needs to be committed). Looked into option for sending emails to everyone at once, but would require creating a whole new function. Decided that was a little silly.

Caroline Moore, Smith College: Did a lot of chatting with Dan Wheeler at Colgate about Simple File Upload. Looks like he took her edits and made them work. Caroline is in the process of testing that out. Would like to add a “Force Download” checkbox with Simple File Upload.

Charles Fulton, Kalamazoo College: Topic Import/Restore thing; applied fix from Tracker.  WIll add vote for it to Tracker. Spent time beating up on Chat.

Eric Merrill, Oakland University: Closed out a number of tasks related to theLuminis Message Broker plugin. Show version of LMB module, secure LMB importing; before you needed to have a secure htaccess file; now the module handles the security. Led a conversation about LMB integration, common problems encountered, what documentation is available, etc.

Steve Taylor, Vassar College and Sarah Ashley, Drew University: Worked on migration notes for moving from Blackboard to Moodle. We’re considering having a “Blackboard to Moodle” brownbag in the spring semester.

Mark O’Neil, Vassar College & Rosalyn Metz, Wheaton College: They spent time looking at a “daily” format for Moodle courses, but found that wasn’t really an option unless they hacked core code in Moodle. But they did find some alternatives they want to try out.

Jeanne Farrell, Diane DeMelo, Wheaton College: Documented differences between the Liberal Arts Edition and vanilla Moodle, creating a plain text explaination. They also looked at Bob Puffer, Luther College’s fixes for the Gradebook.

Rosalyn Metz, Wheaton College: Took on feature to backup a single section from a course.

Jason Meinzer, Reed College: Closing out code tasks in Redmine, looking at subgroups in metacourses.

Daniel Landau, Reed College: Version control wrangling and working on removing the zlib requirement for Assignment ZIP.

Virtual Participants

On the virtual front, our nine hack/dockers worked on:

  • Roadtesting Moodle 1.9.7
  • Coming up with an evaluation list for Moodle 2.0-Dev
  • Worked on Simple File Upload

Requesting Hacks, Fixes and Documentation for Hack/Doc Fest V

Hack/Doc Fest V is coming, we’re looking for  suggestions for bug fixes, documentation and new features for Moodle  that the community would like us to address. You can add your requests by making a comment on this blog post. You don’t have to be attending Hack/Doc Fest to make suggestions — we’d like suggestions from the entire community.

Update 1/4/2010:

  • Moodle Hack/Doc Fest V Task List: A complete list of bugs, feature requests, and road tests has been been posted to Google Docs. Attendees have edit access; everyone else has view access.