How to count cells coloured by conditional format in Excel

Another non moodle post.  C'est la vie.

Quite a few questions pop up on Google saying they have a spreadsheet that uses conditional formatting to colour cells and they want to be able to count how many cells of a certain colour they have.  All the answers seem to point to this post by C Pearson who has an answer but it's not super obvious what to do with it.

If your spreadsheet press Alt and F11 to open the visual basic editor.  This allows you to add function to Excel.  In the left hand column right click the bold heading, it should say VBA Project(name of your spreadsheet).  Go to Insert > Module.

In the window that opens copy and paste the function code C Pearson provides and click the save icon. Then do the same right click, Insert > Module and do the next block of code. You need to add the Active Conditioning one and then whichever of the others you think would be useful to you.  I did all of them so I could try them out and the used CountOfCF.

So once you've added all the functions, use the formula:

=CountOfCF(C11:S15,3)

The green numbers are the range of cells you are looking at and the red number is the number that corresponds to the colour you're counting.  For me this number is three because it is the third condition in the conditional formatting.

And there you have it, counting conditionally formatted cells.

Adding one user to multiple groups via bulk upload

So I've got a nice women from a council buying 300 courses for nurseries in her area.  She wants to able to keep an eye on them and see how many have completed and how many are being lazy and not doin' their learnins.

I posted before about using groups for enrolment keys and creating a new role with the ability to run reports.  The trouble with using these two methods together is that the person with the special role (I called it Local Authority) needs to be in all the groups that correspond with the enrolment keys she's giving out.  This means  I have to add my council lady to three hundred groups and there isn't just an easy way of doing it in one go.

The way around it is to use the bulk user upload option.  You can upload a CSV file to create new users, enrol them on a course, put them in a group and give them a non default role.  Now my council lady already has a user account so I don't need to create that or give her a password.

I started a spread sheet with these column headings:

username

firstname

lastname

email

course1

role1

group1

I fill in the next line with the existing accounts username, first name, last name and email address.  Then I copy and paste that line into the next 299 rows.  The three hundred enrolment keys are distributed across three courses, one hundred in each.  So in the course1 column, the first hundred rows are the short name of the first course.  I thought at first it would be the course ID but it is the short name you need.  The next hundred rows are the second course and the third hundred rows are the third course.  This will enrol her on the courses as a student.

Under role1 I put the special role short name, in may case it's LA.  Under group1 I copy and pasted the group names from the spreadsheet I used to upload groups to each course.

Then I saved this as a CSV and uploaded it under the Site Administration > Users > Accounts > Upload Users option. When you click upload you'll be taken to a page with a few options.  On this page, depending on your situation, change Upload Type to 'Add new and update existing users' This means it will update the existing account with the new courses, role and groups rather than trying to create the same account a bunch of times.

Hit Upload Users and the job should be done.  If you check enrolled uses on a course the account should have been added to it with the new role and put in all the groups.  So now my council lady can see the activity of everyone that uses one of her enrolment keys.

Mahara as an assignment

If you have got your Mahoodle up and running you can set a Mahara page as an assignment submission.  I intend to use this so I can set a group of learners a bunch of pages with text boxes in, which they can fill in and then have assessed.

I followed the instructions in this wiki but, as with everything Moodle related, it's not completely clear.

There are two Moodle plugins you need to install.  First download the local folder. Unzip this and you'll get a file called moodle21. Unzip this as well and you'll have a file called pax_global_header and a folder called mahara-contrib-local-mahara.  You need to upload the contents of the folder to your moodle in the /local/mahara directory (you might need to create the /mahara folder).

Next you need to download the assignment type plugin. Unzip this and you'll get another moodle21 file which  you also need to unzip.  Again you'll get a file and a folder.  Upload the contents of the folder to your moodle in the mod/assignment/type/mahara directory (again you might need to create the /mahara folder).


Login to your moodle as an admin and visit the notifications page.  Click refresh to complete the installation.


Still as an admin go to site administration > networking > peers > all hosts then click on the services tab.  You should see a new paragraph headed Extra Mahara MNet Module.  You need to click the subscribe box.  From what I understand, ticking the publish box makes no difference so I clicked it too.


If you go into any course you should now be able to set an assignment with an option to submit a Mahara page.

Assign an oversight role

Say the manager of a nursery school buys training courses for all the staff.  We issue enrolment keys, the manager distributes them and sits back happy to let the staff get on with it.  Three weeks later the manager wants to see how far the staff have got.

As an Admin create a new role.  Go to Settings > Site Admin > Users > Permissions > Define roles.  Click Add a new role.  Give the role a name (e.g. Monitor), short name and a description if you want.  In Role Archetype choose what role you want the new role to be based on.  I went with none-editing teacher.  In Context I chose Course, this means the role can be assigned at the course level.

Now go through the permissions and allow any that you want this new role to have.  This took a bit of trial and error for me but I pretty much allowed all reports and logs to be run and allowed them to see participants.

With the new role created you need the person to have an account.  You can do this for them or make them do it themselves.

Go to the course you want the person to be able to monitor.  This is the course they have bought for their staff, if they bought more than one you'll have to do this for each course they have staff enrolled on.  Go to Settings  Course Administration > Users > Enrolled Users.  At the top click Enrol Users.  In the Assign roles drop down choose the new role you created, find the person you want to give monitor rights to on the list and click enrol.  This will allow then to run the reports and see the participants of this course.

I've used separate groups so I can issue individual enrolment keys, these groups are all separate so users can't see each other.  This means that the new monitor won't see them either so we have to ass the monitor to all the groups their staff are in.  Refresh the Enrolled Users page of the course you're in and find the new monitor user.  Click the little plus sign in the groups column and add them to all the same groups as their staff, (bare in mind some of the enrolment keys they bought may not have been activated yet so add them to every group that corresponds with an enrolment key they purchased).  They will now be able to see everyone in the same groups that they are in.

Create new Local Authority role
Have the LA sign up like normal.in the course
In the course go enrolled users
Click Enrol users at the top.
Enrol the LA as the new Local Authority role.
Go to enrolled users
Click the plus sign Enrol that LA in all the relevant groups.
They will now be able to see everyone in those groups and when they last logged in.

How to make a check mark/tick in InDesign

I'll start by saying this has nothing to do with Moodle.

I have been designing book covers and one of them needed a tick mark.  So of course I did some Googling to try and find out how to do it.  I came across numerous posts from people trying to do the same thing and the answers they received varied from "It can't be done" to "It can be done but it's a massive hassle."

I eventually found the answer in the most unlikely of places, a Microsoft Excel help document.  This pointed out that Wingdings has a tick mark as one of its characters.

This is only for Windows by the way, I have no idea what to do on a Mac.

Got to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and choose Character Map.  In the font drop down choose Wingdings.  Now you can see all the handy little icons that make up Wingdings.  Click the one you want to use (the ticks are at the end) and press Select then Copy.  This will put the character on your clipboard.  Return to InDesign (or whatever program you're using) and paste the character in place.  The character will probably appear as a box because the font you're using doesn't recognise it.  Highlight the character and change its font to Wingdings and there you go.

I went one step further and made the tick mark into a bullet point. Create a new paragraph style for the list you want ticks next to.  In the Bullets and Numbering tab and click Add in the Bullet Character box.  Choose Wingdings from the Font Family drop down, click the tick mark you want.  This mark will now act as a bullet point for this list.

I'm not gonna lie, it was an utter revelation when I realised Wingdings actually had a use.

How to install a Magento extension

For those just joining us, I'm now in the process of setting up a Magento store to integrate with Moodle.

Magento is an e-commerce solution in a similar vein to Moodle, it is free and open source or there are people that will do the dirty work for you.  I will eventually be using Magento to sell Moodle courses but first I have to get Magento to work with our online payment gateway.

Magento has native support for Paypal but we're using World Pay so I have to install a plugin.

First we vist www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/ and search for the extension you want, you can choose to look at free or premium extensions.  Clicking on the nice big Install Now button.

Now, this might bring up a dropdown menu for you to choose Magento Connect 1.0 or 2.0.  I'll admit this means nothing to me and if you're reading this post it might not mean anything to you either.  In another tab or window log in to your Magento backend via the admin panel and go to System > Magento Connect > Magento Connect Manager, you'll be asked to log in again.  You'll be taken to the Magento Downloader and if you scroll to the bottom you'll see what version of Magento Connect Manager you're working with.  Mine says 1.5.0.0.

Now I assumed this meant I should choose Magento Connect 1.0 from the drop down on the extension page, but when I did it didn't work.  So I tried choosing 2.0 and that seemed to do the trick.

Choose whichever you think might work, tick the box to agree to the licence agreement and click get extension key.  Copy the code it brings up, paste it into the box on the Magento Downloader marked Paste extension key to install and click Install.

At this point it'll either work or return an error message.  If you get an error message (like I did) try the other extension key.  If it works, return to your Magento dash, see if you have any messages saying a cache needs refreshing and configure your new plugin.  In my case this mean going to System > Configuration > payment methods.

Adding terms and conditions check box to sign up page

Want your users to agree to your terms and conditions before they can create an account? No sweat.

As an admin go to Settings > Site administration > Security > Site policies.  Scroll down to Site Policy URL.  In the box but the URL of wherever your terms and conditions are  hosted online, this can be on your Moodle site or somewhere else if you have a company wide policy.

This puts in a link to the terms and condition and a check box that a new users must check before they can signup.

Simples.

Enrolment Periods

We decided we want learners to have access to their courses for 60 days.  Their username will continue to be recognised for access to Mahara and site wide message boards but they will only have 60 day to access and complete paid content.

In Course Administration > Users > Enrolment Methods > Self Enrolment you cans elect how long the enrolment period lasts.  After this time if a user tries to access the course they just get a message saying "You cannot enrol yourself on this course"  This is because when an enrolment period is defined, Moodle sets a start and end date for their enrolment but doesn't actually un-enrol them from the course, if you look at enrolled users they are still there.

Say, somebody completes a course and gets their certificate and, two years later we email them to say the course has been updated to meet new legislation and they want to do the course again.  They can't access it even if they pay for it again because Moodle thinks they are already enrolled.

You can manually unenroll them or edit the unenroll date to give them access again but it's easier to set an un-enrol if inactive (on the same page as the enrolment period setting).  I've set it for 60 days (at least as long as the initial enrolment period).  That way if they complete the course and then don't look at it again they will be un-enrolled after 60 days, so they can re-enrol further down the line.

I've used the word enrol too many times.

Apple's e-textbook and What it Means to Me

In case you haven't heard Apple announced a couple of education innovations.  iBooks 2, an iPad app for reading digital textbooks, and iBooks Author, a Mac app for creating digital textbooks.  Apple is also adding a way for teachers to use their iPad/iPod/iPhone to create full online courses including quizzes and assignments (that sounds familiar).  All this is being aimed at the high school level.

From my point of view the most interesting part of all this is the authoring tool.  I recently had a meeting with an AV company who said one major university they work with was giving up Moodle after three years because the staff just couldn't grasp it.  I can understand this, it took me months to get comfortable with Moodle and I'm still not an expert, and I don't have a full teaching schedule to work around.  If Apple can make the process of creating digital electronic content easier then it could speed up the rate of adoption.

However, as I've found trying to develop courses, simply giving creators the ability to include games and video does not necessarily mean they are going to to produce more effective learning material.  Likewise, putting a lesson on a screen does not mean that learners will automatically be more interested.

I feel like there is still something missing from elearning.  For me there has yet to be that lightbulb moment where something clicks and I think "This is the way forward."  I don't, as yet, see the massive benefit of elearning over conventional methods and I think anybody who has had a particularly inspirational teacher will agree with me.  There is massive potential and definite advantages for different learning styles and requirements but I don't think any of those will replace a genuinely good teacher.

And how many genuinely good teachers will have to be let go so a school can afford to buy every student an iPad?

That's the main drawback to all this technology and I think it will be Apples's undoing.  My high school couldn't afford to buy enough white paint for the year, I don't think I ever once saw a textbook that was less than five years old and they definitely couldn't afford to buy everyone an iPad.  Money is tight, schools can't afford the wi-fi to support all this elearning never mind the gadgets to do it on.

Until every school has the infrastructure to support every child in the country logging on at 9 am, or the mobile broadband network is strong enough, then using internet based resources is infeasible.

An app that only creates content for iPads is too restrictive.  If schools can't afford to buy them for the students that content has to be available for the technology already in children's hands and for every 14 year old that owns an iPad or iPhone there are three that have a Blackberry and ten that have a PC.  Content has to be borderless.

Competitors are only too eager to ride Apple's coattails and they will be only too happy to learn from Apple's mistakes and create a better system for content creation if that is what the market place wants.

And that is the main benefit to Apple's desire to get into education.  They have stirred up interest, they have got people talking and they will create a desire for elearning innovation.  I just don't think they'll be responsible for it.

Luckily I know someone who has recently got into open source elearning and content creation.  So thank you Apple, you have just ensured my employment for the rest of my life.

Changing password requirements

I thought I'd already done a post about this but apparently I haven't.

When I did a round of internal testing on the first Moodle site the biggest hitch people had was creating a password.  The Moodle default is to require people to have at least one upper case, one lower case, one number and one non-alpha-numeric character in their passwords.  Nobody knew what a non-alpha-numeric character was.

At first I was just going to change the wording of the text on the sign up page to clarify the password requirements but then I found out how to change them.

As an admin, go to Settings > Site Administration > Advanced Features > Security > Site Policies and scroll down to Password Policy.  You can either uncheck the box so users can have whatever password they want or you can change the requirements in the boxes below.

I just turned the password policy off.  I know having stupidly complicated passwords is supposed to protect us all from the evils of the internet but if that security comes at the expense of users who can't be bothered Googling non-alpha-numeric then it's a bit useless.  Besides, users can still have a stupidly complicated password if they want.

Enabling SSO between Moodle and Mahara (Mahoodle)

There are a couple of documents you can look at to help you get you Moodle and your Mahara talking.

There is this PDF which is a bit out of date for Moodle 2.0 and there is this slideshow which has details for 1.9 and 2.0.

I am writing this as I read through the PDF as not everything in there is correct for my Moodle 2.0 build. I only found the slideshow version after I'd finished so I can't vouch for it. I suggest you have this post, the PDF and the slideshow open and go through reading all three at each stage.

Have a Moodle and a Mahara set up. I'm running a Moodle 2.0.3 and a Mahara 1.4

In Moodle, log in as admin. Go to Site administration > Advanced Features > Networking dropdown to On (I also enabled Portfolios while I was there, I don't know if this makes a difference.). Save Changes

In Mahara (as an admin) click on Networking under Configure Site. Enable Networking dropdown to Yes.

Save changes.

Still on Mahara, go to Admin home and click on Institutions under Manage Institutions.

The PDF says at this point you can either edit the default institution or add a new one. Seeing as this Mahara might be used with more than one Moodle I am adding a new institution.

Fill the Institution Name. This can be only letters, no spaces or numbers.

Fill in the Display Name. This can contain letters, numbers and spaces.

Click Submit.

I think, going forward, you can change the Display Name. The Institute name can't be change but it isn't seen by users.

Still on the Administer Institutions page, from the Authentication Plugin dropdown choose XMLRPC and click Add. You'll get a popup. Enter an Authority Name. Only Admins will see this. I used "Learning XMLRPC" because I think I'll have to set up another one for the Student Association Moodle.

The Parent Authority is not in the same place as it is in the pdf, it's a bit further down. I've left it as none.

In the WWWroot box enter the web address of your Moodle including the http. For me this is http://moodle.companyname.org.uk

The pdf doesn't mention what to put in the Site Name box. From the help popup I think this is how the Mahara will refer to your Moodle so I've put "Learning Site" Hopefully this can be changed later.

Choose Moodle from the Application dropdown adn leave the port alone unless you know what this is. I don't.

I've chosen "They SSO in" from the dropdown and ticked all three of the boxes below. I think this means users can access the Mahara from the Moodle site (they will be automatically signed in to Mahara), Mahara will check the Moodle database for changes and update its own database every time a user logs in, Mahara will automatically create a database entry is it is a new user and finally users can import content from Moodle.

Click submit.

The popup should close and your new XMLRPC authentication plugin instance should appear on the Administer Institution page next to Authentication Plugin. If you've done something wrong you'll get an error message. Double check your settings. I can't offer you any more advice than that cuz mine worked. *smug*

Everything else on the Administer Institution page should be fine so click submit.

Back on Moodle go to Settings > Site Administration > Advanced Features > Networking > Manage Peers

Under Add New Host enter your Mahara web address including http and select Mahara from the Application Type dropdpwn. Click Add Host.

You should get a page with a big block of seemingly random letters. This means it has worked. You can change what is in the box marked Site. I think this is how Moodle refers users to your Mahara and is editable later too. Click Save Changes, the same you should get a changes successful message before being redirected back to the same page with new tabs at the top.

Click the services tab.

Leave Remote enrolment service and Portfolio services alone for now because the PDF is out of date and I don't know what those are for. Under SSO (Identity Provider) check Publish and under SSO (Service Provider) check Subscribe. Click Save Changes.

Go to Settings > Site Administration > Advances Features > Plugins > Authentication > Manage Authentication and open the eye next to MNET Authentication. (MNET means Moodle Networking which is what it used to be called.)

You don't have to change any of the settings associated with this plugin but if you go into them you'll see the list of sites in your Moodle network, at this stage this should just be your Mahara.

Go to Settings > Site Administration > Advanced Features > Users > Permissions > Define Roles. Select Authenticated user and click the edit icon. Scroll to "Roam to a remote application via MNetmoodle/site:mnetlogintoremote" and check Allow. Save Changes.

Go to your Moodle homepage and turn editing on. Add a Network Servers block. This should have your Mahara in it and allow your users to be automatically logged in.

It didn't work for me and I don't know why yet so I'll update this post when I suss it out.

Edit: OK, so I went back into the Define Roles page and for some reason the box Roam to remote applications box wasn't checked even though I had checked it. Either way I checked the box and made sure I saved the changes and now the Network Server box displays the Mahara link properly. Success!

Edit 2:  I just set up SSO from a second Moodle (the Student Association site) to this Mahara following these instructions and it worked like a charm.  So my Mahara is set up so that users can access it directly from either of the Moodles but not from the Mahara sign in itself.

New Moodle (or Noodle if you will)

One of my colleagues has just talked to me about setting up a new Student Association.  She had in mind a website that, for a small fee, would allow users access to various forums, resources and job notices.  Sounds like a Moodle to me.

So I'm going to blog about this Moodle from the beginning like I should have done with the other one.  For anyone who has read my previous posts this Moodle will be referred to as the Student Association and the other one will be called The Training Portal (even though its name hasn't been decided yet).

Also, boss wants some kind of portfolio system set up alongside the training site so I'm looking into Mahara.  I think I'm going to try and set it up so users of the student site can begin a portfolio which they can keep using once they (hopefully) begin their careers and use our training programmes.  We could also offer a digital membership card to the student association that could remain in their portfolio as a kind of status.

I've had the IT man set up a new Moodle but it's just occurred to me the Student Association could just exist as a course within the training Moodle.

Terminology - What's in a name?

At the moment we're calling the Moodle site the 'Online Learning Portal' but my manager isn't sold on the name and neither am I honestly.  I have a meeting about the site tomorrow so I'm going to march in there with a list of words and make someone pick a new name.

Current Issues

Things are still quiet on the Moodle front as I've been updating course content but recently I've had a couple of meetings that have thrown up a few issues I need to keep in mind.

The biggest thing on the horizon is still the payment gateway which I talked about earlier.  Despite being told it would be up and running by the end of August it is still in the planning stages.  I have almost got it straight in my head how it might work but I have another meeting scheduled in a couple of weeks time to discuss it with all the relevant parties and they'll probably tell me I'm wrong.  I'll do a more detailed post about that later.

We've had a bit of a reshuffle at work and I've got some different responsibilities and one of my colleagues has been tasked with project managing the now training portal.  He probably should have been told this six months ago when I started working on it but that would have made too much sense.  In these meetings we've been having there have been a lot or paper work requirements thrown up such as risk assessments and action plans.

Fair to say I am more than happy to let him "project manage" the paper work and I'll just stick to the geekery.  Unfortunately, because I know the project and he doesn't, I'm probably going to have to chip in.

Some of the paper work he needs to make up devise is:

Action Plan: An overall plan or time line of what needs to happen.  I'm thinking a Gantt Chart might come in handy.


Course Format: I need to sit my superiors down and get the ultimate OK on how I am structuring the courses.  Since discovering the book module I've been converting courses to that but it has a more basic completion requirement than lessons do and I don't want to change all the courses just to have my boss decide that it's not good enough.

I also need to devise a set of rules that dictate how the course material is set out when it gets to me.  The course material I have been given so far has come as Power Point presentations, the trainers have thought about what they want the slide to look like and what font they want to use and then spent time making everything look pretty.  This, it turns out, is a complete waste of time because I have to strip all that formatting out before putting it into Moodle.  Also, some weren't including quiz questions or were suggesting games that weren't suitable.  So I need write a document that explains to them clearly what I need from them and how I want it as well as what games I can make.

Part of the course format is going to be writing the brief that customers can read before they buy the course (because I can't be bothered to write them) and also deciding what level the courses are aimed at (management, general staff, etc.).

Terminology: Currently the site is being called the Learning Portal and the courses are broken up into Lessons.  My boss said she doesn't like that so we need to decide what else to call them.  Ideas were tossed around to have a staff suggestion box but I think the best way of getting a result before I die of old age is if I make a list of all the terms I can think of and camp in my boss's office until she picks one.

There are probably other words on the site that some people won't like, such as calling students Learners, which need to be agreed on so I don't have to spend a week going through everything and changing every instance of the word 'forum' to 'message board'.

Proofing Process: Firstly all the information needs to be up to date and accurate, this ties into the review process.  There also needs to be a process to ensure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes, this is just basic quality assurance.

If the course content comes to me meeting the course format requirements I should just be able to copy and paste it into Moodle which will cut out quite a lot of mistakes (at the moment the text was spell checked when I got it but then I had to re-write quite big chunks and introduced my own mistakes.)  Once text is online changing one little spelling mistake is a bit of a job so I need to minimise the chance of them happening.  For quizzes and questions (especially using HotPot) changing a spelling mistake is even more arduous so it's really important the course format rules are stuck to.

Even assuming I've done everything I can to minimise the chance of spelling mistakes the online content still has to be proofed.  Luckily there is a lady in my office who is a self confessed officer in the grammar police and she works in my department so I should be able to pass the courses to her for a final proof.  This proofing process needs to be given a time scale so I can predict how long it takes to put a course online.


Testing Process: The whole portal needs to be tested for bugs and usability.  I already had people in the office look at it to get some feedback on how straightforward the site was to use and no one seemed to have any major problems (except not being able to create a suitable password but I already fixed that).

After I have the course format and visual style set in stone I think the site will need another round of internal testing.  I might even have to sit next to people and watch them use it so I can pick up on any areas that could be improved.  Then it will be on to closed testing, we'll find a bunch of people who fit into the target customer base and give them free access to the training site on the proviso that they answer a ridiculously detailed evaluation questionnaire.

When the site is ready for public consumption I think there will need to be at least six months of public beta testing.  This will basically be a disclaimer and a detailed evaluation questionnaire so the site can be improved and nobody will get their panties in a major wad if something doesn't work.  This initial period might contain a price discount as well.

Review Process: We recently had a situation at work with some of the companies existing online courses, someone complained that the content was out of date.  Turns out the course hadn't been updated since 2008.  To avoid this in the future I figure each course should be reviewed at least once a year.  They'd have to be reviewed by one of our subject experts because it'll be things like new legislation and terminology that they'll need to look at.  These are pretty busy people so I figure giving them assigning a month for each course to be reviewed would work.

Risk Assessment: What are the risks associated with a Moodle site?  The obvious ones I can think of:

• Data protection: Student data, especially once we start taking credit card details.
• Server Crashes: Resulting in people not being able to access the course they've paid for and us losing data.
• The site being hacked: Could result in learner details being stolen, data being lost or the site being vandalised.
• Accessibility issues.
• Learners not being satisfied with the quality of course material and complaining.

CPD Certification: We want all the courses to be CPD UK certified.  I have no idea what this entails so it's probably best we find out sooner rather than later in case they have to meet certain requirements. Somebody mentioned the courses have to count as a certain number of points or hours so that has to be figured out.

Price: As I mention, the price will probably change after we've had some initial feedback but we do have to decide how much we're going to charge for these courses.  Will they all be the same price?  Will there be a discount for multiple purchases?  How big a discount will members get?

Evaluation Questionnaire: There needs to be an evaluation questionnaire for each stage of the testing process.  I need to decide what I need to know from my colleagues who I trick into choose for my internal testing pool.  Then I need to decide what I need to know from the closed testing process and the public users.  And finally there will be an evaluation questionnaire that all customers will be asked to fill in, we need to decide if learners have to complete the evaluation before they get their certificate or if we make it optional.

How the forums will be used: This is one of Marketing's big concerns because they seem to think the boards will be hijacked by trouble makers who want to slag us off.  I don't think it will be as bad as that but I think comments will need to be moderated.  Initially I think we'll just use the News forum (which only admins and teachers can post to) to post news and updates.  I've set up a couple of boards and put links in courses to try and encourage learners to share specific ideas with each other.  I think this would be a good starting point as the boards can be moderated on the grounds that they are for specific conversations.  I don't think they will be so popular that I won't have time to moderate them myself but if they do take off more time might have to be given to their moderation.

Backups: A backup process needs to be hammered out to make sure nothing gets lost if something explodes.  Ideally this should be automated but I have yet to be able to find a way of doing it, it might be that I have to do a manual backup every Monday morning.

See?  I have a lot to think about.

Book Module

I've not blogged for a while because the development side of my Moodle has slowed down and I've been working on putting courses up.

BUT!  I stumbled across something completely by accident that it well suited to my needs.  That thing is the Book Module.

The Book Module works as a kind of alternative to Lessons, allowing you to put together a series of pages into a "book" which can then be exported or printed by the learner.  The navigation is simpler, there are forward and back arrows on the top right and bottom right and a Table of Contents block appears where the navigation block would normally be (top left for my site).

The Book Module in action

 The simplified navigation and boxed off content area are what appeals to me about using the book module.  The border can be altered through the CSS.  I would like to be able to theme each book so I could have different colour borders but I haven't really looked at that yet.

There is still no smooth way to go from the end of a book to a quiz and then onto a new book (I've just used links within the last page of the book and in the quiz feedback.) but there wasn't in lessons either.  You can't use the question pages in a book the way you could in a lesson but I didn't like those anyway.

There is capacity to embed a quiz or a Hot Pot quiz within a book using an iFrame but I have yet to get that working smoothly so I'll do a post about that later.

Another pretty big drawback of the Book module is the completion options.  You can only have a book marked complete upon being viewed.  So if a student looks at the first page the book is marked as complete and anything relying on that book being complete becomes available.  However, because of the simplified navigation it is not immediately obvious to the casual user that the next step is now open. 

Another thing, if a user gets half way through a book and leaves the page, their progress is not remembered, meaning next time they come back they have to start the book again.  I've been keeping the section of my courses short anyway (about five or six pages per book with a quiz in between) so it's not too bad for me but more complex courses might have to stick to the lesson module.

The Book Module is installed the same way as other contrib modules.  Download the correct file for you build of Moodle from here.  Unzip that file and upload it to the mod folder of your Moodle.  When you login as an admin to Moodle you'll have the notification page come up, just click continue at the bottom and then you'll be able to choose Book from the resources drop down in any course.

Changing a user's account.

Just been briefing a colleague on our Moodle system, I find it's helpful to talk things through with someone because you think of things you otherwise wouldn't.  He said, for example, one of the biggest problems we're going to have when the system goes live will be users forgetting their password and ringing us to tell them what it is.

Because we're letting people register themselves, I don't know what each user's individual passwords are and I haven't yet found a way to display them on Moodle.  What I can do, however, is change their password for them.

Moodle has an option for users who have forgotten their passwords to have a new one set and emailed to them.  The one it sends is a randomly set mixture of letters, numbers and non alphanumeric characters which I can guarantee my users will not change straight away when they log back in and then forget and never be able to log in ever again.

So I need to make sure everyone is the office who is likely to get a use who can't remember their password knows how to change a password for them.

Firstly go to Settings > Site Administration > Users > Accounts > Browse list of Users.  Find the user in question, you can use the search filter at the top to search for their name.  Click the Edit on their row.  There you'll see a New Password box.  Enter the new password and update the profile.

Oh, and, make sure you tell the user what their new password is.

Changing words

You can change any of the words or phrases that appear on you Moodle site.  For example, I use the topics format for my courses but I have all the lessons in one topic.  So seeing the word topic in the main menu might confuse users.

As an admin, go to Settings > Site Administration > Advanced Features > Language > Language Customization.  From the drop down choose you language (you might only have English) and click the Check Out Strings Into Translator button that comes up.  You should get a big green bar that says 100% and a continue button, click that.  This process is bizarre, I don't understand what it does but we're where we want to be now.

You'll see a list of all the different php files that generate text on your Moodle.  If you know which one has the word or phrase you want you can click it but I generally just select them all.  In the Only Strings Containing box type in the word or phrase you want to change.  You get a list of phrases your word appears in.  Find the one you don't like and change it by typing in the big box next to it.

Be aware that this will change the phrase every time it is used.  There may be placeholders in the phrase, these are how Moodle puts in a username or email address, you have to copy these exactly or they won't work.

When you're done, scroll right to the bottom and click the Save And Check In Strings Into Files button then click Continue when it comes up.  Done!

Getting More Details From Users

We keep a pretty detailed CRM (Customer Relations Management) database with all kinds of info.  To get that information from the users of the Moodle site I'm going to need to add some fields to the Create Account page.

As an admin on Moodle go to Site Administration > Users > Accounts > User Profile Fields and you'll see a page saying User Profile Fields, Other Fields, No fields have been defined.  If you want a few new fields, such as one for each line of an address, you could create a new category.  Click the button and create your category.

For a new field select from the drop down.  I want a simple text box so users can tell me where they work so I select Text Input.  Fill in the form that comes up,  I'm going to select Yes in Make this Field Required and Display on Signup Page and not change anything else.  Then click save changes.

Remember, if you export user data at any point, which I will do, having commas in the signup fields might screw up how the data is displayed as commas are often use to signify a new field to a database or spreadsheet.  For example, if someone answers my new Where I Work field with "My Office, London" I'll get My Office in the correct column but London will be in the next column, pushing all the other fields out of sync.  This could be a big problem for databases so try to keep your fields simple.  If you find users are constantly putting commas in and causing you problems you can always edit these field names, either adding another field or changing the name to be more specific.

Enrollment Keys

The courses I'm building will, at some point, be bought in bulk by Local Authorities (LAs) to be used by individuals.  I need to think up some relatively hassle free way of these individuals getting access to the courses that have been bought for them.

I could just keep the self enrollment method I already have set up and trust that everyone will be honest and only enroll on the courses they've been told to use (which would probably work, the computer shy users will probably not try doing anything more than they have explicit instructions for) but that's a bit lax.

Ideally I could use single use enrollment keys.  If I could set each course to have a bunch of enrollment keys that only work once, they could then be distributed by the LAs.  Unfortunately Moodle doesn't support this.

On our current system, we manually set up user accounts and then tell people their login info.  There usually a maximum of half a dozen a month so we set up the accounts on the first of the month and it takes, at most, a couple of hours.  But this means users a waiting for access and it's an administrative task that, to my mind, could be cut out.

The best solution I have come up with so far is to use group enrollment keys.

Firstly, the course in question has to have self enrollment with an enrollment key.  I mentioned how to do that in an earlier post.  Once that's done, while logged in as an admin, go to Settings > Course Administration > Edit Settings and scroll down to Groups.  Next to Group mode set that to either separate groups or visible groups.  I've choose separate groups as this means the groups can't see each other.

No go to Settings > Course Administration >Users > Groups.  Create a new group and give it an enrollment key.  When a user enrolls, they will be asked for an enrollment key.  They can use either the one defined in the course settings or the one defined in the group settings.  If they use the group key they will be put in that group when they enroll.

Now if you want fifty different enrollment keys, manually creating fifty groups is time consuming.  Instead open Excel (or whatever spreadsheet program you have) and make a spreadsheet that has one column labelled groupname and one labelled enrolmentkey (note the spelling, Moodle thinks enrollment only has one L).  The labels have to be in the top row.  In the group name column write the name of your first group e.g. group001.  Drag the bottom corner of that box down and you will see Excel wants to put group002, group003 and so on all the way down the column.  For ease I am using the group names as the enrollment key so I just copied all the group names into the enrolmentkey column.

Then save the spreadsheet as a .csv file.  Excel might try to kick up a fuss about features or whatever but just press ok.  The on the groups page in Moodle, select Import Groups.  Choose your .csv and Moodle will create as many groups as you had in your spreadsheet with the enrollment keys.

I can now give this batch of enrollment keys to the LAs to distribute as they see fit.  Of course, users could use the same enrollment key to get other people they know on the course but a quick look by an admin at the groups page will tell you if more than one person is in a group and then they can be kicked out.

I'm still looking for a way to limit the number of members in each group.  That way each group could be set to a maximum number of 1 and the enrollment keys would, in effect, be single use.

Feb 2012 update:  Just a note to add, the .csv that you import groups from can only have those two columns or it won't work.  I want to keep a record of who has what enrolment keys so I have one Excel work book with everything on and just save one worksheet with only those two columns as a .csv.

Also, say you have made fifty groups by importing a .csv and want another fifty groups.  You can use the original spreadsheet with the extra groups added and import it the same way.  Moodle will recognised the groups that already exist and produce an unsuccessful message, and add the new ones normally.

Unfortunately I still don't have a way to limit the number of groups members.

Changing Icons

The icons in Moodle are hideous.  I don't know how they have managed to design icons that look so 70s, the forum one in particular is horrible.

To change them we first have to find some replacements.  I used a set of icons call the Moodalis theme, but since I downloaded them the website seems to have changed.  You can try searching for them.  Or you can use Tango, Famfamfam or whatever you want.  The good thing about the Moodalis theme was that they were already arranged the same way Moodle icons are arranged.

However you access your Moodle server (I use FTP) you need to find /web/pix.  You will see a bunch of folders with single letter names which is where most of the icons live (note: I say most).  They are arranged thusly:

a – Icons that are not widely used

c – Calendar-related icons

f – File icons for different file types

g – Default user icons and thumbnails

i – General icons

m – Currency symbols

s – Smileys

t – General icons

u – User icons and thumbnails

y – YUI icons

As I say the Moodalis icons were all categorized in the same way to make it easy but whatever icon set you choose you just need to make sure the icon you want to use is name EXACTLY the same as the icon you want to replace, including the file extension.

So if you want to replace the edit icon:

With a new one:

Simply make sure your new one is called edit.gif and is 16x16 (most icon sets are) and overwrite the original in the i folder.  If you do manage to find a theme organised for Moodle, you would be better to overwrite the icons rather than the folder (i.e. copy new icons into i rather than copying a new i folder over the original one).  This is because, in the Moodalis theme anyway, there are more icons in the original Moodle set so overwriting a whole folder would leave you with some icons missing.

To see the new icons you'll have to clear the theme cache (Settings > Site Administration > Advanced Features > Appearance > Themes > Theme Selector).

...And the hideous forum icon is still there.

The forum icon lives in /web/mod/forum/pix.  Replace it in the same way.

The yellow question mark is still in operation too but I have yet to find where that resides.  It will be a case of changing these icons as and when you come across them.  There is talk of changing the icon set that ships with Moodle but who knows when that will be.