Description of conditional activities in Moodle

Description of conditional activities that can be applied to any activity or resource in Moodle

Welcome to the demo

This is a brief demonstration on how conditional activities work in Moodle.

This course itself is an example in which conditional activities have been set to adapt the course according to what each user does anytime. Resources and activities will be presented depending on your activity in the course.

You are seeing this information in the language you have previously chosen. That is an evidence!

In this brief demo we will see:

How conditional activities work applied to this demo itself. Resources or activities will be show depending on your behaviour.
How activities or resources can be conditioned. They will be shown to students depending on the previously set variables, in a practical way.
How to download and install the code in a Moodle installation to acquire the ability to implement conditional activities in it.

What does this demo do?

diferent learning paths - Photo by Elsie esq. on Flickr

This demo has two phases:

First phase: You can log in as guest

As guest, you can see two books: this one and another one with the same information in Spanish. They both descirbe conditional activities in Moodle.

Second phase: You must create a user account

Conditional activities act in a personalized way, depending on what each participant is doing in the course. To see how they work, you must create an account and log in as that user.

This second phase consists of:

Chosing the language to use in the demo (All the items that not match your language choice will disappear)
A page on which it is proposed to introduce yourself (conditioned by the selected language)
Introducing ourselves forum (conditioned by the selected language).
General forum about the course (conditioned by having seen the proposed activity)
A page on which it is proposed to create elements in a Test course, and condition them to other elements (conditioned by sending your introduction in the forum)
A book which describes how to create conditional activities in a course, step by step (Conditioned by having seen the description of the previous activity)
A book which describes how to download the conditionals code and how to install it in a server (Conditioned by having seen previous book and having done the activity in the General forum about the course)

What are conditional activities?

¿Qué son los condicionales? - Fotografía de .Bala en Flickr

In current Moodle versions, all students see the same course, regardless of their background, the activities carried out or their participation in different forums.

In the proposed implementation of conditional activities in Moodle, courses can be personalized for each user to perform scheduled activities at the appropriate time, depending on what they have previously done in any other activity or resource, or the time elapsed since a given time.

An example: We can condition any activity by the student having introduced theirselves in the corresponding forum or having chosen a particular option in a given choice.

Why do we need conditional activities?

Conditional activities have become necessary for the following reasons:

They are widely demanded in the user community
Their implementation is planned for version 2.0 of Moodle
They allow to customize the learning process
They facilitate curricular diversification

Some conditions combined to take a learning way - Photo by mikebaird on Flickr

These reasons led us at CICEI (Center for Innovation for the Information Society) in ULPGC (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) to modify the code in Moodle to be able to respond to the different characteristics of students. Thus we presented the first version of them in the Conditional Activities forum in 2005.

Due to developments in the different versions of Moodle we have adapted that original version to the current 1.9.4

What can we do with conditional activities?

Identify prior knowledge of students and condition the activities and resources by obtained results.
Set different learning paths by applying conditional activities
Keep track of the structure and progress in the course
Establish flexible groups for each activity.
Investigate the use of different options (styles, background, paths, etc..).
Improve the management of always open enrollment courses.

What activities can be conditioned?

algunos iconos identificativos de actividades y recursos en Moodle

You can set any conditions for any activity or resource. The following conditions can be programmed for activities or resources:

Assignment: The student has sent it or not and the grade
Chat: The student has participated or not.
Choice: The student has answered and what their answer is
Forum: Topics started, number of messages, success (number of answers to a specified message) and grade
Glossary: Entries added and the number of comments made
Lesson: Grade, answer to any question etc, and number of matches
Book: The student accessed to it or not
Quiz: Rating and answer given any of the questions
Wiki: Number of times they edited it
Workshop: Obtained grade
For any resource: The student has accessed to it or not.

You can also contition on:

Elapsed time (in days) since they first entered the course
Elapsed time (in days) since the beginning of the course
Elapsed time (in days) from a predetermined date
Student language
Student country

What conditions can we set?

It is possible for each activity or resource in a course to be shown to each user when any of these conditions (or various) is met:

the student has sent a determined assignment or not
the grade (numerical or scale) obtained by the student in a given assignment
the student has opened a determined chat window or not
the student has answered a determined choice or not
the answer given by the student to a determined choice
the number of discussions (threads) started by the student in a determined forum
the number of messages (the beginnings of discussions or threads are also consider messages) sent by the student to a given forum
the number of answers to discussions started by a student
the grade (numerical or scale) obtained by the student in a determined forum
the number of entries added by the student to a determined glossary
the number of comments written by the student to terms of a determined glossary
the grade obtained by the student in a determined lesson
the answer given by the student to a "multiple choice", "true/false", "short answer" or "numerical" question of a determined lesson
the number of correct matches done by the student in a "matching" question of a given lesson
the obtained grade by the student in a "essay" question in a determined lesson
the obtained grade by the student in a determined quiz
the answer given by the student to a "short answer", "true/false", "multiple option", "numerical" or "calculated" question of a determined quiz
the number of correct matches done by the student in a "matching" question of a determined quiz
the number of right matches of the student in a type question "random short-answer matching" of a determined quiz
the number of times that the student has edited a given wiki
the grade obtained by the student in a determined workshop
the student has accessed a resource
the student has accessed a book or not
the student country is different or equal to any of a list of countries
the student language is different or equal to any of the site languages
the elapsed time (in days) since the student has first entered in the course
the elapsed time (in days) since course start date
the elapsed time (in days) since a given date

It is worth noting that any activity or action can be conditioned to the combination of several of the conditions listed above.

Labels for new items

Conditional activities make possible that new activities or resources, previously scheduled, are shown to users. This could generate some confusion confuso

if the students were not warned of the new activity or resource.

In order to facilitate access control, the optional ability to add a customized label to each new element has been implemented. The default label is NEW.

When you access an element with this label for the first time, it will disappear.

In this demo you will see that label on the new elements shown.

How to access to second phase

In this book, that you can see like a guest user, we´ve described the conditional operations.

From now on, if you want to see their actual functioning is necessary for entry into the course as a identified user as the conditional function, as mentioned above depending on what do each person in the course.
If you want to continue the demo you must:

Create an account in this server
Login with your new user again
Choose your desired language (first personalized condition)
Follow the demo which will be conditioned on your actions in the course.

It is of great interest and can help us to improve this show as the features of conditionals that make us your comments, questions or suggestions.

Sitio:	Interfaz Virtual de Aprendizaje - CICEI (ULPGC)
Curso:	Implementation of Conditional Activities in Moodle at CICEI
Libro condicional:	Description of conditional activities in Moodle
Imprimido por:	Invitado
Día:	sábado, 23 de noviembre de 2024, 11:47