In my three previous Moodle Meanderings articles we've sort of 'poked a stick' at Moodle and verified that in fact it's alive and looks well, so this time we decided to see how easy it would be to extend one aspect of its functionality. Let's be clear … Moodle is still a work-in-progress. Nevertheless, I feel that it's an increasingly respectable work in progress which has got a relatively low barrier to entry and use. It may be all some institutions require.
I particularly like the alternative ways of viewing Moodle discussions. I also like the explicit learning activities - learning resources model which underpins course or topic organization.
What's appears a bit weak is the way that only some learning activities (implemented as Moodle modules) can be allocated to groups, e.g. Moodle wikis can be group allocated but 'lessons' don't appear to be. And, as best we can tell, resources are not group allocatable. Some of this will probably change in the near future with for example the primary developer of the Moodle 'workshop' indicating he has plan to 'groupize' the activity.
So what's been our particular contribution to the Moodle project?
The Moodle architecture supports the concept of a 'block' which is a functional element located along the sides of main Moodle frame. Blocks can optionally displayed on the home page of a Moodle site or for each 'course' page. Examples include the Moodle calendar and the 'Upcoming Events blocks. Some blocks can be configured to display or manage data relevant to a local context.
A contributor from the Moodle community (Paul De Jong) had recently added a block which allowed news syndicated from another site to be displayed within Moodle. Whilst this block was useful we felt it could be enhanced so that a course could be supported not by just one syndicated feed but by as many feeds as required by the course author.
We already had a basic model in Auricle which can display multiple syndicated feeds (see the drop down menus at the top of this site). We wanted to improve on this so that authors specify however many syndicated resource sites the wished. The result is that each Moodle course with an active 'Syndicated Feeds' block can now look something like below:
So it's now possible for a course to offer a multiplicity of distributed resources all accessed via RSS syndication. Shown below is the configuration interface or our enhanced syndication block which is presented as a series of multi-line web form fields.
N.B Describing each syndicated resource takes two lines. The first is the site name; the second the RSS address.
Although Moodle automates a large part of the block creation process the task is still not one for those lacking confidence in PHP coding, although undoubtedly the process would be much quicker the next time.
Whilst enhancing the work of others can be a quick way to achieve results sometimes there's some gotachas! in doing so. For example, we found that our new block worked fine on campus but wouldn't display external syndicated feeds. We found that in common with many open source and some commercial RSS developments no account had been taken of what happens when, for security reasons, some instituitons expect data to be accessed via a proxy. The result was we also had to adjust the basic script to allow for this contingency.
The other major gotacha! and one we can't resolve is that, currently, Moodle only allows administrators (not tutors, not students) to configure blocks. Our block would best be configured by a tutor not an administrator. This problem arises because 'fine tuning' of Moodle privileges is necessary; again this issue has been recognized by the Moodle developers.
Anyway, if anyone else is dabbling in the Moodle waters and is intersted in our syndication block we've posted on the Using Moodle site. I suggest you view the message chain as 'Display replies flat with newest first'. Enjoy:)
