Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Time finish function in Submit files tool

I believe what you mean is a submission deadline, where students aren't able to submit their file after a certain date. Is that what you have in mind?

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

Posted by Giorgos Paschalis

Time is an different with LAMS.

When you design a sequence, you can't put hard deadlines in the sequence, like "Open this gate on March 8th, 2011" because the idea is that sequences can be recycled and be used many times.

So in Author, we have used relative times, "Open this gates X days after the lesson has started". And that has shown to be a bit confusing for some people.

However, for this, I propose that instead of setting this in authoring time, we do this in monitor.

This means that when you get to the activity in monitor, there would be an option that prevent the students to upload files after a set date... in this case since the sequence is running, you should be able to enter a specific date: March 10, 2011. (BTW, do we need time too?).

How does that sound?

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

Actually, the question just came up today with a teacher on the phone. The current alternative is to use a manual gate, since hard coding let's say 14 days from start is not a good option in academia. Most teachers (not professional designers) will produce the sequence a few days before the lessons starts. Then they may delay start of the sequence and/or make changes and forget to adjust. Some deadlines on the other hand may depend on external factors, e.g. end of term, mid-term or whatever.

Posted by Daniel Schneider

This is a real need. Some times you need an activity to start and finish in a specific period of time.

First, I would like to say that from Author view we have used relative times:

"Lock file submitting DD Days, HH Hours, and MM Minutes, after the lesson has started".


Second, I would like to say that from Monitor view it is necessary to be able to re-schedule it.

This means since the sequence is starting, you see a specific date and time: March 10, 2011 18:30 and the monitor should be able to change this date and time.

Generally it would be very usu full if there exist statistics (in log-file or in a Monitor tab) with the Date and Time of learner's starting, finishing and re-opening all the activities.

At the moment we have only the time they had spend in each activity but is not enough to facilitate the learners.

Spyros

Posted by Spyros Papadakis

Thanks for your feedback on this, it's been really helpful.

I think to start with this, we could implement it so from Submit file's Monitor screen, a teacher can set a date to restrict submission. Here's a mock up in this case of how this would work for monitors:

Once the restriction is set, it can be unset too (also from monitor).

It the restriction is set but the date has not been reached, then this is what the learners will see:

However, if the time has past the deadline, the learner will see:

Is this good enough for a first attempt?

Also, I was thinking that this might apply to other activities such as assessment and forum. Which other activities do you think it will be good to add this to?

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

If it is not difficult add an time hh:00 e.g. 19:30 restriction.

Posted by Spyros Papadakis

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

This is very good for a first attempt. But if you are able to add and a time restriction add something like HH:MM

(e.g The Teacher has a restriction for submission since 24 March, 2011, 18:30.)

I think that this possibility might apply and to all other assessment activities such as quiz, assessment, in all communication such as chat and forum and in all collaborative activities such as wiki, mind map.

As I had mentioned before in my opinion is very important to add a general log-tool for monitors to see exactly when a learner haw started and when he has stopped an activity and how many times he has come-backup to it.

Posted by Spyros Papadakis

Thanks.

About the login, we have implemented this in 2.3.4. So pretty much any action that users do gets logged.

However, we haven't created an user interface (page/screen) for it. We'll get to that though. Hopefully for the next release.

Cheers,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

Posted by Giorgos Paschalis

This is ready to be tested on the translator's server.

Use users: test1, test2, test3 and test4... passwords are the same as the usernames.

The tool that has it implemented now is Submit Files. So give this a go and let us know what you think so we can implement it to all the other tools.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

Posted by Jeremy Page