17 May 2011, 6:18

Plugin for adding a Continuing Professional Development log to Mahara

Many programmes of study, careers and professions have an expectation or obligation of Continuing Professional Development (CPD). For example, in the UK Further Education (FE) and Skills sector, the Institute for Learning (IfL) has a requirement that its members commit to at least 30 hours of CPD (or pro-rata for part-time teachers or trainers).

This Mahara plugin allows a simple log of CPD activity to be maintained. It includes fields for the start date, end date (if appropriate) title, location and description of the CPD acitivity together with the time spent (hours). Also, a rolling total of time spent on CPD is calculated.

One rationale for this plugin was that if lecturers/teachers found Mahara useful to record and reflect upon their own CPD, they would be more likely to use Mahara with their students.

The CPD can be added to a Mahara view which can also include related resources and artefacts e.g. a blog reflecting in more detail on particular aspects of the CPD.

The plugin allows a user to have multiple instances of CPD. So, a user can start a new CPD for each academic year or have a dedicated CPD for a particular programme of study.

The plugin adds a new 'My CPD' tab (similar to 'My Plans') to 'My Portfolio' in Mahara. Indeed, the code was based on 'My Plans' and was initially developed by James Kerrigan, one of the students on the Foundation degree in Computing and Internet Technology at the University Centre Yeovil.

It is possible to export a View containing a CPD as a standalone HTML Website. The code to export in Leap2A format is in place, but has not been tested.

Installation

The plugin is currently available from GitHub.

https://github.com/geoffrowland/mahara-artefact_cpds

Download, unpack and copy the /cpds folder (and included files and folders) into the /artefact folder of your Mahara installation. Then enable the cpds and activities from the Plugin Administration interface.

The plugin should work with any Mahara 1.3.x installation and probabaly Mahara 1.2.x (not tested). It creates a new artefact_cpds_activity table which is a 1:1 extension of the artefact table. Please test it on a development installation before production deployment.

If it is of interest and receives approval from the Mahara developers, I'll add it to the Mahara Plugins Wiki.

Enjoy

Geoff

17 May 2011, 18:47

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for sharing your plugins!

Feel free to add them to the Mahara wiki. You don't need approval from anybody to do that. (You can login to the wiki using your mahara.org username and password.)

Cheers,

Francois

18 May 2011, 15:33

Thanks for the clarification François

I have started adding them to the Wiki

However, am getting an error if I try to upload a png image

Internal error

Could not rename file "/tmp/phpJqMUvk" to "public/e/ea/Thumb.png".

BTW what triggered the jump from Mindtouch (Dekiwiki) to MediaWiki?

18 May 2011, 19:24

Hi Geoff,

It turns out some of the permissions on our new wiki server were wrong. This should be fixed now.

Cheers,

Francois

15 June 2011, 10:53

Hi Geoff

I haver just downloaded your plug-in and installed it, but although the admin panel tells me it is installed and there is a block for it in the create view area, there is nothing in the menu and when I drag a My CPD block into my view it states there are no artefacts to choose from.

Any ideas

Regards

Kevin

15 June 2011, 12:21

Hi Kevin

After installation, you should have a new 'CPD' tab under 'Content' on the Mahara 1.4 menu bar. Should be 'My CPD' in Mahara 1.3. You need to create a CPD instance there. Then add CPD Activities and hours spent. (So, CPDs and Activities are similar to Plans and Tasks).

Then you should have something to add to a Page (View).

Having this set up means you can have separate CPD logs e.g. a new one for each academic year or a particular programme of study, and chose the one appropriate for a particular Page (View).

If the CPD (My CPD) tab is not visible, check you have downloaded the appropriate version (for Mahara 1.3 or Mahara 1.4) as the navigation menubar has changed between these versions.

I'll also double-check I have not scrambled anything between the versions. What version of Mahara are you using?

Get back to me if you still have problems.

Geoff

16 June 2011, 3:18

Hi Geoff

Thanks for your advice. Dropped the correct version in and it works a treat except for one little glitch. In the location text box although I only have Ynys Hywel in the box the following text is displayed [[at/artefact.cpds]] Ynys Hywel. There is a glitch somewhere but I can't find it in the code, any ideas?? Incidentally we're using 1.3.

Other than that a great plug-in. Thank you.

Cheers

Kevin

16 June 2011, 8:11

As far as I understand, the CPD is split into two plugins:

1. Blocktype plugin
2. Artefact plugin

They are both in the zip file but should be placed in the relevant folders in the Mahara installation.

Make sure you have these two installed in the right places.

Maybe Geoff can confirm what I just said? 

16 June 2011, 8:24

Hi Thomas

There is a Blocktype component, but it is inside the mahara/artefact/cpds folder (where mahara is your mahara folder = htdocs)

So, you only have to install the /cpds folder in mahara/artefact. This will include mahara/artefact/cpds/blocktype

You don't have to install anything in the top-level mahara/blocktype folder (though it may still work. I have never tested!)

The same organisation is used by the Plans module - though I'll revisit the wiki documentation to try to make the installation more clear.

Geoff

16 June 2011, 8:13

Hi Kevin

Glad it is (almost) working. Looks as if you are just missing the 'at' string from the language file. I originally hard-coded the 'at' but recently (thought I had) moved it to the lang file to allow internationalisation.

I'll update the code shortly. In the meantime you may want to apply the fix yourself.

So, somewhere in /artefact/cpds/lang/en.utf8/artefact.cpds.php

add the line

$string['at'] = 'at';

If you also wish to generate a Welsh language file for the cpds plugin, I'll be grateful to receive it and add it to the download bundle 

So far, to my knowledge, the CPD plugin has been  translated into French and Slovenian.

Cheers

Geoff