18 May 2017, 10:25

I second Keith's position that the submission of collections and pages to Moodle from Mahara is a "must-have". 

We haven't seen much uptake the other way around (students export assignments to their portfolios) but if it does get implemented, it would be "nice-to-have" the ability to include any feedback from the instructor --especially where rubrics have been used. It is something we have been asked about.

21 May 2017, 16:58

Hello Meg,

Thank you for your feedback. I added the idea to the wiki. Keeping feedback with the portfolio is important and one of the big challenges to work out I think depending on what we assess in the LMS. If it is a snapshot that is assessed, feedback would probably not make it back to the actual portfolio page but just stay with the snapshot.

How do you use the assignment plugin? Do you want to assess a snapshot so students can continue working on their portfolios independently or would you prefer to be able to lock a portfolio, assess it and save the feedback and only then give it back to the students?

Cheers

Kristina

01 February 2019, 21:58

Hi,

I hope it's okay that I continue this thread.
We are currently testing the assignment via LTI. I would like to discuss one or two issues with you.

Students who click on the Mahara activity in Moodle and have not yet created a portfolio are immediately suggested to do so. But: To get back to the selection field (which portfolio do I want to submit?), the student has to click back to Moodle, the external tool, to be redirected back to Mahara. I think that's very complicated.

In a Moodle course you cannot create two Mahara activities with the same title (e.g. "Learning Diary" or "Learning Task"). You can, but it leads to an error message in Mahara. This is probably rather unusual, but could happen.

My rating scale from Moodle is unfortunately ignored in Mahara. So there is only the one way from Mahara to the Gradebook of Moodle but not vice versa. Our teachers now have to maintain new degrees in Mahara.

In addition, it looks as if a submitted Portfolio will only be shown to the teacher in Mahara who set up the activity in the Moodle course. This means that it is no longer possible for alle Moodle-teachers to grade and view (!) the portfolios. Is that correct? I didn't find anything in the wiki.

Will LTI really be necessary in the future? On the Moodle site, I can't find any news that MNet will soon be unavailable...

Looking forward to your thoughts and ideas :)
Best wishes

Kirsten

13 February 2019, 20:16

Hello Kirsten,

Thank you for your questions and giving the LTI functionality a go. The current assignment submission via the stock standard LTI capability is the end of the first phase. We are aware of some things that could be improved and would need to look into that further (ideally with a sponsoring partner ;-) ).

At the moment, the link "create one" opens the "Pages and collections" page in a new window / tab so that you can go back to the original screen and refresh to see the portfolio in the list of possibilities. Additionally, when you are on a portfolio page, you can submit it directly to the activity from which you came in Moodle. Do you not see that option on your page?

Standard LTI does not allow us to use rubrics and the like. It only allows to send a number grade back. We are working on a new version of the Moodle assignment submission plugin that integrates with the Moodle assignment so that you can then use your standard marking work flow or rubric. A bit more patience is needed for us to complete this.

When I just tested having one teacher set up the activity and then another one viewing the portfolio of the student and grading it, I didn't run into any issues but could do so. The only thing is that once the grading is complete, no teacher has access to the portfolio anymore. That's like the current group submission functionality. Please describe your scenario a bit more so we can try to replicate it.

LTI will be necessary in the future. MNet is not high on the priority list of Moodle at the moment if I remember correctly, but certain functions have already been deprecated, e.g. error logging. We are not officially adding more MNet functionality in Mahara but looking into expanding the use of LTI as that allows us to connect to other LMSs as well. There can still be local Moodle plugins, such as the assignment submission plugin to support work flows specifically for Moodle much better than standard LTI would be able to do.

Thus, we don't need to align the development efforts of the Mahara and Moodle projects but can enhance Mahara no matter whether Moodle removes MNet or leaves it in place.

Cheers

Kristina

21 June 2017, 17:00

Hello,

Thanks to all those who provided feedback on the assignment submission functionality. You can find the proposal for the initial functionality on the wiki. We also kept the additional ideas for later phases as they shouldn't get lost.

Is there anything we forgot?

If you'd like to support that development work, please get in touch with me.

Thank you

Kristina

17 July 2017, 10:35

Hello,

You can view an updated proposal of the functionality on the wiki. Due to the limitations of LTI re-thinking was necessary and not everything can be implemented like it is in Moodle.

This is a major piece of work in terms of effort. If you want to contribute funding to get the work accomplished, please get in touch with me.

Thank you

Kristina

06 November 2017, 20:39

Hello,

Those of you who've looked at the release notes for Mahara 17.10 will have seen that we have not yet been able to implement the functionality to have assignments submitted to an LMS via LTI. It's a rather larger piece of work and will most likely only be funded if multiple institutions contribute to it. If you want to discuss your financial support for this functionality, which would bring the auto archiving of portfolios submitted to the LMS, please get in touch with me.

Thank you

Kristina