Extending your reach with Moodle and TaskChain

Extending your reach with moodle and TaskChain

Thomas Goetz andBob GettingsHokusei Gakuen University and Junior CollegeSapporo, JapanEUROCALL 2012

Extending your reach with moodle and TaskChain

As one of the world's most most popular and affordable Classroom Management Systems, moodle attracts favorable attention because of the education benefits it delivers to students, teachers, and school administrators.

Millions of users cant be wrong.

But, they might be missing out.

What is ?

moodle is an Open Source Course Management System that enables teachers to organize lessons in an online environment. It includes the ability for testing, essay writing, forum discussions, attendance and a lot more.

The focus is always on giving educators the best tools to manage and promote learning.

moodle can scale to very large deployments and hundreds of thousands of students, or just a few.

Many institutions use it as their platform to conduct fully online courses, while some use it simply to augment face-to-face courses (known as blended learning).

Many users love the activity modules to build collaborative communities of learning, while others prefer to use it as a way to deliver content to students and assess learning using assignments or quizzes.

and simplicity

A closer look at the core components for assessment will confirm that its widespread popularity may be due, in large part, to its simplicity.

Simplicity as expressed by its quiz options shows a wide scope with limited features.

One must wonder if its simplicity today will be appreciated tomorrow.

As moodle users migrate over to moodle 2.x, what waits for them that will enhance the teaching and learning environment?

TaskChain

TaskChain is the brainchild of Gordon Bateson and has formerly been known as the QuizPort module.

TaskChain will be able to enable teachers to provide an even wider variety of quiz platforms hitherto previously unimaginable

QuizPort has been around as a moodle plugin since early 2008 and is compatible with all 1.0 versions of moodle.

TaskChain and

Originally developed to import Hot Potatoes quizzes, the then HotPot module met the needs of teachers who either already had an inventory of Hot Potatoes quizzes or wanted something different from moodle stock.

Hot Potatoes is a software suite that includes six applications, enabling the creation of interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the internet and Moodle.

Hot Potatoes is freeware (http://hotpot.uvic.ca/).

Hot Potatoes Quizzes typically have a cleaner, less busy look and offer the use crossword puzzles within moodle.

A Hot Potatoes TaskChain
within moodle.

TaskChain and Hot Potatoes

Pre-conditions and Post-conditions add shape to the task.

TaskChain results page within moodle

First Steps With TaskChain

1. Installing the TaskChain plug-in

2. Installing the Hot Potatoes plug-in

1. Hot Pot plug-in will allow inserting individual .html quizzes into your Moodle structure.2. TaskChain should be the replacement for the HotPot Module, but still you may want to have your databased quizzes I do.

and the Hot Pot import plug-in

and the Hot Pot Import module will bring the .xml files into the question bank.This I find the most useful plug-in of allThis can be a good ending point for the workshop.

A Brief Summary of Taskchains Features

Overall layout of Taskchain

It connects several e-learning task into a single unit.

Files come in a variety of formats: it will absorb Hotpots xml files

It allows adaptive learning paths through pre-conditions and post conditions

The teacher can reach the average grades of the whole unit.

Start to use Taskchain

If everything is fine, Taskchain will be listed among your Moodle activities and resources, so add one.

TaskChain Set-up Menu -1:
(First time Set -up of Taskchain)

1. Fill out previous fields and upload a zipped folder with desired files. You can unzip later and delete container folder.2. Leave Files to be added as Detected automatically3. Next time you need to add/remove files from the activity, you will need to go to Edit Tasks.

TaskChain Set-up Menu -2:
Entry Page

1. Use this utility to teach your lesson and provide any reference necessary for the subsequent activities
2. Leave all options below blank, except for Title and Attempts

Edit Task Menu
Adding New Task -1

The most important

Once the chain is created, all changes have to be done from this menu.

Left: Add New Task

Edit Task Menu -2
Add Selected File Only

You will be re-directed to the file selection menu and all other files in the activity will be shown. Upload desired file and Set as main file. You will be shown the chosen file in the task menu

TaskChain Set-up Menu -3:
Exit Page

1. Expand Exit Page and author to suit your teaching needs: summarizing, highlighting or reviewing.2. Check boxes for desired links

TaskChain Set-up Menu -4:
Resume at Attempt Restrictions dropdown

You should want to Allow Resume option in the numerous settings of this activity to suit the length and demands of your activity.Leave Assessment section by default -its just a suggestion.

Click to edit Master title style

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Click to edit Master title style

Pulse para editar el formato de esquema del textoSegundo nivel del esquemaTercer nivel del esquemaCuarto nivel del esquemaQuinto nivel del esquemaSexto nivel del esquemaSptimo nivel del esquemaClick to edit Master text stylesSecond levelThird levelFourth level

Fifth level

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