moodle mobile...moodle detects the language (from the user profile) and displays the correct text...

Stuart Mealor #MootPH18

https://www.hrdnz.com

Moodle Mobile

● Welcome



Audience experience

● Question 1:

Have you used Moodle on a tablet?



Audience experience

● Question 2:

Have you used Moodle on a smartphone?



Audience experience

● Question 3:

Have you used the Moodle Mobile App?



Audience experience

● Question 4:

Do you consider yourself to be highly competent with

Moodle Mobile App?



Audience experience

● Question 5:

Have you designed a Moodle course with mobile

access specifically in mind?



Moodle Mobile MOOC - sharing

● This session is essentially sharing our experiences

from the development and running of our Moodle

Mobile MOOC.

● And also sharing aspects of the design and testing

that we follow to produce 'commercial level'

courses.

● I'm not going through the content today – because

you can join the MOOC for free 1st May !



About us

● What we do...

One-third training

● Onsite in NZ, and via https://www.moodlebites.com

One-third hosting / technical

One-third development (content e.g. SCORM, HTML5,

Themes, custom code, and consultancy

40% national, 60% international work

Full time, part-time, and contract/consultants NZ, EU, US


http://www.moodlebites.com/http://www.hrdnz.com/



Moodle Mobile MOOC

● Why do it ?

● HRDNZ have been a Moodle Partner since 2006 –

makes me feel old now !

● It's been a hard road sometimes, but very often a

rewarding and interesting one

The challenge of creating a workable business model

around something that is totally free (Moodle) is still a

very unusual proposition



Moodle Mobile MOOC

Stuart Mealor iMoot 2016

http://www.hrdnz.com

Technology

Making the site “work”



Course or Site ?

● Initially we were going to put this course together within

our online Moodle course training site:

https://www.moodlebites.com

● There are courses for Teachers, Designers,

Administrators, and Developers – English Spanish,

French.

● But we thought we would get more flexibility by

creating a specific site

● https://mobile.moodlebites.com

http://www.moodlebites.com/http://mobile.moodlebites.com/



Challenges - technology

● It's a MOOC !

But what does that really mean ?

At a basic level (for us) it means up to 1,000 users

This means an average of 42 users per hour

● Participants locations are highest from New Zealand (+/-20%),

USA, France, UK, India.

● One 'working day' covers second to fifth largest (+/-80%), so

we have to plan for 800/8 (working day hours) = 100 per hour

during busy periods

Stuart Mealor


#MootPH18

Challenges - technology

● However, it's a Mobile

MOOC !

But what does that really

mean ?

It means that people are

accessing small pieces of

light-weight information, but

often.

Lots of small activity, but no

long connections – e.g

streaming movies.



Moodle Mobile MOOC – structure

● The MOOC is just four weeks, but the Site needed

to contain more than just four Courses:



Languages

How to make a course dual language



Challenges - language

● The MOOC is in English and French !

But what does that really mean ?

Stuart (English), Jean-Marc Doucet (French)

We decided early on that we would not have separate

Courses for the different languages, but combine both

into the same Course(s)

Options for doing this ?




● Language tags !

Standard Moodle language Filter

How do we use them ?

For example, the News Forum:

News and

announcementsNouvelles et annonces

Moodle detects the language (from the user Profile) and

displays the correct text (via language Filter)




● It can look complicated in HTML view

Hangout in our

virtual Café - an area for general discussion that might not relate directly to the course content.Conversations dans

notre Café virtuel - un espace de discussions générales qui

pourraient ne pas se rapporter directement au contenu du cours.

But it's quite easy to work with once you've done it a few times :-)

● Adding Spanish would be easy now :-)




● What doesn't get translated ?

Course shortname (important database value)

● Our solution is to use very simple names




● Takes some getting used to as a Teacher



Groups

How to setup and use Groups



Challenges - Groups

● Using Groups

Sections (Topics) can be set to only be available to a

specific Group

Once we realised this was to be the main approach, we

re-designed the Preparation area, and the instructions in

the Enrolment area so that people would join the correct

Group (Group enrolment key) – English or Francophone



Challenges - Groups

● Using Groups



Challenges - Groups

● Using Groups

Courses setup with two Groups

Different Enrolment key for each



Challenges - Groups

● Using Groups – duplicate sections (Topics)



Challenges - Groups

● Edit Section



Challenges - Groups

● Restrict access



Challenges - Groups

● Add restriction dialog

Note we didn't use Language (why not? ...later!)



Challenges - Groups

● Set the Access restriction to a Group

e.g. English



Challenges - Groups

● MOST important part !

Not obvious

Clicking the eye hides the content from other languages

(not just make it un-clickable)



Challenges - Groups

● The result

The other language section is completely hidden :-)

Stuart Mealor


#MootPH18

Challenges – restrict by language

● We considered the

excellent 'Restrict by

language' availability

Plugin

● But encountered issues

with the Moodle Mobile

App https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php

?plugin=availability_language

https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=availability_languagehttps://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=availability_languagehttps://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=availability_language



Challenges – but...

● Information course provided different challenge

We couldn't force only English or French, because any

other browser language would see nothing !

● Remember, it's the Operating System and web browser that

are proving the language to Moodle for the Information course,

because users are not logged in – it's just a Guest access area

– so there is no language set on the Profile yet ;-)



Testing

Commercial level preparation of content

(as if people are paying for it!)



Challenges – content development

● As the main content developer I setup multiple

users and spent time with 4 users logged in!

Stuart – a Teacher

Sylvester – a Student (English language, but sometimes

changing to Spanish to test non English/French)

Honey – a Student (French language in Profile and App)

Admin (to make changes at site level that affect courses

etc.)



Challenges - testing

● Also used multiple browsers for content

development and testing

Apple MacBook Pro

● Safari – Teacher

● Firefox – Sylvester

● Opera – Admin

● SRWare Iron (Chrome without the spying) - Honey



Challenges - testing

● Multiple access across six devices

Apple MacBook Air

● Safari, Firefox, Opera, SRWare Iron

Apple iPad Pro (I love this!) and Apple iPad 1

● Safari, Firefox, Opera, Puffin, Moodle Mobile App

iPhone 7 and iPhone 3

● Safari, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Moodle Mobile App

Android 7” cheap tablet

● Firefox, Opera, built n browser, Moodle Mobile App

Windows 8

Stuart Mealor


#MootPH18

Great find – Mobile App restrictions

● One usually thinks of

restrictions as meaning

you have less control

right ? https://docs.moodle.org/31/en/

Moodle_Mobile_availability_pl

ugin

https://docs.moodle.org/31/en/Moodle_Mobile_availability_pluginhttps://docs.moodle.org/31/en/Moodle_Mobile_availability_pluginhttps://docs.moodle.org/31/en/Moodle_Mobile_availability_plugin

Stuart Mealor


#MootPH18

Great find – Mobile App restrictions

● Not this time !

● This availability plugin lets

you display different content

to browser users and mobile

users :-)

● Two (similar) resources –

one formatted for browser,

and one for Mobile

● Or even completely different

content !



Data from 1st run

Primary data...



Next time…

So what now ?



Improvements

● Made some design changes

● e.g. re-factoring Quizzes for Moodle Mobile App

now they are fully supported in the Mobile App

● Schedule for 1st May and 1st November

● Add Spanish?

● Similar paid version also available (1st Feb, 1st

Aug) for people who want a more personal

experience on https://www.moodlebites.com

v2.0

https://www.moodlebites.com



Challenges – End

● Happy to answer questions, listen to ideas and

suggestions(!), or maybe share my screen and

show you the real course with editing on ?

● All depending on time and bandwidth of course ;-)

● Oh, and the URL is:

● https://mobile.moodlebites.com

http://mobile.moodlebites.com/http://mobile.moodlebites.com/



Let's open the conversation...

● Question for now – or maybe later ?

Have you designed a course for mobile use ?

Have you designed for multi-language users ?

Have you run a MOOC (or considered it) ?

What were your challenges (similar to ours?) – or what

do you think they may be ?

moodle mobile...moodle detects the language (from the user profile) and displays the correct text...

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