Minted - Moodle Integration with Enterprise Data

A JISC funded demonstrator project in the Toolkits and

Demonstrators strand

Carol Shergold and Paolo Oprandi

University of Sussex

Background to the Minted project

• Moodle already in use in our Life Science departments (LifeSci Interactive)

• Planning an institution-wide roll out• Needed to link our enterprise database with

Moodle to get accurate and updated information on courses, students, staff etc

• Keen to use a standard data format for ease of portability etc

IMS-EnterpriseIMS Enterprise (IMS-E):

• Person• Group• Membership

IMS Enterprise Services (IMS-ES):• Support for creating, reading, updating and deleting

information for person, group and membership• createGroup(groupid)

The service implementations typically expose information held by a directory service (e.g. OpenLDAP) or an MIS application (e.g. a student records system) http://www.elframework.org/common_services/person/scope_and_definition.html

CETIS-ES Toolkit

• Written by Scott Wilson

• A toolkit to make it easier to write servers and clients that implement IMS Enterprise Services

Aims

• Demonstrator project for CETIS-ES SDK

• Develop software of benefit to the community

• To integrate our enterprise database with Moodle in a scalable and secure way

Getting started with the toolkit

Steep hill ahead!

Getting started …

• It took some time to get the “minimal example” running

• The learning curve ..• Various versioning and application server issues• Original distribution didn’t have a sample client, so the only way

to see what was happening was to use a TCP monitoring tool such as to inspect the messages

• Results:• Great support from Scott, collaborative working with JoinIn• Blog and forum postings that would help potential new adopters• Enhanced documentation for installation• Scott worked on making toolkit run under Axis 1.3 • and on providing fuller installation examples

Minted - test service

REST-style approach

Integrating Moodle

Minted enrolment plugin Introduction

• Concurrent Enterprise data– which schools and departments exist– which courses are running– who are the teaching staff and the students – which courses are Moodle-ized

• Standards available? IMS- E sig• IMS Enterprise enrolment plugin

developed at UCL - Dan Stowell

Integrating Moodle Minted enrolment plugin

Adding new records

Integrating Moodle Minted enrolment plugin

Updating existing records

Scaling Moodle Minted enrolment plugin

Example user

Scaling Moodle Minted enrolment plugin

Example course

Scaling Moodle Minted profile plugin

Default course and user records

Where we are now

• Both plugins are in use in our live system and working well

• In the process of getting the Minted plugins into core Moodle distribution

• Batch process rather than live look up

• Two way transaction - introducing XMarks

XMarks background - the MLE

Staff use the MLE to enter marks and to progressassessments through the Exams SystemStudents use the MLE to view their marks and overall Course and Programme results

A shot from our MLE showing the assessments for a given course - data from enterprise database.Contributory or non-contributory

XMarks background - the LMS

• Tutor sets up a new on-the-fly activity to provide formative feedback, e.g. MCQ

• Details of this activity and its marks are only visible in the LMS, but students are used to seeing all their activities and marks in the MLE

• Tutor sets up activity to implement an assessment that is already required for course

• The activity is visible in both the MLE and the LMS, although details may differ as it has been created twice.

• Marks are only visible in the LMS, until the tutor re-keys them into the MLE

Summary

• Potential for confusion and even inaccuracies in the presentation of activity and marks data to students

• Duplication of effort by staff

• Data transfer method is required

• Hence Xmarks!

A data model for Xmarks

Is there an existing marks/assessment data model?

Scaling Moodle Minted profile plugin

User defaults

Scaling Moodle Minted profile plugin

Course defaults

Key functions for an assessment service

• getAssessmentList(courseid)

• addAssessment(param)

• editAssessment(param)

• deleteAssessment(param)

Key functions for a marks service (a)

• getMarks(params)• Return all student marks for all assessments within given

course• Return all student marks for given assessment• Return marks for given student on all assessments within given

course• Etc

• getMarkProcessStatus(params)• E.g. under-review, released-to-students, in-exam-system• The process status will alter the set of legal operations on the

data

Key functions for a marks service (b)

• addMarks(params)• Add one or more student marks to existing mark set• Error if marks are added for student where they had already been

supplied?

• editMarks(params)• Change one or more student marks in existing mark set• Error if marks are supplied for updating where no record already exists?

• deleteMarks(params)• Delete marks for all students for given assessment• Delete marks for specified students for given assessment• Error if marks do not already exist?• Error if marks are no longer in state where deletion is possible,e.g.

committed to final mark within exam system?