Miniproject Module - Moodle

Miniproject Module MINIPROJECT is an activity module which can be used by teachers and students primarily to manage ongoing undergraduate projects. This module incorporates the features of a few other modules of moodle along with having its own features. This module is the product of an undergraduate level project carried over a period of 4 weeks. Features of MINIPROJECT module 1. Imports groups and groupings from the course. 2. Teacher can nominate a group leader for the group. 3. Any number of project problem statements along with a file describing the project can be uploaded by the teacher for a single instance of MINIPROJECT module. 4. Teacher can customize the grade sheet adding any number of evaluation criteria depending on the project. This automatically generates an excel sheet kind of grades page into which the teacher can feed the data. The teacher has the freedom to make the grade sheet either visible or hidden. 5. The students can apply for a maximum of 3 projects and also specify their priorities. The application can be accepted or rejected by the teacher. 6. The teacher can also manually assign projects to groups. 7. The teacher can divide the project into various stages and obtain stage specific reports in the group’s space. 8. The student groups who have been assigned a project can access the following features n A group specific discussion forum n A file manager n A group specific as well as individual timetable tool n A group specific Summary page periodically updated by the group leader. The final project report can be submitted to the teacher through this page The existing moodle modules that we have borrowed to achieve some of the functions in this module – File Sharing block by Amr Hourani – We have incorporated certain changes to this block. The changes are active only within the MINIPROJECT module otherwise it functions exactly as the file sharing block. The users of our module who have the file sharing block already installed in their moodle website should replace the following files in ‘/blocks/file_manager/’ by the ones given by us – 1. view.php 2. view_shared.php 3. link_manage.php Those who do not have this module should copy the entire file_manager folder into ‘/blocks/’ . Timetable tool of Thesis Completion tool by eTheNet project Forum module Newmodule module template

Guidelines for teachers to use the MINIPROJECT module – 1. In the MINIPROJECT modules settings page specify the various general aspects of projects common to all groups. The ‘Project Announcement Date’ specifies the date after which the activity will be visible to students. The ‘Project Selection Date’ specifies the date after which the students cannot apply for the project. 2. In the ‘Project Settings’ page the teacher edits the settings specific to the group and project such as • Assigning the Group leader • Uploading problem statements • Adding Evaluation Criteria • Accept/ Decline the project requests by students • Enable/ Disable the visibility of grades to students • Manually assign projects to groups (in case he does not want to allot projects requested by groups) 3. The evaluation criteria added by the teacher automatically appear as columns in the grades page. The names of only those students get listed in the ‘Grades’ page whose group has been assigned a project. In this page the marks common to all group members can be specified in the row against the group name. These marks can be overridden by the individual marks awarded against student names. 4. The teacher can share files specific to groups and files common to all groups in the ‘Files’ page. A mail is sent to students whenever a file is shared. 5. The teacher can view the timeplan of the group, activities carried on by project groups and periodic reports posted by the group leader in ‘Group Space’ page. 6. The instructions common to all groups appears on the ‘Common Space’ page. The final report submitted by the group appears on this page and the teacher can reject the report on this page. In such a case a mail will be sent to all group members asking their group leader to resubmit the report. The modifications can be pointed out by the teacher in the ‘Forum’ page.

Guidelines for students to use the MINIPROJECT module – 1. Prior to project assignment by the teacher all the project group members can only view the contents of the ‘Common Space’ page whereas the group leader gets a ‘Join’ button against all listed projects and he can apply to a maximum of 3 projects with preference. Only one can get approved. 2. The groups assigned with a project can access the other features of this module as mentioned in the features 3. The groups can carry out discussions using forum. These discussions can be viewed by the teacher. 4. Groups can plan their project using timetable tool in ‘Group Space’ page and can plan their individual timetable (visible only to the student) in ‘My Space’ page. 5. The progress of the project and key points are put up in the ‘Summary’ page by the group leader. The final project report is also sent by him. Only one report can be sent until and unless it gets rejected by the teacher.