Auto Grouping Enrollment Plugin for Moodle 2.0

by Reiza Haniff, Sacha Beharry and Anil RamnananUniversity of the West Indies Open Campus

open.uwi.edu

Grouping Requirements for UWI Open CampusStudents register for courses using custom Student Management System (OCMS)

Before the semester begins, students must be pushed to Moodle

Students are now put into groups before teaching begins

Enrollment in Moodle 1.8

Current Environment is a branded Moodle 1.8 installation (since 2007)

Auto grouping does not exist in Moodle 1.8

Custom grouping functionality was built for Moodle 1.8 but part of the process is still manual

Enrollment in Moodle 1.8

push script

MOODLE 1.8

OCMS

External Push Script has to be run which would create student accounts in Moodle 1.8

Moving to Moodle 2.0

Auto grouping exists but can only be done once.

Student accounts still need to exist within Moodle before grouping begins

MOODLE 2.0

OCMSPlugin

Enrol

Group

A new plugin would be created that would handle enrollment and grouping

Enrollment Plugin

User logs into Moodle

Plugin

Get enrolment from OCMS

Add to a course group

Add user to course in Moodle

Enrollment PluginAdministration

Web Services API settings (REST URL, Method Name, API Key)

Field Mapping (Course, User, role fields)

Group

eTutor

25 Students

How Auto grouping Works

Group 1

eTutor

0 Students

Group 2

eTutor

0 Students

Groups are set up before students log in

Group 1

eTutor

24 Students

Group 2

eTutor

0 Students

Student

+

As students log in, the first group is filled

Group 1

eTutor

25 Students

Group 2

eTutor

0 Students

Student

+

Once that group limit is reached, the next group is filled

Group 1

eTutor

25 Students

Group 2

eTutor

25 Students

New Group

0 Students

Student

+

If the exiting groups are filled, a new group is created to contain the

overflow

Enrollment pluginAdministration

Automatic group creation

Current Status and Future Work

Testing is complete and feedback has been positive

We are porting the auto grouping feature to the External Database Enrollment Plugin

We will provide a library that can be added to other plugins

http://code.google.com/p/group-magic/

Thank You