Posting to Moodle Forum
C K Wu
I have just posted the following message at Moodle's forum,
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Hi, folks,
I have uploaded the latest development snapshot of CK-ERP to the (Moodle
+ CK-ERP) demo located at, http://ck-erp.org/moodle/
A new Education cluster had been added to CK-ERP. The cluster is aiming
to become a full online School Information System (SIS) embedded within
CK-ERP, which, in term, is embedded within Moodle. The cluster, at the
moment, comprises seven modules, ck-teacher, ck-counsellor, ck-student,
ck-applicant, ck-family, ck-registrar, ck-eduadmin .
The general system workflow of the 'education' cluster is something like,
Prospective student input/lodge online application.
=> Registrar staff vet/accept/reject application.
=> Registrar staff enrol admitted student.
=> Students apply online for enrolment to specific subjects.
=> Teachers approve/reject students' enrolment application to specific
subjects.
=> [Subjects taught / Assessments conducted online via Moodle materials
or offline within a classroom setting]
=> Teachers record assessment results into the gradebook (Student Grade
/ Assessment Grade).
The demo site lists a large number of built-in users that you can try
out to review the various features of the new cluster. Specifically, the
updated demo carries information on one Community College and one other
Senior High School. The new Education cluster is designed to handle
multi-edu-institutions within one single installation. Thus, the
environment is suitable for implementation within a school district's
admin headquarter, or by NGOs that are running multiple schools within
one organizational umbrella.
There are a number of design issues that are worth noting here,
a) Assessment (gradebook) has a tree like structure, say,
root level - ECON 100 (full year course) comprises
2nd level - ECON 101 (microeconomics - 1st semester subject) and ECON
102 (macroeconomics - 2nd semester subject). Then, ECON 101 assessments
comprise,
3rd level - Assignment 1 - 12, Mid-term exam, final exam, project, etc.
Then, Mid-term exam comprises,
4th level - Multiple choice section, short question section and essay
question section.
However, since transversing tree structure is a rather expensive
operation computing-resource-wise, I have limited the depth of the
assessment tree to 5.
b) I had implemented all the Moodle grade aggregation strategy (CK-ERP's
assessment summation) except extra credit. I had some concerns about
extra credits,
i) Maximum grade is a very important validation check to ensure input
accuracy. Ability to go beyond maximum grade thru extra credit creates
the possibility of unintended erroneous input.
ii) Awarding excellent performance with 101/100 seems to me carries the
connotation that you can get a -ve mark if you really screw up your exam
or be simply absent from it.
iii) If an exam is too difficult and the resulting scores need to be
scaled up uniformly, then, just add an additional component to the exam
with (max=100, min=0, passing=0) and aggregate this component to the
main result, as usual. This is the setup depicted as
(Term=CC-2009-fa,Subject=ECON1001,Assessment=Examination* - 1) at the
demo site.
c) Because the Education cluster is utilizing CK-ERP's native contact
infrastructure. Each teacher/student/family member could have unlimited
number of contact methods and each student could have unlimited number
of family members linked to him/her.
d) Because each edu institution has different ways of
vetting/approving/rejecting applications, I am trying to produce a setup
that is flexible enough for most edu's. However, your feedback on
inadequacies are most welcome.
Hopefully, (Moodle + CK-ERP) will become the preferred solution for
schools for managing their learning and backoffice environment. By the
way, CK-ERP does carry other modules to handle the school's accounting
book, purchases, teachers' renumeration, etc, etc, etc....
Next step is to add student attendance. This is likely to model on the
existing employee attendance infrastructure which is part of CK-ERP's
Human Resources cluster.
As usual, any remark, comment, feedback, criticism ... etc, (especially
regarding the gradebook) are more than welcome.
Best Regards,
CK
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Thought you may be interested.
Best Regards,
CK