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Google Summer of Code 2008 is coming to an end with the “Suggested ‘pencils down’ date” on the 11th and the “Firm ‘pencils down’ date.” on the 18th and yet i still feel like there is so much that could be added to my project.

Whats done:

• report/stats gradebook plug-in works and shows text based statics on a courses grades in a table format.
• report/stats has a modular design that allows for new statics to be dropped in.
• Printable version of report/stats.
• Group related functions for report/stats.
• Settings page for report/stats.
• report/visual gradebook plug-in’s framework is done and allows for new visualization to be dropped in.
• report/visual gradebook plug-in’s flash/flex with flare front end is in a running state and can take grade data from Moodle, a visualization’s settings in an XML format and turn them into an interactive visualization for the user.
• Continuous Grade Distribution Visualization.
• Grade Distribution by Item (Bar) Visualization.
• Grade Distribution by Group (Bar) Visualization.
• Grade Distribution (Line) Visualization.
• Normalized Grades vs Students Visualization.
• Ability to invert Visualization’s axes.
• Ability to hide axes.
• Ability to hide axes labels.
• Ability to hide any legend item (hide a group or item).
• UI Selector widget for changing data source of the visualization.
• Highlighting of legend items (highly a group or item in a graph).
• Popup detailing a nodes information/data.

What needs to be done this week:

• Finish printer friendly version of report/visual.
• Add in checking of users capability to see if they should be able to view a visualization or statistic.
• Add in two or three other visualizations i was planing to get in.
• Finish options page for report/visual.
• Fix mode problem in report/stats where students could possibly see all grades.

What needs to be done before the 18th:

• Add more documentation.
• Do final testing and fix any bugs found.
• Clean up code.

What i wanted to get in but probably will not have time for:

• Back port to Moodle 1.9.x
• Export functionality to other programs and document types like excel.
• Port to flare 2008.07.29 (new major flare release that had some big changes to the API witch would require some recoding of the plug-in’s front end).
• Stats and visuals for outcomes and outcome reports.
• “Find me in data” - a feature i wanted to add to show a user where they are in the data being visualized.
• More options, more controls, more functions, more cool looking animations, more visualizations, more statistics, etc.
• Better looking graphically and more natural UI.
• Add reports that go beyond just grades in a course. Compare diffrent courses, years, drop out trends, age of students, submission times, etc.

Overall i am rather happy with how far the project has come considering that at the start i knew nothing of Moodle, Flex, Flare, Actionscript 3, or much flash. I think the plug-ins that i have made will be use full to teachers and educators and i hope to keep supporting them and working on them in my spare time as a hobby after GSoC has come to an end.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Moodle, GSoC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.