Where are your Users

User Location Map

The User Location Map plots the location of your Users on a Google Earth map. The plot point is added dynamically when the map loads and the data is pulled from the database.

You may look at this and think it serves no purpose, and you would be correct. Sometimes as a developer it’s nice to look at something, and ask yourself, “I wonder if I could…”

..and then a few hours later you are pulling the locations from the mdl_user table and plotting them. I love visualizing the data. I know that the City is stored in the database and displayed as a word in a column – that’s boring, dead. Plot it on a map, see where it is, zoom in on it – now we have living data.

That is really the Dashboards core reason for existing. It exists so that you can interact more visually with your data. Like the relationship map, that allows you to view the Users that have done a Course, and then the Courses they have done, etc.

Sean

Download a trial version of the iLite Moodle Dashboard

Visit iLite to download the 7 day trial version of the iLite Moodle Dashboard.

There are some funky new additions to the Dashboard which include the multi-lingual support, improved User search functionality and the Course Relationship Map.

The Course Relationship Map is something completely unique to the Dashboard. As you can see in the image below, we can see that the Course – iLite Dashboard, has 8 Users. We can also see that 5 of the 8 Users have a small (+) sign below them. This indicates that they are enrolled in other Courses. By clicking on the (+) sign, we expand a 3rd level, which shows the Courses that this User has enrolled for. Hover over the icon to view the Course name.

You may be wondering what is the purpose of the Relationship map, well it is to help you see what Courses the Users are doing at a glance. If a Course has prerequisites, you can view if they have been met simply by calling up the Relationship map.

- Kirsten

 

Dashboard going multi-lingual

It’s time for another sneak preview of the Dashboard. We have been hard at work for several months now trying to make the Dashboard unique, interactive and visually stimulating. New features include a multi-lingual function and has provisions so far for 6 languages, which are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and German. We will look at adding more languages as we get closer to the release date.

Another new and exciting feature is the Degrafa graph inside the datagrid. This allows the scores to be more visually stimulating.  The courses that the user is enrolled for is also listed as well as their quiz results and the course interactivity.

-Kirsten

Dashboard on AIR

So after playing around a bit with AIR, I finally decided to go that route and build a version of the Dashboard. Looking down the road, I think this may become the only version we will maintain and release. If you would like to give the AIR version a trial, you can do so by clicking on the icon below and downloading it.

Once you have downloaded and installed the AIR app, you can log in using the username: miranda, and the password: password

To test it on your own site you will need to download and install a few php file, and register on our site. If you would like to know more about the Dashboard and why it will make your life easier, drop us a mail.

What’s the score

The Dashboard makes viewing a Users scores very easy. In the image below you can see that the iLite Dashboard course has two quizzes. When selecting this course from the list of courses the student has done, both scores are immediately displayed, both as a percentage and graphically. Had a score or more than 80% been achieved, the bar would have been in green. Just another way using the Dashboard makes tracking your users easier.

Dashboard testing

Where are looking for a few beta testers for our Moodle dashboard application. If there are any of you out there running Moodle 1.9 and would like to deploy and test the dashboard, drop us a mail.

UserID to view the demo dashboard:

Username: mary
Password: password

Requirements:

1. Basic knowledge of PHP. You will have to update the config file, and copy some folders to the root of your server. The Dashboard uses the PHP files to access the Moodle DB and return data. This is only a READ, and nothing will be touched, modified or changed in your DB.
2. A userID

What to do:

1. Copy the PHP folder to your server
2. Copy the Flash folder to your server
3. Create an ID at iLite (or we can send you one)
4. Update the config.php file with your Moodle details

How the Dashboard works.
The Dashboard uses the PHP files on your server to retrieve the data from your Moodle database. AMFPHP is used, which gives us a little more performance. Use the icons at the top to navigate between the different screens.

If you would like more information, or have some ideas about how we can improve it, please drop me a mail at kirsten@ilite.co.za

If your idea is good enought, we’ll use it and give you a copy of the Dashboard free.

All that we would like from you is a little feedback on how the Dashboard is preforming. Things you do like and things you don’t like. Information like the OS you are using, the number of users and courses you have and whether you are using SCORM Activities.

Kirsten

Dashboard Demo

After a long process of development we are finally at a point where we can showcase a demo!

Log into http://www.ilite.co.za/eDash/#

User name:   james

Password: password

Remember guys, feedback is always welcome and appreciated.

- Kirsten

It’s been a while…

Time fly’s…Can you believe that we are heading into the middle on the first month of 2009. I thought to myself that I have all the time in the world to get down and write a paragraph or two about what is happening, and then I look again and the month is almost finished. I wonder to myself, how did that happen and where did all the time go too.

We ended 2008 off with a bang and are very happy with the results that iLite has achieved during the year. Now our focus shifts towards the new year and how we can make more of an impact and push ourselves further. We have a couple of projects that need to be completed within the first three months of this year. One of them being a new version of the iLite Moodle Dashboard.

We have been playing with various options for the iLite Moodle Dashboard for a while now, and seeing which way we would like to take the application. We know that our existing clients are due for an upgrade, and are eagerly awaiting the new version. So we have a deadline, and hopefully the project plan runs smoothly and we are ready to roll version 2 out the door.

Wazzok is another project that needs to come to an end now. Sean has been building this site since the end of December and it has taken a lot of energy, endurance and perserverance on his part to roll this one out. We are hoping to have this one done by the end of January at the latest and hopefully pursuing more avenues that this project will deliver.

For me, the beginning of a new year entails the start of a busy season. Yes its tax time again, and I will need to get everything sorted out so that we can start off the new financial year on a positive note.

What makes this time of year even more interesting, is that we only have about 70 days until the start of the formula one season and a very important decision needs to be made regarding our progress forward with our signature Mobile Application. We will be putting together a mobile version of the F1 application, but this year we are taking a different approach.  We are going to let loose an application that is not a Flash Application, but rather a PHP based application/website that can be used by all Mobile users and not just the Symbian devices that we usually develop for.

This is an interesting time at iLite and I will be posting blogs on upcoming events as the transpire. So stay tuned and you will be amazed at all that we accomplish in 2009. I hope that you are as excited about the prospects that this year will bring as we at iLite are.

-Kirsten

The art of being lazy

So, it’s been a while since my last post. Since falling off the radar, I set about rebuilding Dashboard, and adding in features I think  it needs. I think I am on version 3 now, and I know this is not the last version.

As a developer I will look at a problem, or a task we need to perform in Moodle, and ask, “How can I make that easier?” This then is the start of some long nights, which sometimes even result in a solution. I read somewhere that being lazy is a good thing, if you are a developer. Or should that be  an ‘application architect’. By definition a developer develops, but an architect plans first. Anyway, it’s because we are lazy, that we find solutions to problems.

Case in point. We needed to know all the results of a particular user in Moodle. Oddly, or not, Moodle does not have the ability to do this. So I fiddled about and come up with a solution which will show all the scores of all the courses for a user in a nice little graph.

All scores

On the left are the Users details. A grid below show the Courses and Groups for that User. On the right is the fruit of my labour. All scores less than 80% are indicated in red. If you hover your mouse over the chart (no not this image) a tooltip will show the actual percentage.

And so there you have it. It’s all about being lazy.

Sean

What’s the score

That’s what I asked myself. How many unique hits has our e-learning site had in the past month, or since the first of January this year. I know there is a block in Moodle that shows this information, but I wanted to see it on the Dashboard I am building.

So I set about fiddling with the date function in PHP, and wiped up the following to graphs

Hits per Month

Hits per Year

It’s not rocket science from a coding point, but visually it does help to immediately get an idea of how active the site is. I guess the next thing would be to click on a bar and view the users for that day, or the course. Or maybe view the most active courses……

Looks like I might be adding another graph to my Dashboard.