1 Installation and Setup
The following instructions are aimed at the Moodle administrators who will be installing the ELBP block and the other blocks that come packaged with it.
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Moodle Version | 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 |
| PHP Extensions | fileinfo |
| PHP Settings/Modules |
mod_rewrite enabled php short tags enabled
|
In addition to these requirements, if you wish to make connections to external databases (MIS connections), you will need to ensure your server has the required extensions to do so. Once you have installed the block, you will see a list (on the MIS settings page) of the extensions you will need for various different database connections.
This github repository contains only the core ELBP block, but the Electronic Learning BluePrint is also a package, which contains several other plugins. These can be found in their own github repositories.
ELBP This is the core ELBP block which holds all the functionality to use the ELBP.
ELBP_TIMETABLE The elbp_timetable block is a plugin of the core ELBP block. Within the ELBP it will show a student’s timetable in a grid format, with options to look at a Daily view, Weekly view, Monthly view or Yearly view. The block itself can also be added to a page, which will show the student’s lessons that day, as well as a link to view their full timetable.
This block itself is not required if you do not want to use it. This block requires the ELBP block in order to function.
BC_DASHBOARD The bc_dashboard block is a separate block which is bundled with the ELBP. If it is installed, some of the ELBP functionality will be overwritten to use the dashboard instead. For instance it will override the “My Students” list, and use a nicer looking one in the Dashboard with more functionality. This block also allows you to create your own custom reports, bringing in pretty much any data from the ELBP and its various plugins.
This block is **required **in order for the ELBP block to function.
Each block has their github repository, with installation instructions. So please follow those.
On installation of the ELBP, 4 new roles should be created within your system:
elbp_frontpageteacher - This role is used if you want to add the ELBP block to your Moodle frontpage, so we can determine who is a student and who is a teacher. If you wish to use this role, the users should be assigned in the frontpage context.
elbp_personal_tutor - This role is used to assign staff members to individual students in a mentor/mentee relationship.
elbp_addsuptutor - This role is used to assign staff members to individual students in a additional support tutor/tutee relationship.
elbp_manager - This role is used to define users who should have access to the ELBPs of every student in the system. If you wish to use this role, the users should be assigned in the frontpage context.
These settings allow you to customise the main settings of the block, such as its display name, as some institutions may have been using blocks previously called “Personal Learning Plan” or “Individual Learning Plan”, etc… so they may wish to rename this block to avoid confusion amongst their staff and students.
The next setting allows you to turn gradients on or off, this is just a minor styling choice on the ELBP. Without gradients will just use solid colours.
Next is the alerts configuration. This allows us to enable or disable email alerts within the ELBP system. If they are enabled, staff will be able to set up customised alerts which they want to receive, for example they may want an alert when Student X misses a target deadline, or when any student on Course Y has their attendance drop below 90%.
Lastly we have the Student Progress Bar configuration, where you can enable/disable the Student Progress Bar, which is like a traffic light system, where you can define colours and titles and assign students to a colour.
The Environment page is currently only available if you are using a MySQL database. It will show you some details about your Moodle server and your installation of the ELBP block.
The first section “PHP Extensions” will list any additional PHP extensions which are required by any of the plugins you have installed, and whether or not you have them installed on your server.
The second section lists all the database tables in the ELBP, the number of records in them and the size, so that you can keep an eye on them to see if they are getting too large at any point. If a table is highlighted red there is a problem with it, which you should be able to view by hovering over the red icon to the right. This will probably just be something like the table doesn’t have any indexes.
These general settings allow you to define system settings for the ELBP.
Firstly you have the Academic Year setting. Rather than archive off old data at the end of each year, you can simply set the start date of the current academic year, and then all data (where possible) before that date is hidden. (This can be over-written by individual plugins in their own Settings).
Next you should see four roles: Front Page Teacher, Personal Tutor, Additional Support Lecturer and ELBP Admin. These should already be filled out for you with the roles automatically created, but if you want to define your own roles ro use instead, you can update which ones to use here.
Next we have the specific course categories setting. If you only want courses from certain categories to show up in student course lists (e.g. Attendance, Course Reports, etc...), you can choose those categories here and courses in any other categories will not be included in the ELBP.
Alternatively, next we have the exclude courses setting. If you have any courses that you do not want to show up in student course lists (e.g. Attendance, Course Reports, etc...) that students may be on (e.g. you may have an “All_Students” course or any number of other generic courses), then you can exclude them by course ID here.
Next is the appearance section, where you can choose which moodle theme layout to use (it is highly recommended to use one with a full page width and no blocks). You can also choose where the ELBP dock should be on the screen and upload your own logo to appear on printable pages.
Finally, if you have written your own user guides for staff and/or students, you can upload them here and they will appear on the block for them to download.
Various ELBP plugins allow you to connect to an external data source to bring in data, rather than using the Moodle database. On this page you can setup connections to those data sources and assign them to any installed plugins.
The ELBP supports connecting to the following databases: MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Microsoft Access, PostgreSQL, Firebird, SQLite.
The top section of this page shows you which PHP Extensions are required to connect to various different databases, and which ones you have installed. If you wish to connect to a database but do not have any of the required extensions installed, you will need to install them before you can connect.
The next section lists any MIS connections you have created.
The next section allows you to create a new MIS connection.
Firstly give it a unique name.
Then select what database type you are connecting to.
Then fill out the connection details: host, username, password, database name. The host field will different depending on the type of database connection. If you are unsure what to put here, click on the little help icon next to “Create New MIS Connection” for some examples.
Once you have filled out the connection details, you can “Test” the connection to see if it works. If it does, you can then save it.
Once you have saved it, the next section allows us to assign MIS connections to ELBP plugins to be used, but you won’t have any plugins installed yet, so this can be done later.
This is where we install and manage all the ELBP plugins. By default none of them are installed when the block is installed, as different institutions may want to use different plugins, so it’s totally up to you which ones you want to install.
To install a new plugin select it from the drop down menu. All core ELBP plugins are listed under the “Core” option, whilst any plugins that may come with external blocks (e.g. the Timetable block or Gradetracker block) can be found by navigating through the blocks in the drop down menu.
The plugin should install very quickly and will populate its settings with default values which you can change if you wish.
Once the plugin is installed it will appear in the “Manage Plugins” section below, though it will be disabled for the time being, until you are happy that you want people to be able to start using it.
To manage the settings of a plugin, click the “Settings” link next to it, and to uninstall a plugin, click the red cross in the uninstall column.
See section #2 for details on each individual plugin.
Once you have installed and configured all the plugins you want, you will need to put them into a layout and group. There should be a default layout and group already created for you, which you can use.
The layouts allow you to specify completely different groups/orders of plugins for individual courses.
The groups allow you to group similar plugins together into tabs.
You can add plugins to the group by clicking the "Start Adding Plugins" link and then clicking on the ungrouped plugins, they should then move into the relevant highlighted section and can be dragged around to re-order them.
The Actions tab allows you to run ELBP-related actions against users.
Firstly you can reset changes to plugin box colours, either of all users or a specific user.
Next you can set individual capabilities, to override a user’s role capabilities. For example, one particular student may be abusing the ability to add comments to Targets, and rather than create a new role to PREVENT that capability and add him to that role, you can just go to Actions and set his capability to PREVENT.
The capabilities for each of the roles should already be set up for you, but to clarify what you will need to do:
If you want to have the ELBP block on the frontpage of Moodle, use the elbp_frontpageteacher role (or your own role if you have one, making sure to copy the capabilities from the default one) and assign your staff members to that role on the frontpage. They should then see the "My Students" link instead of "My ELBP", which students will see.
Add any managers to the elbp_manager role on the frontpage.
Personal Tutors and Additional Support Tutors do not have to be added to their roles anywhere, the roles are used for the assigning of staff members to students, which is done for you when relationships are created, which will be covered later on.