After the Recycle Bin for Moodle 3.1 and the dashing new My Course Overview in Moodle 3.3, the Moodle Users Association (MUA) is doubling up its efforts. The association’s next target? The Moodle Calendar.
For many, the Calendar Block has a Moodle staple from as far back as the 2.4 release over five years ago. Since that time, however, it has received little “TLC,” while others solutions everywhere, particularly mobile apps, keep coming up with ingenious ways to help us manage our time and appointments.
MoodleNews’ own Joe Thibault recently “sat down” with Stephen Bourget, the mind behind “Calendar Interface,” which is set to transform the clunky way we interact with the Calendar Block. With Bourget’s account of his tenured history with the Open Source LMS, the interview reveals how MUA – through initiatives such as the Project Development Cycle – is growing as a critical influence in the Moodle development road map.
Although an recent feature, positive reviews are already starting to pour down for My Course Overview, originally envisioned by MUA member Gemma Lesterhuis from the Netherlands. Not only it has received praised for its snappy functionality, but for the way it was built.
I'm really impressed with the new "Course Overview" in @Moodle 3.3! A fantastic summary of progress across all courses for students!
— Marcus (@MarcusTeachUs) May 29, 2017
Just looking at code of the new course overview in #Moodle 3.3. Well done #moodledev! Nice API! Lots of it should go into core itself.
— Fred (@FMCorz) May 23, 2017
While it is too soon to tell if the new Calendar will be ready for Moodle 3.4, scheduled by next November, as always, a sound user experience supported by a clean coding architecture is worth the wait. The hackers in the Moodleverse, however, are not waiting patiently. On the Moodle Forums, Ankit Agarwal devised a solution to keep a Google and a Moodle Calendar in relative 2-way sync. While useful in certain circumstances, its seems to succeed most of all in bringing attention to a functionality so many Moodlers rely on.
If you are interested in following up with the development, consider joining the Moodle Users Association. It is the perfect way to help the future work in Moodle, while making sure your voice is heard along the way.
Check out the Moodle-Google Calendar workaround by Agarwal in the Moodle forums.
Read the full interview with Stephen Bourget at moodleassociation.org.
This Moodle Governance related post is made possible by: eThink Education, a Certified Moodle Partner that provides a fully-managed Moodle experience including implementation, integration, cloud-hosting, and management services. To learn more about eThink, click here.
3 Responses
Very helpful information about Moodle user association and calendar block.
long. long a go in 2006 we used moodle in Dutch K12. Student had sometimes 12 courses in parallel. We created a block with a minimal courses-overview for each student AND a class overview of these blocks for the class teachers. Smartphones did not exist, so we echoed the small overview also to the WAP of a cell phone; in Portugal I gave the code on CD-rom to Martin but he lost it: would nice to have these short hand overviews revamped in your new calendar views. see: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=354375#p1429559