User talk:Ross Woods

Projects for new developers

Here's a bunch of things, some sections of which are systemic and interdependent:

- have a simple install wizard, with tick-box selection of features to be installed

- intuitive menus and wizards (If someone looks at a screen and doesn’t know what to do, you’ve probably got it wrong.)

- orientation to Moodle tutorial for staff

- orientation to Moodle tutorial for students

- orientation to Moodle tutorial for administrators - context-sensitive help

- reduce the amount of techno-babble for system administrators

- move selected add-on modules to the core and make them optional installs. This has started to happen, but some core items are still only available in modules)

- have a way for students to input their own data by on-line application

- have a way for students to update their own data on-line

- have a way online for new staff to do induction and input their own data

- have a way for staff to update their own data on-line

- have the full automated database of student information (admissions, personal particulars, enrollments, enrollment statistics, academic records),

- graduate students/print diplomas and transcripts,

- archive records,

- have a structure that allows for different campuses/ departments/ regions/ etc.

- take credit card payments (only one option available as a module and then its quite standalone, not integrated)

- have an automated bookkeeping system to integrate online credit card payments, offline payments students data (e.g. billing, receipting, accounting, functions) and then export reports for institutional reporting, bank reconciliations, etc. Some of it could be adapted from Gnucash. That's a full accounting program and the GNU source code is easy to get.

- manage staff, which are really just a special class of students from a database management point of view.

- have a central administrator console with GUI menus to do things, e.g. allocate permissions

- have a regional administrator console for people to run separate campuses/ departments/ regions/ etc of the same institution

- have a simple structure (and way of organizing) to differentiate between permitted areas: public website, library bookshelves, staff area, separate class area, separate campuses admins, etc.

Moodle can't integrate these things so far through plugins, but it is all so closely interrelated and overlapping that the core needs to offer them.

The more data entry and update that is done in the field, the less needs to be done in database upkeep. If people depend on the system and it's easy to use, we don't have to motivate them to use it.

Ross, thanks for all your ideas for projects for new developers. Please see Development:New feature ideas for information on how to turn them into reality. --Helen Foster 05:05, 3 March 2009 (CST)