Moodle 2 for mobile
Moodle 2.0
This document has for purpose to define the official Moodle mobile application functionalities for Moodle 2.0. We will look to mobile phone application only.
Overview
In this section we list which systems is going to be supported by the official Moodle app. We also list the available applications on these systems.
Apple iOS
The offical Moodle application should work on iPhone 3G. It seems Apple doesn't allow to publish new app other than iOS4 on the app store, it needs to be confirmed. There are two known applications on the Apple app store:
- MTouch created by Ali OzGur (available April 2010) - most likely to parse your Moodle HTML to find
- mPage created by Mass Media, HK (available May 24, 2010) - require a plugin to be installed on your Moodle site (install some web services).
Other not-Moodle applications:
iPhone related documents:
Google Android
You can find a discussion about Moodle on Android in the Moodle.org forum. There is one app for Android 1.5, mPage.
Web applications
The Moodle app will not be a web application. However you can find several web projects connecting to Moodle, including:
- iPhone4Moodle
- Moodle for Mobiles: MoMo (discontinued)
- Moodbile
- MLE-Moodle - MLE-Moodle is a plugin for Moodle, which adds mLearning functionality to this open-source eLearning system.
Use cases
The Moodle app has not for objective to translate the web UI into native UI. It has for objective to quick a quicker access to some functions. It should also use the phone capabilities (GPS, camera, gyroscope). Here are listed the use cases that could be implemented on a mobile device. It should also list some rejected use cases.
Quick
When waiting in a small queue, short travel (bus). These situations don't allow a full concentration. Users are most likely going to do read-only action, that are going to be interrupted at any moment.
All users
- take a photo/video and send it to your private file
- read new messages from other people (private and forum)
- see list of my course (Jerome's note: it's likely to be implemted but I dont think it's a use case. Do we really launch the Moodle mobile just to see our course list?)
Student
- see my grades (limited view)
Teacher
- see list of my students per course
- see grades (limited view)
Long
When waiting to be called for the doctor, long travel. These situation allow the user to be concentrate.
All users
- take a photo/video and post as attachment to a forum for discussion
- take a photo/video and post to a database activity (including location)
- answer a message
Teacher
- give grades if it doesn't require much effort
- check activities/assignements deadlines, with number of missing submissions
- download all assignments (eg pdfs), grade them offline, send back to students
Urgent
These use cases are required actions following the reception of an alert. They can be executed in a short time and they should have the full attention of the user. Even interrupted, the user is likely going to come back to it.
Student
- see my activities/assignements deadlines, specially the close ones
Teacher
- see new submissions
Settings and feature
- a switch to go from a Moodle Teacher app to Moodle student app, first time app is launching, select teacher or student / our implement two different app
- display a dashboard of the needs
- Update a location field in the profile with current location, for display with Google map
- Synch the participants of a course so we can have nice choose-lists of users in the app, like Contacts app or Coverflow
