Credit Score

Awarding credits is a feature of Pulse Pro and can be used for example for:

• Gamification purposes
  • credits can either have a symbolic value or
  • credits can be used to enrol into special courses
• Keeping track of the achievements of a learner in a generic way
• Awarding institutional credits (like ECTS)

Initial setup

In order to use this feature, the following setup is required:

1. Install Pulse (mod_pulse)
2. Install Pulse Pro (local_pulsepro)
3. Create a user profile field and call it for example "Credits" and set it to locked
4. In the global settings of Pulse Pro (Site administration > Plugins > Local Plugins > Pulse Pro) select the user profile field

How to use

After the initial setup, here's how to use Credit Score:

1. Open your course where you want to award credits
2. Turn on editing
3. Click on "Add an activity or resource" and choose Pulse
4. Give the Pulse activity a name (only used for admin purposes, students won't see it)
5. Explain what this Pulse does in the content field (this is visible to the student). If you don't want that the student sees the Pulse activity, make it stealth).
6. In the "Actions" section, enable credit score and enter a value (use a dot if you want to use decimals like 3.5)
7. Set activity completion to not tracked
8. Configure a suitable access restriction (see chapter "Use cases" below)
9. Save.

Use cases

Goal	Configuration	Comments
Award credits upon enrolment	No restriction required	If there's no restriction, the Pulse activity is triggerred immediately upon enrolment. (under the assumption that the course has started
Award credits for completing an activity	Use the "Activity completion" restriction and set it to "Student must have completed the activity"; click on the eye to hide Pulse unless the restriction is met
Award credits for completing the course	Use the "Activity completion" restriction for the last actity the student has to complete in order to complete the course and set it to "Student must have completed the activity"; click on the eye to hide Pulse unless the restriction is met	The course completed restriction is a better way to achieve this, if you're able to get it installed.

Troubleshooting

As with all things automation, it is essential to put enough thought into what you actually want. Ideally, write down what should happen in which case. This also helps us to support you! If it does not work as you expect, here are the most common issues:

• The course has not started. Pulse only works in a course which is currently running —> Check if the start date is in the past.
• The course has actual participants. Pulse only works for students —> Check if the user you want to test with actually has an enrolled user with an active enrolment status.
• The Pulse activity is available. Pulse only works if the activity is available to the student. That's the "trigger" or "condition" we use to determine if we shall actually do something (e.g. award credits). —> Check if the Pulse activity is hidden or has a restriction which is not met by the student; in both cases, it is "disabled" and won't do anything. If you're not sure, just login as the student and check if the student sees the Pulse activity — if the student sees it, it's enabled; if the student does not see it, it's disabled.
• The cron job is not running or has not run yet — awarding credits is done through a scheduled task. It's therefor required that the cron job is running regularly. Moodle recommends every minute, and we can only encourage you to follow that recommendation!