Diary

Diary is based off the Journal plugin. The Diary module allows a teacher to collect online text, audio, and video from a user. Depending on the Diary setup options, a user can create a new entry each calendar day or even each minute. Each entry can be individually reviewed, provided with feedback, and graded, with overall rating results being shown based on the selected aggregate type of rating. Currently, the user can edit any entry, and can even create a new entry for a skipped day. The data submitted by a student is visible only to the teacher, course manager, or site admin, and not to the other users in the course.

Purpose

Like the Journal, the Diary module is suitable for short, online writing assignments in which users can refine their entries over time, based on feedback from the marker. Unlike the Journal however, the Diary can start a new entry for any calendar day, hour or minute. This helps prevent the 'scroll of death' for markers as they see only one entry from each user at the same time on one page. If needed, markers can look at ALL the entries for any single user, and add ratings and feedback to individual entries. Using visible or separate groups also helps cut down on the 'scroll of death' for markers. With all the new tools available in the Atto and Tiny MCE editors, a diary entry can also include audio and video recordings. Feedback can be a simple numerical rating along with text, or autorating info can be added at the push of a button, The use of the rubric or marking guide is not supported.

Activity Setup

1. Login and navigate to your Moodle course.
2. Turn editing on.
3. Go to the topic you would like to add a Diary activity to, then from the Add an activity drop down select, Diary, assuming your installation has the plugin installed.
4. General - Diary name - Enter a suitable name, one that possibly reflects the purpose of the diary activity, such as, Daily Notes, or, Weekly Essay.
5. General - Diary description - Enter a suitable description or a prompt that tells students what's expected of them in regards to the Diary activity. Check the box for, Display description on course page, if desired.
6. Availability - Days available - When the Course format is set to, Weekly format, you can set the Days available to the number of days you want. For other course formats, Always open, will be automatically set, and Days available will be hidden. The Days available the activity is actually open, depends up which week the activity is in. e.g. In the next week, if you create a diary with one day availability, it will be available to students only on Monday of next week.
7. Availability - Open Time - When enabled, a date and time can be set and no entries can be made until the date and time have passed.
8. Availability - Close time - When enabled, a date and time can be set and no entries can be made once the date and time have passed.
9. Availability - Edit all entries - When enabled users can edit ANY previous entry by clicking the pencil icon at the end of the Entry: title. When, disabled, the icon is hidden and editing previous days entries is not possible.
10. Availability - Edit entry dates - When enabled users can edit the date of entry. This makes it possible to "move" a previously created entry by changing the date/time of the entry. An entry for a missed day can be created changing the current date to the missing date.
11. Appearance - There are two settings for the, entry/feedback and text, background colors. This makes it possible to color coordinate with your theme, OR set colors to make it easy to differentiate which Diary you are using.
12. Appearance - Enable statistics - When enabled, all the new statistics will appear below each entry. When not enabled, they are hidden.
13. Auto-rating - Enable automatic rating - When enabled, automatic rating information will appear below each entry. When not enabled, the information is hidden.
14. Min/Max Counts - Add minimum, maximum, and percentage for characters, words, sentences and paragraphs. If left as a zero, the penalty is not applied.
15. Ratings - Aggregate type - Select any one of the rating types you want to use, Average of ratings, Count of ratings, Maximum of ratings, Minimum of ratings, or Sum of ratings.
16. Ratings - Scale - Select a scale from the drop down and set the Maximum grade.
17. Ratings - Grade to pass - Depending on the scale type, set an appropriate Grade to pass.
18. Select/set the remaining options, especially the, Group mode, if you have very many users. Also, be sure to set, Activity completion, if you are using it for the course.
19. Click Save and display.

Tools

Depending on the participates capabilities, various tools are available for real-time-use.

Activity tools

When a teacher or admin is on the view page using the Boost theme, the following standard items are shown directly under the Diary name:

1. Diary - A link that will reload the current diary activity.
2. Settings - A link to the current activity settings page.
3. Diary writing prompts - A link to the prompt edit page. Teachers and admins can create, edit, and delete prompts on this page.
4. Journal to Diary xfr - Visible to admin only - A capability that lets an admin transfer all the user entries from a Journal to a Diary. Includes options to send the user an email and to also add a note in the Diary feedback regarding the transfer.
5. More

Clicking the More options will show the following options:

1. Filters
2. Permissions
3. Backup
4. Restore

Writing Prompt Editor

Clicking the, Diary writing prompts, will take teachers and admins to the, Writing Prompt Editor. On the first visit, the table of prompts should be empty and showing, Currently, there are, 0 prompts for this Diary activity. When visiting this page, by default the editor is always set up to edit the most recent, or last prompt. In this case, because there are no prompts yet, it is set up to let you enter your first prompt so there are going to be some variable names in view simply because there is no data for them to display yet.

1. Set date to start using prompt ID {$a} - Each time you create a prompt, you must define the time it will go into effect. By default, it is set to the current time of when you entered the prompt editor.
2. Set date to stop using prompt ID {$a} - Each time you create a prompt, you must define the time it will cease to be in effect. By default, it is set to the current time of when you entered the prompt editor.
3. Enter your writing prompt - In plain text, tell your students what they have to write about.
4. Character count minimum - If set to zero, no penalty is applied, but for any positive integer, if the student writes fewer than that, the difference is used to calculate a possible penalty to subtract from the maximum score for the activity.
5. Character count maximum - If set to zero, no penalty is applied, but for any positive integer, if the student writes more than that, the difference is used to calculate a possible penalty to subtract from the maximum score for the activity.
6. Character penalty per Min/Max count error - If set to zero, the Min and Max settings do not matter. However, if either one is a positive integer, and the student does not meet that setting requirement, this percentage is applied in calculating the possible penalty.
7. Word, Sentence, and Paragraph counts, work the same as they do for character count.
8. Save changes - Any changes you have made in the prompt editor, get saved to the current prompt. If it is the first prompt, then a new prompt is created. The page will automatically be reloaded with your new prompt in the prompt table list, and also in the editor. Notice that the list column of the prompt table, Edit, for each prompt it shows an edit and a delete icon. NOTE: Once a prompt has been used for a rating, it cannot be deleted!
9. Cancel lets you, back out of the prompt editor without saving anything, and gracefully go back to the normal view page.
10. Create new prompt - Adds a new empty prompt to the prompt table and presents you with an empty editor, ready for you to type a new prompt.
11. Return to XXX - XXX will be replaced with the current diary name. The button is a link back to the normal diary view page. It allows you to go back without making any changes to the prompts.

Student tools

On the view page, above the first entry, there is a toolbar with the following:

1. Export to .csv - A students export will contain only their entries from the current diary. A teachers export will contain all the entries from the current diary. An admins export will contain all entries from all diaries on the site.
2. Reload and show from current to oldest diary entry - Reloads the view page and sets the, Sort order, From current diary entry to the first entry, for the current user, showing the number of entries selected in the, Entries per page: drop down.
3. Edit top of the list - Open the diary entry at the top of the list for editing.
4. From first diary entry to the latest entry - Reloads the view page, with the users very first diary entry at the top of the list of entries.
5. Lowest rated entries - Reloads the view page, with the lowest rated diary entry at the top of the list of entries. Note: any unrated entry is considered lower than any entry with a numerical rating.
6. Highest rated entries - Reloads the view page, with the highest rated diary entry at the top of the list of entries.
7. Most recently modified entries - Reloads the view page, with the most recently edited diary entry at the top of the list of entries.

Teacher tools

On the report page, above the first entry there is a toolbar with the following:

1. Export to .csv - A teachers export will contain all the entries from the current diary. An admins export will contain all entries from all diaries on the site.
2. Reload and show from current to oldest diary entry - Reloads the report page, and shows the most current diary entry for each user with at least one entry.
3. Current diary entries - Reloads the report page, and shows the most current diary entry for each user with at least one entry.
4. First diary entries - Reloads the report page, and shows the first diary entry for each user with at least one entry.
5. Lowest rated entries - Reloads the report page, and shows the diary entry with the lowest rating, for each user with at least one entry. Note: any unrated entry is considered lower than any entry with a numerical rating.
6. Highest rated entries - Reloads the report page, and shows the diary entry with the highest rating, for each user with at least one entry.
7. Most recently modified entries - Reloads the report page, and shows the most recently edited diary entry, for each user with at least one entry.

Also on the report page, next to the entry and date title for each student, there is now a link that will let the teacher see ALL the entries for a single student. From this new reportsingle page, the teacher can change/add grades and feedback to as many entries as they wish. A click on the, Save all feedback, button will save all changes and take the teacher back to the normal report page. Next to the, Save all feedback button, there is a, Return to report page for - Current Diary Name.

Setup a site wide Diary

One of the most versatile ways I have learned to use the Diary plugin for general use without ratings, especially on a development site, is to set it up for use throughout my whole Moodle site. The only downside is that you will need to install it on the site front page and when you do so you will need to change the, Locally assigned roles, to Student (student). With the role set this way, users can see all of their own entries and only an admin will be able to look at every entry for everyone. If you feel you need to, you can also add users with the manager and teacher roles.

   Install the Diary plugin.
   On the site front page add a, Main menu, block.
   In your new Main menu block, Add an activity or resource, then select Diary.
   Give it a name such as, Site Wide Diary.
   Add a Description, such as, A site wide diary for use by everyone.
   In the Diary settings, under Locally assigned roles, add everyone, except the admin, as a student.
   On the front page, in the Main menu block, click the edit icon and select, Configure Main menu block.
   In the settings, Where this block appears, change the, Page contexts to, Display throughout the entire site, then Save changes.

This should give everyone a link to the Site Wide Diary on every page of your Moodle site. If you want ANYONE to be able to see what the students have written, you will need to give them the Teacher role on the front page.

See also

• Journal module - While the Journal module allows students/users to add text to one "entry", Diary moves one step further allowing students/users to add a new "entry" every new calendar day.