Plenary meeting

Introduction

The Plenary meeting activity module organizes online and in person meetings following traditional rules of parliamentary procedure. It may be used as a tool to teach skills to conduct a meeting or to structure and administer faculty, staff, student or other organizational meetings.

Users are granted the privileges to speak, make motions, vote or chair meetings through Moodle capabilities and roles. The activity maintains a record of motions to provide meeting minutes. User actions are logged in Moodle log system.

The activity can be used with an in person event or as an online event. It has an integration with Deft response block to allow audio and video to be shared based on whether the user is recognized to speak in the activity. Other web conference or media servers also can be used as long as users can be managed by them manually. Two integration options are provided for Jitsi meet. There is a managed meeting form that provides similar functionality to the Deft response option, and there is a meeting form option that simply provides a standard Jitsi Meet room on the meeting page.

Features

Making motions

Users participate in the meetings by offering motions. The presiding officer determines which motions are considered.

The motions that are available are configured by the admin in the site settings.

Open meeting

Before the meeting may begin, a presiding officer must open the meeting. Other users will not be able to offer any motions until this happens.

Resolutions

Once the meeting has been opened, participants can offer a motion to be considered by the group. A use click 'Resolve' button and completes a modal form to supply the content of the motion either as text or in an attached file. After form is saved it is either accepted or denied by the chair or queued immediately depending on the activity configured. Once on the floor, it will appear on the activity page for other users to view. If required other users will be given the opportunity to second the resolution before it is placed on the floor for debate.

Amendments

Once a resolution or main motion is on the floor, participants will be able to offer amendments to motion to make modifications.

Seconds

Resolutions, amendments and motions to adjourn may be configured to require a second. If a motion requires a second, a different user than the one offering the amendment must click the second button before normal users can do anything else with it. The chair can remove it if no second is available. Whether seconds are required for a type of motion can be configured by the admin for the site.

Privileged motions

Users can raise a Point of Order to address an action of the chair at any time while other business is pending by clicking the 'Order' motion. The chair will have to recognize or dismiss the question before less privileged motions.

Meeting forms

The activity can configured for use in different contexts to be selected in the activity settings. This is done with meeting form plugins. The following meeting forms are included.

Basic meeting

The basic meeting form is enabled by default and is appropriate for in person meetings where users are in the same run or have an external method of communication. Users can offer motions and vote using the activity so that there is a record stored of the meetings official proceedings, but audio or video is not integrated (although a Deft response block audio venue can be added).

Deft meeting

If Deft response block is configured with video support, the chair and the person who has the floor can share audio and video to speak to the pending business. When a new motion is allowed on the floor, the previous speaker is dropped and the person offering the new motion is automatically given the capability to share a camera and microphone.

Jitsi meet

If a Jitsi Meet server is available, the admin can configure it to work with the plugin. The activity will authorize the users to join a room which is shared on the activity page. Speakers must be moderated with the tools in the Jitsi interface. Speakers are not automatically queued. Some actions in Jitsi are recorded in the Moodle logs including users joining the meeting and raising hands. This form is useful for small groups that are familiar with using traditional web conferencing rooms.

Managed Jitsi meet

The behavior of this meeting form is similar to the Deft meeting integration above, but is able to work with self hosted Jitsi meet servers as a back end.

Additional features

Group support

The Plenary meeting supports Moodle groups. When group mode is enabled for the activity motions are separated by group so that independent meetings can be run simultaneously in one activity. Users only see motions in the selected activity group. Deft and Jitsi integrations will have separate rooms assigned to each groups so users only hear and see the activity in the selected group.

Assessment

The activity may be graded to provide feedback to the participants in the Moodle gradebook. This may be used to contribute to a course grade or simply to provide individual feedback to meeting participants. The advanced grading methods in Moodle are supported. The grading interface provides a report on individual users activity in a meeting.

Completion conditions

Some activity completions available to track user participation when the view activity or submit motions.

Moodle App support

The Moodle Mobile App is supported by the activity. Participants can use the app to create, view and modify motions. The Deft meeting form allows watching other speakers, but not speaking.

Installing via uploaded ZIP file

Log in to your Moodle site as an admin and go to Site administration > Plugins > Install plugins. Upload the ZIP file with the plugin code and ZIP file for block Deft response. You should only be prompted to add extra details if your plugin type is not automatically detected. Check the plugin validation report and finish the installation. Installing manually The plugin can be also installed by putting the contents of this directory to

{your/moodle/dirroot}/mod/plenum

and place code for block Deft response in

{your/moodle/dirroot}/blocks/deft

Afterwards, log in to your Moodle site as an admin and 1. go to Site administration > Notifications to complete the installation. 2. Adjust subplugin settings to accommodate variations in parliamentary procedure. 3. Install Block deft response or other conferencing integration dependency for online meeting support.

Additional configuration

Motions may be customized in the plugin site administration settings. Motion types are subplugins that may be individually enabled or disabled in Plugins > Activities > Plenary meeting > Motion types. Some of the motion types have additional settings which can be modified to fit local parliamentary variations.

There are also different Meeting form plugins that can be managed. If more than one is enabled, teachers will be able to choose which to use in the activity settings. The Basic form is enabled by default. Before enabling Deft form, the admin should configure Deft response block and enable the updating and video service from deftly.us. If using Jitsi form is used, access to a Jitsi Meet server must be configured.

Configuring Deft integration

The Deft meeting form requires that the Deft response block is installed and configured to provide content updating and Audio and Video conferencing. The deftly.us site provides a message service and media service access to make the conferencing experience work. The admin will need to activate the service and video bridging in the Deft response block sit admin settings, and then go to the Plenary meeting -> Meeting form plugins settings page and enable the Deft integration plugin. If you are wanting to us this on a production site which requires a reliable capacity contact deftly.us for a user agreement.

Jitsi Meet

This plugin provides an optional minimal integration for Jitsi Meet. A Jitsi Meet room is embedded on the activity page and users are authenticated from Moodle to use the room. First obtain access for a secure Jitsi server. You should receive an app ID, secret, and server url. The admin should add these to the Jitsi Meet form plugin settings, and enable the plugin on the management page. The teacher will then be able to select Jitsi as the meeting form in the activity settings and set a room name to let the participants use the integration.

LTI Usage

LTI service is available from the developer at deftly.us if you are unable to install locally. There are some additional features that are also available. You can create a free account there and a sample course from the user dashboard, and then submit a site support request for LTI Access.