Talk:PublicPrivate

Able to do this with roles?

Can't you do this with roles? I think you should be able to.--Tim Hunt 00:18, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Don't think so but we're open to ideas

A couple years back our programmer, Mike Franks, had a conversation with both Martin Langhoff, and Martin Dougiamas. Basically we had a need to make activities and resources either available to everyone, or private and only available to members of that course. Both Martin's mentioned that it can be done with Groups and Groupings, so we went based off that suggestion. The problem is, it is too complicated to setup for the average instructor, so we automated the process.

Every time a course is created when this feature is turned on, a group "Course Members" is created, and the grouping "Private Course Material" is created. All the members of that course automatically get dropped into the Course Members group. With that automation in place, all a professor needs to worry about now is clicking the little lock icon to control access to any resource or activity.

If you would like to see this in action I can set you up with an account on our TEST server. --Nick Thompson 01:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

How does PublicPrivate compare with OpenShare?

Both developments look like they could provide solutions for institutions who want to gradually open existing courses, in a cost-effective way that's also very easy for teaching staff to manage. An important step towards "OCW 2.0"? It would be a pity to have two independent paths that lead to the same end.

OpenShare: http://flexknowlogy.learningfield.org/addons/openshare/ --Alan Arnold 10:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

How OpenShare Compares

OpenShare does this with Roles. I have not updated OpenShare since October 2008, despite my best intentions, but I'd love to regain that motivation if there are needs.

One concern with this Public/Private article: it refers to Resources, not Resources and Activities. Resources are much easier to simply share (because of the Guest role); Activities require a user account. (OpenShare does both). Jared Stein 2 14:59, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Public/Private does BOTH resources AND activities. --Nick Thompson 01:17, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Public/Private vs. Openshare

Here is an objective look at the KEY differences between Public/Private, and OpenShare. (If I leave anything out, feel free to add it. Do NOT add something if it is a PRO for both public/private, as that defeats the purpose of this.)

Public/Private:

PRO's:

1. No setup, once it's installed and turned on, any newly created course will have public/private enabled
   
2. Make resources public/private from the course main page
   

CON's:

1. Modifies Core Moodle
   

OpenShare:

PRO's:

1. Does NOT modify CORE Moodle
   
2. Deals with licensing

CON's:

1. There is no way to mark resources as public/private from the course home page, you have to go to a management page to do this.
   
2. Have to manually update the student group assignments every time a new student is added to the course
   
3. Have to add the block, then have to "turn on" openshare before you can start using it. (for every course)
   

--Nick Thompson 01:18, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Moodle 2

Is there any plan to make a "moodle 2" version of this patch? As far as I can see, Moodle2 does not feature public/private control. However, it is now possible to specify a "licence" on various files. Maybe it would be possible to specify what licences guests can actually see when they move through a course, but this does not seem possible.

We will begin upgrading this for moodle 2 as soon as it comes out. We anticipate the upgrade to take roughly a month or two.--Nick Thompson 15:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)