Moodle Activity Extensions Spec

Moodle Activity Extensions

Goals

To provide a common point for creating and managing due date extensions to all Moodle Activity due dates.

Background

For Moodle 1.9, UniSA developed in house a number of advanced modifications to our Moodle instance. One of these modifications was our custom Extensions module. The 1.9 version only worked with mod_assignment and mod_quiz activities (Quiz was implemented after the initial release), however it has been very well received by our school staff and academics. In the year 2012 there was over 200,000 individual extension requests alone. Some 190,000 of these were approved. It's been very very stable with only a couple of minor issues discovered along the way.

We are transitioning to Moodle 2.X later this year, so starting in December 2012 myself and another developer here began the task of porting our existing modifications into 2.x. We believe the Extensions module is something that many people in the community would get benefits from, and as our porting effort continues, we would like to provide our code to the community.

Features

Our current 1.9 implementation supports the following features, which will also be implemented in 2.x:

• Individual extensions
  • Students may request an extension for activities that allow it via Moodle (Existing 1.9 functionality)
  • Students can supply up to 3 documents as proof of requirement for extension (doctors certificates etc) (Existing 1.9 functionality)
  • Students can submit only one pending request per activity at a time. (Existing 1.9 functionality)
  • Students can submit their pending request to a specific staff member, or to any staff member that has the correct capability (New in 2.x version, previous single staff member only)
    • Once that request is approved, they may request a further extension on that same activity (configurable) (Existing 1.9 functionality)
  • When a student has an approved request in the system, while they have no other pending requests they may request another extension (configurable) (Existing 1.9 functionality)
  • Staff may apply an approved extension on a student behalf, which allows for situations where a student cannot access Moodle to perform the request (configurable) (Existing 1.9 functionality)
  • Web Services will allow external systems to interrogate extensions for a student or activity (New in 2.x version)
  • History of extension request is visible on the request edit page (New 2.x version), in addition to the standard Moodle logs (Existing 1.9 functionality).
  • Extensions can have a range of status, Pending, Approved, Denied, Withdrawn, Revoked or More Info Required. (Existing 1.9 functionality)
  • Extensions integrates with Messaging 2.0 (New in 2.x version, simple email in 1.9 version).
  • Extensions can be 'quick approved' by a staff member selecting a checkbox along side each, and then selecting 'Approve' (Existing 1.9 functionality).

• Global extensions
  • Staff may apply a global extension to an activity, optionally they can select groups to apply the extension to individually or to the entire Course.

(More detail available in forum thread: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=216784 )