Instructions for adding videos to Moodle from the Streaming Server

1. Compose a new web page
2. In the Name field enter the name of the video
3. Add a brief summary of the video
4. Go to the Compose a web page editor and click the <> icon so that you are in TEXT MODE
5. Enter the following code, adding your folder name following stream= and the file name following the / after your folder name

<div align="center"><iframe src="http://bb-app.csufresno.edu/webapps/FSU-BulldogTV-bb_bb60/player.jsp?stream=THIS IS THE NAME OF YOUR FOLDER/THIS IS THE NAME OF YOUR FILE" width="680" height="460"></iframe></div>

Example:
<div align="center"><iframe src="http://bb-app.csufresno.edu/webapps/FSU-BulldogTV-bb_bb60/player.jsp?stream=dsharples/GSCC_223_Week_2_3_320x240_oc_hint.mov" width="680" height="460"></iframe></div>



When students click the link to the video, it will play in the center of the screen.

Moodle Pilot: Lesson Learned

Problem Description:

As part of the Moodle pilot process, we were batch loading Fresno State 26,000 user accounts from the converted Peoplesoft-Blackboard data extracts. The user accounts were created properly, however, due to the large amount of user records and the Moodle a-synchronized emailing mechanism generated a huge amount of repeated email notifications.

Findings:

Moodle is using a CRON job to send out email notifications. The following code selects all the records into a record set and loop through it to send out emails. Upon successfully emailing the user, each record then gets deleted from the database. However, with the huge amount of records, it may cause RACE Condition that the next cron job picks up the records already being queued for process.


//
// generate new password emails for users
//
mtrace('checking for create_password');
if (count_records('user_preferences', 'name', 'create_password', 'value', '1')) {
mtrace('creating passwords for new users');
$newusers = get_records_sql("SELECT u.id as id, u.email, u.firstname,
u.lastname, u.username,
p.id as prefid
FROM {$CFG->prefix}user u
JOIN {$CFG->prefix}user_preferences p ON u.id=p.userid
WHERE p.name='create_password' AND p.value=1 AND u.email !='' ");

foreach ($newusers as $newuserid => $newuser) {
$newuser->emailstop = 0; // send email regardless
// email user
if (setnew_password_and_mail($newuser)) {
// remove user pref
delete_records('user_preferences', 'id', $newuser->prefid);
} else {
trigger_error("Could not create and mail new user password!");
}
}
}

Solutions:
- Increasing the CRON job interval; or,
- Dividing the batch load to groups.

p.s. Increasing interval of CRON jobs may also delay the email delivery of new items posted in forums as well.

p.s. about the Moodle cron job:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/RedHat_Linux_installation#Set_up_the_cron_job, or
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Cron

Moodle Pilot Updates

The final Moodle Open Lab was held on January 15th. Faculty spent time fine tuning courses.

At this time we are working on several issues:

Some students experienced login issues - all locked Moodle accounts have been cleared so students will be able to login to the course through Blackboard.

Instructors were reminded to make sure that students are logging in through Blackboard using the single sign-on instructions found in the Moodle Pilot Forum, and to make courses available in both Moodle and Blackboard through the Adminstration block > Settings area.

Instructors were also reminded that the email function in Moodle has been disabled and if they create a new News Item an email will not automatically be sent. At this time, they will need to copy and paste the contents of the News Item into the email function in Blackboard.

At this time, instructors may manually enroll students in Moodle who registered for the course after rosters were loaded.

Manually enrolling students into Moodle

1.In the Administration Panel click on Assign Roles

2.In the Roles column click on Student

3.In the Search area, located in the lower left-hand corner, type in the username of the student

4.Click on the name of the student in the Search Results box

5.Click Add – the student will now appear in the list of users

Blackboard is in

Bb has granted MEA from CalState. I have started to prepare for NG pilot when it is released by th end of this month. Feb 2009!