[wp-edu] GSoC 2010, BuddyPress for teaching

Sun Apr 4 20:12:19 UTC 2010

It seems I'm the only person here who doesn't want a REQUIRED dependency 
on Buddypress so I will wish you all the very best of luck on your 
project while I continue to work on mine. It is too bad I won't be able 
to help with it.

@stas
There are normal wordpress functions for checking users so admins and 
students get different views. I've already done that in my script. Just 
use the current user can check. Assign students as subscribers, teachers 
as admin or editor depending on how much control you want to give.  
There is a wordpress codex page to show what abilities each level has.  
It wasn't very difficult.

@Joseph
Thank you for explaining how you use kbgradebook for showing feedback 
instead of actual grades/scores. Since I'm having my plugin create 
averages, I am keeping my score field for having percents (although I 
admit I'm not limiting it to 100), but I'm adding a varchar(200) field 
to my database table for teacher feedback.
"From the student's point of view, too, they can see the representation 
of their progress and the comments and feedback in a single word press 
page. "
good point!

@kyle
"
 From an admin perspective this is probably true.  BuddyPress tends to 
run slowly when pushed - at least on my shared hosting account even with 
W3cache enabled and WP-DBmanager doing some cleanup occasionally.

But from an instructor's angle, BuddyPress increases communication 
peer-to-peer and peer-to-professor in non-standard ways that a typical 
LMS usually doesn't enable.  This interaction, as I have observed, leads 
to more class engagement and anecdotally more learning."
----------
I'm glad to see we agree on this point even though we expressed the same 
idea differently :-)

"
I see your concern with this.  I'd counter by saying that BuddyPress has 
WordPress (the Organization) support since Andy Peatling and JJ Scooby 
are involved.  This isn't a plugin that is going to go by the wayside.

I guess I see groups & courses as having this natural relationship and 
that it's tough to envision a non-BuddyPress WP-as-LMS.  But you're 
right, not everyone would want the BuddyPress features (but why not?!)."
-------
my concern here is the REQUIREMENT of Buddypress to use a plugin for 
managing courses. It should be used for what it is a social plugin for 
interaction. Just because it is an automattic project, that doesn't mean 
it is stable or will be optimized. I'm pretty sure it isn't optimized at 
all. :-)  I have it running on one of my websites that has only a few 
users, but I don't dare try to launch a big course with many users with 
BuddyPress without a dedicated server. I've been testing BuddyPress on 
one of my websites and in the last few months I've had to redesign my 
blog theme twice due to the big changes they make every time it updates 
and the sitewide posts widget (which was awesome) complete broke with 
the 1.2 update. I wish they had warned us of that huge bug before 
upgrading *sigh*  Buddypress also does very strange things to page 
titles which I reported at least twice but I guess fixing functionality 
bugs is low priority right now.

"But logging into the site is de facto practice in my experience with 
Blackboard.  However, extending notifications beyond e-mail to RSS and 
maybe SMS would be a nice change.  I'm in agreement with you though, we 
need to provide multiple ways to keep track of dynamic course content 
like assignment and grade updates."
-------
wow, I really like the idea of using RSS for assignment/homework feeds, 
but I wonder how many people really understand how to use them. That was 
why I was thinking about e-mail. Even my parents know how to send an 
e-mail, but I doubt they have a clue about "new" technologies.   Being 
in Mexico where many people have limited access to the internet, I try 
to think about what they would know how to use and could quickly see and 
do from an internet cafe or from work during their lunch break (which is 
why I'm mostly focused on quizzes and automation)

"Ah, but again BuddyPress adds key functionality with its profile data. 
  Completely customizable - something WP doesn't do out of the box.  I 
know I create a lot of profile fields for input so that the professor I 
assist can get some key information on his students (if they provide it, 
which most do)."

Actually you can easily add new profile fields to regular plain old 
Wordpress with just a little code in your functions.php (in your theme 
directory).
here's a page where I learned how to do it. It is quite simple to make a 
list of fields with this method.
  http://yoast.com/user-contact-fields-wp29/
yes, that post describes adding new contact methods, but you could add 
fields for whatever you want and they will appear as profile options.

On 4/4/2010 12:09 PM, Kyle M. Jones wrote:
> @Christopher
>
>> I like Buddypress, but I don't think it is currently a good option for
>> course management. It is great for more interaction (like the messaging
>> system)  and forum integration, but the code is very new and Buddypress
>> generates a huge amount of mysql queries so you'd almost have to have a
>> dedicated server for more than a few students on the site at a time. 
>
> From an admin perspective this is probably true.  BuddyPress tends to 
> run slowly when pushed - at least on my shared hosting account even 
> with W3cache enabled and WP-DBmanager doing some cleanup occasionally.
>
> But from an instructor's angle, BuddyPress increases communication 
> peer-to-peer and peer-to-professor in non-standard ways that a typical 
> LMS usually doesn't enable.  This interaction, as I have observed, 
> leads to more class engagement and anecdotally more learning.
>
>>
>> Why force the user to have Buddypress to use a plugin?  Making a plugin
>> depend on another plugin to work is not great design. If that other
>> plugin breaks or changes in a way that is incompatible, your plugin
>> stops working too!
>> It would be for the best to let the plugin do what it is supposed to do
>> with or without Buddypress so no functionality would be lost if
>> Buddypress has to be disabled due to server load or compatibility issues.
>
> I see your concern with this.  I'd counter by saying that BuddyPress 
> has WordPress (the Organization) support since Andy Peatling and JJ 
> Scooby are involved.  This isn't a plugin that is going to go by the 
> wayside.
>
> I guess I see groups & courses as having this natural relationship and 
> that it's tough to envision a non-BuddyPress WP-as-LMS.  But you're 
> right, not everyone would want the BuddyPress features (but why not?!).
>
>>
>> Well, for scholarpress to work for me, it would need to be redesigned to:
>> 1. give homework and other tasks based on days from course enrollment
>> (I'd like to see email updates sent to enrolled students. It really
>> isn't practical to expect students to log in to the site frequently to
>> know what they should do.)
>
> But logging into the site is de facto practice in my experience with 
> Blackboard.  However, extending notifications beyond e-mail to RSS and 
> maybe SMS would be a nice change.  I'm in agreement with you though, 
> we need to provide multiple ways to keep track of dynamic course 
> content like assignment and grade updates.
>
>> 4. not force me to use the plugin's course pages since Wordpress is the
>> CMS. I don't need bloatware! The plugin should not manage content. It
>> should manage the course features... I hope that makes sense.  Wordpress
>> should continue to manage site registration and user profiles (an issue
>> I have with Buddypress for using separate profile data)
>
> Ah, but again BuddyPress adds key functionality with its profile data. 
>  Completely customizable - something WP doesn't do out of the box.  I 
> know I create a lot of profile fields for input so that the professor 
> I assist can get some key information on his students (if they provide 
> it, which most do).
>
>
> @Joseph
>
>> I'm very excited to see where this can go. 
>
> Glad our paths continue to cross. :)
>
>> WordPress as a course management system is really already quite 
>> viable--for more experienced and skilled users.  For the average 
>> teacher, there is still some smoothing out to do.
>
> Yep.  They way you and I use BP/WP as LMS isn't something that a 
> general user can pick up and run with on the fly.  It does take a bit 
> of courtship....
>
>> So I would recommend, very strongly, that any approach to making new 
>> LMS-type plugins for WordPress should keep them atomized and 
>> specifically tailored to specific tasks.
>
> I couldn't agree more.  Keep it focused on modules (parts of the 
> plugin as a whole) that can be switched on and off depending on need. 
>  I advocate for complete customization of the LMS for the professor 
> but also for the student.  Of course, this granularity of 
> customization, I imagine, increases complexity with the plugin as a whole.
>
>> We really should not be thinking of beating moodle or blackboard at 
>> their own game.  It's not a good game or one that has much of a future.
>
> That's an interesting statement...  I think my approach to WP-as-LMS 
> is motivated by the fact that I /do/ in fact want to beat Blackboard 
> and create a separate alternative to Moodle.  It's about options - 
> preferably free options created by a community that truly cares about 
> their online learning environment.  I'd agree that Blackboard doesn't 
> have a happy future years away, but institutions still buy-in to this 
> behemoth because it has a solid foothold in the LMS domain and it will 
> stay as such in the present unless more and better options (like WP or 
> a better Moodle) start to break it down, or it implodes.  God, I hope 
> it implodes....
>
>>
>> Again--none of this is meant to be critical in the sense of stopping 
>> progress!  I'm just ecstatic to see the project getting rolling, and 
>> we should see it as opening up possibilities, rather than closing 
>> than down.
>
> Same here!  If there's any criticism from me, it's only constructive.
>
>
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