Activity completion

The much sought after feature of “completion tracking” has made it into Moodle 2.0 (beta). This setting for activity completion is part of the course settings provides an option to complete an activity through a few mechanics:

• Self Completion
• Completion by teacher
• Activity Completion
• Grade Completion

One important thing to note, is that the sister feature of tracking of completion is the ability to restrict availability. I will cover this aspect another time but it is referred to below.

So what can be tracked for completion? The simple answer is everything. The practical answer is what needs to be tracked? It is possible to track all the resources and activities.

Would you want to track a label?

You could have a disclaimer showing as a label on a course which requires user “completion” to move onto other activities which you restrict if they haven’t completed (accepted) the disclaimer. This could be useful for pre-assignment or pre-quiz acceptance of terms and conditions. However, I imagine in most cases labels will be not tracked as in the below graphic.

I think the key questions will be where would you want a user to select completion or have it automatically completed. Think about the following resources and activities, which would be suitable for automated completion and which would be more suited to user selection.

• Glossary of key terminology
• Forums for collaborative discussions
• Reflective Quiz on a specific topic – with unlimited attempts
• Web page resource

Below is an example of the forum options which provides a rich suite of tools to set completion. I think of courses I have worked on which just viewing would be sufficient, and others which would require multiple replies to existing topics. So as forums can be used many ways so the variety of options is absolutely required.

The options for each of the features in Moodle have their own logic for Activity Completion. I know that some will welcome this feature and some will be wary of its sister activity and the level of control it offers, turning potential elearning into etraining, but each to their own.