Student folder

Hi Philipp. I 'solved' my problem by changing "Approved by default" from No to Yes. In this way, the files are immediately available for the course participants to view. So that way, I don't have to grow white hairs trying to police the uploads. My assumption is that the uploads will be done by responsible users.

Philipp. I've tried event monitoring as this link here suggests: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=320197
I ccan create a rule named "student-folder-1" with the Area to minitor being "Student folder". However, when it comes to the Event itself, currently in Moodle 2.8 (which I am using), there are only two events to monitor: "Course module instance list viewed" and "Course module viewed". Neither of which will be helpful to me because I want to monitor whenever an upload is done on the Student Folder activity. To see what I mean, here's a screenshot of the Rule settings.

So guess I am back to square one.

Hi Philipp. On my course page I currently have one Student Folder. My course page is divided into SEVEN (7) topics. So the plan is to have 7 Student Folders. That's one folder for each of the 7 sections (topics) on the course page. The problem I will face is monitoring each of the folders for new uploads. If the uploader (student) doesn't inform me via E-mail that he or she has uploaded a file, then it's going to be a hassle trying to check each and every folder for new uploads. Any suggestions?

Hi Philipp. Thanks for the fast reply! Yes, you are right. I missed the "last modified" link because in my theme (Klass), the color of that link is in low contrast compared to the red background - which is our corporate color. I tried the link and it sorts the records nicely. So now I can see the student uploads listed from the top of the screen. That definitely solves my usability problem. A BIG THANK YOU for that. (Future) filters that would be very useful are "Unapproved uploads" and "Approved uploads". That would make it easier not to overlook any unapproved uploads that are still pending approval. Cheers and have a good day. Frankie.

Hi Frankie,
That's a really good point. Currently we do not have any filters for the list displayed, but I'll take that info and let it be discussed by our whole dev-team. Maybe we can come up with good solutions (filters, messages, etc.) for a future version. But that improvements won't come before 3.4 due to our 3.3 release currently being in QA-testing-phase.
You could sort the table by "last modified" in the meantime, if you click on the header of the table's "last modified" column showing you the newest/oldest uploads as the first entries.
We'll definitely try to improve the plugin's UX!
cheers,
Philipp

Great plugin! Loving it. I do have one minor problem. More of an inconvenience. As the Admin when I click on the Student Folder resource, there is no clear indicator, signal or message that tells me if any student has uploaded a file. I have 70 students. I have to click on the page numbers (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) at the screen below to list the next N students. Somewhere in the list that shows up on the screen is the odd one or two students who have uploaded their files for approval. So what I mean is that it becomes a very tedious job for the class teacher to approve the student uploads. No doubt the "Download all files as ZIP" link does help in that it packages all uploads as a zip file that is immediately downloaded. As the teacher has to continuously check the student list for uploaded files, the task of approving student-uploaded files is a bump in the road. Any advice or is there something I missed?

Hi Frederica,
you can control access and visibility of the activity via capabilities: just remove the capability "mod/publication:view" from the students role.
Alternatively you could use Moodle's conditional access settings (https://docs.moodle.org/33/en/Restrict_access_settings) in connection with a group just for the trainers.
Hope this helped you!
Cheers,
Philipp

Hi,
Is there a way to hide the Public Files block only on students' page?
I would like to show that block only to the teachers and not to the students.
Hope you can help.
Thanks,

Hi again Óscar!
ad 4) You have a setting to let the files be visible directly after being uploaded OR the teacher has to approve the files before they are visible for other students!
ad 5) There will only be displayed the whole "submission" has been updated (the date the most recent file got uploaded, replaced, deleted, etc.)
ad 6) The student folder can not be graded. If you want to grade the submitted files, you should use Moodle core's Assignment activity. You can then use the student folder import every submission from the Assignment instance.
Cheers and you're welcome!

Hi Philipp,
Thank you so much for your kind and quick answer!
If have 3 more questions, if you don't mind:
4- Can users see the files that other user uploaded? If so, can this be avoided? (i.e. Separate groups, like data bases)
5- If the user uploads more than one file to a folder, does Moodle display when the user's/group's files have been updated the last time FOR EACH FILE (not for the whole folder)?
6- Can this activity (student folder) be graded?
Sorry for bothering, but I don't have full administrator rights in the Moodle course I administrate, and before I ask the ADministrator to install this plug in I need to make sure it does what I need, and I also need to write a report proving it... :S
Thank you so much!!

Hi Óscar!
ad 1) The student folder is a regular activity module and therefore you can add as many student folder instances in a course as you like!
ad 2) You can define how many files can be uploaded by students via a setting per student folder instance.
ad 3) In the student folder's table with the public files are the dates displayed when the user's/group's files have been updated the last time.
I hope that helped you!
Cheers,
Philipp

Hi!
Thank you very much for sharing your work.
I would like to ask you 2 questions:
1. Is it possible to create more than one folder for students (as if the folder was an activity)?
2. Is so, is it possible for students to upload more than one file in each folder?
3. If so, it does Moodle show the date each folder was uploaded?
Thank you so much!

Dear Andreas,
the Student Folder is not really comparable with the database activity.
Do you have any specific questions concerning this plugin?

What is the main difference to the database-activity?

We just published version 3.2.2 of the Student folder plugin for Moodle 3.2 fixing the file permission check for one's own files in team submissions for the standard group (see https://github.com/academic-moodle-cooperation/moodle-mod_publication/issues/19).