Insights

Here at Oxford Brookes, we have a  Blue Card scheme enabling students with specific learning difficulties (SpLDs) to flag their work with a blue card , so the tutor will mark it with due consideration. There are two ways of submitting a Moodle assignment that might be required to be assessed differently if a student has a specific learning difficulty: the  Turnitin assignment , and the  Moodle assignment . Here's what the JavaScript blue card functionality will look like in Moodle to a lecturer. Please note this is a proof of concept and is not yet available in live Moodle. We run a Moodle query in the background to check whether the student is entitled to a blue card, and only display the blue card button to them if they are entitled to use it. When the lecturer opens the submissions to a Moodle or Turnitin assignment, the ones who have added a blue card will be highlighted. Moodle Assignment Log in to Moodle.  Go to your course and then your assignment.  ...

Here at Oxford Brookes, we have a  Blue Card scheme enabling students with specific learning difficulties (SpLDs) to flag their work with a blue card , so the tutor will mark it with due consideration. We needed a way of making it easier for students to flag their work with a blue card, and I have come up with the following script, which goes into the Additional HTML section in Site Administration in Moodle, and works with the Moodle Assignment functionality (see previous post for a blue card script that works with the Turnitin plugin ). First the student clicks the button to add the blue card, which inserts a comment with the words "Blue Card" in the submission comments field. When the form is submitted, the JavaScript looks for a comment in the grading table, and adds a flag in the status column to remind the tutor to review the comments. The tutor can then display the comment and see the words "Blue Card" (which are a link to the dyslexia marking guidelines). /* ...

Here at Oxford Brookes, we have a Blue Card scheme enabling students with specific learning difficulties (SpLDs) to flag their work with a blue card , so the tutor will mark it with due consideration. We needed a way of making it easier for students to flag their work with a blue card, and I have come up with the following script, which goes into the Additional HTML section in Site Administration in Moodle, and works with the Turnitin plugin. (See the next post for a script that works with Moodle assignments .) First the student clicks the button to add the blue card, which inserts the text "Blue Card: " at the start of the assignment title. When the form is submitted, the JavaScript looks for the text "Blue Card" on the next page, colours the table cell blue and appends a link to the dyslexia marking guidelines.   <script type=" text/javascript "> var TurnitinBlueCardButton =  ' <input type="button" id="tiibluecard" value=...

I want to add a tooltip to an HTML element in Moodle, using the custom CSS available in the theme settings. I want only to use CSS, and not add any HTML or JavaScript to the page. Here's how I did it. See the Pen Popup message (pure CSS) by Yvonne Aburrow ( @vogelbeere ) on CodePen . This can be used to apply a popup message to any CSS class, and you can position the message anywhere on the page. You can style the popup message any way you want. Please view the demo in CodePen for best results.

Agile methodologies like Scrum sound amazingly efficient when presented by people who have implemented them in a non-hostile environment. But conditions are not always perfect, and things can sometimes go wrong. One of the key features of agile project methodologies is that they have different types of meetings . Each different type of meeting has a very specific function. They can become tedious and unproductive if they deviate from the prescribed form and function. With that in mind, let's look at the different types of meeting, how they are meant to work, and what can go wrong. Three Amigos     © Copyright  Peter Trimming  and licensed for  reuse  under this  Creative Commons Licence . Three Amigos This is a relatively new type of meeting in the agile toolkit, and was developed in 2013 . Essentially, this is a meeting during which the business analyst (BA) presents the requirements and tests for a new feature. The Three Amigos (BA, developer, and QA...

Sometimes you need to upload a printable document, such as a flyer, a newsletter, or an information sheet to your blog or website. The Blogger tool (unlike Google Sites) doesn't have the facility to attach documents. Fortunately, you can create a public folder for documents on Google Drive, and link to it from your blog. Here is a step-by-step guide to how to do that. Step-by-step guide: Creating a public folder You only need to do this once for any group of documents associated with a particular site or project. Open Google Drive and click on the NEW button. Select Folder   Give your folder a name and click CREATE Right-click on your newly-created folder and select Share... Click on Advanced  Click on Change... Select ' Public on the web ' and click SAVE , then DONE Uploading a file Next, you need to upload the file you wish to publish to your folder. You should avoid uploading Word documents for use as forms; use Google Forms instead. Open  Google Drive  ...

There are some amazing tools available for developers on the web, from pretty-printing your code to validating it, from colour palettes for visual impairments to tools for testing APIs. Here are some of my favourites. Stack Overflow This is the go-to site for questions and answers about coding. It has questions and answers on just about every programming language that you can think of - PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, JavaScript, jQuery, Angular, and more. And every environment you can think of - Windows, iOS, Android, and so on. And every mark-up and styling language - HTML, XML, CSS, and Sass. Stack Overflow has an awesome community of people willing to help complete strangers, which I think is amazing. I have learnt so much from reading Stack Overflow, and I haven't asked that many questions on there, because many of the common questions have already been asked and answered. User Experience This is the equivalent site to Stack Overflow for asking user experience questions (usability an...

So you have a Google document that you want to display on your Blogger blog or website. It's actually fairly simple to embed Google Documents in a Blogger blogpost or page. How to embed a Google Document Open your Google Document for viewing Click View, then Full Screen Copy the URL of the Google Document from the address bar of your browser Go to Blogger, create a new blgopost or edit an existing one Switch to HTML view Paste the URL that you copied in Step 3 anywhere in the code (this is only temporary) Copy the following code, and paste it into your HTML where you want the document to be embedded. < iframe   src =" https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GVBowL69OnrHbNLwnFGJDiNuoS1Fs712tpdQkfu9DDc/ " width ="480" height ="520" > < /iframe > Replace the highlighted URL above with the URL that you copied in step 3.

So you have a Google presentation that you want to display on your Blogger blog or website. It's actually fairly simple to embed Google Slides in a Blogger blogpost or page. How to embed a Google Presentation Open your Google Presentation for viewing Select Publish to the web Click on Embed  Select "Small (480x299)" under slide size and "every 5 seconds" under Auto-advance slides. Click Publish Select the HTML code in the text box and press Ctrl C on the keyboard to copy it. Go to Blogger and create a new post, or open an existing post for editing. Switch to HTML view. Paste the code you copied above into the blogpost. Save and publish your blogpost. Example of an embedded presentation

FontAwesome is a nifty icon set that you can use anywhere that you can edit HTML. For example, you can use it in Moodle to display a symbol. Step 1. Go to edit mode and find the text region you want to edit. Step 2. Click on the first button on the toolbar (to show more buttons) Step 3. Click on the HTML edit mode button  <> Step 4. Go to  FontAwesome icons  and click on the one you want to use If your icon is purely for decorative purposes, use this code: <i class= "fa fa-tree" aria-hidden= "true" ></i> If it has a semantic meaning, use this code: <i class= "fa fa-tree" ></i> To improve web accessibility , FontAwesome recommend using aria-hidden="true" to hide icons used purely for decoration. Step 5. Paste the HTML into the Moodle text box Step 6. Turn off HTML editing (click on the HTML edit mode button  <>  again) Now you have a tree in your text box! Need to make it bigger?  Go back to HTML edit mode...

An easy-to-read prose style is the first thing you need to get people to read your posts. Here are a few pointers: Say what you mean Use an appropriate tone Call a spade a spade – don’t say ‘utilise’ when you mean ‘use’ Vary your sentence length – too many short sentences is ‘choppy’; too many long sentences is boring. Avoid passive voice, e.g. ‘the business was lost by the inability of the sales team to convince the buyer of the uniqueness of their product’ (replace with ‘the sales team lost the business because they couldn’t convince the buyer that their product was unique’) Avoid clichés and stock phrases, e.g. France bit off more than it could chew in Vietnam , and America’s intervention was too little, too late . Avoid too many qualifiers, e.g. Most people usually think that many puppies are generally pretty cute. Avoid too many prepositional phrases, e.g. “the organisational culture of [your organisation]” could be replaced with “the way [your organisation] is organised”. Avoid t...