Developing ODS Moodle plugin - introduction for future developers

The main target of the current activity is to make an introduction and give all the necessary guidelines for the Moodle Blocks that have been developed to enable the alignment of Moodle installations with ODS portal.

The objective behind these modules is to facilitate the inclusion of stakeholders that use Moodle installations in ODS, since there are several schools that use Moodle to organize their content and support their learning activities. In this context, two Moodle Blocks were implemented. The first one provides access to the ODS repository search services and uses a generic JavaScript-based component. The second Moodle block provides the necessary functionality to enable harvesting of Moodle courses from the ODS harvester, thus offering the capability to the users of a Moodle installations that uses this block to publish their educational content in the ODS repository. The first block essentially provides basic-level alignment while the second block provides a systematic way of entry-level alignment of Moodle installations.

To support all interested stakeholders to make use and take advantage from these developments, two guides have been implemented and are provided in this activity. The first is for developers and the second is for Moodle administrators and include the following:

Developers guide:

• Introduction – scope and general description
• Supported Moodle versions and main configuration
• Guidelines for expanding the module- configuration and scheduling
• Guidelines for supporting Moodle content
• Checking and implementation steps

Administrators guide:

• Introduction & scope
• Description of Moodle blocks
• Installation and remove installation guidelines
• Configuration guidelines
• Examples for the use of ODS OAI-PMH Moodle block
• Localization
• OAI-PMH Data source target

Please, follow the urls below in "Useful Links" to find the detailed guides and a presentation of all steps.

References:

S.Tomić, V. Paunović, K. Zimmer, "Searching and exposing learning objects from Moodle: The ODS experience", Bulletin of the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology, Volume 17, Number 1-2, April 2015