Stage 3
Introduction
During the requirements capture phase, the desire to hold
real time chat sessions was expressed by several members of
the ICT staff, to allow real time question and answer sessions
to take place outside of regular classroom hours. Although
this functionality was deemed outside of the core requirements
for the environment, this was added as an extension after
the core functionality had been implemented within stages
1 and 2.
The Implementation of Chat Session
After the core functionality of the system had been addressed,
a chat session was introduced into the system to allow students
and teachers to communicate outside of regular classroom hours.
The idea behind this addition was that regular advice sessions
would be made available to students through the environment
where teachers would address students’ questions and
concerns in real time and students could be encouraged to
assist each other.
To demonstrate the functionality available within the Moodle
real time chat module, a chat session was created on the test
platform and accessed via several web browsers all logged
into the test system as different users. This chat session
was then used to demonstrate how the real time chat session
would work.
Problems found during Demonstration
During the demonstration, two issues became apparent. Firstly
within the Moodle chat environment users are provided with
the ability to make other users’ machines beep via a
link next to each users details and a command line option.
This functionality is provided to gain the attention of desired
users. It was felt however by the Head of ICT that this facility
would be abused by students if made available to them and
should therefore be removed. It was also noticed during demonstration
that only first names were used to identify speakers. This
would mean that if several users all shared the same first
name and were using the system at the same time, it would
be difficult to identify which user was communicating.
As Moodle offers no option to switch the beep function off,
to address the issue of the beeping, it was again necessary
to inspect the Moodle source code although this time it was
the code responsible for the chat functionality. After spending
many hours trying to remove the beep functionality completely,
it was decided that this was too difficult to achieve. Therefore
an alternative solution was derived whereby the link used
to activate the beep function would be removed completely
from the system as well as any reference to the beep functionality
within the Moodle help documentation. This was deemed sufficient,
as when the chat functionality is added to the live system,
users would never have experienced the beep function and the
chances of them guessing the command to use at the command
line would be very slim. This issue would have to be reassessed
should the students become aware of the beep command.
To modify the chat system so that it displayed the full name
of the speaker rather than just their first name, it was necessary
to first locate exactly where the display of messages was
being carried out. This proved to be very difficult to locate
as the source code for Moodle is very poorly commented. Although
once located the modification was very simple to administer.
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