Weighting Influence of Learning Progress Objects

1 Requirements

By now (ILIAS version 5.0), learning progress objects which determine the status of a superordinated object (e.g., a course) cannot be weighted, so the influence of any object on the overall learning progress (LP) status is equal, even if one is a short and simple exercise and another one is a hard and complicated test.

It would strongly enrich the tracking and didactical options in ILIAS if such an enhancement was implemented:

• Course administrators (as well as members) could gain a more exact insight into the(ir) processing status in the course.
• In further developments, the "passed" status of a course could be triggered by a configurable minimum fraction of the LP (similar to the minimum score needed to comply with a learning objective).

There are two ways a weighting function could look like (in the "Settings" view of the "Learning Progress" tab):

• The weighting values across all objects have to equal 100 (percent). In case the user enters values summing up to more or less than 100, …

  • ILIAS refuses to save the entries (but keeps them in the form)
  • ILIAS displays the value differing from 100 (positiv or negative)
  Advantages:
  • User is forced to develop a consistent weighting pattern.

• ILIAS is automatically summing up the weighting values entered by the user and
  calculating the fraction of each single value compared to the sum.
  The default value for each object is "1".
  Advantages:

  • User is not stuck to a percentage scheme.
  • There is no possible "bad value" to be considered by ILIAS.
  • It is easier to handle special situations as dewscribed below in "Implications to be considered".
  I would prefer this approach (and I'll refer to it in the following).

1.1 Affected Features

Functionality as outlined above could be implemented for the following situations:

• Course / group / folder with LP setting "Automatic by collection of objects"
• Course with objective-oriented view
• SCORM learning module with more than one SCO
• ILIAS learning module with LP settings "… (by chapter)"

1.2 Implications to be Considered

• Groupings of LP objects:
  How is ILIAS supposed to react when a user …

  • establishes a grouping of objects for which weighting values already have been stated before?
  • dissolves a grouping of objects for which a (joint) weighting value already have been stated before?
  Suggestion:
  • When establishing a grouping of objects, the weighting value of the grouping is automatically reset to "1".

• Adding / removing LP objects:
  How is ILIAS supposed to react when a user adds / removes objects relevant to the LP?
  This refers to different actions:

  • Removing the objects themselves.
  • Declaring objects not to be relevant for the LP anymore.
  • Declaring additional objects to be relevant.
  Suggestion: In any case, the weighting value of the remaining ones is recalculated.

• Considering percentage values sent by single LP objects?
  Only some objects types are capable of tracking percentages of processing / success values:

  • Tests are featuring a percentage value of achieved scores.
  • SCORM modules are featuring a percentage value of processed SCOs (however, by now the SCOs of a module cannot be weighted, either)
  For reasons of comparability and programming effort, I'd prefer percentage values sent by single LP objects should not be considered.

2 Status

• Scheduled for: Not scheduled yet (will be set by Jour Fixe)
• Funding: Required
• Maintainer: (will be set by Jour Fixe)
• Implementation of the feature is done by tbd
• Contract settled: No
• Tested by / status: tbd

3 Additional Information

Contact the following persons if you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding:

• Information about concept: Florian Suittenpointner (suittenpointner [at] qualitus [dot] de
  
• Information about funding: tbd
• Information about implementation: tbd

4 Discussion

Zenzen, Enrico [ezenzen], 24 AUG 2022: This request no longer fulfills the requirements of the Feature Wiki. In consultation with the maintainer I change the status of the feature request to "Redundant / outdated". If the request is still relevant, please update template and mockups.

5 Implementation

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