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Hello! In this video, we will be talking about how to use Firefox browser and a little bookmarklet in Firefox.
In order to count the number of posts that students participated in a forum in Moodle.
First thing first, download Firefox! Simply google it, and you should see Firefox on your results, which will take you to the download page.
It won't take long, because it is just an installer. Once you have it, click to execute and it will download the real Firefox program.
Uncheck this box since I don't want Firefox to be a default browser, then click install. I will be back when it's done.
OK, now it's done. I don't want to import anything, so choose the appropriate option for that. We only want Firefox for one thing, count the number of posts from forum.
Now we have Firefox. Next thing is to find a tool to work on Firefox. It's called SNAPP.
You will get it on the first result. The actual name is Social Networks Adapting Pedagogical Practice.
Go the the page, and go to Install SNAPP menu. And you need to give some information to the site.
I'll just skip the email update. Then choose Moodle, and SNAPP 2.1 (it doesn't really matter, you will be able to use both versions anyway).
Then the CAPTCHA. Press "Get SNAPP". Opp, a little trouble. Let's try again.
Now we are in the bookmarklet page. There are a few steps here. I recommend Firefox, it's far more stable comparing to IE.
What we need to do is to drag and drop the bookmarklet to our browser.
So what to have to do is this, go to Firefox menu / Options / Bookmarks Toolbar.
Then you'll see this additional bar below the address bar.
Next, grab the SNAPP and drop it on the toolbar, you can do that for both versions.
Now we have Firefox, and SNAPP tools. Next is to get Java installed in our machine.
So go ahead and search for Java. I recommend the ORACLE site. Let's see if I can find it.
OK, you should go to java.com/en/download/index.jsp then choose Free Java Download button.
Once you get the installer, run it. This will take a while, so I'll be back after this.
Ok, it's done downloading. Now it will install Java. Again, this will take some time.
OK, you will get a pop-up windows saying "You have successfully installed Java".
Close that window and Firefox will verify your Java. And it won't work (because you have to restart the browser first).
After you restart Firefox, go to the Moodle that you want to count the number of posts in a forum. This is an easy part :)
Navigate to the forum page. Make sure that you are in a forum page, otherwise SNAPP won't work.
Let me try this on the course homepage. When you click SNAPP, you will get an error because SNAPP couldn't find forum.
Now let's get back to the forum and click the bookmarklet button.
You can observe that SNAPP is running if you see some weird thing running on your screen. This will take quite sometime.
When it's done, you can see many little boxes on top of the left menu, don't worry about it. Go down to the bottom of the page.
Again, make sure you restart the browser. Click to Activate Java. Allow and Remember.
Then click I accept the risk and want to run this app, and click Run.
Now you will get the communication network and network scores below.
Let's change the network layout to better understand this social interaction. Choose Spring Layout.
You can also zoom in or zoom out, or use mouse to pan the network.
This is an overview of your class on how they interact.
The lower part is numerical data, showing the number of interactions.
No Posts stands for number of posts.
Degree is a aggregate number of incoming and outgoing posts, as you can see from the upper network diagram.
For example, the second student "Aukit" has 2 in-degree and 8 out-degree, meaning that he replied to friends 8 times in total, and received 2 replies from others.
This is the quantitative measurement that we can use to grade students.
To export these data, we can just cut and paste these data into notepad or Excel.
You can press Ctrl + C or right click to copy the data, then paste in Notepad or Excel.
Since I don't have Excel in this machine, I will try Notepad.
Then you can use these scores with other assignments and exams in your class.
There are many steps involved in this technique, but I hope it helps you better grade students when you want to use forum in your class.
That's it for this video, Thanks :)