1. MONASH ENGINEERING
MoodleBOT
The development of an automated intelligent support system for Moodle designers
Luke Low

2. Context
| Victoria University: Lecturer of Innovative Pedagogies
| PSA: Senior eLearning and Instructional Designer
2016- | Monash University: Online learning system coordinator

3. Beginnings
Was set a task to automate the process of rolling over units for the new semester
Endeavour was a failure
Learnt how to automate others processes in Moodle

4. Reality about academia
Time poor
High cognitive load
The time between setting up Moodle activities can be somewhat lengthy
New and powerful tool as a learning admin

5. What is MoodleBot?

6. Example
Create links to unit guide for a variety of units formed as
Change permissions set so that only admin can hide, move or delete the link
~150 times per semester

7. Example

8. What is my purpose?
Automation tool for labour intensive repetitive tasks
Persistent Moodle grammar checker
Informed training needs analysis
Predictive support model (future development)

9. What is MoodleBot?

10. Increase capacity to do more for academics
Results have been
Increase capacity to do more for academics
KEY: 27 critical incidents were prevented last semester
This early detection results:
improves perceived quality from staff and students
reduces workload for academics and support staff
Insight into Moodle usage in the faculty

11. Creating your first script

12. What you will need
Selenium WebDriver
Selenium IDE*
An IDE that supports a language you are comfortable with
Know how Moodle users URL query string parameters eg yourdomain.com.au/course/search.php?search=XXX

13. Things to avoid
Don’t record your username and password
Don’t go too fast, put plenty of intentional breaks into the code
Don’t test on a production server
Test your scripts thoroughly
Know your servers limits

14. Our script
View a course
Login
Turn editing on
Add a URL
Configure it

15. Start recording
Open Selenium IDE Start recording

16. Recording - output

17. Recording - cleanup

18. Recording - cleanup

19. Recording - polished output

20. Test to see if it works….still

21. Export to Python / Web Driver

22. Python script - Raw

23. Python script - Raw

24. Python script - Raw

25. Python script - clean up

26. Python script - clean up

27. Python script - clean up

28. Python script - clean up

29. Python script - clean up

30. Python script - clean up

31. Slowing things down

32. Slowing things down

33. Summary
Automation for Selenium
Powerful tool for system admins
Clean data from recording system
Put breaks into programming
Take care of your educators

34. Questions