Activity completion in Moodle allows students and teachers to track the use of resources and activities. This information can be shown to students on the Moodle screen and in a report for teachers. It can also be used as one of the criteria for determining course completion status.
Activity completion can be set for any resource or activity within a course. Each item within the course needs to be set to enable activity completion, so we are able to choose for some items to be tracked while others are not. For the purpose of this chapter, we're only going to set assignments to be tracked, but the instructions are the same for all resources and activities.
In order for activity completion to be used, it needs to be turned on in site administration and course administration.
Once Completion tracking is turned on for the Moodle site, teachers can turn on the option within the course by going into the Administration block and clicking on Edit settings under the Course administration heading. Once in this screen, we need to scroll down and click on the Completion tracking title. Under the Enable completion tracking field, change the option to Yes to turn on this option:
Click on Save changes at the bottom of the screen. We can now add activity tracking to any resource or activity within the course. We have already set the option for a pass grade on an assignment, so we will now also add activity completion to it to see how this enables us to check progress.
- View the assignment on the screen and click on Edit settings in the Administration block.
- Scroll down and click on the Activity completion text toward the bottom of the page:
- The Completion tracking drop-down list will have three options:
- Do not indicate activity completion: The resource will appear on the Moodle course without any activity completion options.
- Students can manually mark as complete: Students will tick the activity to show that they have viewed or completed it. This is often a good choice for Moodle resources where you want to track whether the student has read the content. For example, the student ticks the activity to say they have read it as Moodle can only tell if a student has clicked on the link.
- Show activity as complete when conditions are met: Moodle will indicate whether the resource or activity has been completed or not. Depending on the type of activity, the options for completion vary. This is often the best option to choose for Moodle activities where specific tasks need to be completed.
- Choose Show activity as complete when conditions are met.
- The options below the drop-down list are the different ways in which Moodle can decide whether the activity has been completed or not and will vary depending on the type of activity. All resources and activities will have the Student must view this activity to complete it option. However, since an assignment is a graded activity, we also get the Student must receive a grade to complete this activity option. Put in a tick in the box to choose this option.
- Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on Save and return to course.
Take a look at the course screen and you will now notice a tick box icon on the right-hand side of the assignment:
The box indicates that the resource has activity completion settings associated with it, and a tick will appear in the box when the activity is complete. This icon is viewed by individual students to show their progress through the course.
Note
The tick box shown in the previous screenshot has a dotted outline. This indicates that Moodle will be adding the tick when the activity is complete. For activities where the student will mark the activity as complete, this box is shown with a solid line. Students will add a tick on the box to state that the activity has been completed. A good tip is to add instructions into the description box when setting up the activity to tell the students that they will need to click inside the box to mark the activity as complete.
By default, as soon as the assignment is graded, the activity will be marked as complete. However, as we have set a grade to pass, the activity will be marked as complete only when the assignment is graded at or above the required pass grade.
Let's take a look at how students and teachers view the activity completion information.
Students view their progress through the main course screen. Next to each item that has activity completion set up, the student will see a tick once that item has been completed. In the case of assignments with a pass grade, the student will see a tick when the assignment has been graded at the pass grade or higher. If the student does not gain the minimum grade to pass, a cross will appear next to the resource.
The following screenshot shows Task 1 on the main course screen when Madeline W is logged in:
A green tick is shown next to Task 1, which means Madeline has completed this task and has achieved at least the minimum pass grade. We can also see that Task 2 is complete. This is shown with a blue tick and a solid outline on the check box as this has been marked as complete by the student. Task 3, Task 4, and Task 5 are not yet complete as they do not have any ticks next to them. This means that either Madeline has not completed the work or the work has not yet been graded.
In the following screenshot, we can see that the course screen of Bayley W shows Task 1 with a red cross next to it to indicate that the assignment has been graded but it has not yet met the required pass grade. This shows that the activity is not yet complete.
The individual course screen and completion status of each activity will vary for each student. However, the teacher will want to see all of the completion information on one screen.
A teacher can view the students' progress through the Activity completion report which will show the activity completion status for each student of the course for each activity that has activity completion turned on. To get to this report, we need to use the Administration block and find the Reports link:
The report we need to use is Activity completion. After clicking on this option, we will see a screen similar to the following:
There are many resources within the course but this report will show only those resources and activities where activity completion has been set. We can see each student on the course listed on the left-hand side, and the activities that have activity completion settings added to them will appear across the top of the screen. This table will show the current completion status for each student and for each activity.
In the previous screenshot, we can see that one student has currently passed Task 1 and one student has not yet passed. If the assignment had not yet been submitted for any student or it hadn't been graded, there would be no color icon in the activity column as shown for Bayley W for Task 2. Cross icons appear only when grades to pass have been set and the student has not achieved the required grade.
This activity report enables the teacher to very quickly see progress on required items in the course. When used with the Grade to pass option, the teacher can very easily view how individual students are progressing in a simple format. It does not, however, provide the specific grade for each assignment, so it does not completely replace the Gradebook. We can click on the activity name in the top row and this will take us to the activity (and give access to the grades) if required. However, in courses where students only need to complete and pass specific activities, the activity completion report could be used instead of the Gradebook for progress tracking.
You will notice that it is possible to choose letters for First name and Surname to filter the group to see specific students. If you have set up groups in the course as explained in Chapter 7, Reporting with the Gradebook, the list of groups will also appear in this activity completion report to filter groups of students. You can also download this data in a spreadsheet for further use and manipulation.
If courses have lots of resources with activity completion added, this report can be quite big. However, it is possible to further select activities for reporting through the use of course completion.