Lambda Solutions e-Learning 2.0 Online Training and Moodle Experts

In response to our Moodle Mondays the following questions was asked by a participant:

When I delete an account, I know that the grade records are still kept with the class. How can I access the records with the account gone or unassigned from the class?
Furthermore, by deleting a class, would the students' grades also be erased?

Here is the answer as we see it:

Point1:
You might have to reassign the student back to the class in order to get that info. A way to avoid this is to run the course as a new course every term or semester. Simply backup the old course without user info and then restore it as a new course.

Point2:
If you delete a course all of the students grades go with it as well. You should back up and archive the course before deleting. Our completion module permanently stores the users grades.

As always please feel free to contact us if you are looking for Moodle support, hosting or training.

Lately I’ve gotten lots of requests in regards to rapid eLearning development specifically in regards to Articulate. Recently a client asked if Articulate was the best tool to use to convert PowerPoint into Flash because we had experienced some image degradation during one of our projects where we converted some PowerPoints with Articulate and then integrated them into Moodle. Well in order to find out I asked one of the smart guys here to do a quick analysis and this is what he found out:

"To answer your question about image degradation in Articulate, this has a lot to do with the compression the software does to make the course WEB ready. This compression can be customized based on how the material is being delivered. We normally compress it for CD quality, as opposed to WEB, to get better picture quality. But in addition to this compression there is also additional compression happening in the background with PowerPoint itself. That is why it is advisable to always ask the clients to provide us with image files (or *png) instead of images/screen shots embedded in WORD or PowerPoint to minimize any uncontrollable compression. Ideally the images used in the courses are of high-resolution (minimum 200 pixels per inch). "

"As for tools, I have assessed the following ppt2flash tools:
Articulate, Adobe Presenter, Wondershare and Ppt to Flash Studio Conversion.
Articulate had all 95% of the features of the other tools with the additional features of:

Of the applications outlined above Articulate offers better value and seems to offer more advanced features. The quizzing features in all the software are comparable….basic."

So there you go.