Last week, I reported on my experience with staff in a district choosing to “cease the teachable moment” by turning off Moodle messaging. There were some excellent comments offered, but I have to confess, I truly enjoyed one posted today.

I was delighted to read this comment from Suzanne Dreyer that offered a different approach.

So delighted that it’s worth sharing here as a comment hoist! Suzanne also introduces a Message Log Report module. A little about that module:

Admin report that provides log of messages sent by users in your Moodle install. Report can be sorted in several ways and filtered by the user involved (both to and from), or just by the user it is from or to.

To see the user’s profile, click on their name. To see messages involving that user, click on the [more] link below their name. Or type a username into the Involving, From, or To fields to get a user’s messages.

PLEASE NOTE: This report is compatible with Moodle 1.9, but you must add a line to core Moodle files to make it work with Moodle 1.9.1-1.9.3. It works as expected with Moodle 1.9.4, simply copy the messagelog directory into the /admin/report directory of your install.

Here’s Suzanne’s comment:

I love the messaging system in Moodle, and with the help of the Message Log Report for 1.9+ downloaded from moodle.org, we were able to have an authentic lesson on digital citizenship.

Sixty, 6th graders ‘discovered’ messaging all by themselves, and managed to generate 1,000 messages in one week’s time! Not one message had anything to do with classwork, and many of them were sent during class!

I generated, hid the usernames, and printed the message log report. Then I showed up in their classrooms, and explained appropriate ways to use this feature. You should have seen how big their eyes got when they realized administrators can see what they write within this school resource. I explained that their ‘free-play’ with messaging was over, and they were now expected to use this feature for class business only. Since then, not one inappropriate message has been sent.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure