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Streamlining the results management process using Moodle: a collaboration between Monash University and Catalyst IT.

Catalyst IT has a long standing relationship with Monash University, working together to experiment and innovate with Moodle LMS. Through our work, we help extend the possibilities of the Moodle product and support a sustainable educational framework for the open source community.

One of our recent collaborative projects, which took a few years of dedication but was well worth it, was focused on streamlining the University’s assessment results processing in Moodle.

All the key areas of the results processing:

• Validating results
• Submitting results
• Preparing Chief Examiner’s Report and
• Processing amendments

required reviews and improvements.

Problem

The common problems with results processing for universities and other higher education providers include:

• Manual data entry errors
• Transfer of data between systems (using spreadsheets)
• Delays in grading
• Inconsistent grading standards (between individual markers or faculties, for example), which make it difficult to prepare the Chief Examiner’s Report and to analyse results data
• Inadequate moderation or review processes
• Manual administrative tasks, delaying the process and taking up a lot of resources (making amendments to grades, for example, can be very laborious if multiple parties, systems or record files are involved)
• High volume of student enquiries for grade reviews, adding to the administrative burden, slowing down the review process and affecting the overall student experience
• Regulatory compliance, including standard grading requirements and accreditation standards – adhering to that is difficult if there is no standardisation and automated workflows in place in the results processing system
• Generating and analysing statistics is difficult – having data from multiple sources may not provide a holistic view on areas of concern such as at risk students

Solution

Result Submissions at Monash University – Before and After

Previously, Monash University relied on Callista Grade Export, manual transfer of data between systems i.e. Callista and Moodle (using spreadsheets), and manual amendment forms to manage results.

The inconsistency in marking approaches, and the timing of marking, between markers made it difficult to keep the process efficient, perform result reviews and avoid administrative burden.

Investigation:

Workshops with representatives of all 10 faculties, have been held to identify and action a roadmap to a more standardised, streamlined solution.

Above: ‘Streamlining the results process using Moodle’ presentation snippet from MoodleMoot Australia 2024 – presented by Ankur Agrawal of Monash University 

Process

As a result of this investigation exercise, a suite of four required Moodle Plugins was identified and developed, including:

1. Manage Results
2. Submit Results
3. Amend Results
4. Chief Examiner’s Report

This was a complex project that required a lot of resources and had a big change management component as well.

Monash University worked closely with Catalyst IT, having Catalyst developers embedded into the Monash team to deliver each phase using the Agile methodology to release all the features.

The release of Manage Results and Submit Results plugins was the initial phase and a quite significant part of the entire project.

Amend results followed about 6 months later, with Chief Examiners Report another 12-18 months after the first deployment.

Results

Having implemented all four plugins, enabled Monash University to keep all the four key areas of results management process within Moodle – avoiding third party systems and data transfers, and allowing for certain standards and requirements to be built into the system while automating the workflows and achieving consistency enterprise wide.

The following benefits have been achieved as a result of rolling out this suite of Moodle plugins:

• Centralised access to results
• Standardisation of grade letters across the University faculties
• Standardisation of grade rounding
• Fewer errors in results submission
• Improved workflows – not only the elimination of manual errors but significant reduction in admin hours was achieved; in addition, employees were in-built into the workflow – it was clear who is responsible for what at each stage
• Ability for students to apply for a deferral without manual forms and processing
• Ability to withhold results for the entire cohort if needed
• Timeliness, consistency and collation of all necessary data in time for the Board of Examiners meeting was now possible and easier
• All data pulling from Moodle to Chief Examiner Report is configurable
• Visual reports are now possible
• Validation of results and of any errors now happened directly in Moodle
• Faculty-specific and site-wide questions were embedded in the Chief Examiners Report
• The Results Auditing process also became more streamlined and user friendly – the Chief Examiner Report versions were now archived in a downloadable PDF format – making it easy to find and refer to previous versions

Streamlined results management success over the years

The overall outcome of this project is an end-to-end transformation of the results management process across the University, leading to improved efficiency, consistency, security and accuracy. In a period of two years, and as of November 2024, more than one million results have been submitted using the new interface, and 150,000+ results amended without any issues.

The two to three years of development work that has gone into this project was truly worth it.  Once again, this project highlights the power of open source software and the freedom to innovate that it provides.   

Catalyst IT thanks Monash University for sharing their journey of optimising data management systems and for trusting us with their Moodle projects. We look forward to working together on other exciting developments in the near future.

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