Moodle plugin of the month – Inspire

The Inspire plugin implements back-ends that go beyond simple descriptive analytics to provide predictions of learner success.

Before you even think about installing this plugin, note that it is developed by Moodle HQ, and is expected to become core in a future release soon.  So unless you need this functionality right now, it may be best to wait.

This is Moodle’s official descriptive and predictive analytics engine, implementing machine learning.

It’s an interesting animal – not quite seeming to fit with a corporate training requirement, and too limited (currently) to provide high-end data for University level perhaps ?  The main features are:

• A built-in prediction model for Students at risk of dropping out of courses.
• A set of student engagement indicators.
• Tools to evaluate models against your site’s data.
• Push notifications for Teachers using Events.

It is worth noting that the prediction model requires that Courses have fixed start and end dates, and so it is not designed to be used with rolling enrollment courses – we’re not sure how this actually works with courses that are ‘reset’ and run again yet ?

https://moodle.org/plugins/tool_inspire

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Stuart Mealor

Managing Director at HRDNZ

Stuart is interested in all things e-learning, with specific interests in Moodle, e-learning strategy, and business development.His experience in education over 30 years, MBA in International Business, and knowledge of e-learning systems implementation, together with graphic design background, give him a unique skill set for e-learning projects.

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