moodle-local_teamwork

A Moodle local plugin that lets teachers (and optionally students) organise course participants into named teams directly on the assignment or quiz view page, with drag-and-drop cards, random-team generation, and optional voice-command control.

Use cases

Interactive team formation during class

Teachers open the Team Work panel on any assignment or quiz activity and drag students into team cards in real time — no need to leave Moodle or use a spreadsheet. Teams are instantly visible to students.

Student self-enrolment into teams

With the Choice by students feature enabled, teachers can allow students to form their own teams within a configurable time window, with limits on total teams and team size.

Group-aware quiz and assignment submission

When Team Work is active on an assignment, the submission workflow is extended to show which team a student belongs to. For quizzes it integrates with the quiz summary view so teachers can see team context alongside individual responses.

Voice-controlled classroom management

A built-in voice interface (configurable per language) lets teachers control Team Work hands-free — create a team, move a student, delete a card, or have the list read aloud — using customisable trigger phrases.

GDPR

This plugin stores the following personal data:

Data	Table	Purpose
User ID (team membership)	local_teamwork_members	Links enrolled students to named team cards
User ID (creator)	local_teamwork	Records who created the teamwork session

No data is shared with external services. Implement classes/privacy/provider.php before deploying to a GDPR-regulated environment.

Branches

Moodle version	Branch	PHP
Moodle 4.4+ (PeTeL m45)	petel_m45	8.3+
Moodle 3.9–4.3	MOODLE_39_STABLE	7.4+
Moodle 3.3–3.8	main	7.1+

Note: This plugin is maintained as part of the Weizmann Institute PeTeL platform. The canonical branch for active development is petel_m45.

Required plugins

This plugin will not function correctly without the following companion plugins. Both must be installed before running the Moodle upgrade.

assignsubmission_teamwork (mandatory)

• Path: mod/assign/submission/teamwork/
• Role: Assignment submission sub-plugin that registers the Team Work panel inside the assignment grading workflow. local_teamwork checks assign_plugin_config for records created by this sub-plugin to decide whether to activate on an assignment page. The two plugins are mutually dependent — assignsubmission_teamwork/version.php declares local_teamwork: ANY_VERSION as a formal Moodle dependency.
• Source: Distributed as part of the PeTeL plugin set. https://github.com/PeTeL-Weizmann/moodle-assignsubmission_teamwork

local_quiz_summary_option (mandatory for quiz support)

• Path: local/quiz_summary_option/
• Role: Provides \local_quiz_summary_option\funcs::get_quiz_config(), which local_teamwork calls directly to check whether Team Work is enabled for a given quiz activity. A missing plugin will cause a fatal PHP error on any quiz view page.
• Source: Developed by Catalyst IT; customized and available in the PeTeL plugin set. https://github.com/PeTeL-Weizmann/moodle-local_quiz_summary_option

Installation

1. Install companion plugins first — copy or clone assignsubmission_teamwork into mod/assign/submission/teamwork/ and local_quiz_summary_option into local/quiz_summary_option/.

2. Clone or copy this plugin into your Moodle directory:

   git clone https://github.com/PeTeL-Weizmann/moodle-local_teamwork.git local/teamwork

   or copy the folder to {moodle_root}/local/teamwork/.

3. Apply the core patch (see Applying core patches below).

4. Run the Moodle upgrade:

   php admin/cli/upgrade.php

   or visit Site administration → Notifications in a browser.

5. The plugin creates three database tables:

   • local_teamwork — one record per activity that has Team Work enabled
   • local_teamwork_groups — team cards (named groups inside a teamwork session)
   • local_teamwork_members — student→team-card membership

Team Work configuration

Navigate to Site administration → Local plugins → Team Work.

Voice control

Setting	Description	Default
Enable voice control	Master switch to activate the voice interface	Off
"OK" tokens	Wake-word phrases that activate the voice listener (one per line, per language)	ok, ok petel, hello computer, …

Voice command schemes

Each scheme defines the spoken phrase patterns that trigger a team management action. All schemes are configurable per language (English, Hebrew, Hebrew kids, Russian).

Scheme	Default phrase (English)	Action
Add a team	add a team / add new team	Creates a new unnamed team card
Create named team	please create a team {_teamname}	Creates a card with a specific name
Create N teams	create {_number} teams	Batch-creates N new cards
Move student	move {userfullname} to {teamname} card	Drags a student to a target card
Delete team	delete {teamname}	Removes a team card
Read users	read user lists	Reads the student list aloud
Read teams	read teams	Reads existing teams aloud

Teacher usage

1. Open any Assignment or Quiz activity page.
2. The Team Work panel is injected automatically when the plugin is active for that activity.
3. Use the toggle to enable/disable Team Work for the activity.
4. Manage teams via the panel:
   • Add card — creates a new team slot.
   • Drag and drop — move student chips between cards.
   • Random groups — auto-distribute students evenly.
   • Student settings — configure whether students can self-manage teams, maximum number of teams, maximum students per team, and an optional end date.
5. The group selector at the top of the panel filters by Moodle course group.

Student settings

Accessible to teachers via the Student Settings button in the Team Work panel:

Setting	Description
Choice by students	Allows students to create or join teams themselves
Numbers of teams	Maximum number of team cards students may create (0 = unlimited)
Students in each team	Suggested maximum students per card
Last date of use	Optional deadline after which student editing is disabled

Applying core patches

The rubric PDF export feature requires a one-line addition to Moodle core.

mod/assign/amd/src/grading_panel.js (line ~302)

Add the following inside the grading panel init section:

RubricExport.init(userid, function(){
    var url = $(location).attr('href');
    $(location).attr('href', url);
});

Rebuild AMD after applying: npx grunt amd --component=mod_assign

Web services (AJAX API)

All UI interactions use Moodle's AJAX web-service layer. The following functions are registered:

Function	Description
local_teamwork_render_block_html_page	Render the Team Work panel for an activity
local_teamwork_render_teamwork_html	Render the full Team Work popup
local_teamwork_set_teamwork_enable	Toggle Team Work on/off for an activity
local_teamwork_set_access_to_student	Save student-editing settings
local_teamwork_add_new_card	Create a new team card
local_teamwork_delete_card	Delete a team card
local_teamwork_show_random_popup	Show the random-groups configuration dialog
local_teamwork_set_random_teams	Generate random teams
local_teamwork_set_new_team_name	Rename a team card
local_teamwork_drag_student_card	Move a student between cards
local_teamwork_render_teams_card	Re-render team cards
local_teamwork_render_student_list	Re-render the unassigned student list
local_teamwork_save_rubrics_pdf	Export rubric as PDF
local_teamwork_delete_user_submit	Remove a student submission from a card
local_teamwork_check_user_submit	Check whether a student has a submission
local_teamwork_render_student_settings_popup	Render the student settings popup
local_teamwork_student_settings_popup_data	Save student settings

Capabilities

Capability	Default roles	Description
local/teamwork:manageteams	teacher, editingteacher, coursecreator, manager	View and manage team assignments for an activity
local/teamwork:submitinteams	student	Submit work as part of a team (reserved for future use)

Integration testing

# Run PHPUnit tests (from Moodle root)
vendor/bin/phpunit --testsuite local_teamwork_testsuite

# Run code checker
php local/codechecker/cli/checker.php --path=local/teamwork

No automated browser (Behat) tests are currently included.

Contributing and support

Pull requests are welcome. Please follow the Moodle coding style and include PHPUnit tests for any new functionality.

For commercial support or custom development, contact Devlion.

Warm thanks

• Weizmann Institute of Science PeTeL team — ongoing maintenance and feature additions
• Weizmann institute was supported by external software development company Devlion for the majority of the development work.

Maintained by Weizmann Institute — PeTeL

PeTeL (Platform for E-Teaching & E-Learning) is the Weizmann Institute of Science's custom Moodle platform, serving thousands of students across Israel with interactive science education.

License

This software is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 or later.