MoodleMoot 2011 – day 2
| April 20, 2011 | Posted by Brian Lake under Conferences, Featured |
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Hello all – day two of Moodlemoot UK.
Open university of Israel. Interesting item on the “scroll of death” – Moodle courses tend to be flat – if it is extensive, it tend to go on, and on, and on. They’ve used collapsible content items to address this.
New activities
- Files activities
- video record activity
- websites
New blocks
- Who’s online – split into sections (course, department, section)
- Smart Block – create new activities and resources and assign group premissions
Video and chat
- Video incorporated into Moodle chat
- You can watch a video and leave comments and have a conversation as you watch.
The Process
They undertook this development over a year and two months.
- Instruction of designers
- Design and best practice
- Integrate Moodle into other university systems
- Development of new features
- Course content transfer
- Quality assurance
- Teacher training
- Teachers build courses
- Pilot kickoff.
This looks to have been a deliberate process . It puts into perspective the goal of Guildford to deploy, develop and train teachers in Moodle in under 4 months. You’re provoking a rethinking of teaching methods and goals.
Daniel Mackley – York St. John University.
Presentation: “And nine months later we had Moodle”
York St. John took a “compressed” timeline – 9 months. They were using it as a secondary VLE.One of the first steps was to get hesitant people on board. Transfer of courses was a big component. What they did was to say to staff “you have to have a clean start” – this isn’t my preferred approach. The biggest change they made was based on academic feedback – but they could only upload one file at a time.
They needed a way to upload more – multiple file upload. Should we do this via Webdav? hard to say.
They also developed a student and staff feedback module, so they could constantly gather feedback as the development process went along.
Added an audio recording tool – nanogong likely. Also email tool and calendar notifications.
End user training was central. Staff were concerned about the move and had reseverations, despite the fact the performance of the system was much improved. Their solution was to stretch out training over several months and to develop instructional videos. This meant that staff were not dependent on the trainers. Also developed step by step guides.
They also took one day a week for faculty visits – they’d make themselves available to a faculty on fixed days for support. Also created “champions” who would have the job of being Moodle evangelists.
Technical bits – They use SITS student information system. They use active directory to establish groups that are then passed to Moodle.
They are looking at big blue button as a virtual classroom. Replacement for Wimba horizon. I keep meaning to get to this – busy busy.
The move to open source has made it much easier to collaborate. Licensing doesn’t restrict who can use the system and who can’t – you can allow external users in. They also can resolve problems quickly.
Student experience with any VLE is directly correlated with staff use. To get the staff on board students have to be enjoying and using it. Make sure your students are consulted on the design and use of Moodle at an early stage.
Did they have many problems? Short answer – no. It went very well and had very few problems. But they did this internally – no external support at all. This should be seen as a continuous process of student engagement and technical development.
lunch!
