09 Moodleposium Day 1 & 2



Moodleposium 7-8 September, 2009 Canberra

jjfbbennett notes

The Moodleposium was fantastic - Many Universities are moving to Moodle as their WEBCT license comes to an end. 3 cheers for blackboard for making Moodle 'the option' as it turns 2.

Official site Moodleposium

Moodle session 1 Keynote Denise Kirpatrick, Pro Vice-Chancellor Learning, Teaching and Quality Open University UK

  • open university is primarily Distance Ed with only 1 lecture room
  • Over 220,000 students with over 8000 lectures & tutors
  • Central academics create content - with media people as support - required an LMS which is easy to create with
  • UK wants to use online to regain academic status - as it has lost its leadership in international education - more effective leadership is required in online eLearning.
  • OU took a while to move to Moodle because big can mean slow to move
    • 2004 selected Moodle
    • Reasons - OU saw Moodle as an opportunity to engage in world wide community - open-source seen as important place to be for education.
  • Course development
    • All course development is team based
    • small teams with short course life - past was based on long course life
    • Preference and movement from not making it up as you go. (This could be an objective for @School NT - courses are managed by faculties or cross school Teams)
  • OU cannot support the high physical resource based subjects
    • Where possible physical materials are made virtual (Rich-media)
      • an example: Rocks replaced by photos with a virtual microscope
      • soon to be an app for iPhone
  • Moodle Calender is important.
    • Central is the Calender is feedback - OU runs multiple calenders
  • Objective is to gain Instant automatic formative assessment (e-assessment)
    • Use of Moodle quiz
  • One place build
    • Use of Moodle and Moodle wiki - one space to remove confusion.
  • Future tools
    • e-books
    • voice function on mobile for language
  • Present tools
    • Asynchronous & Synchronous - Elluminate integration with Moodle
    • Secondlife & Facebook employed
      • integrate Secondlife & Facebook into Moodle.
      • Secondlife offers a sense of place
      • Example given of doing a science experiment (can't go past go until certain experiments are completed.
      • Social life is important for education for engagement. (@School NT needs students to be able to effectively operate in a virtual social environment)
  • OU needs data for course development marketing & changing perspectives.
    • Competing forces for shrinking $s
    • Moodle provides data
  • Staff development
    • Communities of practice almost sustaining itself
      • Use moodle.org
      • Teachers need rewards, incentives and recognitions (@School NT needs to consider these as teachers move from 0.2 release support)
      • Reward those who adapt and reuse. for quick course development
  • Moodle - modification vs Vanilla
    • OU has questioned how far do you modify but stay within the moodle environment.
    • Modification can make upgrading complicated
    • OU wants to share is - Sharing is more important than modification
    • All OU created blocks and Modules are passed back into moodle.org
    • Present tough economics means efficiencies -
      • Course development efficiencies
      • User contributed efficiencies
      • Formative assessment efficiencies
      • Communication efficiencies
  • Student Access
    • Identified bottom poor supplied with laptop and broadband.
    • Digital literacy is important for all students for society participation.
  • Intellectual and copyright management is a big workload. (@School NT requires an AO who works with Intellectual Property position to comply all courses)
  • OU is building a future based business.
    • Moodle is modular and can incorporate change
    • Need to look forward - What impact is web 3

Moodle session 2: Management Lessons Learned Leaders from Massey U, CIT, OU, ANU, CU

  • Canberra Institute of Technology CIT moved from WEBct to Moodle
    • Technologies -> WIMBA, Moodle, Equella
    • Netspot manages the suit (@School NT should consider employing Netspot services)
    • CIT entering into pilot stage with Moodle
  • CIT manages large scale staff PD
  • Students access headsets & webcams in bookshops (@School NT should consider the same)

  • Massey University New Zealand Mark Brown
    • largest distance Ed provider in NZ 18000 students
    • moved from WEBct to Moodle

  • Today's earners have new expectations
    • investing in our digital future
      • digital literacy is essential for graduates
    • Investigating scenarios in social learning
    • Google generation
    • Knowledge generating society
  • adoption of Moodle - project methodology
  • Massey University has a project assurance position
    • To assure quality of service
  • Rebranded Moodle as stream
  • Contracts a private organisation similar to Netspot
  • Course development is not individual based
    • Faculty team based
    • Aims to break down silos within organisations
  • Finding staff who can work within digital literacies is a challenge

    Australia National University

  • Moodle rebadged as wattle
  • huge campus and is an on-campus site
  • one campus but 7 independent academic schools
    • bringing in Moodle across 7 areas has been a challenge
    • Agreement has occurred
  • Netspot hosts
  • Interest note: limited parking influences subject availability
    • This influence altered with Moodle
    • With online enrolment via Moodle some subject enrolments substantially grew.
    • Lectures streamed to Moodle
  • Student use
    • 2002 less than 10000 hits on WEBCT
    • 2009 -1500000 hits per month
  • Professional Development
    • 1st wave Professional Development (Skills based) in Moodle tools
    • 2nd wave Professional Development in Moodle pedagogy

    University of Canberra

  • Moved from WEBct to Moodle
    • 2007 moved to Moodle
    • 2008 pilot 50 courses
    • April 2009 97% undergraduate have some Moodle use
      • no WEBct in 2009
      • 1500 Moodle units
  • Netspot helped with quick uptake
  • Communication is essential for Teacher, Admin and Executive buy in
    • need to use Moodle name to for buy-in
  • Pedagogy
    • Biggest focus to move to Constructivist from Instructivist
  • From the Audience
    • movement from WEBct to Moodle because WEBct was closing down
    • Blackboard too expensive
    • Janison NSW department decided not to go with janison
      • Most of TAFE NSW chose Moodle over Janison
      • Janison was seen as an Instructivist
      • Moodle seen as more constructivist

Moodle session 3: Martin Dougiamas

Moodle Creator

  • There are over 500 sites with over 10000 users
  • 21 million users 47000 installs
  • Communities need a driver to get established
    • http://moodle.org has an established community
    • Aims to extend the possibilities of communities
  • Moodle 2.0
  • Key areas for Moodle development
    • Administration, control, integration, usability, pedagogy
  • Moodle heading towards integrating many technologies iPhone & flash
    • Moodle to have the architecture to be wired up many devices via API
  • New focus
    • Better activity and course completion capacity
    • Student progress tracking
    • Link image repositories to image dialog > flicker and other proprietary image database
  • Check out new tools via http://test.moodle.org/
  • New Tool - record from webcam in Moodle
    • New side panel that pops out - making a better look
  • Portfolio capacity
    • Push out to Flickr, Google docs and other content repositories
    • Google
      • There is a strong integration with Google docs and Gmail
      • Google uses moodle for training
    • Moodle now works with ms webmail (Good for @School NT - need to check it out)
  • Pedagogy Focus
    • It seems most LMS don't get past content "dump and push mentality"
      • Avoid "dump and push" by combining the activities into sequences that leads into other areas
      • learning design is important or dump and push will dominate.
    • Some get to passive forum
      • Teachers need to facilitate forms
      • Teachers need to be active drivers
    • Some get to quizzes
    • Need to get wikis, glossary content via social collaboration
      • User contribution is important
  • Advise to move away from @dump and push
    • Introduction external activities & games
    • Use peer review modules like workshop
    • Employ survey tools and logs to study and reflect on engagement
    • Share ideas by becoming involved in active research communities
  • Moodle Vision
    • Moodle now will focus on pedagogy for the 2.x series
    • Moodle hub
      • connecting sites
      • hubs registered on moodle.org
      • users can search across hubs
      • ordinary site + publishing site + community site

Moodle session 4, 5 & 6

Netspot Mark Drechsler

http://www.netspot.com.au/

http://www.movetomoodle.com.au/

  • Netspot can alter Moodle (@School NT to negotiate with Netspot)
    • Provide surety of modules and blocks
    • Provide surety of upgrades
    • best thing about Moodle is it's capacity to plugging
    • Netspot can make Moodle flexible without side effects

  • Lightbox plug-in - This is very polished gallery plug-in
  • Feedback plug-in - This will provide a fully functional survey capacity

  • UPGRADE 2 - Advise
    • Moodle 2 should run faster than 1.9php 5.2.8
    • php is advised to Linix
    • MS SQL is a risk
    • mysql is the preferred

  • Reasons to seek Netspot support
    • files on disk will be moved
    • roles and permissions change
    • small sites no problems - should be OK for @School NT
      • big site may take hours
    • most 3rd party modules will break
    • themes now have power

    Vanilla vs Flavour

  • Vanilla is Moodle as it downloads
    • Flavor is Moodle altered
  • Glossaries should be used as they provide automated knowledge
    • strength is in auto link
    • student entry is favourable - user developed content
    • can export glossaries from one to another

  • There was a interest is the question - what motivates students to read & write?

  • FLEX:ED CIT - Kerry Traninger
  • 10 weeks to create a full course with graphic design support
  • Advise
    • Focus on authentic learning
    • Use adapted webquests
    • Have ice breakers
  • use rich media like YouTube
  • Physics: electromagnetic spectrum song

  • University of Canberra
    • Template warning: course list - can be unmanageable
    • Use mymoodle on login
      • This gives enrolled courses, announcements, grades and announcements
  • Developing a select filter for courses

  • trying not to get teacher developers stuck on the escalator
    • Use and apply user generated content and already created content
    • Teachers as rich media developers are at risk on getting stuck.
  • Employ modules rather than hack Moodle
    • Hacking is no good for upgrades
  • Moodle is a box of options
    • teachers use what tool they need
    • Use options such as OpenID, podcast, mahara, LAMS etc
    • mahara is an opensource portfolio - can plug into Moodle
    • Lightbox is an excellent image gallery
    • second life sloodlemolacule editor
    • Google full integration
    • Edumate - student management - creates courses in moodle - push & pull data
    • ldap tree can create and populate - seek Netspot assistance
    • Accordian & tabs settings - teachers can choose in course setting
    • Course menu in Moodle 2 is better than Accordian
    • Book module is a must
      • Large web pages broken into smaller pages
      • Resource files placed into pages
      • book module can be scormed
    • certificate module - for completion of modules
    • Dialogue module - messages between teacher and students
      • This is far better than email
    • playpen.moodle.com - check it out
    • dimdim module
    • skype can be used within user profiles
  • When course finishes reset after backup
    • Backup zip course can be upload into SharePoint or archived

Moodle session 7 & 8

Massey university

  • Massey University courses are free but pay for assessment
    • Lecturers have a significant assessment time load
    • Multiple Lecturers assess the same course
  • Lightwork - assessment tool developed by Massey University
    • lightwork requires a client - not an Internet based tool. it downloads course assessment students
    • can have multiple assessors
    • connect /download / mark / upload
    • To remove time wasting in assessment
  • Lecturers - many see computers as a distraction
  • Quote: "Bringing change in a university is like shifting a graveyard"
    • I have only 5 years to retirement
    • A perceived "Workload Increase" used as an excuse
  • http://lightwork.org.nz
  • many courses now require a team management.
  • feedback via audio

    WEB2.0

  • The Benefits of Web 2.0 are
    • The capacity to share
    • connected knowledge
    • Offers alternatives to content based dump and pump
    • Rapid development via user contributed content
  • Moodle can embed
    • flicker tag shows, Twitter RSS feeds & RSS feeds from Internal Moodle
    • tags on personal profiles can be called upon
  • Moodle wiki is basic however alternatives Ouwiki and Nwiki can be used.
  • Mahara blog integrates with Moodle & is better blog
  • Moodle 2 will have better blogs and wikis (This is perhaps the best option for @School NT)
  • Web 2.0 options
    • Need to consider -> the feature set - the management issues - the risk
    • Need to consider education need vs personal need
  • To employ Web 2.0 consider the risks vs the outcomes
  • 3 Key options
    • module options (Low risks)
    • integrated options (Moderate risks)
    • independent options (High risks)

    Un-Moodling Moodle Options

  • Moodle suffers when there are lots of topics & resources
    • scroll of death
  • To avoid scroll of death
    • replace many pages with a directory
    • use a Moodle book option
    • Use a wiki instead of many index links
    • can get URL of collapsed topics and make a graphical interface
      • Graphical links hit the collapse topic URL

  • moodle unseen YouTube video
  • can hide the bottom topics in course settings
  • course menu block gives a tree on the side - looks good

  • dragmath editor instead of latex math is a better math editor for secondary educators
  • openshare block - open sections to world
  • mymoodle page
    • This should be open on the login
  • Moodle Tricks
    • audio video - highlight space for embed link This makes a more even look
    • dialog good way of tracking communication
      • need to select seperate groups for all participants option is the module settings
      • better than email
  • statistics via Moodle is better than blackboard and WEBct
  • Moodle aims is to be simple
    • "to be simple enough that even teachers can use it"













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