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 Development Educause Australia 6th May 2009 (edaust09)

View more documents from Martin Dougiamas.

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
http://moodletraining.org
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