Books and eBooks

I was invited to present at an ‘e-Book and Content’ event the other day, which unlike so many of the venues I had been invited to before, was attended predominantly by non-academic staff. In the main the audience was made up from by library / information professionals, administrators and publishers. Much of the theme for the event naturally centred on the subject of e-Books, which many appeared to agree, was the next natural stage in publication and distribution for learning materials. The reason for my inclusion of this event in a blog on Moodle, is that if like myself you have come to feel that to become a vle, certainly in my own understanding of the term, requires more than just the copious posting of course notes onto the system, but the development of materials more consistent with an eLearning delivery platform than a class handout. Certainly there does seem to be a case for the production of content that departs from our more traditional model of chapters and indexes following a comment from a delegate who reported the difficulties that one cohort of students had identified, that certain sections of books ’do not seem to read very well’; the section in question turned out to be the index!
A general consensus expressed on behalf of library professionals seemed to center on the burden of cost exacted on them by publisher bundles, which it seems often contain publications with a very low reader frequency. I wonder if we could learn something here from the music industries experience with i-Tunes. In this age of digitised music, the needs of the market seem to being served by the granulation of the traditional album into tracks from which personalised albums can be constructed, can we not think about doing the same with chapters! If you have any views or experiences then please feel free to reply to this posting.

Moodle Cute Repository

I received an email recently describing a new content repository from the Worcester College of technology, its called MrCute and is intended to be an optional add-on to the Moodle Virtual Learning Environment. More specifically, it extends the functionality of the IMS Repository system originally developed by Alton College, UK. From their website a repository is a storage area where materials – in this case elearning materials – can be held and from where they can easily be accessed by teachers and learners. IMS (Instructional Management Standards) Global Learning Consortium is an international body which aims to set standards for interoperability between learning systems. The specific standards involved in this case are the IMS Content Packaging Standards.
MrCute will be compatible with Moodle 1.8.2 but not with earlier 1.8 versions. You may like to give this site a visit and see what you think and please remeber to get back and post your views, but it certainly sounds worth while.

Open Source Mahara and Moodle

I was wondering if anyone out there in Moodle land has thought of trying out the e-portfilio and social networking tool Mahara yet. Mahara has been designed as a means of storing evidence of lifelong learning in digital format called artifacts, a Mahara concept. An advantage to this approach is that students can display their artifacts in views depending on the intended audience; seems good in itself. In relation to Moodle, its appears that 1.9 and Mahara v0.9 support a transparent Single Sign On, all well worth a look. Please feel free to reply to this blog of you have any thoughts.

Death of the Podcast

As a supplement to my lectures and notes for 2006-7, I decided to begin making some specific MP3 recordings at certain strategic points during the delivery, which resulted in about four or five recordings with each lasting somewhere between 3 to 4 minutes per session. While I used the MP3’s in audio form, I also decided to tryout driving an avatar with the audio and so give them all something to look at while listening, basically duplicating the material. All these recordings I then posted onto Moodle. At the time my students thought this was a bit of a novelty, and by tracking their activity I found they seemed to be making good use of them, very encouraging for me. At the start of this academic year, I simply restored my course and released the MP3 and Video casts, great for me, and I thought my students, however tracking has revealed an unexpected trend for the first semester. Below I have listed the students access, from a group of 20+ on a topic basis for the material

MP3 11,6,6,0,1
Video 9,4,3,0,4

As an experiment I have not installed the Podcasts for the second semester, and I have to say so far have received no requests for them! Has anyone else out there had a similar experience? Was the podcast just a blip? Or is this a reflection of my present cohort?

The rise of the networker

What is that can make one years group of students so different from another, you have no doubt asked yourself this question and so do I, and this year is no exception. If you have been following this blog, then you will have picked up on the Social Networking exercise I devised for my 06/07 group as an icebreaker, that would eventually serve as a means of comparing final outcome. Well I ran the same exercise this year 07/08 and have finally got around to looking at the figures for September; this is the month on which outcomes will be compared. To my amazement the number of Forum postings has increased nine fold on the previous year! That’s right 900%. I have no explanation for such an unprecedented increase, the opportunity was presented to them in exactly the same way, no mention made on likely impact for outcome. Can it simply be an early indicator of the growing perception and influence that Social Networking is having on our expectations for life style, as we come to increasingly live in an online world? Comments welcome.

Social Networking outcomes

If you had read my previous bog to this, where I presented two Social Networking diagrams, produced from the Sociomatrix data processed by Agna, then you will no doubt have been having some thoughts about the likely final outcome for the two groups. If you recall group ‘A’ displayed a very low level of social activity and group ‘B’ a far more impressive set of connections. Well here are the results.



Of course it is not possible to draw any firm conclusions from a single trial, more are needed and more will now take place, but certainly the outcome even to a casual observer produces a clear enough impression. The less well-connected group ‘A’, have between them achieved results that are skewed toward Pass and Merit, while the more active network of group ‘B’ displays a skew toward Merit and Distinction. I must say that I was more than pleased with this outcome, as it does at least on the surface appear to support the case for a more socially oriented model of learning.


One more small and possibly insignificant point is that group ‘A’ would seem to have double the amount of late assignment submissions.

You will no doubt have guessed that I have been keenly showing these results to just about anyone that will listen, and the response I must say has been very positive. Apart that is from one senior manager, who will of course remain nameless. But who pointed out somewhat reasonably, that had the outcomes for the two groups been reversed, then we might have been able to build a case for blocking access to all these Social Networking sites! And what if any are the intrinsic suggestions here I wonder, that entertainment wins out against education, perish the though.

Thoughts on Social Networking

Going on as I do these days with regard to the value of social networking tools practices and the implications for collaboration in learning, which you may well have picked this up from a number of posts in this blog. As its summer now and there are no classes, its given me time to start thinking about trying to see if I can extract anything at all meaningful from the exercise that I encouraged my year 1 level 3 students to carry out at the start of their course in September 06. In fact I did a couple of blogs on this which you can still get to from here and to save repeating myself they are:-

Tell And Post, Thursday, September 14, 2006

Social Networking So Far, Sunday, September 24, 2006


Essentially the idea was to start them off by using Moodle as a social tool and see if this had any impact of the likely emergence of online groups and ultimately outcomes. Just recently, during the summer, I have been dipping into SNA (Social Network Analysis) this is a methodology for mapping and measuring relationships and flows in a system; this can be human or even data itself. Now being a software person, my first reaction was to go looking for some tools, free ones anyway and I found Agna, a superb little piece of Java freeware. I used Moodle reports to produce a student-by-student activity for the Social forums throughout September 06. Then using their names, though for this exercise I have replaced these with numbers, as the node values in the Sociomatrix; see below.

For this simple Binary exercise I simply recorded a 1 at the intersection of contact between two students.

I carried out the exercise for two groups, who I shall simply refer to as A and B

My next stage was to use the Agna Network Viewer to produce charts.

I shall let you make up you own mind on the level of social networking taking place here, but just establish for you that the arrows indicate the direction of communication.
Well what do you think? Is any of this likely to influence outcomes for later on the course? I will reveal all a week today, on Sunday 12th August.

So long Intranet welcome DSpace

This week thanks to some major groundbreaking efforts from my fellow Moodle VLE administrator Clive, we now have our DSpace content repository accessible through common authentication with Windows Active Directory via Free Radius server. If you have been following this blog then you may recall the posting
DSpace Content Repository - Tuesday, April 12, 2005, where I reported that the system was now fully installed and rolled out for user access. Well to be honest, that turned out to be somewhat optimistic, because apart from myself, Clive and couple of other brave souls, not very much has been happening. But now that can all change, because through Clive's efforts this week not only can we offer users a common Windows Network, Moodle, DSpace login; you may like to keep up with his blog on all this. DSpace will now only allow authenticated users to access the actual content, in other words, the Meta Data is visible and will continue to be Harvested by OAIster, but only Bromley College staff and or Students can access the content. This of course overcomes one of the major concerns from staff, that their material will be open to all, regardless of Copyright or IPR. Naturally the next big bonus is that DSpace resource are now available from within Moodle; you just have to login in once at the start of your session. So goodbye to dupliacted Moodle resources, network drives, incomprehensible folder structures and ground fills of orphaned documents, from now on may DSpace and Meta Data rule.

Handouts to videos

Well its that time of year again when following the upgrade of Moodle to our test server and tried out all the features that I need to star thinking about updating the Moodle course notes for the new version. This usually means I check each page of the notes with the new version and apply changes as they occur. This year however I have decided to reduce the actual Moodle training notes in their printed form and deliver the rest as a series of short video clips that can be run on demand by users as and when they need them. The impact of this will be to reduce the time needed for initial training, while at the same time ensuring that during the training, which does tend to be a bit hectic, given I only get 2 hours, I can spend more time looking at specific curricula issues rather than Moodle features that I have come to realise many will not come to use. So how do I intend to breakdown the content into printed and video formats?

Printed format

• System settings and administration
  
• Labels and headings
  
• Editing facilities
  
• Managing files and folders
  
• Linking to resources
  
• Moodle Assignments
  
• Course presentation
  

Video Format

• Using Forums
  
• Using Chat
  
• Creating Glossaries in Moodle
  
• Managing the calendar events
  

Once I have these completed these I will make them available through this blog, so feel free to give them a test-drive and get back to me with any comments.

One more for the constructivist

For those of you who have been following this blog, you will recall that last academic year 05/06 I ran a trial with my HND Computer Systems Engineering students where I used the VLE to investigate the delivery of about 20% of the course material based around the Social Constructivist model. The particular framework that I chose for this was the ‘Community of Enquiry’ from Garrison, Anderson and Archer. Well as I said then, results looked promising but it needed more data and so here are the results from this years trail 06/07 for both percentages and grades as measured against 2002-2005. I think you will agree that it does look more than encouraging and I shall be featuring these outcomes in my Camel presentation at the college on the 2nd of July this year.

Self Evaluation

If like myself you are deploying much of your full time course delivery over Moodle , then you will no doubt also be realising that while there are many advantages to this for everyone regarding administration, are there any similar enhancement to outcomes? Well I have to say probably not, after all, good teaching, good notes and resources are exactly that whatever the medium you deliver them by. If you have been reading this blog then you will know that I have been trialing methodologoes such a 'Communities of Enquiry', with some success. Even so I still find myself trawling round for some realistic model for self evaluation, and thats when I came across this article that I find myself getting somewaht enthusiastic about. Of course the test is going to be can I implement this through Moodle in some way, well stay tuned for that one.

Video formats and storage

I received a request recently from a client to produce my Moodle training resources as a set of video files, which does make a lot of sense; I have also been using more video this year on the VLE. If you are finding this emerging trend, then you may like to have a look at a couple of resources for video conversion and storage. At the Yasasoft website you can download a limited free version, it will convert just about all format up to five minutes and its a really nice and easy to use piece of desktop software. I also came across a reasonable online media converter the other day at vixy.net, which seems to be worth having a look at. Of course with video comes the need for storage, and if yours I limited, then why not try storing it with blip.tv, they seem to be making an open invitation.

Thinking about your VLE

If like us here at Bromley College you have been deploying a VLE, then like me you may be wondering after having structured courses with all kinds of content from Word files to podcasts, where the technology is moving and what the outcomes have been. If you are thinking along these lines, then you will be interested in the findings of the JISC funded projects that are about to enter their second phase, you can find the site here. I read a summary in the May 2007 edition of Cilip Update, which seemed to promote the conclusion of student preference for social networking over pure VLE, with the suggestion that educators are becoming concerned about the future of the traditional VLE. For my part I have no real evidence that this is the case, have you, please feel free to post.

VLE's and poor attendance

I was surprised by the concerns expressed in the recent HE Forum about VLE’s leading to reduced attendance. And so an emailed was circulated to a national list, not by myself I must add, to see if this is generally seen as a problem. The responses indicate the opposite. You will find a link here to some of the responses that you may find useful. The question posted was:- Using a VLE might lead to a reduction in attendance. Does anybody on the list have to deal with this worry? Is it true? How do you counter it? Please feel free to inform us of your own views on this subject by replying to this post.

Project LEON

Starting Monday 12th March ULCC are running London's first Online Conference looking at Web2 Technologies supporting 'personalisation' called LEON (London e-Learning Online Network). There are a number of strands to this project,and my own here at Bromley is looking to the potential of Second Life, where students can share a 3D space and presence in real time. The current project features a library with access for individual or group study, links to web sites, pod casts, movies, documents and virtual page turning books. Presentations and lectures can be delivered to groups or individuals using white boards, media players all delivered by the lecturer. The potential improvements for social engagement above that offered by the more usual first world experience of synchronous, asynchronous chat and forum seem boundless. If you are interested in joining us the go to the website and contact Philip Butler for enrollment details.

VLE project 2 completed

Going by the transactions from the latest learning trial using Moodle, here at Bromley I feel certain that I will be looking at another successful outcome. There were 23 students taking part of which only 16 eventually completed the project and between them accounted for over 12,000 transactions in four weeks. For all those who did manage to stay the course, I presented feedback assessment for collaboration, and there is without doubt overwhelming support from them as well as a sense of achievement. However for students who’s engagement / attendance proved patchy before the project, the new approach seemed to be of little positive influence.

Learning in a Virtual World

Just lately a lot of my time has been taken up with Second Life, if you have yet to try virtual worlds then let me recommend the experience. My principle reason for the whole venture is to see how this new semi-immersed virtual reality can be utilised for teaching and learning, even as an extension to our continuing work with Moodle. On Saturday 17th of Feb at 5pm I will begin hosting some presentation trials that will be looking at the Linden Script, that’s the language in SL, and comparing it with other main stream computer languages. So if you are free around that time and would like to come over for a short and small class and supply us with some feedback in another reality just click here and I will look forward to seeing you.

Video beats the audio star

At the start of this term decided to try using my PDA to record parts of my lectures, and these recording are in range of 3 to 4 minutes. The particular course that I selected for this is my High Level Programming for level 4 students, and to date I have made about 40 recordings. But I thought I would tryout something of an experiment by making these recording available in two forms, one being a straightforward mp3, while the other would feature a speaking CrazyTalk avatar. Although the speech content of the two media are identical, the CrazyTalk avatar version has attracted almost twice the number of viewings!

Using Moodle to deliver self financing courses

I am hopeful that Moodle here at bromley College will begin to fulfil a commercial role following an enquiry the other day from company who required a course in Website Design for one of their employees. I have been running a very successful self financing course “HTML and JavaScript for Website Designers” for some time now, however it does require a minimum of 12 students to be viable, with the next one likely to start in January. This timescale was however too long, and I was asked if it could be run as a distance learning package, well maybe if I ran it through Moodle. As this will effectively be a trial, I have given the course for free in return for a comprehensive feedback and review. In fact when the boss came along to lookover the set-up, he signed himself up as well. The course can now run at the pace of the students, they will provide me feedback via the Journal, have access to resources using Block Folders, submit completed exercises as Assignments and keep in touch using Forums and Chat. Hey I may even be able to use Second-Life!!! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Podcast or videocast, which do you prefer?

Do you podcast you lectures? . I have started this in a small way but from the system logs the results were not encouraging. Anyway I started to give the whole idea some serious thought recently. From my own perspective, if am driving or travelling on public transport, then yes I would listen to a podcast, however if was sat in front of a computer, then I would appreciate something more visual. The feasibility of videoing and editing a whole lecture on a regular basis would for me be unrealistic. But do you really need the whole lecture, well no, and all I record usually are selected parts in audio using my PDA. Anyway I decided to pop one of my audio tracks into one of CrazyTalks avatars, the result, good, judging from the Moodle logs, the media is definitely getting a better response. If you would like to take a look just click here. Please feel free to feedback on your own experiences by posting to this blog.