moodle developer pool: a few thoughts

The following idea is gathering support from across people at the University. We have been focused on a developing community of practice in terms of effective use (which we must keep doing). However, the background to this is the emergence of a Moodle software development plan. This plan will indicate what we are looking at during each academic year. Many of the developments will be constrained by available staff resource. However, there are a number of people who might want to improve their expereince of developing Moodle and mobile apps using authentic / meaningful tasks with real users and an end date.  Our current development model doesn’t encourage or facilitate a community of developers approach. It would be really useful to publise this and encourage developers across the university to participate.

In terms of risks, it would be quite low, they’d not have access to real (confidential data), they would work with members of the Moodle Tech Team, to ensure their solutions scale and would have marginal negative impact on performance, and they would be able to use e-learning development boxes. The benefits would be significant as they might be able to develop solutions for requirements.

more thoughts to come … mind dump over !!

e-learning Operational Plan: pre monitoring report statement

The e-learning operational plan (2009 to 2011) was released in June 2009 after being presented at a Learning and Teaching Committee Meeting. It is available from, http://www.bath.ac.uk/learningandteaching/themes/e-learning/opplan. The plan identified 20 actions to be undertaken within certain timeframes.

The annual monitoring report against the identified actions and any amendments will be available from the previous url and should be available by the end of Jan 2010. the annual monitoring report will be circulated to the LTC and the DoS.

This is a pre-monitoring report statement concerning the e-learning Operational Plan.

Some of the key actions for this year have been achieved. For instance, the Creation of a Moodle User Group (Dec 09), publication of the e-learning Staff Development Programme (Sept 09), Propose an e-Assessment Review (Nov 09), Write a staff development evaluation plan (Oct 09).

The eLPF plan has not been written as a complete document. However, it has been discussed and implemented. The eLPF will take place as a standalone meeting once a year. It will also be the umbrella group for large one day events which include external representatives. For instance, the PPP SIG in November, and the SMS event arranged for March 2010.

During the period the e-learning Team had resourcing issues. This resulted in a few actions facing some slippage. For instance, Develop the Moodle Development Plan  will not be released until Feb 2010, Design a Moodle Evaluation Plan, will not be released until Feb 2010. The e-learning Podcast series will start in Feb 2010 with thin inflow of new staff, who’ll be given responsibility to implement this initiative.

An area which has not been developed due to staff turn over has been the Online Unit Evaluation Service.

thoughts on podcasting event at Bath (11th Nov, 09)

e-learning ran a regional event for the podcasting for pedagogical purposes SIG on the 11th Nov. I think it was a success, and we’ll be running another event on the 2nd march (using SMS / texting in HE). The following are some of my notes to remember for the next time

• rooms – 6 west was fine, make sure we have booked atleast two break out rooms. Also make sure the projectors are OK in the breakout rooms
• people seemed to find it fine, so same as before, a few signs to help people
• need to have clearer instructions for the wireless network. People didn’t follow onscreen instructions w.r.t re-booting.
• get them onboard before the questions (responseware), so they have a chance to contribute
• get better mics for the presentors … the clip mics didn’t work and lots of sessions didn’t record !!!
• make sure all presentations are available on the presentors machine, i.e., the keynote presentation was not, so could capture using panopto
• e-learning tablet PCs were great, just make sure have software installed and wireless set up.
• better use of the event tag, in particular, pointing it out regularly on slides
• ensure there are poster boards, and encourage the e-leanring team to make a few more posters
• ensure we have some representation from a JISC type service – this worked very well at the podcasting event. If we can’t get a service then perhaps some blurb from JISC Advance or the HEA

 

 

Why buy a PSP and an iPod Touch?

This is a question which needs to be addressed as the e-learning team are using some external money to buy a PSP. The answer is relatively straightforward. In terms of background, devices like the PSP are becoming more common place with students (or variants of, i.e., the new generation of nintendo ds). They also offer significant opportunities for the student in terms of lerning. For instance, they have wi-fi web access, they have rss aggregates pre-installed, the can play multimedia, they can capture multimedia, they include chat tools and conference capabilities. In other words, for low level type of uses these are superior to laptops !!

Our purchase fits into a wider ongoing project around the area of using mobile devices in learning and teaching. This will include, Nintendo DS, iPod Touch, Smartphones (blackberry and windows platforms). In particular;

• ensuring Moodle works effectively on this type of device
• activities in face to face teaching can be completed, i.e, use of responseware, sms/twitter, note taking etc.,
• how viable are these as data / evidence collection tools, i.e., capturing info and uploaded to an e-Portfolio

Once the devices are delivered the first activities will be;

• access the wi-fi network and complete a responseware activity (also use a iPod Touch, Nintento DS, Blackberry and HTC).
• complete a number of basic tasks in Moodle (also use an iPod Touch, Nintendo DS, Blackberry and HTC Touch HD). The tasks will include, navigating to a specific course, adding material to a forum, complete a 2 question quiz, opening a web page in the course, reading a word document). We’ll need to make a course up for this test

The outcomes of these exercises will be written up on mobile-learning.blog-city.com, and relevant blogs at the University of Bath.

 

 

 

 

e-Assessment Review: thoughts from DoS 18th Nov

The following is the raw data (responses) when I asked people at the recent DoS meeting to write down their what questions they’d like answered, or issues addressed in the forthcoming e-assessment review (2010).

These are in no order (typos are all mine) ….

21 responses

————————————

• we might like a system that collects video clips and combine these with other assessments (MCQ, papers) for marking
• use of writing tablets, in exams and part of the marking process
• overcoming the issue of downloading 100+ short assignments from Moodle and providing feedback is a very slow process
• central OMR service?
• e-assessment for mathematics: Maple TA or STACK
• provision of specific central support for departments (not just training workshops, FAQs and helplines) so staff able to work with academics over a sustained period on a one-to-one basis as a new system is introoduced
• are there models of e-learning in which learning and assessment are intregrated, i.e., not having to set aside tutorials for tests only
• tie up and impact with rest of teaching process (i.e., unit assessment redesigned away from high stakes terminal exam during dedicated assessment period and towards smaller value tests given throughout the semester).
• what support (i.e. workshops) will be made available?
• e-feedback
• does the review assume that the university will move towards on-line marking of all coursework?
• e-feedback, for example could a submittted piece of electronic work be annotated (eg using a tablet) electronically and the feedback made available to students
• MCQ for large classes and infrastructure needed
• automated addition of other tools eg plagiarism detection or automated tester for programming assignments
• what about following the OU model of e-TMA’s Quick marking with feedback .
• Integration with TurnitIn
• issues about assessing free text work, eg PhD disserations
• is there a danger of the move to introduce e-assessment tools driving the pedagogy?
• routine and automatic incorporation of plagiarism detection software
• effective ways of providing e-feedback, formatively and summatively, to individuals and groups
• don’t neglect printing costs of printing assessed work submitted online for marking At present met by students !! Parallel paper and e-submission better?
• is moodle the best/most flexible system for organising and running forum discussions for groups of different sizes and abilities
• other technologies (e-portfolios)
• technologies for batch processing of assignments within moodle (batch downloading and storage)
• e-assessment of large MCQs would be extremely useful
• anomymised peer assessment
• MCQ
• student attendance at lectures
• electronic tutorials – students generated unique question, complete online, monitored and assessed
• professional placement portfolios – possibility of submission of reports from external agencies
• anonymous marking / procedures – are they working?
• not sure if audience response system counts as part of e-assessment
• Moodle performance
• automated assessment that goes beyond MCQs, natural language processing, diagram recognition

 

working up notes for changes to QR Codes

We provide an automatically generated QR Code on the bottom of our Moodle pages – this allows people to scan the code if they wish to bookmark, or deep link back to the page it they print the page and wish to access via a phone etc.,

This has been available for a number of months, I’ve recieved a few email comments and it will be time to change the wording to reduce the degree of confusion

comments so far …

————-

Furthermore, I often get a bar code square asking me to scan with a
>> cell phone camera.
>>
>> My specific questions are: 1 – what do I need to do to join a forum
>> group. 2 – do I need to do anything with the bar codes?

————-

Many thanks for your speedy reply. I’m logging in remotely from my PC
- and have logged in at moodle.bath.ac.uk – I searched for ‘research
skills online’ but am then asked to scan the qrcode with my phone. I
tried setting up a qrcode, but get no further than this. I’m not
overly technologically minded, so maybe I’m missing something or doing
something wrong?

———————-

The current text on the page is …

Mobile Barcode

Scan this code with your mobile phone camera to access this page online.

To find out more, visit http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/qrcode

————————-

As you can see some of the confusion from the users is they simply don’t know what the QR Code is, and they assume (rightly) based on the text info that they need to scan the code. The initial approach was to minimise the text information. However, given the evidence a new approach would to change the text. ie.,

—————

The url for this page is available in this QR Code

<<image>>

If you scan this QR Code on your mobile phone you can access the page directly on your mobile device. You might use this for quick navigation or bookmarking.

If you are accessing this page on a computer then simply ignore the code.

To find out more about using QR Codes on your mobile device, visit http://www.bath.ac.uk/barcodes

—————————-

 

User satisfaction with our Moodle service

The following is are some of my developing ideas based around the initial responses of a survey I’m currently running with our users on the University’s Moodle Service.

The survey runs until 15th November. The aim of this survey is to enable the e-learning Team to gather information on Moodle performance during the start of this academic year (2009-10).

As background, we are aware, although Moodle did not stop working, there were some periods when service performance was very slow.  For instance; during the first 4 days of the new academic year we had the following number of unique users logging on (need to multiple for the number of logins, and issues with concurrent accesses). This is over 40% of our student FTE !!!

Monday 5th October: 4,867

Tuesday 6th October: 4,560

Wednesday 7th October: 4,657

Thursday 8th October: 5,000

More details are available on the Moodle Service Blog (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/moodle). We also had a number of emails to our e-learning@bath.ac.uk queue. One email in particular was concerned with availability for distance learners. Therefore, I’m keen to identify how the experience was from the perspective of staff and students who were attempting to complete tasks.

The following are the initial respones (still have a week until the survey closes). We’ve over 150 responses The methodology was to collaboratively develop the questionnaire (big thanks to the e-learning Team), promote this via a post on the Moodle Service Blog, a resource in Moodle (the post log-in page), a forum post in the Staff Area course, and an email to the University of Bath’s Directors of Studies (UG, PG). I’ve not incuded any of the qualitative responses.

It is evident the large number of responses are from students (91 out of 154).

The intention was to capture how satisfied people where with the Moodle Service over the key period. The following ar ethe responses when asked overall how satisfied were you with the Moodle Service. 

It was very pleasing the majority of respondents (59%) were either satisfied or very satisfied with the Moodle Service. Even more pleasing was only 4% were not satisfied at all. It can be interpreted the vast majority of the users were satisfied with the service.

This trend continued with specific questions concerning responsiveness and availabilty. Overall, for both these indicators evidenced that the “very satisfied” category increased. In terms of overall availability, there was a higher number of people very satisfied with the service (32%).

An interesting observation is pattern for satisfaction with respect to responsiveness shifts slightly towards the satisfied / neutral choices. This isn’t a surprise as the system was available over the period, i.e., it didn’t stop working whereby it was not available for all users. However, at some periods it became very slow, i.e., the responsivess declined. This is captured in the responses.

Recommenations

The findings from the survey suggest we (the Moodle Service supplier) still have a significant way to go interms of the quality of our service. Yes, there are a significant number of users who are very satisfied with the service, however, we have a small number who are not at all satisfied. This might be a small number, however, they can not be ignored. The target for the start of the next academic year will be ensure the service is more responsive so we have an improvement in the responses.

 

 

 

 

 

Setting up induction tasks

There will be a number of new starters in the team in the new year. These will all have a set of induction tasks to complete as part of their probation. Apart from the maternity cover, who I assume will have a slightly different probation period (need to check !!).

In terms of the ESSD posts, the aim of the induction tasks are as follows;

1. let them get upto speed with our install of Moodle 1.9.6, custom code, and the specific development of the Moodle-SAMIS integration

2. get them familiar with the process by which we run our Moodle install, i.e., development box through to live, including subversion control, and testing procedures

3. make them familiar with the relationship between the different parts of the team; ESSD, LT (central & dept), and the use of RT and Trac

4. expose them to working collaboratively within the ESSDs, other members of the Team, BUCS and the wider UoB community

5. objectively identify they have the required skills, knowledge and approach as outlined in the job description to be able to play an active and appropriate role within the team. In other words, evidence that they have successfully passed probation, and indicate from an early stage their progress through the probation period.

Therefore, the induction tasks should be;

1. very well defined
2. achievable within the time frame
3. ring fenced time
4. mapped back to the required skills / knowledge in the JD
5. can be monitored and this monitoring is transparent and objective
6. include set milestones

Ideas for tasks, and timeframes;

• 15 minute presentation on how the SAMIS-Moodle Integration (Block) works, and suggestions for feature enhancements from the user perspective. This is a four week piece of work
• Moodle housekeeping – removal of old users, and hiving off of log tables. This is a two week piece of work
• 15 minute presentation on risk assessment on current system architexture (hardware & software set up) in terms of trends in user growth and expectations for start of 2010-11 academic year. Three week piece of work

>>> mid probation >>>

Trend data for e-learning email queries

We are continuing to use RT to log all queries to e-learning. This has even involved a member of the team adding telephone queries. This is a really nice addition

A question often asked by me as the Head of the team is what’s happening in terms of the number of queries entering the process. Is it stable, increasing or decreasing? This will give an indication of pressure and requirements in terms of resource allocation.

The following displays the number of tickets created per day since 1st Sept 09 on our system.

It shows the help desk get a large number of queries (over 400 in the last two months), it also shows the peak period is October (as you’d expect with the start of the new academic year), and the underlying trend is starting to fit the september pattern of a few emails a day.

This is good news in the sense it looks like we’ve got through a peak period (thanks Team), so we can re-think the required resource level of front desk staff.

Please take this with a pinch of salt, i.e., it gives us the trend data. However, we’d need to map this against resolved in the same period, time taken to resolve and type of ticket to start to unpack a clearer picture. Much of this I simply haven’t the time to answer. Therefore, for now, I’ll leave it that RT queries (volume) will start to fall back to a much lower level, indicating we can release people to start to work on other projects.

e-assessment work – Jules

Met up with Jules to discuss e-assessment (objective) work which I need doing.

Have agreed he’ll write a 3000 word discussion paper (for publication on OPuS), around the following questions;

1. what is e-assessment (objective testing)? (about 600 words)

2. how might I use it in my teaching and learning? This would include scenarios, evidence from UK HE and publications. The aim is for the audience to be won over to the pedagogical benefits of objective testing for formative purposes. They can reflect on how they might use it in their teaching.

3. objective testing in Moodle 1.9? (a few hundred words). This is the authors perspective of the use of other tools in Moodle (not just quiz) for objective testing, i.e., the lesson.

This will be completed by Dec 09. Assuming agree on the cost (;-)).

The rationale for this is, in terms of support e-assessment (formative, objective testing) at Bath, we have the FAQ which contains lots of material on the Moodle Quiz (http://moodle.bath.ac.uk/faq/category/1/quiz.html), and the e-book available through the staff area. We also have links to guides on question design (http://esu.bris.ac.uk/esu/e-assessment/writing_e-assessments/index.htm) and material on planning your online assessment (http://esu.bris.ac.uk/esu/e-assessment/planning_online-assessment.pdf). Finally we have policy statements on using Moodle for formative assessment only (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/moodle/moodle-policy/#high-stake). However, we don’t have why and how to effectively use e-assessment in your teaching. So it is the last piece of the puzzle.

We discussed the idea of workshops etc., agreed we’d need to look at this for semester 2.

Finally, discussed a role in the upcoming e-assessment review. This will involve a data collection activity (who is using e-assessment, why, and what are their expereinces). So it would be nice to use an external for the semi-structured interviews.

Also, given the likely outcome is, we need systems to provide e-assessment on (in terms of robust, scaleable solutions), I’d like to find out if Moodle 2.0 is future proof interms of quiz, and online submission functionality. Jules could be commissioned for this report, i.e., is it fit for purpose from the academic / admin perspective. Then I’ll get a technical review from the e-learning / BUCS team. A potential model is to provide a second install of Moodle for high stakes summative (objective) testing and online electronic submissions.  So ensuring this type of activity can be provided away from the general use of Moodle. Plus, the institution could own this, so it could be on a separate upgrade path to Moodle, and include our own adds up.