[philtubman]

can i ask you elizabeth: do you have the multimedia filters turned on in moodle? they auto embed all media files that you upload and make for a really nice looking experience. i only ask because it is off by default, and if you don’t turn it on (its just a click button in site admin) the experience of using multimeidia is very limiting. i want to start experimenting with video assignments in moodle, where the user can record to the browser and submit the recording – that would be really useful in our linguistics and european languages dept…

[philtubman]

I’ve come across LTI http://www.imsglobal.org/toolsinteroperability2.cfm recently which is great for using external tools within our lms, which is moodle. i’m glad we use an open source lms because it gives us options to connect it in ways that commercial platforms cannot (we link it to the student info system using web services which creates and admins assignments through the records system, which is cool. we have also linked it with our PG admissions ‘portal’, so applicants get to see some ‘webboards’, which are basically moodle sites specifically designed for them.)

Back on LTI, I do wish the standard would move forward quicker. There are some unofficial extensions such as being able to send grades back and forth, and auto-enrol all students in the LTI provider platform, so assessments peer assessments etc. can be set up in advance.

all pretty cool stuff for edu-geeks like myself. I agree that we could do with engaging more with our academics as most will just use docs, ppts, the odd unmoderated or e-tivit’ed forum.. there are some exceptions though, and most of the most radical affordances that vles provide require significant changes in mindset for most tutors. perhaps just more hand holding then…

like most tutors would not be able to co-ordinate a peer assessed assignment or know how to make the most of it and having ‘ownership’ over the teaching techniques leads to the best teaching, with or without technology…

[philtubman]

hi if you have enrolled on Lancaster University Open Learning moodle, the backup files can be found @ https://openlearning.lancs.ac.uk/mod/folder/view.php?id=660

If you haven’t, they can be found @ https://www.dropbox.com/s/txj3xjtrg7l28in/MDL2.3BACKUPS.zip

Thanks Phil

[philtubman]

@Sancha – have you thought of doing something in a G+ community rather than a VLE? I have recently started to think that this provides lots of ‘social’ VLE activities (and a synchronous ‘hangout’ if required…)

(it will aggregate you WP blogs and provide a space for structured social interaction – look at the ocTEL one if you haven’t already…)

[philtubman]

=I did this with a course last year where we did the first semester teaching “building block” skills from Blackboard, then the second with students creating WordPress portfolios and recording a variety of other activities. To be honest I’d just leave out the VLE entirely if I could another time because most VLEs are just extra technology stress for learners and their interfaces are so poor compared to the social networks that learners judge them by.

LTI Bb and WordPress together for a seamless transition from one to the other… no double logon…

http://www.imsglobal.org/toolsinteroperability2.cfm

[philtubman]

James,

We use ‘mahara’ at lancaster which i think does most of what you say.. integrating social media… ah.. perhaps if you can rss., mayabe html the fancy ocTEL TAGS_explorer (thats a friday job coming on…). it think the rest you could ’embed’ with the right html, perhaps thats another friday job lol…

you can certainly share publicy using either ‘public’ or ‘secret URL’ which you control. i believe badges are ‘in the post’

It is linked to our moodle by mnet so you can ‘send’ discussions and submissions to the portfolio content area too…

[philtubman]

in reading the posts for this exercise, esp James’ post on Social Media and Sanchas post on Graphic Design, it makes wonder how much the ‘thinking’ (watching and doing) is now being done ‘socially’ through rapid sharing of opinions and creativity through social media.

Your  ‘thinking’ exercises focus on social aspects too (online) except for reading and lectures (not nec online), although this is also probably up for debate.

Its also interesting that the ‘platforms and tech’ that support these activities do not usually fit into one quadrant either – its dependent on contextual use…

I have a feeling that Kolb was thinking ‘individual’ type stuff on the right hand side of the cycle (the watching and reflecting), and I read the descriptions of those learners and their preferred learning styles as quite ‘bookish’ (I also read ‘solitary’). On the left hand side, (the doing and feeling), he says is preferred by more ‘social’ types who share more ’empathy’ and ‘feeling’.

Do you think that adding social media (or indeed any online activity perhaps?) turns some of this on its head, as the thinking and reflecting are done much more in online,  virtual communities of practice rather than inside the individual?

[philtubman]

mistake – see below

[philtubman]

Hi Sancha,

What i found interesting about your post was the way in which the assimilation and convergence aspects (the ‘think’) have moved into a social domain (I guess the ‘feeling’ has always had a foot in ‘social’), and that technology has facilitated this, specifically social media and mobile.

Given that Kolb maps these quadrants and preferences on individual learning styles, and taking into account the statement above about social media, do you think certain learners are better at certain bits of the design process than others, or are these skills now part of ‘digital literacy’ that every learner needs to possess in equal measure??

I also find it interesting that teaching graphic design is the same whether its done f2f or using eLearning technologies. I would be interested to know how you ‘map’ the f2f teaching activities online, and what technologies afford this?

 

 

[philtubman]

this has been on my mind this afternoon, especially after watching Jim Groom describing what DS106 is all about…http://mediasite.suny.edu/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=a028f4a4a61840eeb88544d7e50faa201d

I want to add a bit of DS106 into my ‘Using Moodle’ courses.

James, you are right that ‘learn this app’ is all about training, but I feel my ‘using moodle’ courses wouldn’t do it justice if i followed the same path.. so I started thinking about how I could add some storytelling into my course, and everyone have a laugh at the same time.

I’m still not sure about this, but my plan is to modify the part of the lesson where I say ‘you take section 1, 2, 3 etc. (one per participant) and do what you like’ to being more like ‘each section is going to tell part of a story, so i want you to describe your part of the narrative by use of a moodle activity’. This gives free reign to people to add whatever activity they like and link to youtube vids, add a picture, whatever, but also makes them think about using Moodle as not just being a place where they drop documents, but a place where they can have some creative licence

Craziness, no? I would appreciate your thoughts on this, and any suggestions of storylines I could choose.

Do you think there is room for a bit of DS106 in application ‘training’?

[philtubman]

Hi Elizabeth, Thanks for this post describing your practice in such detail. I run several ‘workshop’ type sessions too (in using Moodle) and it certainly helps to give each participant the means to actively explore on their own (using 1 PC each). I find this difficult in some ways because the amount of freedom that is given to each person in terms of what they can do ‘stretches’ my capability to keep the lesson on plot, and also to answer every question.

It is undoubtedly useful though to let others learn through their own inquiries though, so i usually do structured exercises, which keep the interest level up whilst I am demonstrating, and then have a ‘free for all’ half hour when the ‘content’ has been delivered, and partipants can choose what they want to look further into. I am also lucky enough to have some support from our fantastic student eLearning Assistants, who are all Moodle-pros, which helps massively.

It makes me think a couple of things, when I examine that learning environment though:

1 – could I do this by ‘flat’ lecture capture alone? (ie just a video) – absolutely not, as most learning occurs by answering individual questions.

1a – could this be achieved by lecture capture + use of the public note taking channel on most LC systems (i.e. time-based asynchronous discussion) = possible, and worth exploring as an alternative to multiple f2f lessons. It would not engage those users for whom FEAR is the biggest challenge (FEAR of writing something wrong, FEAR as in needs lots of hand holding)

2 – how would this work on Adobe Connect or other system = would certainly ‘reach out’ to more users, but issues of 1a would still be there – some ppl just want their actual, not virtual, hand holding 🙂

3 – Clickers – not too relevant unless there are lots of learners in a class (more than a ‘show of hands’)

4 – Social Media use for community of practice building – this is not something I have tried at all, but I can see how it might work – participants to tweet their questions, and peers to ‘tweet’ the answers. Moderators to ensure no disinformation is getting out and gathering traction.

—- I like this approach (4) because it is taking on-board the questions, inquiry based learning, 1-1/f2f elements, making them ‘public’ and expanding the Community of Practice, possibly beyond the borders of the institution.

 

I cannot see any of the above REALLY working for me, today, in my practice, though, because the EXPECTATION of staff training is that they will see a ‘sage’ who will ‘deliver’ the most appropriate content for them. And that is a culture issue, that is strongly related to 1a, imho.

[philtubman]

Graham,

You’re exactly right about the careful curation of resources. You have to look deep into the resource to see if it is useful, and then be prepared to roll up sleeves and do some more mashing and remixing to make it fit for your purpose. I’ve been a proponent of sharing source files, more specifically ‘open source’.

Saying this, I’ve seen some great content on iTunes U that stands alone, and I think that is the way it is formed into a ‘course’ in a way that ‘assets’ are not. cMOOCs seem to be something else entirely – although both share a ‘narrative’

I’m starting to believe that the sharing of resources should be something more akin to open source software development, where content can be sliced, diced, discovered, remixed at will, at any stage, and preferably as close to the production of value as possible.

I think we need to somehow ‘level’ the playing field so the ‘assets’ are exchangable, in an open standard. I like these repositories, but on the other hand, silo’s are good only for those who maintain, empty and fill them at the end of the day, and much content goes ‘unforked’ because it is locked behind non-open formats, or as you say, licences!

[philtubman]

i wrote a blog post on the discoverability and sharability of resources that seems pertinent to this discussion:

http://sophistryblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/from-oer-to-cmooc-to-github-proposal.html 

[philtubman]

I’m actually quite a supporter of iTunes U, even though people don’t like that you have to enter it via the iTunes client. iTunes client is free and the resources are downloadable, as Graham points out. I watched a fantastic series on Justice, by Michael Sandel through iTunes U. Even though the client is proprietary, it is worth mentioning that the videos or podcasts have open standards, so you don’t even need the client once its downloaded, certainly not necessary to have an iPod or iPhone, as some mistakenly think.

I also worked on one of the Phase 2 OER projects, which had a ‘discoverabiliy’ focus. We recognised that most people want to search through google, so hit the SEO Ninjas sites to raise its Google profile. The problem with this is that unless the resources start to take a life of their own and people independently tweet on etc. then the SEO magic starts to lost some of its capability. Fine, say, if you work in a ‘marketplace’ where constant SEO will maintain your page 1 discoverability, but OERs do not have a ‘hype’ cycle to them in most cases. By this I mean the short termism of ‘retweet’, ‘reblog’, ‘backlink’ that gives such good SEO results to start with does not apply to OER in that the availability of the resource needs to be constantly high, regardless whether anyone has ‘backlinked’ to it this week.

And that’s why I perhaps have a soft spot for iTunes U as an OER repository. Its available, most people use it for their media management, its free for those who don’t, EVERYONE has heard of it, and the search will not degrade resources based on this weeks popularity. And as previously said it uses open standards and the content is downloadable, therefore transferrable into areas of little bandwidth via HDDs etc. My feeling is that TOTALLY ONLINE content, like Coursera or EdX, is great for the software developers and those in the centre keeping track of the stats, but not so for the areas of lesser bandwidth, arguably those who need the OER the most.

[philtubman]

Hi, Thanks for this post James and the other contributors.

I work on the other side of the fence to MonikaMajor, as I work in the ISS dept and hear about problems 2nd hand from the staff when something is going on such as quizzes not working in certain browsers etc. It is an institutional problem that as e-learning is embedded in courses, the fear of not being able to solve working problems is a major problem for uptake amongst normal teaching staff. And nobody really knows who to fix these, unless you know somebody…

I would like to hear some positive stories of the luddite to enthusiast, and the methods used to introduce people into TEL. As has been discussed on this topic, the skills and attributes required are very different from f2f teaching. I have read about things like the 3E framework http://staff.napier.ac.uk/services/academicdevelopment/TechBenchmark/Pages/3E.aspx but it still remains a mystery as to how to move people through these stages.

My addition to this discussion is the point that fear of technology-reliance as a factor in adoption of TEL. The point goes very deep, as Karen points out, into the homes and personal lives of tutors, as the attributes required for digital literacies (for tutoring) disrupt your perceptions of yourself and profession. This is a harder nut to crack than even the insitutional support problem I started with.

Does anyone have any thoughts or stories on this…

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