I’ve now completed a few small pilot training sessions in Moodle 2 .0. Some general comments:

The same:

Workflow: Edit mode on, the Add resources/Add activities dropdowns, the icons, Sections
Forums (the bug with Q&A forums is still there)
Groups/groupings (except for new site wide groups aka cohorts)

Different

1. Navigation in the new Navigation block is a challenge, with the navigation block, section naming, docking etc.
2. The new file system takes a bit of getting used to if you are used to Course Files in 1.9.  I have not enabled the Legacy Course Files repository.  The systems we use have no File System repository enabled.
3. Blogs are looking more like blogs now, with comments. Some users are struggling with navigation.   Unfortunately you cannot restrict visibility to course level , and you cannot view all Course blog posts by student X.
4. Gone: multiple file upload plugin, Journals (!)

New

1. Conditional release, activity completion (enables simple dependencies to be built)
2. Improved editor
3. New wiki
4. Blocks: Comments block, Course completion block, Private files block
5. Private files for everyone, including students.  And they can ut images in forum posts.
6. There are other things . . . .  have not used them yet . . .

Philosophicaly speaking I now see again the need to approach things in three stages. Much as I dislike standard workshops, I use this (linear) sequence, based on a very very simple course design.

1. EXPERIENCE: See and experience Moodle as a student.  I do a field trip to Moodle in a course on Coffee Appreciation.
2. DESIGN: Look at the design of the experience.  Critique it.  Plan a simple design for a section.
3. BUILD: Implement it in Moodle.

I now have two basic workshops on offer: Online, a Month of Moodle and a three hour Design and Build in Moodle 2.

Not strictly Moodle: Greater Christchurch Schools Network.  (Built around the Christchurch Loop)

http://www.moodleinschools.org.nz/ Moodle in Schools: MoE supported site.

ecdf Supported Moodle sites repository.  (Higher Education)

Wellington Loop Moodle.

Based on Ardvaark theme: http://e-bhp.wszechnica.com/ (you can hardly tell this is Moodle)

You could think of Moodle as being like a walled garden. It’s a private online space, which is divided into things called courses, each of which has members.

A walled garden has two aspects. It can be safe or it can be merely isolated and cutoff. However, as I have posted in other forums I think for a formal taught course, providing some sort of freedom and boundaries is good, and from there it can be used as a base for free range learning. (Authentic learning, and a few other buzz words)

For the geeks, Moodle needs a server, PHP, MySQL and so on. I’m interested to note that the standard install does not include some small features that I think are absolutely essential and some that are pretty good. Like the Book module.

I’ve seen quite a significant change in the last two or three versions of Moodle. However, from a personal point of view, there are still a number of things that I’d like to see built in and standard.

At the moment I keep some of my chicken scratchings on this topic at Akowiki.  Just a brain dump, little more.

Some of you know my history:

• 2005, Moodle workshops at another local institution.
• 2006 a large number of Blackboard workshops (like 40 plus) to help migrate staff from WebCT to Blackboard
• 2007 WebCT/Bb
• 2008 the Moodle trial at the University of Canterbury.

The final result of the trial announced in November last year was that we would move to a single supported LMS in 2010, which was to be Moodle. It’s been like a death after 8 years working with Interact. We are now in the middle of a transition process. So Moodle occupies a fair bit of my mind at the moment.

Some of my thoughts include:

• Navigation issues – crazy bread crumbs, no left menu
• The best way to support content delivery
• Blogs (or the lack of them in Moodle)
• Wikis – Moodle has an inbuilt wiki
• The reflective journal – not yet functional
• The file sharing “Database”
• Multimedia capacity

I think it will take a year to get Moodle to where StudentNet/Interact was in terms of some basic utility.  But in other things, Moodle will make people’s lives after Interact just nice.

So what?  What basic functionality is needed to teach&learn in a formal course? [Social networking aside for now]  What functionality provides a good walled garden in the middle of a taught course, with the right amount of porousness and openness?

There is a feeling, often expressed among the participant lecturers “I’m not really doing much, just using the basics”.  I came in today for the first time this term to find NO e-mails about things to do with Moodle.  Except the Moodle trial meeting.

We have a show and tell this week: Lecturer to lecturer.

One little incident has interested me.  Not to do with trial courses, but in two courses that did start up on the site, both using a wiki and a forum with a task.

We used the minimalist approach both times.

Wiki Minimalism. In wikis you need to understand the three wiki steps:

1. Click to edit
2. Edit
3. Click to save.

and “Here is where your wiki is, here are some pre-defined pages – Go for it”in other words, no big deal about pages, history, rollbacks, notify, camel case . . .

I took for granted they would use the forum for forum stuff.  They didn’t.  Everything went into the wiki, including Hi, how are you? Where is everybody, Hey this is cool . . .

Leigh’s Online Facilitation course on WikiEducator has started.  Need to get into this as well.  In another post.

Week 8 with Luis on his “experiment, or initiative, at work where (he has) diverted most of (his) conversations into social computing and social software tools, both internal and external” is written up here: http://www.elsua.net/2008/04/07/giving-up-on-work-e-mail-status-report-on-week-8/

And here are the stats:

I couldn’t do this of course.  Yet. I have fallen off the wagon again (I have got over 50 e-mails in my intray), but a passing comment to Diane at work (Thursday last week, about Luis) resulted in a passing comment today (“I thought about sending you an e-mail, but decided you didn’t need one”)  Cool eh!!  But this has set me thinking.

Collaborating around a wiki: the meeting scenario

I spent some time today trying to share a new way of working with our team.  When working on this well defined project, Lets use a wiki and a forum. Lats take minutes as we go: simple actions who, what, by when – we got a wiki set up, even has a nice WYSIWYG editor, and made a start.

Things that slowed us down.

1. Failing to distinguish between Wiki and Page on wiki.
2. Not knowing when a page is required, and when just some more text in the page is needed.
3. Worrying in detail about formatting while we were merely getting down a few bullet points.
4. Too small a font on the data show.

It was cool, and we made good progress.

However: last week, one post to the project forum lead to three personal replies to my intray (all of which should have been in the forum), and one in the forum, and one person saying “I did reply to you (didn’t I)?”.  Five interactions. I bet we can use the forum better.

I’m just deciding: do I have the nerve to say

“For this project, communicate ONLY via the wiki, the forum and the file sharing area (with it’s comments)”
Unless (as Luis says) it is a personal e-mail.
OR – wander into my airless hole of an office and talk to me.  (Just don’t send me e-mails)

This would save a LOT of hassle.

Luis has made his post on Twitter.  I will get to it.  One question I have is this: How do we keep up with each other and what we are all working on, feed in comment when something may be of interest . .   maybe a twitter-like blog of some kind?

Scenario, in the Moodle trial: Say in one day, Glen has made five discoveries on different topics (some bad), he has solved three problems, done a Moodle hack (or two), heard back from a consultant, will need to leave a meeting early.  I need to tell him about a CSS problem, a setting I cannot find and I’m interested in half the things he’s worked on.  I’m sure there is a better way to work than each of these needing an e-mail  Have Skype open?  Dunno. Yet.

We need:

1. timed release
2. signups for groups [how can you have a supposedly constructivist enviroment without this?]
3. student folders for files [ditto!!]
4. better multimedia handling [Their mps player has no volume of time]
5. Better text editor

DOWNS:

1. They have a lingo (activity locking) where all I want is timed release like “Show the tutorial answers on Monday, after the tutorials” They are using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
2. There are several ways to insert multmedia.  A sound player with NO volume and NO duration – that you cannot stop downloadng the file whether you want to or not.
3. Few critical help messages in the screens, you need to use trial and error, or check the help. (ie a poor UI)
4. LOUSY text editor.
5. Save buttons ONLY at the bottom of screens sometimes.
6. Uploading of files has THREE approaches in different places.
7. Extra clicks:  Tons of them.

BUT: then I get some help calls about Blackboard and it doesn’t seem so bad.

Just deciding how to engage in the forums, not finding them quite as helpful or positive as the wordpress forums.  Martin seems to regularly exercise his right of veto with a robustness he really doesn’t need to use. I wonder if it is a different client base: institutions, whereas WordPress is largely individuals.  More installations of WordPress . .  dunno.

UPS:

1. Nice wiki (But then Glen loaded the OU wiki that is supposedly better)
2. Forums
3. New guy working here.
4. 5 minute text editor fix sorted.  (I am still waiting for a Blackboard fix from August 2006 to their text editor that I estimate could take all of 5 minutes)
5. Speed.
6. Multiple windows.

As an aside, we have not chosen to trial Sakai.  To many show stoppers for us.  For instance, “By sometime in mid-2008 admins will be able to delete forum posts”
Has anyone done a feature by feature comparison Moodle/Bb/Sakai recently?

Onwards. We have a plan, just figuring out how to work the plan.