Category Archives: vle

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Enhancing the student experience

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Technology allows us to do things faster, easier and at a time and place to suit our individual needs; sometimes technology provides new opportunities and new experiences.

From a student experience perspective technology can improve their experience. Technological advances and new media rarely replace existing practice and media, but often supplement, enhance and enrich them.

e-Books for example have not replaced paper books, but allow access to collections that may either not be available or allow easier access at a time and place to suit the student.

e-Journals similarly make it much easier to find relevant articles and access can be from home, college or in the library.

The Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is used in many different ways, but the key again is access to learning where and when the learner needs it. It allows access to resources, discussion, interactivity, assessment from a computer at home, in a computer suite, from a laptop in a coffee shop, via a mobile device on the train. Whereas learning may currently only take place within the institution or individually outside the institution, the VLE allows learning, both individual and group learning from anywhere.

Technology can also be used to enhance existing practice, making it more engaging and interactive. The use of video, audio and voting handsets (clickers) allow traditional learning activities to be enhanced and enriched.

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What do we want? Where do we want it?

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Old Books

It was interesting to hear at a recent meeting that learners were requesting that more resources were available on the VLE. It was apparent that they appreciated that their teachers were placing the resources on the VLE, making them available at a time and place to suit the learner.

This doesn’t surprise me, the lack of activities and resources on an institutional VLE is one area that often comes up in learner feedback. I remember a (fair) few years ago talking to the e-learning people at a large university and they said that 80% of their support calls were from students unable to find their course or resources on the VLE; the reason they couldn’t find them was that they didn’t exist, their lecturer either didn’t have a course on the VLE or hadn’t uploaded any resources.

It’s a simple thing to have a course on the VLE and upload all the resources you use to it, it also supports learners to add extra resources, links to ebooks for example, links to useful websites, RSS feeds from relevant news sites. You could embed YouTube videos, presentations from Slideshare, Prezis and so on.

It’s also an opportunity to add further resources, to inspire learners, stretch them, add challenges, embed maths and English

Of course there is a “danger” that if you only upload resources to the VLE that it becomes just a repository of files, and the inevitable scroll of death. I do think that you should think of this “stage of VLE development” as the initial stage, the first stage, the start of the journey that will end with a VLE course that is engaging, interactive and a really useful tool for learning.

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100 ways to use a VLE – #59 Uploading a Powerpoint Presentation

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Projector

Probably one of the tools that teachers use “too much” is Powerpoint. As a result I would suspect that there are many VLE courses out there that mainly consist of uploaded Powerpoint presentations.

I do find it interesting how embedded the use of Powerpoint is in education. In the late 1990s I was delivering lots of training sessions on how to use Powerpoint to lots of curriculum staff at the college where I worked. Back then I heard many of the “reasons” (and in many cases the excuses) why the curriculum staff couldn’t use the software, how their learners were different, how it wouldn’t work in their subject. However I did persevere in outlining the potential, the possible benefits and the longer term impact that using a tool such as Powerpoint could bring to teaching and learning.

It was nice a few years later (after I had left the college) to find that the training had had an impact and Powerpoint was well used by the curriculum teams. I was particularly impressed with Hair and Beauty who were not only creating innovative presentations, but were sharing them across the department.

Jump forward ten years and Powerpoint is extremely embedded into most colleges and often not only overused, but badly used. Though of course there are lots of positive and innovative uses of Powerpoint, so mustn’t be too negative about it. It is also often an useful starting point in getting staff to move on in their use of learning technologies.

If you do need to upload a presentation to the VLE, then my preference is to use a service such as Slideshare or Speakerdeck, this converts the presentation, and then allows you to embed the presentation into a label or page on the VLE. Slideshare even allows you to add an mp3 audio soundtrack file to run alongside the presentation. This of course implies that you are using a traditional linear presentation, if you’re not then this is not the road to travel down, as these services break any form of interactivity in a Powerpoint presentation. If you are using an interactive Powerpoint presentation, then it makes much more sense to upload the Powerpoint file, rather than convert it. You are making an assumption that the learner has access to the Powerpoint software. This, in a world of iPads, tablets and Chromebooks isn’t always a given.

Uploading Powerpoint files to a VLE, is most certainly not cutting edge in terms of using learning technologies, many of the people reading this blog probably were doing this back in the early 2000s or even earlier. However experience shows that there are still plenty of curriculum staff out there who don’t have that background or experience and for them uploading of Powerpoint files to the VLE is at the beginning of their journey into using note just the VLE, but learning technologies as well, more effectively to support and enhance learning.

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100 ways to use a VLE – #27 Undertaking a Survey

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Many curriculum topics ask learners to gather and analyse data. Hospitality and Catering students may want to gather data about spending habits on eating out. Travel and Tourism students may want to gather information on the costs of tickets for attractions, opening times and discounts. Students on a Business Enterprise course may want to gather data on customer habits to help them formulate a business plan.

In addition to learners gathering data for a survey, teachers or other staff in the college may want to get data. We recently gathered information on how learners felt about the VLE and what needed to be done to make it better; we also gathered data on how they felt about tablets and their use in teaching and learning.

There are a fair few ways for learners and staff to gather data for a survey. You can of course collect responses in paper format, enter all the data and then undertake the analysis. Another option would be to use a Google Form and collect the data in that way.

Using the VLE, say for example, through the Feedback Module on Moodle, allows the learners to spread their survey across the complete college community. Once the survey is done there are some analytical tools included in the Feedback Module, or you can download all the data into an Excel file for further analysis. There is an element of consistency too, with learners using the same tool for the data collection and initial analysis.

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Best thing since…

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Bread

The best thing that I did recently on our Moodle installation to was have the Grid format installed.

If you’ve not seen it, what it does is change the format of a Moodle course from a long list of topics to a grid of icons that link to the topics.

Or to put it more simply it kills the scroll of death.

Moodle Grid Format

I have written a fair bit about the inevitable scroll of death that seems to naturally occur in Moodle once you start using it “properly” to support learning.

The grid format means that learners click the icon for the topic they want to view and the content pops up on the screen.

This means that the learner doesn’t need to scroll down to get to the content or activities they want to engage with.

In addition it makes Moodle courses look neater and tidier. It makes it easier to find the right topic. Initial reaction from learners and staff was very positive and they liked the new format.

There are a few things that I would like to see changed.

You can’t change the default size of the icons, the standard size of 210 x 136 is quite large and on a “normal” sized screen means that you really shouldn’t use more than 12 icons. If you were using a weekly schedule for your Moodle course you might have 36 or more topics. In this type of scenario then the grid format means you have a scroll of large icons instead. In that example a much smaller icon would make more sense.

You do need to have the ability (or the service of others) to create the icons you need. Though you can use any image as an icon, and Moodle will automatically resize the image, this from a design perspective doesn’t quite work. The resizing is quite crude and if your image doesn’t have the same ratio as the default icon size then you will have gaps. I use Fireworks for creating my icons, though you could use Photoshop. For staff I have been recommending CoolText.com which is an online tool for creating logos and with a little tweaking can be used to create a series of icons for the grid format for Moodle. It would be nice though if there was a way that this kind of tool could be built into Moodle.

A minor point is that the grid format is only really usable with 2.4 or later. Using it with earlier versions of Moodle is not to be recommended as there are stability issues. A key issue is that the grid format will break the backup and restore process in earlier versions of Moodle, and you wouldn’t want that.

So if you are running Moodle 2.4 I would certainly recommend that you have a look at the grid format and see how it can change the way Moodle looks, but also the way that staff and learners engage with it.

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100 ways to use a VLE – #85 Interactive Whiteboard

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Blackboard

One tool which is often used in the physical learning environment is the interactive whiteboard. One tool which is used probably a lot more in a lot of physical learning environments is the traditional whiteboard. Another tool which is well used in training rooms is flip chart paper, even if a lot of the time it is the paper that is used rather than as a flip chart.

Regardless of your feelings about interactive whiteboard, the concept of a large shared working space that learners can contribute to together for writing and drawing is one that is often used in education. It is also a rather challenging concept to embed into online environments.

The easiest solution is to stop thinking about a digital whiteboard, but think about the activity and the learning outcomes and see if a different tool could meet those particular needs. For example a brainstorming activity on the meanings of different words could be undertaken using the Glossary tool in Moodle. A collaborative exercise could be done in a wiki. Drawing a concept map could be done using mind mapping software.

It’s not to say that it’s impossible to use a whiteboard in an online environment, but you would very likely need to link or embed such a tool into the VLE.

Remote delivery solutions such as Adobe Connect and Blackboard Collaborate have a digital whiteboard built in as one of the features. These online whiteboards can be used by the remote delegates to interact with the each other and the teacher. These sessions can often be recorded and then linked to from the VLE to be played back at a later date.

There are various tablet apps, such as Educreations that can be used as a portable digital whiteboard, the final output is saved to the web and can be linked to or embedded into the VLE.

There are other online tools that can be embedded into the VLE, Padlet (the service formerly known as Wallwisher) is an ideal tool that allow multiple users to post comments to a virtual wall.

The whiteboard is a cornerstone of the traditional classroom, as was the blackboard before that, it is a tool that you don’t often see in VLEs, but that’s not to say it isn’t possible to have an interactive whiteboard, just that sometimes you need to think slightly differently.

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Assessing Assessment – ocTEL

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This week on ocTEL we’re looking at assessment. As part of my thinking I reflected on the use of quizzes in Moodle.

Designing Moodle quizzes is much more than just been able to use the quiz tool from a technical perspective. There is a real art to crafting questions so that they not only allow the learner to test their understanding, but also require a higher level of thinking.

If we look at the following multiple choice questions, the format of which is one of many different types available on Moodle, it provides the structure and the practitioner provides the question and the answers:

Which is these is a mammal?

Shark
Dog
Spider
Crocodile

This question does not test understanding, most students would be able to guess the answer or would not find it challenging. Within Bloom’s Taxonomy this is testing knowledge only, the bottom layer of the triangle.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

In terms of feedback, you can design Moodle quizzes to provide feedback on questions. So you can explain why their answer is wrong or right and where to look for further information or support.

Onto a similar question:

What is the capital of Australia?

Sydney
Melbourne
Canberra
Melbourne

If we look at this question if you didn’t know the answer then you would need to do some research. However as with the previous question within Bloom’s Taxonomy this is testing knowledge only, the bottom layer of the triangle. It’s more challenging than the first question, but if you didn’t know it already then a quick Google search and you have the right answer.

So what about this question:

Which of these is the odd one out?

Odd One Out

The “problem” with this question is that there is no single right answer. The answer needs an explanation, and it’s the explanation that demonstrates understanding of the question, not the answer.

If we look at Bloom’s Taxonomy it is possible with this question to go all the way to the top.

However Moodle will struggle with assessing a question with no “right” answer and certainly would not be able to assess the explanation.

You could provide generic feedback on why there is no “right” answer, but that may not be useful for all learners. Feedback needs to be personalised to be really effective. Students generally don’t appreciate generic feedback.

This doesn’t mean that Moodle quizzes aren’t an useful tool for checking learning, but its limitations in assessing higher order thinking needs to be considered when designing assessment.

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A Closed Group

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Discussion

Back in 2009 at ALT-C we had the VLE is Dead debate. My view back then hasn’t changed much in the last four years. To save you watching the video, the heart of my viewpoint was that the VLE was the core of a student’s online presence and that other tools and services would plug into that.

I was recently discussing with a group of Psychology students how they used and felt about the VLE. Their response was quite positive, they found the VLE useful and it helped them with their learning. What they also said was that they were pleased it was available. When I asked them about discussions and chat functionality, they were quick to respond that no they didn’t do this on the VLE, but were much more likely to use their “homemade” group on Facebook for those kinds of discussions. When I reminded them that learners had asked for Facebook to be blocked in the library, they replied that this didn’t matter as they preferred to use Facebook on their smartphones.

You get a picture of how they were using different online environments and tools to support their learning. They were making choices about which tools they preferred and those that they didn’t. The students could have created a group on our Mahara site, but they preferred to use a familiar tool such as Facebook.

The question we might want to ask is how do we “assess” these discussions or even access them? Another question might be, do we need to?

If students are using a Facebook group for discussions, should we be trying to impose restrictions on their choices and make them discuss course related stuff on the VLE rather than in a closed group on a different service? Or should we focus on the importance of discussing over the importance of the platform?

In face to face discussions, these do take place in a classroom or seminar, however the vast majority happen elsewhere, whether that be in the refectory, the coffee shop, the library, at home, in the workplace or while travelling. Can we be surprised that online discussions also take place outside the “official” discussion forums?

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Is the Scroll of Death Inevitable?

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newspapers

One of the common themes that comes out when people discuss how to use Moodle, is the inevitable scroll of death.

As you start to use Moodle and create a course for the first time., you add a title, add a label describing the course and then you add a link to file, a link to the forum, some quizzes, a wiki, an assignment, then another. Before long you will have a long list of resources, the inevitable “scroll of death”.

From a learner’s perspective this is a long list of links, no context and not really an engaging and interactive learning experience. It will be more challenging to use Moodle, it won’t be intuitive. The end result will be disengaged learners and people saying that Moodle is “boring”, why can’t it be more like Facebook, Twitter or Google+?

If you are reflective and ask learners for feedback, when you next build a Moodle course, hopefully you will think about whole course design and not build merely a list of links. However years of talking to educators I have found that they rarely talk about whole course design, they are more worried about what they are going to teach tomorrow, or at best next week. They may well have a scheme of work, but that doesn’t mean that it’s useful or they stick to it.

This short-term planning often resulted in the resources been posted to Moodle without any thinking about the context or the impact this approach will have over the whole course.

Now at this point we mustn’t dismiss this approach entirely. It’s often seen as a good thing that we see learning on the VLE, however this doesn’t mean that when you find just a list of resources means that there is no learning happening. It may be happening in the classroom, in the workshop, the workplace, the resources are merely a starting point or a catalyst for learning.

An unplanned approach to curriculum design, combined with a interface flaw within Moodle, means that you are more likely to end up with the “scroll of death” than anything else. If you throw into that mix all the resources that are used over a course, there could be lots of them, probably much more so than any kind of interactive activity, then is it any wonder that when used extensively, most Moodle courses have the “scroll of death”. I know that when I was planning lessons I would have many kinds of resources to support the activities, there may anything up to ten resources for any one activity or assignment. This can quite easily lead to a “scroll of death”.

Another aspect to consider is that the VLE in most FE Colleges (and Universities) is used more often to support, enhance and enrich delivery in the classroom or the lecture theatre. It’s more rare for the VLE to be used for the delivery of learning on its own. Support often means resources, as opposed to a series of learning activities.

Having said all that there is no excuse for the “scroll of death” with a little planning, it’s quite easy to not only avoid it, but add context to any resources and activities, so making the VLE an engaging and useful experience for learners.

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It’s not Napster

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It’s not Napster

Interesting Examples of Technology Enhanced Learning – ocTEL

Probably the most interesting example of TEL for me at the moment is the MOOC, but probably not in the way you would expect.

What interests me about MOOCs is the hype surrounding them and a belief that they will have a significant impact on the HE sector. Some have been saying that MOOCs are to HE, in the same way that Napster was to the music industry. I am less confident in that view, but I do wonder (as someone who works in formal education) if I am thinking as a record company rather than an innovator.

The thing is that over the last few years there have been a fair few ideas and technologies that people have talked about as revolutionising education.

Go back to the 1990s and lots of people back then were talking about how online learning and VLEs were going to revolutionise education. Fast forward to today and VLEs are embedded in a fair few educational organisations (and used intermittently in others) however the VLE is in the main used to enhance and enrich an existing educational experience. You still have traditional classroom and lecture theatre delivery, but there is support, communication tools, extra resources and activities on the VLE that allow for a more personalised and individual learning experience. Rarely will you see a course delivered wholly on the VLE and where you do, it’s usually by an organisation that was doing that kind of remote learning before with paper.

In 2006 many people were talking about mobile learning (oh and still are) and how mobile devices were going to break apart traditional education delivery allowing learning to happen at a time and place to suit the learner. Fast forward again and what we find is that mobile devices are again in the main used to enhance and enrich an existing educational experience. Learners use mobile devices to access additional information and resources, as well as communicate. Services such as Twitter which work well on mobile devices allows back channel communication and sharing of resources and links. You aren’t seeing in the mainstream whole courses designed to be delivered on a mobile device. Some subject areas have made good use of mobile learning, but as with the VLE, the real strength of mobile has been to add value to a traditional learning experience.

Go back just a few years and everyone was talking about the PLE (Personal Learning Environment), how every learner could create their own learning environment, how Web 2.0 tools could take learning outside not just the institutional VLE, but also allow learning in communities and add an element of social learning. At a simple level, in a PLE, a learner would use a range of web based tools and services to create their own learning environment, engaging with learning communities across a range of institutions. Though that is happening today, it certainly isn’t mainstream.

I don’t see mainstream education using the PLE concept, yes individuals are pushing it and encouraging their learners to engage with web tools and services, but the PLE revolution that was talked about, just hasn’t happened and the term is rarely referred to or mentioned today in discussions about learning technologies. Certainly I don’t think I have seen the term PLE in any of the discussions in this MOOC.

In many ways I do think that MOOC is similar to what we have seen before. A lot of people evangelise how this “concept” will revolutionise education and cause traditional institutions to change. Personally I don’t see that happening.

In many ways MOOCs for me are an evolution of the PLE. By adding content and structure to the PLE you get a MOOC.

So will MOOCs revolutionise education in the same way that Napster changed the music industry?

What needs to be remembered is that there were lots of other services at that time, as well as other technologies, it wasn’t just Napster that had an impact on the music industry. Well maybe we should look whether it was just Napster, in many ways I think mp3 and the iPod (and iTunes) had a bigger impact. Also where is Napster now, the original Napster concept that is? It’s gone.

MOOCs will change education, the fact we are talking and discussing them implies that this will feed into how we work and support learning. But is it Napster? I don’t think it is.