e-learning reports

Blackboard assimilates Angel

2009-05-08T17:39:00.002+01:00

I hadn't heard of Angel, but Blackboard's splodged it. And it seems that these days, VLE=LMS, which seems like a much better TLA.

Lots of commentage and grumbling from the newly subjugated. Much fleeing to Moodle I imagine too.

Search : Blackboard Angel Acquire

Forgot to attach the file?

2008-12-10T13:27:00.005Z

Nice. That will be annoying, hopefully, and it's so easily done. Haha! When they refer to it later, they will find the attachment missing. Excellent! If it's late enough they will bring their laptop to a crucial meeting, expecting to refer to the file, only to find they haven't got a clue what's being discussed.

Here's how to make it more annoying, especially if you want to appear helpful (which is nice as you will never be blamed for doing it).

Send a supplementary email including the attachment. Don't include ANY of the information from the original, probably lengthy email. Best of all, call the follow-up something generic, like "oops".

If a message should have multiple attachments, try "forgetting" just one. Never send out the whole lot again. That would be too clean.

A bit more subtle, but it still works:

Send the whole message again, but completely Quoted (it will be blue and quite annoying in most clients, and with luck it will have random line breaks in it). Most email programs do this by default.

See how easy it is to turn email into an Aegean stable? Some further tips:

You can include the attached file anywhere in the new text. Best place is in between the bottom of the quoted text and your newly added signature. They will never look there. Tee-hee!

Again, if you have the chance, change the subject line. That will stop those oh-so-clever types who think they can use message threads to keep on top of things.

Anything you can do to multiply the number of messages the recipient has to handle, or the ambiguity of the situation, is fine. It all adds to data overload, and slows down their ability to do "good work". Some of them even think that's why they're at work!

mmm, still Delicious!

2008-08-17T11:14:00.004+01:00

Here's a video (yes, moving things, on Flickr) explaining without words what happened when Del.icio.us lost its dots and gained a layer of logic over its already impressive bundle of features.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/deliciousblog/2718285703/

I smell funding. Which is great for perfecting an idea, but, as I recall, didn't cause the main ideas in the first place.

Nice, funky, explanation by the way. I want lectures to be like this. Not 1 minute long and with a slappy synth part, but with a momentum that intrigues and delights the audience.

The idea of Seven Things

2008-05-23T13:32:00.005+01:00

Seven's a nice small number, so saying only seven things forces the speaker to edit carefully. I like it. That is, I like being on the receiving end of properly focussed communications, but need to learn more about sending them.

Stalking through Julie's Twitter, for likely co-twitterers, brought me to Matt Lingards' link (hello Matt!) to 7 things about twitter, on Educause. And there's more!

So here goes. As an added challenge, I'm going to squeeze down, twitter-stylee yeah?, Educuse's seven-things on two sweet sides of PDF office-friendly format into seven tart sentences.

Seven Things about project planning applications

This is not strictly an e-learning tool, but this is one of my ducks, mmkay?

A Project Planning application is a software application that is designed to define, plan and track inter-related tasks and resources in a Project (meaning finite work with a defined set of outcomes).
Project Managers and allied professionals use PM software (the classic misnomer : software can't manage!) to prepare schedules and budgets for their projects, but you'll also find engineers, developers, general managers and team members in contact with the applications and/or using the artefacts that arise.
These applications generally operate by modelling a project as a series of inter-linked tasks, each with an estimated duration and utilisation of resources; the connectedness, timing and other aspects the project are calculated according to the entered data and shown on charts and tables, such as a Gantt chart, network diagram or resource graph.
These tools are important because more work (development activities and funded research) is organised and controlled in the paradigm of a project (perferably a well-managed one), and project management occurs on the syllabus of many programmes, including most science and engineering disciplines.
A fool with a tool : planning software encourages a microscopic view of task management (one can become obsessed with perfected the schedule) that can sometimes obscure or de-emphasise systemic or relationship issues in a working environment (i.e. it's often better to go round and talk to people, and play around with some sticky notes).
In two directions: applications getting more embedded in corporate workflows (task reminders straight to Outlook) and intranet applications (e.g. timesheets direct to a MS-Project database); on the other hand, a newer breed of lighter, web-aware, collaboration-focussed applications that seem to be focussed on a different constituency entirely (of which a good example is Basecamp).
The former sort of application is part of the expected armoury of a qualified engineer or scientist, whereas the latter type would seem to favour educationalists themselves in working together to produce new courses and tools.

For reference, the pattern is:

what is it?
who's doing it?
how does it work?
why is it significant?
what are the downsides?
where it is going?
what are the implications for teaching and learning?

Problem Based Learning

2008-05-22T17:01:00.003+01:00

To the UCL Teaching and Learning Network meeting to hear four speakers discuss experiences of problem based learning. Nothing particularly e-/electronic about this one, quite a lot of eeeeh/curiosity. I went expecting some big theoretical stick to hit me, but it didn't. I'm evidently already doing a good wodge of PBL, and already know a bit about it, and could probably hold forth on Peer Assessment methods in particular more than is strictly necessary (please do contact me if you want to talk about Peer Assessment). UCL readers can explore more in the TLN Moodle, ask Phil Riding for the key if you haven't got one.

I'm struggling to define exactly what PBL is, and I suspect there's not going to be a clean universal definition, but here goes:

students explore a topic through a problem or case study
outputs are similar to real-world artefacts (proposals, plans etc)
there's an emphasis on application
the curriculum (list of knowledge to be gained) is tacit
knowledge scope depends on where the students go, as well as the scenario design
learning outcomes include transferable skills

There's quite a lot of Problem-based learning going on close to me, for example:

MSc Systems Engineering Management case study exercises (Formative only, Groups)
Project Management Project Plan Assignment (Summative, Groups)
Project Management Case Study exam question (Summative : exam conditions, Individual)
Dissertations (Summative, Individual)
MSc Space Sci/Tech Group project (Formative!, Groups)

There's also a moderate amount of Peer Assessment going on in the group projects talked about at UCL. A typical assessment structure goes:

Group work artefact: 60%
Individual piece/presentation/viva : 30%
Peer assessment: 10%

I reckon the Peer assessment element is really useful tool to reinforce productive group behaviour, and the fact that it gives a mark that can differentiate students is a bonus. I used to think it was the other way round.

TILT2008

2008-04-16T12:19:00.009+01:00

UCL Teaching and Learning Conference TILT 2008

Friendly enough bunch, though, but, you know. Some of the presentations are a little along the me-too type. The remit is wider than technology though, which might explain the relative lack of innovation. I guess I expect to be constantly amazed at events like this.

Some personal highlights:

Was gladdened to hear that podcasting at UCL seems to be just round the corner. Jeremy's got a stack of shiny servers and software (e.g. like Anystream's Apreso, as used by Winyard et al) that do all the mashing and mixing of sources. The talks at this very conference for example. Woo, at long last. Let's hope the efforts don't get mired in endless fretting about IP. UPDATE: the server workflow has eaten its own fingers, so the podcasts are borked, for now. UPDATE UPDATE: they fixed it. Grab them while they are hot.
Had fun with the personal response systems. Who wants to be a ~~millionaire~~ poor academic? Let's ask the audience.
Felt sorry for those locked into WTS, who can't even get audio on their machines, let alone all this fancy stuff.

Looked forward to effectively outsourcing online reading lists, c/w hyperlinks and scanned bits, to the Library where it belongs. Hope they don't make it a wobbly heap of complexity like the exam papers (couldn't that be made look like a plain list, hmm?)
Resolved yet again to try and introduce CBM into teaching, probably Project Management to start with.
Got the urge to incorporate more Objects, either QT-VR blobs of space hardware from photos (we've got lots of good stuff, but it's all in Holmbury) into teaching, or even art objects (via the print collection? They've obviously got lots of good stuff).

Found myself ranting about the empty phrase "the video was good quality". What?? I thought we were supposedly learned grown-ups. There's No Such Thing as "good quality", unless it's understood what the use might be. Puh-leaze read Garvin, or anything about Requirements and then come back and say something meaningful. You are permitted to say "the video was good enough to do X, but not Y". I reckon folk see the moving flashes and are hypnotised into bliss, hence the nonsensical utterances. Take the podcasts of these talks. Yes I can see the head, and the lips moving around a bit, and the big text, but not the little bits, or the texture in the image. I can see how many hands the presenter is holding up, but not whether she's sweating slightly. It's not the same as being in the room. If I'm bovvered, I'll do a dummies guide to video quality, and a checklist of AV qualities, note the plural, that might be relevant to teaching. It'll have to distinguish Functions from Features, and cover image, text, sound, colour and search. It might use metaphors in music performance or some other thing, like the concept of computer-mediated sex, to bang home the point. /rant

Followed many course developments elsewhere - especially those of Peacock (converting a course to online mode), Dunsmuir (collaborating to produce an accredited course) and Federighi (developing a course where curriculum drives teaching, not vice versa). I'll 'ave summa that.

Watched the Big Fight : some real challenges to the implied build-it and they will come approach to some of UCL's recent branding/mission/strategies. "Global Citizenship" for example. Tom Gretton was the cheerful lad who in this case pointed to the emperor's allegedly draughty arse (Citizen = defined polity, rights etc . Global = nothing of the sort). I much prefer the concept of the metaphoric city (a place of meetings), which being virtual, could be global. UCL as a city of learning that's open to, and for, the world. Hard to fit that in two words though. Maybe that's the point. More on the blog it is officially hoped. Though I doubt it : blogging hasn't really caught fire at UCL. CASA (undescribable, go and look) and John Wells (the non-department of Phonetics) are about the only decent UCL blogs I know of (tell me another, please).

Onwards.

e-learning briefing at MSSL

2008-01-30T15:52:00.000Z

Several staff at MSSL took time to hear me speak about my experiences with Moodle and e-learning generally, and also to re-introduce services provided by Information Systems. I think we made some headway into the general problem of best to use technology to support learning. Most undergraduate and Masters students are usually a long way away from where most of the teaching staff are, so it makes sense for us to be on top of the technology. As well as that, we (MSSL) are generally technically adept. However, beacuse of our remote location, we may forget about or never hear of activities and services at the centre. I'm hoping this will change. I also think our main challenges are not technological but to do with the culture of learning in physics classrooms.

Nice little definition of constructivism

2007-10-05T19:11:00.000+01:00

Nice summary here about the contrast between traditional and constructivist approaches to learning/teaching by Ken Carroll at Praxis (a.k.a. Chinesepod):

Is knowledge delivered or constructed?

2007 - the year of Moodle?

2007-09-07T17:11:00.001+01:00

It's everywhere. Even my next door neighbour has heard of Moodle (he works in a sixth-form college)! Here in UCL, it has been adopted as an official VLE, having been a pilot service for a year or two.

With colleagues, I have been putting together simple course structures and courses for a variety of levels (undergrad/postgrad modules and executive training). Point Click, prod, poke, bosh. Sorted. Not much real need to read the manual. So far so very easy. Compared with WebCT, the process of course creation is much speedier. The interfaces are generally much less clunky and the metaphors are straightforward enough that even a particularly notoriously un-techy teacher doesn't constantly crash things.

One thing I particularly like is that any item (file, activity, quiz) has a static URL [1] that can be used anywhere else. An obscure URL, but a URL nonetheless. This makes integration with other sites and blogs possible. Another thing : the feeds and email hooks mean that Moodle courses aren't forgotten, allowing integration the other way. WebCT, as I recall, was a black hole, almost nothing went across its event horizon.

We are still learning the ins and outs (there are a few bugs, which Julie knows all about), and we have yet to receive proper student feedback.

I'm looking forward to rolling out programme-wide Moodles for at least a couple of MSc's later this year. I'm also looking forward to the software itself stabilising. The sunny uplands of Version 3. UCL has 1.6 right now, and 1.8, 1.9 are out there in development-land.

[1] It still mentions a script called view.php, so, according to the ultra-pure W3C, can't be considered "cool". Unlike Sir Tim.

Independent learning

2007-05-28T17:43:00.000+01:00

Chinesepod, one of the podcasts I regularly listen to, has recently done a version-up. Among other things, they have ditched the idea of a series of podcasts, while keeping up the daily deliveries. No longer are they numbered Intermediate 97, 98, 99 and so on. Instead, they are giving prominence to the theme of each program, the un-numbered title.

This seems to promote a bit more user independence, and encourages, gives permission to perhaps, the idea of dipping in to the stream ad hoc. Ken's pretty keen on user-centered learning, look, he's referencing Blackboard whitepapers about it.

On the website end, they have enabled users (paying ones anyway) to develop a calendar of learning. So you can be browsing the stock of podcasts, and you see a lesson on Tai Chi. Cool! So you bookmark that one, and that's remembered for you. You look at your calendar, and decide that next Monday lunchtime might be a good time to listen through and look at. From your bookmarks, you drag the lesson title to the Sunday. That's when the relevant audio file and PDF transcript will be delivered to your iTunes. After breakfast on Monday, you sync the pod and you can't wait till lunchtime.

I just now grokked all this, having been confused for the last 5 weeks.

Permanent Markerus Erasius

2007-05-18T14:01:00.001+01:00

This isn't e-learning, but chemical-based learning. We never called it c-learning, did we?

You know, last time I was in a lecture room and accidentally wrote with permanent marker on the white board, I shrank by a foot, apologised, threw the marker in the bin, and tried to carry on around the fresh graffiti. I needn't have been so upset, here's a wonderful undo spell:

Lifehacker : erase permanent marker

Becta on Web 2.0

2007-03-27T15:05:00.000+01:00

Here's a nice report on trends in T+L using new generations of web tools:

They've called it Emerging Technologies for Learning.

Hello?! The tech has long since emerged. The users and managers now need to emerge after it.

TLN : Podcasting

2007-03-21T21:48:00.000Z

Just back from the TLN talk/discussion on Podcasting at UCL. About time too! There has been some traffic on the insanely great Mac list about this recently. You know, the usual worries: what mic and recorder to use, where to put the file, with what compression, and how to wrap it all up in a xml file. And does my bum look big in this. As usual, have been meaning to develop something podcastish for ages, but haven't got to it yet. I did the round trip thing a couple of years ago, and the 23-second "hello world" is still there on a server someplace.

So, after a fairly routine (though very slick) couple of presentations for the noobs about what a podcast is, or was last year, and what a feed is, we got to the discussion business. I was almost expecting about half a dozen UCL people to reveal their wonderful podcast seminars series, and for the web services boys and girls to say "Here we are with another big webserver that's got the nuts to host it all, and here's a nice form-n-script that you can use to upload and cook your XML for you, and here's a mic (that we've found works well) for you to borrow till you get your own, and oh by the way we've sorted things with iTunes podcast directory so your busy students can't forget where you put it."

I said almost. Back in the world again, my fat mouth got its usual run.

Questions, questions:

Why are people obsessed with "putting lectures on the web". It's like 1999 all over again, only with bad audio instead of over-long web pages. What's so fantastic about a lecture that it has to be badly reproduced in an unsuitable medium?

Why is everybody afraid of polluting the Brand? A big part of our brand should be "does stuff".

Why does the harmful meme "what is the best way of doing this" have such a hold? There is no best way.

Matt's way:

Get on with it. Let flowers bloom, and prune and arrange later.

Experience. Listen to Chinesepod, watch youtube, and work out how bite-sized media work.

Keep it short. Don't for heaven's sake consider putting 40 minute lectures through someone's headphones. Keep boring meta stuff out, such as where the departmental coffee machine is. Ums and ahhs are tolerable in RL, nice even, but are leaden milliseconds when recorded. Love the Wayne's World model, also the BBC model. We are not the BBC, however.

Use face time (lectures) for the exchange of human emotions about the topics. Put the reference works into print, web, video or audio as appropriate. The lecturer's job is a DJ's, to showcase other people's tunes, pointing out the interesting bits, filling the gaps, and keeping them dancing.

The audience don't mind if the records are a bit scratchy, but they must not be bored. Don't confuse pace and style (which are mandatory) with production gloss (which isn't).

People laughing about a point is a great way to teach. Get down the pub with Audacity and a pair of mikes, and talk about the subject, preferably one that's been described elsewhere. "You've read the notes on the theory of price elasticity, now Peter from Freakonomics is going to tell me about Barca's moves in the transfer market. Now Peter, 20 million is a lot for a defender, what are the forces here, are the TV networks dominating the demand side of the equation? ..." Remember, 10 minutes max. Your punter is a busy person.

Now, about copyright and the creative commons in audio content ... Sorry time's up.

The New Web for Dummies

2006-05-09T10:41:00.000+01:00

... or something like that. You know when you go "e-learning yada wiki yada blog yada" and people stare at you (thinking WTF are you on about why aren't you writing out OHPs or sharpening your chalk) and you want to stuff something like Web 2.0 (as applied to Education) for Dummies into their open mouths?

Well, here it is.

Using Blogger for teaching - slides

2006-03-30T08:06:00.000+01:00

It's a bit rough and ready, but my slides are here and here. 2.6 MB Powerpoint.

Bit of blog intro-theory, a few screen shots from VLEs and forums, lots of wild speculation.

Report from T+L 2006 (3)

2006-03-29T17:22:00.000+01:00

17:20 Martin Reid & June Hedges (UCL Library Service): Coping with copyright and content.

Fairly routine introduction to what this bit of the library does for us. Phew! June mentions Creative Commons right at the end!

Report from T+L 2006 (2)

2006-03-29T16:30:00.000+01:00

16:20 Using wikis to support collaborative exploration of anthropological issues.

Wikis incorporated into teaching. Looking forward to this one. Two presenters: Rodney Reynolds, Nicolette Makovicky. Material Culture. First year. I think I saw this on our Moodle (Phil Riding is a co-author).

Lots of ideas, new to the learners, flying about. Tutorials too didactic? ("Are you going to be like a normal teacher and give us the answer?"). Wiki an obvious (to me) a ripe medium for engaging with such ideas. How did it work?

Wikis seeded with opening text(1 sentence) by tutors.

Reluctance ... students concerned about "giving ideas away" ?
Confusion ... with summative/evaluative contributions in other courses
Is it competitive (in either a good or bad sense?)
Are traditional roles asserting themselves?

Can it be assessed?
Can participation be enforced?

Hugely interesting. Comparisons with Wikipedia's Discussion pages? Role of editors to provide structure? Assessment of all this?

16:58 Wiki technology in Dutch Dept and Virtual Dept of Dutch. Ulrich Tiedau, Kathryn Ronnau-Bradbeer.

Because Dutch departments round the country are small, they collaborate a lot. Bunch of stuff about their inter-uni study packs, use of WebCT, videoconference blah blah. What about the wiki? Motivation came from non-existence of WebCT collaborative ability. The speaker is Dutch and he says "vicky" now and again.

Each student given overall responsibility for one page, but encouraged to the others. Critical mass issues, need group of certain size (they had groups of ~4 and ~30), and for a certain time. Assessment needs to be integrated. S's would like to use this tool as part of assessment, but wisely decide to concentrate on what can be assessed.

Extremely interesting, look forward to discussing at the T+L club!

Report from T+L 2006

2006-03-29T16:00:00.000+01:00

This morning: busy cobbling together my presentation. I've left it rolling in the exhibtion stands area.

15:59 First chance to to sit down and blog in the conference. Several expressions of interest as to what a blog is, why would I use one in teaching.

The HoD popped in too to talk strategy.

Lots of other interesting stories around the conference. Smart (i.e. experienced) learners: Sophie Martin; Smart boards: Frederick Simons; big WebCT courses: Andrea Sella; multimedia plugins and HTMLW : an "academic markup language:" : Andrew Martin; Extending the cultural scope of foundation science courses: Chris Fenwick.

There's wifi in the room, so I can report that right now I'm listening to Sue Lightman talk about Interactive Voting systems in clinical teaching. Three students per handset seems to be right number to cluster around a single handset, based on the amount of noise that comes off the room.

16:10 Key Skills Agenda ... hmm pretty uninspiring. Something about wikis next, so I'll sit through this one. Ah there's a colleague, I wonder if she's noticed me?

Tilting at windmills?

2006-03-24T14:06:00.000Z

OK, cardboard armor on, chaaaaarge!

I shall be talking to anyone who wants to listen about using Blogger as a lightweight collaboration tool for education. I've had a few months now of using a blog for a course which has had hundreds of users pass through it, and I'll be going on about how wonderful (or not) that was in the 2006 UCL Teaching and Learning Conference.

One of the dragons I see through the heat haze is the dreadful clunkiness of WebCT forums. What's that, Sancho? It's really the friendly windmill of Moodle?

Looking for more good education blogs

2005-12-12T12:36:00.000Z

You can peer at random people's subscriptions on their blogs, but I need to do some actual work before Christmas. So, what's a bigger shovel?

Educational bloggers on Flickr – pond a bit small, fish are self selecting
Bloglines subscriptions of famous people, like "dnorman" – D'Arcy Norman presumably – enormous pile, lots of good quality
Edublog awards nominees
The map of edubloggers (self-selection again) powered by Frappr! and Google Maps

any more ??

Naked education

2005-12-11T14:57:00.000Z

Right! I'm going to get naked in front of the students more often.

(from Presentation Zen)

elgg Learning Landscape

2005-12-08T22:15:00.000Z

I'm intrigued by elgg and its Learning Landscape. I discovered it by following, through the flocking mechanism of delicious, who else had linked to a particular post on the corporatisation of universities (this is the little flock) following their adoption of electronic media (itself an ironic current).

Which goes to demonstrate that sometimes this social stuff actually works.

Choosing a forum

2005-11-16T13:30:00.000Z

There must be hundreds of collaboration platforms available to me in principle, but I'm usually tempting to pick low-hanging fruit. Following a well-established pattern, I need to taste the fruit before responding to advice.

I've just this week re-opened a Blogger blog, Questions of Project Management, for some of my students, in preference to instituting a WebCT course that 180 of them would have to register for and then maybe not use. I don't care if search engines find out what we talk about, but I do anonymise enquiries (which I still field by email).

In Systems Engineering Management (MSc with predominantly industrial delegates) we will shortly go the WebCT route, simply to provide a secure forum and minimal course information. Whether this will expand toward content delivery is unresolved.

Yesterday I became aware of Courseforum and Projectforum, which looks like wiki, but tidied up and given dancing shoes. It's got RSS integration (both in and out) and tells you about changes by email – wha-hey! This could be a solution to my lightweight VLE and forum needs, but like anything in this second wave of development, they want money. We use a phpWiki in the MSSL TMG for internal chatter, but it hasn't caught fire as yet (only ~6 users!).

I'm going to be more scientific about observing what happens with all these fora, so in the mode of a paper, here would be the abstract:

We describe how and why we used the blog-publishing web service Blogger to provide students with supplementary information relevant to an assignment in an otherwise conventionally-taught UCL course. We explore how Blogger’s characteristics fitted the demands of this publication task, and compare its facilities with other forum tools. A specific comparison is made with Discussions feature of WebCT, where we look at other courses involving the same tutors. The effect of the features of each setting on the nature of the interaction with students is explored. Both tools are compared to the use of e-mail to achieve the same ends. A sample of Students’ own response to these methods is shown, and some conclusions are drawn.

I plan to present this at UCL's next Teaching and Learning Event.

Natural Podcast

2005-11-10T10:45:00.000Z

Wow, even Nature's got a podcast.

They join NASA, Stanford, New Scientist, the BBC and everybody else in the race to your brain. Earholes are the new eyeballs.

What's on my ipod? Mark Kermode's film reviews make me laugh out loud on the train (during half-term I got a few who's that scary man, mummy? looks from six year olds). And "我学习普通话" with Chinesepod.com.

I use ipodder and itunes.

In 2015, those six year olds will wonder why I bothered writing this.

Blackboard buys WebCT

2005-10-15T11:16:00.000+01:00

I heard today that Blackboard is set to buy out WebCT.

Random selection of links to merger commentary by independent observers:

Auricle Bath
John Dale Warwick
D'arcy Norman Calgary
More roundup Stephen Downdes

There's a great discusssion on Slashdot where, guess what, both products get slagged off.
This being Slashdot, by people who claim to know a thing or two. Admins and students are the
majority of the audience, but there's a few "professors" in there too. It's worth a giggle, if you
can stave off the feeling of here-we-go-again depresion.
I have some insight on this topic as a university professor. I've used
both systems, and I was on the Academic Technology Committee when it was
advising the CTO and CIO on purchasing decisions for such systems. We
wound up paying for both. As you say, they both suck, and I'm sure
whatever unholy combination is produced will suck even worse. At the
time - 1999 or 2000 I believe - "open source" was something my
colleagues on the committee had heard of but didn't know anything about,
and the CTO and CIO were computer-savvy but looked on open source with
disdain (this made sense as they were constantly wined and dined by
folks who represent closed source companies looking for big deals). I
was teaching summers at UCLA at the time and had the opportunity to use
ClassWeb [ucla.edu], an open source alternative to such tools. My
experience with the tool was exemplary; I thought it was easy to use, it
fulfilled the necessary functions and was not needlessly confusing for
students. It was also free. Best of all, the developer worked at UCLA so
when there were features I wanted I was able to ask him for them and
they were available in days. It was truly a classic case of the
superiority of the open source model working well. For much less the
price we paid for Blackboard and CT, which all the students complain
about, we could have hired programmers to handle coding issues on
classweb and had an open source solution that we could fine tune at
will. But when I made the suggestion, the feeling around the table
(particularly from the CTO and CIO) was, shut up hippie....

Another cycle

2005-10-12T13:50:00.000+01:00

Having spent quite a bit of effort getting the e-learning horses into their harnesses last year and wondering whether all the trouble was worth it, this year could be the one where some furrows are usefully ploughed with less sweat on my part.

It has certainly been very liberating to simply direct students to the virtual store cupboard, without having to fill each of their baskets. Today's course material distribution takes ten seconds.

Me: "Log on to webCT, you'll see my course there, grab what you need"
Them: "er... great!"

Increasingly, students will expect more and more direct provision of on-line information. Here's a trendspotting survey in the Grauniad (spotted in Cutting Through). The conclusions talk about media buying habits of the youth, but these are trends that will probably affect student expectations in universities too. In not too many years' time, it has to be stressed. Next year's first tutorial could go like:

Them: "Hey grandad, I've looked for your RSS feed and course documents last week, where are they? I want my money back. I'm off."
Me: "er... wait!"

New UCL blog spotted - any more?

2005-06-21T13:49:00.000+01:00

Peter at the Management Studies Centre has started a team blog like this one, called Thriving on Chaos. Know any more bloggers in UCL?

The idea of aggregating abundances of blogs is dealt with by James Farmer in BlogSavvy, which seems to be a spinoff from his existing Incorporated Subversion.

UK Education resources : changes afoot

2005-04-19T17:38:00.000+01:00

Attentive readers will note that this is cross-post from Double Loop.

My usual mode of operation in the edu-game revolves around the annual round of production and feedback linked to the academic year. I'm looking ahead to future concepts right now, and it's around this time that I start trawling around the national resources. I've just spotted that the entity formerly known as LSTN has mutated into the UK Higher Education Academy.

The reason I'm looking here is to get a sense of what practitioners are doing with learning technology around the country. I'm suspicious that what I'm seeing is not representative of the best. Certainly sites the the UK HEA don't fit the zeitgeist of now, and more importantly my working practices. No attribution (Who are you guys?), no contribution (no comments boxes!), no RSS (what, none at all?). Too many empty strategy papers (aarrgh PDF!! arrgh dead URLs in the PDFs!!!) and out of date case studies.

An example, I came across an LSTN-branded working paper, in the Physical sciences subsite (why?), entitled Virtual Learning Environments stating that

The most basic form of asynchronous communication with computer technology is the use of email, where a message is sent and the reply is sent later i.e. asynchronously. So, all VLEs should provide at least basic email facilities.

What, university students don't have email they can use? Why are these dated papers still being circulated? Hasn't the community moved on in the last two years?

I suspect the valuable practical lessons are out there somewhere not being reported, at least not here. Back to the blogfields.

I'm ramping up my orbits around blogdom looking for inspiration. A very small sample can be seen in the sidebar of this blog. I'm getting a consistent impression that the best learning technology practitioners, at least the ones who blog, are seriously struggling against two things.

1. Managerialism and corporate approaches to learning technology implementations. Example: teachers being required by directive or circumstance to use a particular VLE tool.

2. Directed experiences of the learner, i.e. prior programming of a student's responses at course-design time.

To some extent these two aspects support each other. Heavy tooling up leads to industrialisation of production, whereas the opposite models are also mutually supportive. Many commentators are advocating a pick and mix (a.k.a. the filling station model) toward both provider technology (blog, wiki, podcast, webpage, VLE if you must) and learner acitivity (browsing, using Google, emailing each other, discovery).

Edublogger awards

2005-04-07T18:18:00.000+01:00

... representing some of the best in Educational Blogging in the past year or so.
Expect to see more of some of these in the sidebar soon.

From Incorporated Subversion.

UCL Teaching and Learning Strategy 2005

2005-04-04T14:18:00.000+01:00

It's good to see the buzz-alphabetti of ICT and VLE mentioned, among other things, in the UCL Teaching and Learning Strategy that was announced recently - here (restricted to UCL staff). It looks as though some key viewpoints made at earlier consultative workshops were incorporated. Now, how can we turn this into implementable plans at Departmental level next session?

Interactive whiteboards

2005-01-18T13:24:00.000Z

I gave a demonstration of how to use an "interactive whiteboard" to a group of lecturers yesterday, and it's fair to say they were very impressed. They were lucky, actually, because they'd inherited a teaching room left behind by the Ergonomics department, and so coincidentally they inherited a large and perfectly-configured interactive whiteboard.

These things are really good to use. They're one of the few things in the area of "learning technology" which is genuinely quite intuitive to use. Simply use it like an ordinary projector screen, but when you want to scrawl a note on top of one of your slides, or use the mouse to perform some action, you simply touch the screen with your finger!

This model comes with some very handy extras, such as character recognition (it will turn your scrawled markings into neatly-formatted computer text), different colours of "pen" to write with, etc. Try one out, if you ever get a chance...

Goose is getting fat

2004-12-10T17:07:00.000Z

Term 1 at UCL is coming to a close and there’s almost time to reflect on my e-learning practices.

I’ve been running a course – MSSL’s ST4 – almost entirely free of the photocopier. Does this make it e-learning? Who cares?

Notes/slides were delivered using our VLE, WebCT, but lectures ran as normal – using materials largely unadapted from the previous year (I have inherited this particular course). The existence of the course discussion forum was mentioned, but by and large ignored by the 15 students. To be honest, I think they have better things to do than chat.

Similar use was made of the VLE by me and my colleague for our Space Technology course, PHYS3C64/SS15. The online materials supplemented the normal lectures.
I’m planning a similar use for Project Management next term.

I think the students regard whatever we are doing as pretty normal. They are probably surprised if a course doesn’t at least have a web page. By and large they cope with many of the hurdles of the VLE very quickly. I’m looking forward to seeing how 80+ undergrads, who aren’t necessarily techies, get on. This time, they’ll be receiving a dead tree edition of their notes anyway so WebCT will be used for extras: optional slide-sets, some coursework briefing documents, and a forum for coursework Q+A.

Outside of my own sphere, I haven’t heard much of the last institutional workshop on e-learning strategy, nor have I been able to keep up with much more than my immediate colleagues. What about you?

Overviews of e-learning research papers

2004-11-12T13:04:00.000Z

For those of you who'd love to read more research papers on e-learning but don't know where to look, this website seems like it will be very useful:

http://www.elearning-reviews.org/

It's run jointly between Stanford University and a centre in Switzerland, and compiles brief reviews of research papers related to e-learning. I've only just discovered it - the site is a bit ugly but the content looks really useful.

Julie's Introduction

2004-11-08T11:59:00.000Z

Hello, I'm Julie Voce and I'm one of two Learning Technologies Support Officers. My role is to provide support, advice and training on all aspects of Learning Technology. The main area I deal with is the Virtual Learning Environment, WebCT, however this will probably change as people embrace other technologies like Computer Assisted/Aided Assessment.

To let you know a little more about my background, I have a MEng in Computer Science so in theory I'm quite techy with experience of programming in C, Java and obscure languages like Haskell and Modula-2. My first job after graduating was at UMIST (now part of the University of Manchester) on an EU funded research project which developed a piece of language learning software for intermediate to advanced learners of French (Freetext). Whilst at UMIST I also taught on the MSc in Computer Assisted Language Learning, where our students had to develop a WebCT course and I am pleased to say they did remarkably well.

For more information about learning technology see: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/learningtechnology/

Let's not go there

2004-11-03T10:04:00.000Z

In Derek Morrison's Auricle, a frightening 2nd-hand account of rampant corporatisation - use the Official VLE or get a slap. Derek:

Message from Earth to institution; weblogs, wikis etc - you need to support them.

The First Party was James Farmer - article here - note the many, many messages of outrage and support.

The paradox is, I suppose, that teachers require support and infrastructure to deliver their teaching. What they don't want is for the provision, when it comes, to completely dictate their teaching practices. If we can't have provision then we'll require to be left alone to work. That's natural enough when we are talking about £200 OHP units but not necesserly the outcome when the technology costs are orders of magnitude greater.

Creativity is not an optional extra in the education field. I sincerely hope our institution doesn't go this way (towards a proprietary monoculture of tools), and, to date it doesn't look like it will. An example of second-mover advantage, perhaps?

The time taken to add one lecture

2004-10-29T19:42:00.000+01:00

OK, so I’ve got this 2-hour lecture, ready to go onto the OHP, for Space Systems Technology. The notes, in practically book-chapter quality, are already on the WebCT course, so I shouldn’t feel compelled to put anything else online. But I do. Somehow, I want to make the customer offering complete (note how I come out with spontaneous marketing-speak now?), and also make a handy on-screen revision tool that might jog the memory more than memory itself.

Let’s see what’s involved in providing Powerpoint – they like to print out the Notes pages, and why not – and Impatica versions of an existing presentation. I’ve already anticipated a little by having a sequence of slides, illustrative of the progressive degradations that you get when compressing images, be longer than I would use for actual overheads. The sequence itself is like frames of a movie, and the learning point is all about comparison rather than analysis of any particular one.

First of all, I make sure I’ve got my Powerpoint file ready (it’s called “processing” and the course is called PHYS3C64), so let’s start the clock. Here are the steps:

1. Transfer processing.ppt (786 kb) to a network drive
2. Log on to server running Impatica 3.0.2
3. Find the source file, Add to batch list. Enable navigation controls and HTML output. (There’s loads more : zip, SCORM, ipk)
4. For this one, I don’t want to introduce two lots of compression artefacts, so I go to the Media tab and (here’s hoping this is right) set the JPEG compression to 100%. I assume that normally, it will compress the whole slide-image as one entity.
5. Oops I spotted an option “apply extra compression” in Output Files. Turn that off.
6. Hit Impaticize!
7. 38 slides take a minute or two.
8. OK, now I’ve got a processing-imp.jar. Turns out it’s 930 kb. Haul this back to my PC, along with the 1 k html wrapper it makes, and the copy of the player it spits out.
9. Bundle these puppies together in a dummy folder.
10. I already have the 3c64 setup as a Network Place – using the webdav info provided in MyWebCT. Copy the dummy folder across. For some reason I can’t copy files this way, only folders. However, I can move files once they are present on the server, so I put them where I want now.
11. Log on to WebCT.
12. The next bit takes ages, it seems. Putting two additional files at arbitrary places in an existing content module seems overly clunky (I know, I know, it’s because HTML forms don’t generate Events). WebCT doesn’t help me by not having a proper file browser dialog for selecting to-be-linked file, just this huge list in a tiny font.
13. Switch to View mode for a quick test. Press F11 to get more actual screen back. Click through the subject icon, this link here and Boing! my first slide.
14. Having minimal/no compression is good for me (I’m working on a fast-ish network) since all my text and graphics are clean. Now how about that series of compressed photos. The slides are now coming out at 800 x 600 rather than my native 1024 wide. Excellent – all OK.
15. My native powerpoint file is launched ok from WebCT (although it leaves an empty screen on the browser – weird).
16. Check that the titles are consistent in this module’s table of contents. It should say “Science Data Processing – for on screen viewing” and “Science Data Processing – Powerpoint for Printing”. Getting the phrases rhythmically the same is important, I feel. One thing I hate is when the browser launches a helper app without warning!
17. All done. Update Student View so they actually see the new stuff. Takes no time (but funny how it goes through all the hidden files too). All I have to do now is wait for the complaints.
18. About 40 minutes, including typing this lot. I’ve probably missed Top of the Pops now.

Dan's introduction

2004-10-29T16:49:00.000+01:00

As requested, allow me to introduce myself. I work as the FISO for the Life Sciences faculty, a job which centres on staff IT training and advice, and website development, but also happens to include quite a lot of e-learning-related work.

In many cases the e-learning work has been using WebCT, since that's the main e-learning vehicle provided at UCL, but also important is Tony Gardner-Medwin's LAPT tool. It provides self-paced learning through questions and answers; I've had some involvement in developments with that.

I do have an interest in website development and programming, which has meant that I've been able to develop various web-based tools. Here's a personal project of mine which I've been working on:
http://hiv.sourceforge.net/
(N.B. It's a personal project done in spare time - not connected with UCL!)

My UCL homepage:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/is/fiso/lifesciences/

Let's have a meeting!

2004-10-29T15:06:00.000+01:00

But not like this: Dilbert

Auricle ... diverse platforms

2004-10-29T13:25:00.000+01:00

Dan suggested we look at Auricle, Bath's e-learning website (actually a blog, though more formal than this one).

This will go in the sidebar (the bit over there, under our names) when I get time. Meantime, one article caught my eye directly, about diversity of toolsets in e-learning. Derek Morrison says

I put forward a couple of refreshing alternatives to the 'e-learning=proprietary VLE' furrow now being ploughed by many institutions. I think we have a lot to learn from institutions that have opted for an eTools and services model as an important part of delivering on their learning and teaching strategies, so I'm revisiting this theme today.

More.

Please Welcome ...

2004-10-29T13:23:00.000+01:00

... Dan Stowell and Julie Voce, as team members. Whilst probably known to most readers here anyway, can I suggest that they say a little bit about themselves?

WebCT conference

2004-10-29T13:12:00.000+01:00

From reading the October 04 WebCT newsletter, it looks like we just have enough time to convince our HoD's to send us for tapas-leave in Barcelona - the annual WebCT jamboree.

e-learning reports - introduction

2004-10-29T09:49:00.000+01:00

Hello, and welcome to e-learning reports.

This blog has been set up by staff at UCL to illustrate, entirely unofficially, how the development of e-learning tools works in practice. We don't have any particular message, system or theory to impart. We are not experts by any means, nor are we e-learning strategists. This will be a record of our observations "doing" teaching through electronic media. Education practices are continually changing, now more than ever. Taking part in this blog is one easy way of keeping in touch.

Use the site feed for an easy way of keeping abreast of new articles. Paste this feed URL into your feedreader (Help! What does that mean?) : http://elearningreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml

The team members will be reporting on their experiences of creating courseware, adapting existing materials, and incorporating electronic tools in their teaching practices. Some of the team members may be learners, and we'll see reports on their perspective, too. The reports you'll see will be fresh from the field, reflecting the reality of teaching practice.

We'll also recommend websites, blogs and other resources that will allow you connect with other interesting e-learning topics and practitioners.

Along the way, we'll learn about what works (and a little bit about why), reveal common frustrations and difficulties -- and their solutions -- and hopefully inspire others to get involved too.

Comments from you will always be welcome; in fact, they are expected of you!