Technology Enabled Learning & Teaching

TELT related resources, news, events and debates

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MoodleMoot 2011 and Moodle 2.0

Posted by xinni on September 7th, 2011 · Learning & teaching, LMS Upgrade, TELT news, UNFED

UNFED notes, August 2011

Learning and teaching Forum

Ann gave us a brief on the upcoming Learning and Teaching Forum. The forum will be held on 16th September in Scientia Building. The topic is assessment feedback. The keynote speaker is Professor Royce Sadler. BackNoise is the technology that will be used on the forum to capture audience’s questions for the Q&A session. The interactive session of the forum will be divided into two parts:  an equation / mind map activity based on keywords from Royces’ keynote, and 12 facilitated table discussions with different assessment focuses.  For forum agenda and more information, please go to http://teaching.unsw.edu.au/forum-september-2011

UNFED Usergroup course on Telt Moodle

As advertised before, the UNFED usergroup course has been set up on TELT Moodle.  Those who have subscribed to the UNFED mailing list should have enrolled to the course. The URL is https://moodle2.telt.unsw.edu.au/login/index.php. Login by using your zID and password. If you cannot see the course name appearing on your homepage after logging in, please contact Karsten  (k.sommer@unsw.edu.au).

Karsten demonstrated the usergroup course and encouraged UNFEDers, especially TELT admins, to participate in online discussions related to TELT platform. So far, active discussions on next Blackboard upgrade have been used to inform IT in regard to outage schedules.

MoodleMoot 2011

Many people from UNSW attended MoodleMoot 2011. Karsten noted that the conference atmosphere was engaging and collaborative. He introduced Moodle HQ to UNFED and briefly talked about Moodle management and development processes.  Karsten highlight the differences on files management in Moodle 2.0, compared to it in 1.9.  The reasons behind those changes have been well summed and explained by Mark Drechsier on his blog.  http://www.markdrechsler.com/?p=481. To respond to the changes, which means Moodle users will not longer view and manage their files through ‘file cabinet’, UNSW adopted legacy course files as an interim solution for 2011. Netspots and LTU have been working on integrating Alfreso, an open source content management system, with Moodle 2.0.  EQULLA is another content management system that has been mentioned on the forum.

Niki demonstrated a Moodle course design course, which is highly interactive by using a wide range of moodle tools and web 2.0 tools. Niki also recommended Moobrics, which could be used as a catalyst to identifying staff’s current and future online teaching and course development skills.

For more information on MoodleMoot resources, please visit the UNFED Moodle course.

 

Due to time limit, UNFED MoodleMoot session will extend to the Sept meeting. Anatoly and Fiona will brief us on Moodle course visual presentations and the database tool.

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

 

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Peer review task and Workshop tool in Moodle 2.0

Posted by xinni on August 8th, 2011 · TELT news, Tools & applications, UNFED

UNFED notes, Jul 2011

Associate Professor Julian Cox, Faculty of Science, gave UNFED a brief demonstration on how to design and facilitate a peer review task using the Workshop tool in Moodle 2.0.

Starting from the instructor view, Julian explained workshop features by taking his own course as an example. The workshop tool can be used to facilitate self-assessment, peer assessment, peer review and commenting.  It also allows instructors to upload pre-written or selected examples for students to assess and compare their assessment with a reference assessment. The workshop tool streamlines the administrative process of

  1. allowing and closing off submissions
  2. allocating students into groups and randomly distributing submissions within groups
  3. allowing commenting and peer assessing
  4. closing the task and releasing comments and grades.

Julian highlighted that the aim of the peer review task in the course is to engage students in the peer review process, giving them a platform for providing as well as receiving peer feedback and a means to improve their own writing based on feedback  before final submission. The main purpose of the task is neither to prepare students to be markers nor to reduce assessors’ marking loads. With this in mind, in his sample task he did not award students grades for completing the peer review task. Instead, he associated completion of the task with their final submissions; their marks for their final submissions were reduced by a certain percentage if they did not complete the peer review task.

For more information on self-assessment and peer assessment task design, please visit http://teaching.unsw.edu.au/student-self-assessment and http://teaching.unsw.edu.au/student-peer-assessment.

For both technical and pedagogical advice about the workshop tool, please visit the relevant Moodle support page (http://support.telt.unsw.edu.au/moodle/content/M2_create_workshop.cfm?ss=0).

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) and Web 2.0 assessment for digital literacy

Posted by xinni on July 20th, 2011 · Learning & teaching, TELT news, Tools & applications, UNFED

UNFED notes, June 2011

Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) is an online tool used by many educational institutions globally to manage frequent writing assignments in large classes. The tool allows instructors to setup a writing task with samples which his, or her students will mark and be calibrated against as markers based on strict criteria configured by the instructor. Students are first asked to submit their own writing assignments usually anonymously into CPR and proceed to the calibration stage. Once they are calibrated as markers they then go on to review and mark randomly assigned text submissions from their peers. Their markings are weighted based on how well they did in the calibration stage. In this process students learn both by becoming good markers during calibration, but also by reviewing and marking their peers work and receiving feedback from peers on their own work.

John Paul Posada, Educational technologist from Engineering, showed us how CPR has been used in ENGG 1000. For more details on John-Paul’s presentation, please view his Prezi slides on http://prezi.com/muxjr-w59kgg/. During the discussion, John-Paul highlight that admin support calls on both account access issues and time clarifications have been largely reduced after CPR has been host locally (Engineering CPR was previously host in United States).  The software can accommodate diversified task designs. User training is recommended for instructors who are new to the application. Engineering is working on integrating CPR, or at least the calibrated function, with Moodle 2.0.

Web 2.0 assessment for digital literacy - Belinda Allen shared with us some interesting practices presented that use Web 2.0 in assessment. Belinda collected these practices from a webinar presented by Ingrid Richardson from Murdoch university. The webinar presented research from an ALTC project: Remix, Mash-Up, Share: Authentic Web 2.0 Assessment Scenarios and Criteria for Interactive Media, Games and Digital Design. The project particularly focuses on activities for digital media students, but the approach to development of digital literacies may have wider application. To find out more, please view / download Belinda’s presentation slides web2assessment. Danny from ASB raised the question about copyrights. The participants had a discussion on social-media related copyrights issues. Kate from Learning and Teaching shared her experiences as an Visual Arts teacher.

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

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Adaptive eLearning and ASB upcoming events on assessment

Posted by xinni on June 9th, 2011 · UNFED

UNFED notes, May 2011

Dr. Dror Ben-Naim from School of Computer Science and Engineering gave us a presentation on Adaptive eLearning.  Adaptive eLearning is Intelligent Tutoring Technology: computer-based educational environment that can intelligently adapt to students’ level of knowledge, providing students with the unique feedback that they need, when they need it. Dror also briefed us about different adaptive eLearning projects at UNSW. After the presentation, meeting attendees had the opportunity to have a hands-on experience using the Adaptive eLearning Platform. We trialed the student role in virtual lab and trialed the instructor role in designing adaptive questions.

For more details, please download the presentation slide -  Adaptive eLearning – UNFED workshop – 25-05-2011

Danny briefed us about upcoming events in ASB, which will focus on disseminating good practices of using technologies in assessment practices. For more information including dates and topics of the events, please download the flyer – ASB technology month.

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

 

Assessment as learning Forum and LMS discussion

Posted by xinni on May 10th, 2011 · UNFED

The UNFED meeting in April was right after the Easter long weekend. As a result, many people were still on leave on that day. We did not have any pre-arranged presentations nor topics for the meeting. Instead, we have had free discussions within the attendees, mainly from the Learning and Teaching unit and the Library.

Ann, as the organiser of May forum, briefed us about the Assessment as learning Forum on 5th May. Tim and Roman, education designers from LTU, led the discussion on current learning management systems.

If you would like to suggest any topics for future UNFED meetings, please feel free to contact Xinni (xinni.du@unsw.edu.au).

ReView and Group Management in Moodle

Posted by xinni on April 14th, 2011 · Learning & teaching, TELT news, UNFED

The meeting invitation of this UNFED session was extended to L&T fellows and faculties. We have a very good turnout and engaged discussions for the session.

ReView

Dr Gigi Foster (academic Economics) and Danny Carroll (Educational Designer) of the Australian School of Business have presented on the trial of ReView in Courses and for accreditation at the ASB.

Began with the design philosophies behind the tool, Danny introduced ReView as the software promotes a criteria based assessment focus and efficiencies in the marking and feedback given to students. Danny reported that user feedback collected from ASB academics has been very positive and the trial has been expanded in 2011. ASB is also interested in using the tool to demonstrate the level of achievement of Program Learning Goals.

Gigi gave us a guided tour in ReView by demonstrating student, tutor and lecturer views from a real course. Gigi has found it contributes to

  • quality assurance through standardisation of marking approaches
  • improve efficiencies on marking,
  • improve efficiencies on providing and distributing feedback
  • facilitate the process of self-assessment among students

Version 2.0 Review is currently under development. The new version will have an improved user-interface, enhanced mapping functions that enable courses mapping learning outcomes to program learning goals with the focus of Assurance of Learning.

Click to download presentation slides (in PDF format)

Group Management in Moodle

John Paul Posada (Education Technologist in Engineering) gave us a presentation on ENGG1000 group management in Moodle 1.9.

John-Paul explained the complexities of course requirements on group managements:

  • over 1000 students
  • multiple projects designed for group works
  • different project-related information being released to different groups
  • flexibilities on group sign-up options
  • instructors’ requirements on forming groups based on certain criteria

To meet the requirement, Engineering team developed its own Moodle plug-in, called Team Build, which enables instructors set criteria in the format of multiple choice questions and form groups based on students’ responses.

Moodle 2.0 pilot

Niki Fardouly and Karsten Sommer (Learning and Teaching Unit) briefed us about Moodle 2.0 pilot.  Those who would like to use Moodle 2.0 in smester 2 are encouraged to lodge Express Of Interest form via http://telt.unsw.edu.au/PilotEOI.cfm.  Information on Moodle profession development courses will be circulated soon.

Next UNFED meeting will be on 27th Apr,  2011. Don’t forget to let us know of any topics of interest, and to let your colleagues know about UNFED – contact Xinni for information.

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TELT Pilots and ASCILITE 2010

Posted by xinni on March 7th, 2011 · Connections & collaboration, TELT news, UNFED

This is the first meeting for 2011. We have a lot of people attended including Fiona Thurn, new education technologist from the Learning and Teaching unit.

Karsten and Fiona answered questions regarding TELT pilots

Moodle pilot

Learning and Teaching is currently running Moodle pilots on both version 1.9 (semester one) and version 2.0 (semester one and two). Pilot courses that are already developed / running on 1.9 will be rolled over by NetSpot.  NetSpot has also provided Moodle 2.0 trainings to pilot participants.

Engineering expressed their concerns on whether university migration will be able to accommodate current customizations that have been done on Engineering Moodle.

Note: For semester one, Turnitin will only be integrated with Moodle 1.9 pilot course.

Wimba Classroom

Wimba classroom is a web conferencing tool with provides virtual classroom environment. It is on open pilot stage.  Wimba classroom has been integrated with Learning Management System, Blackboard and Moodle.

Notes: Australian School of Taxation and Business Law (Atax)  is using Elluminate, an alternative online collaboration tool, for this year.

Omnium

Learning and Teaching, COFA and NetSpot are working together on integrating Omnium with Moodle.  It is expected to be delivered in semester 2, 2011 in Moodle 2.0. However, it may start with a link inside a Moodle instance instead of a full scaled integration.

GradeMark and PeerMark

GradeMark was in use within Blackboard Turnitin last year. Roman briefly reported that it has been incorporated into marking and providing feedback process in some courses despite of a couple of technical issues. PeerMark is the new feature provided by Turnitin, which is expected to be used in peer review process. More user feedback on PeerMark are welcomed.

Mahara

Fiona looks after Mahara pliot this year. Mahara is an ePortfolio tool that offers students the ability to collect and display their work in one place. UNSW instance of Mahara will be integrated with Moodle 2.0. The university offers 1000 student spaces in the pilot

For those who would like to participate on TELT pilots, please apply via

TELT Pilot Expression of Interest form on http://telt.unsw.edu.au/PilotEOI.cfm

For those who would like to find out more information on TELT pilots, please go to TELT wiki on http://telt.unsw.wikispaces.net/

ASCILITE Conference (2010) and CoCo Conference

Belinda has presented to the group on her

-       2010 ASCILITE Conference paper which is about disseminating good practice in blended learning in Science, and

-       presentation given on coco conference in University of Sydney, which was about designing curriculum with creativity, building learning environment that fosters creativity and assessing creativity as graduate attribute.

Please see her Belinda_ascilite_coco presentation (in pdf format) for details.

Next UNFED meeting will be on 30th March  2011. Don’t forget to let us know of any topics of interest, and to let your colleagues know about UNFED – contact Xinni for information.

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Blackboard, Moodle, UNSW-TV and more

Posted by belindaallen on December 3rd, 2010 · Connections & collaboration, Learning & teaching, TELT news, UNFED

UNFED meeting notes – November 24 2010

cardboard box figure

My Figure by Noelas - Flickr CC image

The last meeting for 2010, and we had plenty of participants keen for news on the Blackboard upgrade and Moodle 2.0 pilot. The current status of UNSW-TV was also covered -  Niki’s notes on the discussion are below.

Only a little time was left for conference reports. Andrew Chambers told us about the IODL Conference on Open and Distance Learning that he attended, hosted at Anadolu university in Turkey, which has 1 million+ students. Most of the attending universities were ‘mega universities’, that is those with more than 100,000 enrolments, and some advanced distance learning models were presented. Distance education is relevant to several UNSW faculties, and discussion will be continued at our next meeting in February.

Also at the next meeting we will continue with conference news: Educause, Sydney Uni Learning Technology Research Fest 2010, ascilite 2010 and more – so please bring your reports of summer conferences.

Blackboard, Moodle and UNSWTV Updates

The group discussed the recent Blackboard upgrade and UNSWTV outages and asked questions about the issues affecting these services. Niki Fardouly, Robyn Jay and Tom Cavdarovski provided the following answers.

Date chosen for the upgrade

Currently there is no date available in the calendar that will guarantee that there is no impact on learning and teaching activity somewhere in the University. Unless the academic calendar is rearranged to accommodate essential maintenance work, learning and teaching activities will continue to be adversely impacted. The date was chosen so that it would not conflict with either exams or summer semester teaching, i.e. to minimise impact on students. We were also advised, wrongly as it turns out, that marking would have been completed by that date.

Timing of outages

To enable more frequent maintenance to be done to the TELT systems will require a regular time to be set aside for this work. This could be a short weekly outage window with a longer outage once a month. Discussion of the best times in the week to have this outage raised issues of impact on learning and teaching activities, if conducted during business hours, and impact on part-time students who can only study on weekends if conducted on Saturdays.

Reason for the long outage

IT have avoided applying system patches at regular intervals throughout the year in order to avoid outages that would impact on learning and teaching activities. All the patches were saved for this one upgrade. The 9.0 patches had to be applied before the 9.1 software upgrade could be installed. The patches ran into problems on our system that required troubleshooting by Blackboard Support. Apart from the errors, the patches also took a much longer time to install than had been anticipated.

IT are conducting a Post Incident Review to identify other contributing factors that can be managed differently in future, as well as talking to Blackboard about why the software updates ran into problems on our system.

Current problems affecting Bb 9.1.2

IT are investigating why the NSS data feed to Blackboard has broken and what can be done to fix it. In the meantime course creation, student enrolments, and staff role assignments are being done manually. The WSSO looping issue is also being investigated. For other issues see Blackboard 9.1.2 Known Issues List (Resolved and Unresolved).

Moodle project

Funding has been provided to expand the Moodle pilot in 2011, with the Faculty of Engineering moving to the externally hosted UNSW Moodle instance. Moodle interface themes and a set of pedagogically designed templates will be developed for deployment in second semester 2011. Technical training and support materials and pedagogically focused professional development resources and programs will also be developed for deployment in the second half of the year, in preparation for a wider expansion of Moodle use in 2012. Register your interest on the TELT website.

UNSW TV issues

The UNSW TV service has been suffering frequent outages and storage issues since it was moved from external servers to on campus servers. This has made the service too unreliable for critical learning and teaching activities at present. The problems should be alleviated by early 2011. If videos don’t need to be kept secure they can be uploaded to the UNSW YouTube channel.  Another option is to use the My Media service.

UPDATE Tom Cavdarovski advises that My Media is an option for staff only and those staff need to be able to make streaming files (contact Tom for advice). This system is not suitable for student uploads as it has no security system to protect the university from possible legal issues. Students do have the Youtube option – they can use/create their own Youtube account and can ‘relate’ their videos to other videos with the same name (ideally it would be a course code).

Next UNFED meeting will be February 2011, so best wishes to all for a happy and safe summer break. Don’t forget to let us know of any topics of interest, and to let your colleagues know about UNFED – contact Belinda for information.

EduFeedr: free and unfettered

Posted by robynjay on November 17th, 2010 · Issues, Learning & teaching, Networked learning, Tools & applications

One of the biggest challenges for academics seeking to engage students via open, independent, student-managed spaces particularly blogs, is how to aggregate and manage contributions for feedback and assessment purposes.

Mike Bogle and I have been following the progress of David Jones’ BIM ; an activity module for Moodle (v1.9 – BIM will be ported to Moodle 2.0 be early 2011 at the latest) that provides the functionality required to allow:

  • Students to register feeds.
    Be they RSS, ATOM etc and from whatever source – usually a public blog.
  • Students to use that feed to respond to questions set by teaching staff.
  • Teaching staff to track progress and, if so desired, mark and comment on student contributions.
  • Coordinating staff to track and moderate marking by other staff.
  • “Import” the marking into the Moodle gradebook.

There is a video of a presentation that gives an overview of BIM, including showing how it works for staff and students.

In a blog post today David points to a similar service that can operate independently from Moodle.

EduFeedr is ‘a feed reader for online courses where each participant is using his/her personal blog to publish thoughts on course readings, answers to assignments and other course related posts.’ Although still in beta it looks like it will have potential for those seeking to operate free of an LMS.

A good overview with links and slides is available on Hans Poljoda’s blog.

CC FlickR image by Aranda\Lasch

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Gartner’s top 10

Posted by robynjay on November 16th, 2010 · Tools & applications, Trends

Following on from the previous post, Gartner’s top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for organizations in 2011 may also be of interest.
‘Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.
A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years.   As such, these technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives.’
The top 10 strategic technologies for 2011 include:

  • Cloud Computing
  • Mobile Applications and Media Tablets
  • Social Communications and Collaboration
  • Video
  • Next Generation Analytics
  • Social Analytics
  • Context-Aware Computing
  • Storage Class Memory
  • Ubiquitous Computing
  • Fabric-Based Infrastructure and Computers
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