With these two features working in tandem teachers are now able to better track which students in their courses are or aren’t-

• Accessing course resources
• Submitting assignments or completing quizzes
• Participating in course forums

Below is a clip (longer than we’d normally produce) that demonstrates how our nursing teachers are using both the new features within the Diploma of Nursing program hub to track important information that must be read and understood by their students and that receipt must be retained for future use and reference by the teachers and possibly the Nusring Board.

If you’d like a further demonstration or advice don’t hesitate to book some time with the Learning Innovation team on ext. 6525

Enjoy and please leave a comment and ‘like’ the post.

The Learning Innovation team

We’re upgrading to Moodle 2.1 which will be a fantastic improvement to our blended learning offerings. Our teachers and students will now benefit from additional features such as-

• Activity tracking
• Conditional activities
• Improved text editing features 

Officially, but…

We’ll be offline from 6pm tonight till 2.30am tomorrow morning. From around 12pm tomorrow we expect that we’ll have our new theme sets in place and our custom settings locked in so if you’d like to try to log on from then (all things being equal) you should be able to. (Shhhhhh… Don’t tell Jason I told you this but if you try to log on at any time this evening the worst that may happen is that the site will look different)

Please note

Prior to and after the upgrade your Username and Password will remain the same.

Regards,

The Learning Innovation Team

Nancy White

Tomorrow (30/11/11) Wodonga TAFE in partnership with eWorks and GoTAFE will be hosting Nancy as she works exclusively with our teaching staff in a series of two workshops directed at how teachers can understand effective ways in which to use eLearning and communities within online environments, focusing particularly on strategies and principles.

Nancy is listed as one of the ‘top influencers’ in the eLearning industry. She is an international practitioner in understanding and practicing online group facilitation of distributed work, learning and community groups (presenter, writer, teacher, coach, facilitator, and rapporteur). As a technology steward, designer and builder of online interaction spaces (events, teams, learning groups) she has worked extensively with ‘web 2.0′ tools and approaches and community and instructional design.

Session 1

(9.15-11.45)

Targeted at teachers who are new to eLearning and those who are interested in getting into eLearning. Nancy will take you through a session about eLearning for beginners and demonstrate what makes a good online lesson.

Session 2

(12.30-3.45)

Aimed at teachers with a minimum of 1-2 years experience with online delivery, this session will provide more advanced information and will focus on monitoring the health of your online community, how to deal with situations when they occur online etc.

The sessions aren’t ‘about the tools’ but about the teaching and learning… they’re about effective ways to use eLearning and communities within online environments, with a focus on strategies and principles.

Like to follow what’s happening on the day?

• Twitter- #WIOTNancy

• Live blogging on this blog all day

• Video streaming- The session has now ended, thanks to those who tuned in to watch live.

Image: http://www.change-management-blog.com

As we approach the end of the year, there are a number of tasks that must be completed in preparation for 2012. Those teachers who have incorporated Moodle into their teaching delivery should plan on discuss the following points.

Apply template
During the year, Learning Innovation worked closely with CIAS to create a Moodle course template. This template ensures we tick the right boxes with regard to compliance matters, it comprises of-

• Learning program information in Moodle book format
• Student acknowledgement sign off developed in a ‘quiz’ format
• Student acknowledgment/sign off for assessment instructions developed in a ‘quiz’ format
• CF61/2/3 Student evaluation forms developed in the Feedback module

This ensures students know and record via quizzes that record in the Gradebook that they understand their rights & responsibilities, what’s required of them (and us!) throughout the unit, what’s required of them (and us!) with each assessment and the evaluations provide teachers with a data-driven approach to validation and continuous improvement.

Not all courses within Moodle have had the template applied to them, if your Moodle course is one of them, please make some time with the  Learning Innovation team (Geoff on ext. 6525) to discuss how you can transition your course to the new compliance format.

Backup course
As courses finish for the year, you’ll need perform a backup to your Moodle courses so that you have a digital record of all that transpired. To do this, click on the Backup option under the administration block of each course. This option will present a number of options for what to include, please ensure all logs, users etc. is included, If you require assistance have a look at this prior post on our blog or you can contact Geoff on ext. 6525 to arrange some training. 

Reset courses – Now your hard work of developing a unit has been done, it’s easy to deliver it again in 2012. Once you have backed up the course, use the Reset option under the course Administration block. This will ask you which options you wish to reset, quiz attempts, forum posts, assignment submissions etc. With your selections made, continue through the prompts and your course will be reset.

If you require assistance have a look at this prior post on our blog or you can contact Geoff on ext. 6525 to arrange some training. 

Enrol 2012 students
With your course reset, you may need to enrol your 2012 students in your Moodle course. The most efficient method to achieve this, is to use the spreadsheet to bulk upload students into the appropriate units. As a teacher, or administration officer, you should be familiar with this process, if not contact Geoff on ext. 6525 to arrange some training. 

Create additional units
Now that you’ve seen the benefits of using Moodle for some of the units you deliver, you should now consider implementing it for other units. Please contact Learning Innovation to discuss how best to make this happen.

If you have any issues or questions regarding the tasks above, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with the Learning Innovation department at learninginnovation@wodongatafe.edu.au.

Image: http://flic.kr/p/tBRL7

A number of our students had requested we make Moodle easier to access. This week we made that change. Over the years we have done a fantastic job of promoting the Wodonga TAFE website address http://wodongatafe.edu.au and people remember it.

So what better place to put a link to Moodle, than on that very well known front page. Better yet, the Moodle button isn’t just on the front page, but every page of the website, making it easier to access than ever, to access your online courses.

Wodonga TAFE continually improves by listening to student feedback, so if you have a suggestion, please get in touch.

Choosing to incorporate webinars into your teaching practice can be lots of work for possibly not measurable educational value and trying to manage a large virtual classroom full of not very ICT literate students (and possibly yourself?) can be like herding cats

This post is a follow on from our previous post in which we reviewed Big Blue Button software and its integration with Moodle.

We’ve had a number of trials both ‘in house’ and ’live’ trials with our Diploma of Sustainability students and as a result we thought it may be helpful to give some hard found advice on incorporating webinars into your teaching practice. This won’t provide you with all the answers (we’re still learning as we go) but it may give you some food for thought.

Why would I incorporate webinars into my teaching practice?

There are a number of reasons why you might do this, some for good pedagogic reasons but there might also be sustainable practice, access & equity and economic benefits to be realised.

We are a small regional TAFE we have a large and diverse student cohort so to be able to communicate with them outside of, or as an adjunct to, formal classroom lessons is a bonus.

Do you have any of the following student groups, if so perhaps webinars might be worth considering-

• Rural/regional based students
• Interstate distance education enrolments
• Students unable to travel regularly due to financial, family, medical or other reasons

What should I consider when planning to incorporate webinars?

Notwithstanding sound educational benefits in doing so, you should be cognisant of the following-

• Does this actually add any value to what I’m currently doing in class now? If the answer is ‘No’ then don’t, the additional organising and training will bring nothing to the table of educational value. Anything new that you add to your teaching practice (in our opinion) should be of educational value, plain and simple. “It’s not about the toys stupid!“
• What is the ICT literacy of me or my students? Do you/they have the technical and problem solving skills to be an active participant in your sessions, if things don’t go to plan (as they sometimes wont) can you/they fix/resolve any issues. If the answer to this is ‘not really/not sure/I don’t think so’ then don’t put you or your students under unnecessary stress by asking them to do something that will ultimately end in failure &/or frustration and a bad experience for all.
• Do we have the tools to do the job? By this we mean can you bring this off technically? Consider the following and make your decision accordingly-
• Is there sufficient bandwidth at both ends (teacher <-> student)to make this viable?
• Do you and your students have hardware that will make the sessions enjoyable to participate in without ‘gliches’, sound drop-outs, pixellated images, no sound, fuzzy sound, quiet sound…… Get the idea? 

What can I do in a webinar?

Do’s

• Short 10-20 minute tutorials/workshops in which clear goals e.g.-
• Ask them to read and report on a reading you’ve given them prior to the session. Treat it like a short ‘book club’ meeting
• Ask them to report on their progress on their concurrent project work- encourage active participation by asking lots of questions and encouraging the other students to do the same
• Short 10-20 minute Q&A sessions where you can make yourself available to answer any questions the students may have as they reflect on their project or class work. Ensure you engage each student by asking them to suggest possible answers to other students questions
• Ask each student to run a session in which they report to the class on their project or group work. Remember, keep it short and sharp!

Don’t

• Don’t let your sessions run too long- 60 minutes max.
• Don’t replicate a ‘typical’ classroom session, do something that will be of real value and at the same time engage your students and make them feel it was worthwhile participating in the session
• Set ground rules! (Yes rules, or how does classroom management sound?)-
• Ensure that time frames are adhered to- a 6 o’clock start means being in the session 15 minutes prior to commencement to test equipment etc.
• Ask that each student is in a quiet room away from noise etc.
• when students enter the session test their microphones/trouble shoot then mute their microphones
• Students should indicate when they wish to speak by using a ‘hand up’ icon or similar. Yep, sounds awful but if you don’t you’ll be ‘herding cats’ trying to keep them quiet so that the person you wish to speak may be heard
• Don’t be under prepared (remember the 6 P’s) and have a fallback plan if some of your students experience technical issues

The one thing you don’t want to do in a webinar is simply replicate what you’d do in a classroom, it’s a waste of planning, energy, resources and download and might only serve to isolate your students.

 Below is a copy of a slide we display at the commencement of our webinars, please feel free to replicate it or offer us some suggestions on how we might improve ours. Enjoy….

Sample 'Welcome' slide to use at the commencement of each session

 We hope you’ve enjoyed this post, please feel free to leave a comment or advice. If you’d like to have a try of Big Blue Button with us please email us as we’re keen to ensure our set up is robust and having others say Hi in a session is a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

Till next time,

The Learning Innovation Team 

‘Herding’ image: http://imgfave.com/view/1258353

BigBlueButton (BBB) is an open source web conferencing system developed primarily for distance education.

The beauty of BBB is not only that its open source and therefore free, but it also comes with integration for Moodle. Our ‘IT Crowd‘ were able to download and install BBB and integrate it with our Moodle 2 test site in a matter of minutes. Once installed it becomes available from the Activities drop down within Moodle.

The clip below shows you how easy it is to add a BBB activity to a Moodle topic, it’s settings within Moodle and then shows you what a student would see when they enter their course.

Overview

Let’s be clear, it’s not as fully featured as say Adobe Connect but in our testing we’ve found it to be just as stable & featured enough to not have a need to source more expensive proprietary products. There are three roles available for participants-

• Viewer: are users who have no authority within the conference; their primary role is to view the presentation as well as chat amongst other participants. In a course the viewer would be the students.
• Presenter: has all the same capabilities as a participant, with the added features of uploading presentations and sharing their desktop
• Moderator: has all the capabilities as a participant, with the added features of uploading presentations and sharing their desktop and perhaps more importantly mute particpants

Additional features

• Public and Private Chat: The Chat window enables all participants to conduct public or private chats
• Watch presentations: The presentation window displays the current presentation Participants can zoom in the presentation using the slider, as we navigated through the slides using the arrow button
• Mute or Eject Participants: You can mute and un-mute participants in the conference by clicking the icons located at the bottom left side of the module. You can also eject participants from the voice conference by clicking on their name and then clicking the eject button
• Share your Desktop: As a presenter you have the capability of sharing your desktop with others in the conference. When you share your desktop, BigBlueButton will launch a Java Applet that asks for your permissions to run. You have the option of sharing a portion of your desktop or the entire screen.

What can’t it do (at present)

• Record the session, but we believe this is in development for future releases. NB: BBB does allow you to copy the text from the Chat box for administrative uses etc.
• Polling, you cannot ask questions and have your students respond using voting buttons like Elluminate allows
• Text annotation on the screen. This is a little disappointing however you can annotate & highlight using ‘pen’ and shape tools 

Remember this is not Skype, while you can connect ‘one to many’ with Skype there is a cost attached; BBB is free. Another advantage is the user doesn’t have to load any software- a big bonus for novice or not tech-savvy students

Our next post we’ll discuss webinar teaching practice and how to get the most out of your sessions given a little bit of planning and some sensible ground rules- stay tuned!

We hope you enjoyed this post, please feel free to make a comment or ask a question.

The Learning Innovation team

Next Vista's Home page

This site is called Next Vista for Learning, this site differs from the previous one in that, and I quote from their web site-

Next Vista works to make learning more engaging, with a focus on helping students start strong with any topic they study. Its central project is a free, online library of teacher- and student-made short videos for learners everywhere.

Next Vista believes a strong four-minute video could save students days or weeks of frustration by providing a variety of presentations on the topics that give them trouble.

How does it work?

The site has three main categories or ‘collections made by both teachers and students-

1. The ‘Light Bulbs’ Collection contains videos in the following categories- Career, Health & Fitness, History & Culture, Literature & Writing, Mathematics, Performing Arts, Science, Technology, Visual Arts and World Languages.
2. The ‘Seeing Service’ Collection contains videos in the following categories-Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America.
3. The ‘Global Views’ Collection contains videos in the following categories-Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America.

Follow this link to view a video showing you how to multiply fractions.

Overall?

• The clips are generally very good but perhaps more focussed on K-12, not necessarily always at a VET level- have a look and see what may be of value to your particular teaching area and student cohort.
• The site, clips and some content is very American-centric; not a criticism but something that you’ll need to be aware of, particularly regarding weights & measures etc.
• There is ample provision for embedding these clips into Moodle or PowerPoint presentations etc. You can even save the clips to your local drive as Quick Time movies although we recommend embedding them as the best option.
• All clips are nicely categorised which makes searching for clips really easy.
• All clips are under four (4) minutes which makes for quick downloading by your students and even better for their concentration span

This may not be of value to all but I’m sure for some teachers it’ll be just what you’ve been looking for. Please feel free to leave a comment, we’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on this site.

Geoff Young
Team Leader, Learning Innovation

Learning Innovation and Organisational Development

Sometimes we forget that our students may not learn the way that we do or fully understand what it is we’ve actually taught them until they’ve had some time do digest their learning and put that new concept or information into their own  context or view of the world.

Mathematics is one of those subjects I find that students either ‘get’ or they don’t- there’s no middle ground. That’s OK, some of my best and most creative building design students have struggled with basic maths. While we can assist our students through additional tuition or literacy & numeracy support etc. this may not be the total answer to them ‘getting it’.

Some students are visual learners and having pages and pages of examples in a book just won’t do it for them, they need something more in keeping with their learning style, something that

• is represented visually and verbally
• teaches them in ‘chunks’ and connects their prior knowledge
• uses diagrams to display large amounts of information in ways that are easily understood and helps reveal relationships and patterns

One resource that does this (and more!) is The Khan Academy. Quoting from their ‘About us’ page, “all of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.”

The online resources are categorised into

• Maths
• Science
• Humanities & Other
• Test Preparation (Overseas categories though)

Take a look below at an example relating to Trigonometry I selected. VIEWER WARNING: If ‘SOH CAH TOA’ still brings back bad memories turn away from the screen now!

Looking through the lens of blended learning this ticks all the boxes- students can access the examples anywhere/anytime, they can view them as many times as they need and refer to them at any stage in the future, a teacher may augment their classroom face to face mode with these resources and best of all they’re free.

I’d be interested in your thoughts of this fantastic resource, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Teaching is just like hosting a party- Hopefully everyone has a great time but when the guests have left you’re left to clean up after them. The same thing needs to happen in your Moodle course, once you’ve finished teaching and assessing one group you need to get it ready for the next.

Before you commence your next class you will want to Reset the course. What does this mean and what are the implications of doing this?

Moodle describe Resetting a course as allowing you to empty a course of user data, while retaining the activities and other settings. An important caveat though- Once deleted your chosen user data is deleted totally. Be careful. So, what do I have to do to Reset my Course?

Moodle sum it up very succinctly:

1. Log in and go to the course area you want to Reset (you need to have editing permissions on this)
2. Resetting a given activity is irreversible, so ensure that you have taken a Backup of your area including the user data – this is a snapshot and can be reinstated if necessary
3. In your area’s Administration block, click on Reset
4. Click any ‘Show Advanced’ buttons to show all options for that category
5. Make your selections based on the options
6. Click the Reset button
7. Return to your Course and check that things are as you want them.

We have also created a clip that may make it easier to follow if you’re a visual learner.

We hope this clip and post has been helpful, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment, we really appreciate your feed back.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ytruly/2662120147/sizes/sq/in/photostream/