Moodle @ UniSA

Interview with David Cropley, Associate Professor in Engineering Innovation, School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of South Australia.

Assoc. Prof. David Cropley has been using Moodle for one of his Masters Degree in Military System’s courses this year and has given Moodle two thumbs up. He was one of the first at UniSA to use Moodle and began exploring the software on the recommendation of a colleague who had experienced success with Moodle. Whilst discovering what Moodle could do for his students and colleagues, Assoc. Prof. Cropley learned that UniSA were also looking at Moodle to replace the current, yet ageing, UniSAnet.

His decision to use Moodle was based on a colleague’s suggestion that it seemed to do a good job. “Once I started to look into it a little bit more, I found it certainly offered more useful features compared to UniSAnet that would help to meet our goals. It probably does a better job than UniSAnet in facilitating the student interaction and getting them to be more involved in participating in the things that are going on each week.”Assoc. Prof. David Cropley currently has completed one delivery on his first Moodle course, with a second course now underway. Development of further courses is ongoing with two more coming on board next year. Twelve months from now the full complement of eight courses should have a Moodle homepage.

“I certainly think it is easier to use than UniSAnet and it is more user-friendly from my point of view. It is easier to sit down, log on to it and do the things I need to do in terms of looking at the discussion forums and quizzes. It is certainly straight forward to use and did not take a lot of time to become reasonably conversant with Moodle. It has not created such an overhead that you think that it is too hard to use. It has always been easy enough to use or quick and easy enough to work out problems, so I have always been encouraged to keep using it.”

When quizzed about his top five features of Moodle, Assoc. Prof. David Cropley suggested the calendar was particularly useful for keeping students organised and on track. “The calendar feature alerts the students to milestones during the course. I think it can result in better learning outcomes if you give the students a slightly rigid structure.” Additionally he liked the quizzes and forums as these provided formative assessment which could be recorded in the Grade Book. “I could just leave it and then wait for the end of semester to tally it all up.”

He found the groups and groupings somewhat tricky to use but thought it was very useful as course participants included not only award students but also a small number of professional development people and it made it possible to create two views of the homepage. “It proved to be fantastically useful because we created one website and the users did not know that they were seeing something different from other people. Once I had worked out the structure of the groups and groupings it made it very easy to have two very separate customers but one webpage. That was very efficient for us.”

Assoc. Prof. David Cropley believed that it was a bit early to assess the success of the introduction of Moodle to his Masters Degree courses but believed that results he had seen so far were encouraging and that the students’ reactions had been very positive. “I would say that the comments that I have had from the students have endorsed the fact that they have found this flexible and they are able to fit it around their full time work”.

He is looking forward to continuing his association with Moodle over the next twelve months as he and his colleagues develop Moodle homepages for all eight courses. “The more I have used it, the happier I have become with it. It is proving to be flexible and doing everything we want it to do. I can’t say anything bad about it”.

Tools for teaching maths and other hard sciences

Some ideas for how to engage students of mathematics and hard sciences using online tools are shared in this feature article from the eLearn magazine by Maria Andersen.
http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=articles&article=97-1

They include:

• tablet computers with equation writer
• video recording and editing
• jing screen capture that staff and students can use
• training for equation writing software
• free synchronous spaces for collaboration - even when you are not there
• using publisher resources
• toys like Wolfram - The Wolfram Demonstration and Wolfram Alpha
• videos of experts
• emulations of graphic calulators

Moodle Quizzes with Romeo Marian

We are using online quizzes in one of our courses at the moment, MFET 5022, Total Quality Management. We have students who are local, on campus, and we have them all around the world. Using Moodle quizzes allows us to have a remote presence. We can give the same attention to all students wherever they are.

I think the quizzes are very good for an analytical course where you can chop the course into pieces and questions can have specific answers, i.e. there is a set link between inputs and outputs. The questions can be varied and can be written in a way to allow students to apply reasoning. However, this would not work as well with synthetic courses, something like a design course for example – where the problems are open ended and have infinite combinations of solutions. I see this as a limitation. But this is a tool and there is no such thing as a universal tool. We have to use it where it fits best.

Once the system is up and running, it is self sustaining, you have to spend less and less time on development. I have not got there yet. My estimates are that I will need to do about ten deliveries to break even. I have three so far.

I set up a practice quiz which students can attempt as many times as they like. Every two weeks they have a topic summary quiz, followed later by a larger quiz which covers three topics. The structure of the marking – quizzes have a small overall contribution toward the final mark – permits quick and painless feedback, indicating areas needing further revision or extra study. Then at the end of the semester they have a final in-class exam. The subjectivity in the course is removed. The marks are automatically and instantly awarded. It’s a brutally honest system. To avoid academic dishonesty, with a handful of students taking the tests for their colleagues, the questions are randomly chosen from a test bank, with the questions and answers shuffled.

Advantages
I’m using quizzes to avoid technical issues and to ensure fairness. It’s the computer that does the tricks so I cannot be accused of unfairness, and this is a big advantage. Once it is set up, the marking virtually disappears. You just press a button to collect the marks at the end. All students are treated the same, regardless of whether they are locally or remotely located. The reaction from my students was fairly good. I got good results or better back from them in the CEIs when compared with the more traditional face-to-face delivery of the course.

Advice for colleagues
I would advise colleagues that if they have time to use online quizzes, they should go ahead, but beware. It takes a lot of work to set it up; it is work for the future. Once it is up and running, however, it saves you time. The time commitment is then reduced to ongoing maintenance. It is a huge job that you have to be aware of from the beginning. I knew it was big but I did not realise it was so huge. It is not really something you could do just to see if it works. It will not save any time in the short term.

Future directions
I started delivering this course, face to face about 5 years ago and based on historical data I expected 24 students, but ended up with 94. This resulted in 70kg of marking – and this is not a joke! This was the point where I thought something had to be done. It took me 4 years to find the instrument. Now I am left with only marking the final exam, which is really just ticks and crosses – multiple choice questions. That only takes me about 6 minutes per paper.
I do not know if there will be another course that I will modify this way because it is a huge amount of work. I do not see myself doing this again for at least a couple of years. It is new technology and we can only anticipate its evolution. There are probably other possibilities that we will discover in the future.

Getting ready to Moodle

We will start the conversion of 5% of our courses (~25 in ITEE) to Moodle very shortly - ready for teaching in Study period 2 2010 [the final decision on which courses these will be in our Division is in the hands of the Deans T&L - Brenton].

To start you thinking about Moodle and its functionality - here is a movie (2 min 45) that explains the bits of Moodle using lego.



There are also the Using Moodle book (this is what I used to build my first moodle course).

I am really impressed with the increased awareness of social presence within the Moodle environment that I am currently trialling with students. You know who the particpants are, when they are online, where they have been, where the unread discussion forums are - it really feels alive. I am hopeful that this change to Moodle will convince more teachers to use the online environment as a way to engage students in their learning.

Online conferences

Last weekend I participated in the MERLOT conference (Multimedia educational resource for learning online and teaching) in San Jose in California - but as a remote delegate. This meant that I

• joined in to live keynote sessions using virtual classroom software (Elluminate) with a web cam on the speaker and the slides interacting via chat
• participated in smaller breakout sessions interacting via chat and voice, and
• created my Second Life alter-ego Eliamber Keger to get to some sessions in Second Life learning spaces
• have access to recordings of the main sessions, as well as other resources.

Main problem - time difference - the sessions ran from 12 midnight to 9 am. I was okay the first night but reverted to recorded sessions afterwards.

I noticed that there is another online conference coming up that is relevant to our Division - the International Joint Conferences on Computer, Information, and Systems Sciences, and Engineering (CISSE 09). Fully online on December 4 - 12, 2009.

Find out more here http://cisse2009online.org/

Eportfolios in Engineering – Advantages and Disadvantages

Recently, John Fielke talked to us about his experiences with using e-portfolios in his course ‘Computer Techniques’. This posting will highlight some of the advantages and disadvantages John found when using PebblePad with his first year engineering students.

Using PebblePad as a webfolio tool with engineering students - Advantages and Disadvantages.

Advantages:
I chose to use PebblePad as a tool for the students to use to submit their computer models and drawings. The year before, we used AssignIT where the students put all their work into one zip file and uploaded it into AssignIT, producing a series of files for assessment. By using PebblePad, I was looking at linking those files together with a bit of reflection from the students about how they completed the assigned tasks. AssignIT requires all of the student’s work to be bundled into one zip file and submitted as one file. I have used this twice now with large files and on both occasions, AssignIT has crashed as the students were submitting these very large files at the same time. PebblePad not only allows multiple smaller files to be uploaded, the students can upload these files gradually each week.

I used the profiler tool to get the students to look at their work and reflect on their learning outcomes by answering a series of questions. The profiler tool is a dynamic, real time resource so we can look at the students’ work and provide immediate feedback, and allow the students to act on this feedback prior to their work being assessed. In addition, it can actually make marking very easy because work can be assessed as it is submitted rather than in a block at the end of the course.

Students saw growth in their knowledge

Another advantage is file preservation. If the students upload their work regularly, they reduce the risks of losing files or having their files corrupted.

Students can create a personal page with a photo of themselves, a few of their aspirations and a some personal background allowing academics to get know the students on a personal level and not just their name and ID number. If webfolios are used across multiple courses, the students can just call up this page into each course webfolio.

Disadvantages:

To utilise some of PebblePad’s features the students need to upload their work regularly, but many were reluctant to do this. Few students took the opportunity to respond to the feedback we provided and make changes to their work before it was formally assessed.

Some students did not understand the importance of sending their work to the gateway. We also had the issue of students thinking they could use the one webfolio for two courses resulting in some students sending work to the wrong gateway.

PebblePad is an interesting repository for work but the way it is structured, asset tracking and asset finding is not very user friendly. Asset management issues included students deleting files and breaking links between files, or updating a file and not updating the hyperlinks resulting in missing files. All we see is what students link to their webfolio, not the work that they have uploaded into PebblePad. Additionally, some students compressed their work up in file formats not able to be opened by the university computers. The students needed to resubmit in the correct zip file format. We held a session on webfolio development but less than half the students attended that session. The students who attended the session found it much easier than those who did not.

In hindsight, I realise that I should have asked the students to submit a single zip file each week and post a reflective comment about that week’s work rather than submitting up to 10 files for a week. Accessing multiple files is very time consuming in PebblePad.

A passionate group of students absolutely disliked PebblePad as it was either too difficult to use or too simplistic in its capabilities. Others wanted to personalise it to the limits that other web authoring software allows. PebblePad did not easily allow this. The other drawback of PebblePad is that we were looking at engineering drawings and whilst it allows viewing of jpegs their resolution was not high enough for us to read these drawings very clearly and individual files had to be opened in a series of cascading menus to view their work and this became quite time consuming.

Future Directions

Some of the improvements that could be made to Pebble Pad are to give it a corporate UniSA rather than a primary school feel. I would like to see it re-badged, corporatised and the PebblePad name removed. The interfaces, the fonts and low-tech look of it do not appeal to engineering students.

I still think that e-portfolios are a good learning tool for the students and they integrate and roll everything in together. The students have a record of their learning, which they can reflect on if they want to. My advice to other academics would be to get on board and use some of these developments that the university is resourcing and not try to do these things on your own, but have the corporate body backing you. After my experience with PebblePad this year, I would love to use some form of effective, interactive, feedback providing, reflective online submission method in the future.

Eportfolios in Engineering

Today, John Fielke will be talking to us about his experiences with using e-portfolios in his course ‘Computer Techniques’, which is one of eight core courses common to all of The University of South Australia’s Bachelor of Engineering degrees.

Dr. Fielke identified three interesting areas that arose from his experience with using e-portfolios, or webfolios, for the first time in 2009 in his Computer Techniques course.

The use of online formative feedback for students using webfolios

PebblePad is a ‘real time’ webfolio tool, which allows academics to review students’ work and provide formative feedback. During my Computer Techniques course I gave my students feedback and then allowed them to update their work. However, very few students took up this opportunity. I suppose the students could be helped to see the benefits of the provision of this type of formative feedback if marks were allocated for the use of the feedback, but it is still up to the students to decide if they want to use to take advantage of this.

Using the Profiler tool in PebblePad to assist students to reflect on his/her development of the UniSA Graduate Qualities

Another part of PebblePad that I used was the profiler tool where I got the students to reflect on their learning outcomes. The profiler offered the opportunity for me to ask students questions and I tailored these to allow the students to reflect on the university’s graduate qualities. For example, I asked questions about their background knowledge of computer-aided engineering drawing before the course, and then I asked them to rate their knowledge after the course.

The profiler tool not only provides information about the students, but also allows the students to reflect on their own development. For example, I asked the students to rate the effectiveness of their learning in specific learning environments such as the computer practicals or the lectures. This allowed the students to acknowledge that they did learn differently in different modes. The best part of the profile is that you see this in real time as the students are working on it and you can use the reporting function to find out where everyone is up to at a specific time.

Students reflected on their modes of learning

The students might be inclined to put off their thinking about the graduate qualities until they near graduation, however, presenting a series of questions that they have to answer about their current personal development makes them reflect on this and helps them to think very clearly about the skills they are developing even at this early stage of their studies.

Self-assessment using the Profile tool in PebblePad
I also used the profiler tool to ask the students to reflect on their effort and learning in the course, and predict their grades. I was surprised at the number of students that self-rated themselves quite low and identified that they did not put a huge effort into the course. They included many comments to justify why this was the case. Some students did think they deserved a HD, whereas other students thought they deserved a C and suggested that they had understood most of the course but had a few difficulties here and there. Some self- rated themselves as a P2 and commented that they did not try too hard, but thought they had done enough to scrape over the line. A couple of students rated themselves as an F and explained that they had not had the time to put the effort into the course. I was very surprised at how accurately they predicted their grades, probably within one grade. It really showed to me that the students do acknowledge the amount of work they put in and they do aim for a grade. They are not all after a HD for an assignment, they might like it but in reality, they are just going to do enough work to get the grade they are aiming for.

It was very easy using the profiler tool. The reporting function allows quick and easy access to information provided by the students. However, there is so much functionality in PebblePad that we still have not used.

Postgrad Engineering - online course design and experience

Today Yousef Amer will be talking to us about his course redesign experience for a postgraduate course, Supply chain management.

When I started designing this online course my aim was to have my students (class size of ~70) to be engaged and to get to the point that they were interacting and sharing knowledge. To do this I used Gilly Salmon’s 5 stage model of teaching and learning online as described in these books – e-moderating and e-tivities.

The web site was simplified as much as possible. We separated the web site into two sections - Teaching and Learning. The Teaching section contained e-readers, journals, books, solutions and PowerPoint presentations. The Learning side contained the interactive elements –the discussion groups and quizzes.

Addressing Stage 1, “Access and motivation” the front page was welcoming and outlined all the main folders and features of the course site. Students were reassured and encouraged to take time to become familiar with the site and information available on it. There was one face to face lecture that demonstrated the online environment to the students. I walked them through the different components of the web sites, highlighting the critical components – 3 discussion boards. One was a lectures notice board, one was a group discussion board where students could only access their own group (~10 students) and the final one was a general discussion board. Students were shown where regular communication occurred. I also provided a consultation time for those who needed one-on-one support mostly for technical support.

Stage 2 is “Online socialization”. The first activity was to ask students to introduce themselves online and provide some background in relation to work experience and qualifications and what their aspirations were. The communication rules were also spelt out.

In Stage 3 “Information exchange” the students were required to respond to another’s post in their discussion group. This gave them the opportunity to access work from at least one other student or the entire group if they wanted to, and the chance to peer review. I used weekly online quizzes to allow the students to self-assess their knowledge of the topic and become aware of where the gaps were in their knowledge and opportunities for development. To build up and establish the groups online e-tivities were assigned two weeks apart.

Stage 4 relates to “knowledge construction” – and this is where the students were working in groups. Most groups were communicating quite well and some were already tackling the group assignment in an organised fashion.

This sense of “development’ relates to Stage 5. Students spoke more freely and expressed themselves more openly online as compared to in lecture and tutorial setting. Communication was also more immediate with some students checking the discussion board daily.

As a online teacher it was an interesting experience. You could see the groups forming through the discussion board to become active and supportive of each other – finishing by exchanging telephone numbers and meeting times. For me it was important to keep track of their contributions so that the ‘quieter’ students didn’t get left behind. This was a bit tricky at times, especially as some students have similar names. Those students who weren’t making postings were encouraged by other students and if they disappeared for too long were emailed by myself. Concerns about their expression of English was common – but after I reassured them that they were not being assessed on spelling and grammar, that they became more active in the discussion.

The student evaluations of these learning experiences has been very positive particularly the way that this learning can be applied in real situations.

Wikis in Engineering

Today we have Liz Smith, from the School of Advanced Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering, to share some of her experiences using wikis to support student project work in different courses.

We have used wikis in Engineering for the past couple of years. A couple of examples include....

In 2008 we used PBwiki with the common first year course Sustainable Engineering Practice. The students used the wiki as a place to create an online portfolio of assigned tasks. The tasks were focussed on developing the student's understanding of the engineering profession. This included collecting three on-line news articles on engineering and sustainability and commenting on each article and how it related to sustainable practice; collecting two on-line job advertisements for graduate engineering positions and summarising the attributes for which the employer was looking; developing a career plan map and discussing how the student planned to manage their ongoing professional development; reporting on the industry speakers who presented throughout the course and preparing a resume. Each of these tasks was approximately 200 word equivalents.

For more information on how we used PBwiki and what the students thought about it, check out our paper:
http://www.ojs.unisa.edu.au/index.php/atna/article/viewFile/378/288

And here are our presentation slides from the ATN Assessment conference 2008:

Liz Smith et al 2008

View more OpenOffice presentations from Diana Quinn.

In 2009 we used PBwiki for the second year course Mechanical Engineering Practice. The major assessment task for this course is the Weir Minerals Design and Build Challenge. This challenge is for nominally second year mechanical engineering students working in groups. To assist in working collaboratively, each group were required to use a wiki to simulate an engineering design file. In their wiki, students collated information related to the project, such as drawings, calculations, and meeting minutes.

It was hoped the wiki would help students work collaboratively. Here is a link to our example wiki http://meng2009-coordinator-2009.pbworks.com/

The benefits of using the wiki, as identified by the students include: the flexibility of uploading information at home, sharing and storing files in one location, displaying images and videos, and the ability to provide feedback on each other’s contribution. However, even with the wiki, the preferred channels of communication between group members were via phone and email, where email was the preferred method to share documents between group members. The benefits of using the wikis, as identified by the teaching staff include: indication of group progress, avenue for providing formative feedback and identification of group members who are not contributing.

Course Coordinators regularly checked each group’s wiki and provided formative feedback on its content. Students then used this formative feedback to further improve their wiki site. Although the formative feedback was appreciated, students’ comments suggest they would prefer regular summative assessment tasks based on their wiki to keep them on track.

Overall, I really like using wikis. I particularly like using PBwiki as you can create private wikis for free. Other wiki tools such as Wikispaces require you to pay a monthly amount to keep the wiki private.

After using PBwiki in 2008, I declared that I would never use PBwiki as my wiki tool again. But, since then they have updated the software so that it has more functionality and easier to use (it also has a new name PBworks). So when deciding on which wiki to use in 2009 I chose PBwiki – better the devil you know...

This is not an advertorial for PBwiki, it is just my wiki of choice. There are plenty of wiki tools availble, a good comparison of the different wikis available can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wikis

How wikis work?

Wikis can be a fast and easy way for students to work collaboratively and be more active in their learning.

Wikis have been available for a few years now as free software, some of which that have been supported by LTU's Online Education Support Team. However, wikis are also embedded in the e-Portfolio learning tool, PebblePad (webfolios), and they will become 'mainstream' from 2010 within our new UniSA Learning Management System, (LMS), Moodle.

A UniSA research project is looking at how UniSA staff have been using wikis in their classes and would like to know why academics have selected wikis, how they prepare, support and assess students, and what the students experienced within the wiki learning environment. They aim to create a framework that can be applied generally to help staff use wikis to support student collaboration.

The research is being conducted by Tangi Steen, Dale Wache, Jo Hanisch and Kirstin Wache primarily using short (10 min) anonymous online surveys. If you are planning to use wikis in your teaching in 2009 then please consider contacting Kirstin Wache to register your interest.

You may also be interested in this paper and presentation from last year's assessment conference from Snelling and Karanicolas - Why Wikis Work.

Cathy Snelling And Sophie Karanicolas 2008

View more OpenOffice presentations from Diana Quinn.

Ever thought about doing an online course?

The UK-based Oxford Centre offers online courses for academic development. Although pricey (265 Pounds for 5 weeks of online interactivity) - they are a highly regarded service. I would highly  recommend the experience of being an online learner to anyone who wanted to improve their online teaching.  Some of the upcoming sessions are:

1. Researching and Evaluating eLearning 20 April - 22 May 2009 (too late!)
   
2. Engaging learning with Social Software 3 June - 3 July 2009
   
3. Engaging Students with Assessment and Feedback 4 June - 4 July 2009
   
4. Enquiry Based Learning 10 June - 10 July 2009
   
5. Online Tutoring 17 June - 17 July 2009

A sip of Merlot perhaps?

Why not!

The amount of content on the web is growing exponentially - and this includes materials that can be shared and may help students with their learning. 

There are many places that you can search for content to add to your materials - a few of which I have put as a permanent link on the right hand side of this blog - but there is one that has been seriously under-utilised and that is MERLOT - Multimedia educational resource for learning and online teaching. 

Merlot offers a well-established peer-reviewed database of learning objects for sharing: http://www.merlot.org 

For example -  I searched for Merlot for materials by category - selecting Science and Technology > Engineering on the left hand side. There were 595 entries. You can search within this category if you like. There are simulations, case studies, tutorials, quizzes and more.

The first link in this engineering browse was a 'Classic' - MecMovies - by selecting 'Go to material' I arrived here  http://web.mst.edu/~mecmovie/ . MecMovies takes learners step by step through various concepts in Mechanical engineering such as torsion, sheer stress and strain. The community had rated it as 4 and a bit stars and it was included in the personal collection of 17 Merlot Members  (which is pretty good). 

There was also a 2 minute movie from the author http://taste.merlot.org/Videos/MecMovies.html that explains what Tim Philpot was getting at when he designed the tool and how he determined that it was making a difference for his learners. 

So why not give Merlot a go and see what it might be able to offer you?

Putting Defence lecture material on-line

Peter Hamilton (Defence and Systems Institute) writes about his approach to e-learning by using online presentations to replace the lectures.

I had the job of creating an Associate degree in Engineering (Defence Systems) program where all students would be working in industry and needed flexibility for learning. The students were more mature and had worked in manufacturing engineering roles, primarily as technical officers, and needed to retrain for work in companies that service the growing Defence industry.

Below is a presentation that describes the project (UniSA staff can view the web sites linked within the presentation).

Associate Degree in Engineering (Defence Systems) e-learning project

One of the strategies used was a 'lecture capture' technique where we made short recordings of the topics given by our course experts that could be accessed online 24x7. We had financial support from the federal government to implement the program and create the resources.

To make this happen, I purchased 6 licenses for Adobe Presenter 7, the application software underlying the ‘In a Nutshells’, in about Sep/Oct 2008. It works as a PowerPoint add-in that publishes that allows ‘narrated PowerPoint presentations’ to be created and saved on a special server in ISTS. The process of up-loading narrated presentations to the Server is centrally controlled by me.

The tool is relatively easy to use with most lecturers being able to master the tool in under 30 minutes. Narrated presentations have been created in a number of ways depending on the preferences of the lecturer:

1. Lecturers use an existing PowerPoint presentation for which they have prepared a script or, sometimes, good notes. Lecturers then record the script using the Presenter 7 tool. The script becomes the ‘Notes’ component of the narrated presentation.


2. Lecturers use an existing PowerPoint presentation but without a script. Using the Presenter 7 tool they record the narration for each slide speaking ‘off-the-cuff’, prompted by the slide content. The sound file is then transcribed into a Word document by a professional transcriber; is edited by the lecturer to eliminate ums and arghs; and forms the ‘Notes’ component of the narrated presentation.


3. Lecturers present a PowerPoint based lecture in the normal face-to-face fashion. The lecture is recorded using a digital recorder. The sound files are transcribed in the same way as above. Using Presenter 7, the sound files are uploaded to match the PowerPoint slides while the transcribed and edited sound file is used as the ‘Notes’ component of the narrated presentation. This is a quite labour intensive process.

These recordings have been well received by students both on-line and on-campus as they can revisit them as often as they like. We have sometimes just played them as a lecture and still the students appreciated them as they were very clear.

We need to be mindful of the length of the recordings as there is only a certain amount of time that someone will look at their screen to watch a recording. Our average lecture length is about 20-30 minutes, some a little longer, others a little shorter. For a lecture, I consider about 30 minutes to be optimal.

Capturing lectures

When developing content for teaching in online courses, or providing extended flexibility for face-to-face or external students, many people consider the use of lecture capture techniques. Lecture capture could be as simple as making an audio recording of a lecture and slides/notes available online or can involve using sophistocated software programs that link together the voice, visuals and resources.

Educause put together a short document called the 7 things you should know about Lecture capture that describes what it is and considers the significance, implications and downsides.

One of our first podcasters at UniSA was Tim Sawyer in Medical Radiation - he prepared this short presentation about his approach to share with others in 2007 (6 minutes) as he was quite impressed with how much his students engaged with the recordings.

Currently we don't have any automated systems to do podcasting or lecture capture at UniSA - although last year we were close to getting Lectopia - an automated record and publish tool installed in lecture theatres - but for some reason it all faded away. If you want to make recordings you need to have access to your own (school's) recorder.

If you do want to try making audio recordings, Online advisers will set up "podcasting" environments for courses that students can subscribe to to receive lecture recordings to their ipod as soon as they are available. A manual upload of audio files and pdf documents (lecture notes) by the lecturer is required.

Our next blog post will be from Peter Hamilton from DASI who has used Adobe Presenter as his main lecture capture tool for courses in the Associate Degree in Engineering (Defence Systems).

Stay tuned ....

Mixing it up for more engagement

Do you accept the argument that people have different learning style preferences and therefore we need to mix it up a bit as teachers so we are not favouring one learning style preference over another?

This notion is build into our assessment policy - section1 - Assessment Principles and Requirements. 

1.1.4 Assessment tasks should be diverse.

Assessment practices should be inclusive and support equity principles, catering for both individual and group diversity. It should be recognised that all assessment models have limitations and a capacity to disadvantage certain students. Every effort should be made to minimise such disadvantage by, for example, using a variety of

 assessment techniques. Inclusive language must be used to avoid gender, racial, cultural or other language bias.

Honey and Mumford (1992) developed a learning styles questionnaire that grouped learning style preferences as

• activists - prefer to do something practical
• reflectors - prefer to read and take time to consider options
• theorist - prefer to read and analyse
• pragmatists - prefer to do something related to the real world. 

Later, Palmer and May (2004) tried to map different online environments on to these learning styles. 

• activists - prefer simulations, discussion groups and noticeboards
• reflectors - prefer online content, multimedia, tasks and research
• theorists - prefer structured content and structured systems
• pragmatists - off-line tasks, focused discussions and just-in-time learning.

Palmer and May then wanted to apply this information to balance assessment - with learners being reassessed in different learning styles. 

The questions this raises for me are many - for example - do I teach to my preferred learning style (pragmatic) as this most the most sense to me? Will the teachers in a program have enough intrinsic variety in their preferred learning styles/teaching that students will get a fair go across a program? Are learning styles a disposition that is shared by many in a professional/discipline group?  With the focus on experiential learning at UniSA - will this curriculum re-design better suit the pragmatist? Is Peter Lee's preferred learning style pragmatic? Does it matter?

Interested in your thoughts...

References

Honey and Mumford (1992)  The Manual of Learning Styles (3rd ed) Maidenhead: Peter Honey. 

Palmer and May (2004) Using learning style theory to improve online learning through computer assisted diagnosis' 8th CAA Conference, http://www.caaconference.com/pastConferences/2004/proceedings/Palmer_May.pdf 

A conversation with Peter Kentish about Moodle quizzes

I cornered Peter Kentish recently, gave him coffee, a comfy chair with a cushion and asked him to recount  some of his experiences about using Moodle quizzes to share with our readers. 

Q: How come you are using Moodle Quizzes now?

It all started in 2007 when the new common first year in engineering began. I had always taught my old Engineering Materials course with a cohort of 60-70 students using 6-7 multiple choice and text-based questions but now, with the new common first year core course it was going to be 200! There was no way I was going to be able to do all that marking! I knew  that the quiz approach had worked well for motivating my students to learn consistently in this course so I asked for an automated system to help me mark these tests. 

It wasn't the first time I had asked for an automated assessment system. The UniSAnet team tried several times but were quite frustrated in their efforts to create an in-house 

online assessment tool and resorted to trialling the Moodle version. I was one of 2 people who were allowed to use this environment and test it for the University. 

How do you use it?

I run 6 tests during the study period for this course. For each these there is actually a pair of quizzes. The first is a practice (non-assessable) one that students can attempt as many times as they like, find out which they got right or wrong and also what the right answer is. Then there is an assessable version that counts for grades.  There about 30-35 items in the assessable one and 15 or so in the practice version. 

A screen grab from the Moodle quiz environment

 

Students do the assessable quizzes in a computer pool during their tutorial time. I set the time the quiz is open for and a password - I make these up so they are different for each tutorial class. When all the classes have finished taking the test I send them their results which have been automatically marked. 

What has it been like using Moodle quizzes?

The system itself has been quite good - robust.  There have been virtually no bugs in the system - just one that hasn't been solved. This has no negative effects provided you are aware of it.

Like most things there are positives and negatives - there has been a lot of time setting up the database of questions, but the time saved with the auto marking has more than made up for it - particularly as I am now in the second year. The benefit will continue for future years as less time is required in maintaining the database.

How do you come up with your questions?

When I first started I had my old questions that needed to be entered into my database which took a long time. Now, when I want to set up a test I create a shell for it (setting the time and password for the class) and select the questions I want from my database. Each year I choose different questions. I also use the random shuffling functionality - my selected questions are presented in a different order and answer options are also in different order for each student (this shuffling feature can be turned off). 

Also, at tutorials I get ideas for questions where the content is applied to problems and write new questions to add to my database. This is good as I really want to test students application of knowledge rather than recall of memorised facts.  

Also, tutorials are not assessed directly, so to motivate students to engage with the tutorial activities I warn them that a certain amount of the quiz items are going to come from the tutorials so they need to do this work (i.e. memorisation of facts will not be enough to be successful - you are not very good as an engineer if you are not able to apply knowledge to solve problems!)

An example of a question from a practice quiz

What do the students think?

They generally like MCQ best - they think they have an advantage as the right answer is there they just need to find it.  For the first practice quiz there were over 958 attempts - some students attempted it 15 times, others not at all. The average mark for the test was about 70%. 

Even though the students were advised that quiz 2 would be more complex than the first, the number of attempts on the practice test did decrease to 795 -probably because the students have more competing interests or they have been lulled into a false sense of security from test 1. The average mark for this second test, which was more difficult,  was  lower - around 60%. 

Moodle curious?

When I first found out the Moodle was a real contender for our new online learning platform a few years ago I thought it would be good to see what it was like. 

My first exploration was edna - which offers free sites for educators as well as the opportunity to reach out to others in online groups - and uses Moodle for its environment. I had to make an application and after a day or two I was given approval to play in my own spot. To be honest I never got very far  - it wasn't intuitve (for a lass grown up on UniSAnet)  and I could never find the time to do the training course (although they offered a few times). 

This 1 minute movie gives an overview of the groups. 

This year I have now done the 2 day training and am able to author. The environment is very flat - all on one page - which is odd.

The stunning thing for me was the online assessment options available - with marks going straight into the system. It will be ultimately make the early assessment of student learning much easier, faster, better. 

I have started my first site (another 6-8 weeks before it will be finished as still preparing content). It is planned to be one that will be the basis for some of the ICUP modules (you can import and export easily out of Moodle). It is  on a tiny development server (slow performance) but it is enough for the experiment. 

There are still many decisions to be made for the new environment which will start going live in 2010 - e.g. will AssignIT stay or will we use the Gradebook in Moodle? What e-portfolio tool will we integrate? If its PebblePad what about the gateways??? What will we call it? (it won't be Moodle). 

But this is in the hands of others.... 

By the way, they are planning a progressive transfer; 5% first, then 30 % by another time etc... All done by the end of 2011 with UniSAnet switched off. 

Diana

Community aims

Welcome to our new group - Engaging Online Learning. 

This group has come into being at the request of Brenton Dansie (negotiated project with the Learning and Teaching Unit and ITEE 2009)  to address a disconnection between the online teachers in the Division. He knows that there is online teaching and learning out there, but the teachers and their experiences are not brought together in any organised way.  Would you agree with this perception?

The Dean would then look to us, as a group, to support with development activities, presenters, new PLE trials, apply for grants and awards - and could help shape a strategy for online teaching and learning for the Division in the future. 

To meet this we will start a blog-based Community of Practice (CoP) - this sketch from Nina Evan's whiteboard tells the story...

Therefore we have a few aims...

Primarily we are a Community of practice (CoP) that shares our experiences (good and bad) as teachers in the online environment based in the Division of ITEE. Using blog posts and tagging we will publish our practice and allow the community to interact with these experiences through comments. This will be used as an record of what is happening in the Division for reference for Brenton and newcomers to online teaching and learning.

We are able to apply to Brenton for funding for things like trials, seminar presenters etc. to have some fresh influence to the group.

We are also in a position to influence what is happening in the online teaching and learning arena in the Division by shaping our strategy - but this is secondary and long term aim. 

So welcome, please subscribe and stay connected!

Diana and Nina

P.S. To "subscribe" - add your email to the box in the right hand column called "Subscribe via Email" to get an email alert or use one of the RSS feed options to your browser, outlook or news reader. There is a second step - validation of your request by clicking on a link in an email, however this email often ends up in Junk mail folders!

YouTube lectures

Did you see this article about a UNSW academic using YouTube as his content provider?
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2009/03/04/1235842462189.html



Pity it doesn't really share what the students think of it - but it does emphasize the benefit of creating short pieces of content for the teachers - its re-usability - in this case, for high school students.

I remember a few years ago the sound of dropping jaws world wide when MIT announced that it was going to put all of its content freely available online - as it was the not the content that was the mark of the MIT experience, it was the learning activities that really made the difference. It is what the student does that is important.

Besides YouTube, iTunesU also provides good systems for distributing and organising content (audio and video) - see promotional video here. We need to factor this mobile dimension of learning into our thinking about delivery options.

Australian Research into impact of Learning Technologies

The Campus review reported that there is a new group in Queensland (CEIT - Centre for the Education Innovation and Technology) that are dedicated to the research of innovations in technology in teaching and learning. They hope to produce 'hard data' on which to base decisions about educational technology and share this with the public.
http://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=Sections&ss=Technology&idArticle=6394

Sharing and growing online practice

Welcome to the Engaging online learning blog - a space designed for the folk at UniSA - Division of Information, Technology Engineering and the Environment.

Here we can do things like share practice, coordinate seminars and collaborate on projects and writing. This activity will ultimately shape online learning in the Division as it continues its outreach to work-based, rural, remote and international students.