Many of you will be aware of the TechSmith Relay service as the University has been using it for a number of years, but are you making the most of it for your students? The service is available on all UoP machines via MyApps and you can also download the software free from our TechSmith Relay server (log in with your UoP details) for use on any other compatible machine – see https://relay.port.ac.uk/relay/ClientDownload.aspx
TechSmith Relay allows you to record your screen with an audio voiceover, which is currently considered suitable to meet the requirements of the Disabled Student Allowance. Incorporating TechSmith Relay into your teaching need not be just about meeting these requirements however, as all of your students can benefit from being able to hear what was said during contact time. Students’ attention can be disrupted while making notes during a lecture, and knowing they can refer back to the recording rather than having to rely on their own notes afterwards means students can concentrate fully on the lecture.
To use this software in a lecture theatre you will require a microphone to be connected to a PC, in some rooms the desk microphone has been linked up in this way, but not all. To ensure you can record your session in this way we recommend the purchase of a USB microphone which you can quickly set up in the various teaching rooms.
This can take the form of a simple USB wired microphone if you do not stray too far from the microphone during your lecturing, such as:
Or, if you like to wander around the presentation area, a microphone such as the RevoLabs X-Tag could prove useful although it will cost significantly more:
Of course, rather than recording your entire lecture, if you do have time at your desk to create a lecture summary suitable for revision then this may well prove more effective to complement your teaching. Research has shown that short recordings of 5–15 minutes are far more effective for student engagement and learning.
PLEASE NOTE that it can take a few minutes to upload your recording (particularly at the end of a lecture) so allow 3–4 minutes before logging off the PC otherwise your recording will not complete uploading even if you receive a message saying it has been ‘submitted’.
You may also find Relay a helpful tool for providing feedback. When marking an essay you could have the essay on screen and use the mouse as a pointer whilst talking about an assignment, thereby providing audio feedback in addition to written feedback. Why not check out the Assessed Video tool!
Many students who arrive at the University often fall short of the necessary study skills required for them to achieve their academic goals. With the support of the Academic Skills Unit (ASK) students are able to enhance their skills by attending workshops and one-to-one sessions, as well as receive paper handouts. However, the University have also invested in a licence for the Palgrave MacMillan resource Skills4StudyCampus which is available to our students online.
Skills4StudyCampus is an interactive online tool that allows students to prepare for studying at university level and to help them develop their study skills. There are 6 modules: Getting ready for academic study; Reading and note-taking; Critical thinking skills; Writing skills; Exam skills; and Time management.
Skills4StudyCampus Moodle site ‘Skills4Study@Portsmouth’
Students can access this resource by logging into Moodle and selecting the site Skills4Study@Portsmouth from the ‘Useful Sites’ drop-down menu.
Students are then free to actively participate in activities as and when they need to. The modules include: diagnostic tests to help students recognise areas in which they need to improve their skills; self assessment tasks to help them gain a deeper understanding of their knowledge and skills; interactive activities to help reinforce the skills and knowledge they have learnt; and module assessments to test understanding of what has been learnt. Students can also use the My Journal feature which allows them to make notes and reflect on their learning.
The modules have been designed to suit different types of learners and has been created to support students with accessibility issues.
Embed Skills4StudyCampus into your Moodle course units
Skills4StudyCampus modules / sections can now be easily embedded directly into a Moodle course unit using the External tool activity.
To find out more on how to embed sections of this resource into your Moodle course unit, log into Moodle and select ‘Staff Help Site’ from the ‘Help Sites’ drop-down menu. You will then find a section that will provide you with guidance along with the generated embedding links.
Moodle has successfully been upgraded to version 3.3, improving functionality and stability for all users.
New features:
Integration of H5P – a content-authoring tool that allows you to quickly create interactive resources for your Moodle units (you can use H5P to upload or create: audio recordings; charts; drag-and-drop words or images; flashcards; interactive videos; quizzes; and timelines).
Stealth activities – activities and resources that are accessed only through other items or links, and are not visible from the course page (previously Orphaned activities). Stealth activities and resources can now be hidden in a standard topic space but made available (under Edit, Make available) to a student / participant. This will hide resources / activities from the course page completely, but still be accessible to students through a link or item within the Moodle unit.
Drag and drop media – when in editing mode, for quickness, you can now drag and drop media files (images, audio recordings) directly into topic spaces in your Moodle site and select whether to make them either a downloadable file or viewable resource without having to add a label, book or page file to contain them.
Atto editor – Atto has become the default editor. Staff and students can change their preference to Tiny MCE via Editor Preferences in their profile. However, Atto does provides auto-saving functionality (useful for exams) and formats content in a much more accessible way. Tiny MCE does offer a few different elements of functionality that some staff may find useful, for example – whilst using Tiny MCE in the FireFox browser image resizing can be done by dragging the image corners, rather than having to specifying the require image dimensions.
Moodle assignment:
The Moodle assignment tool has been dramatically improved to include inline commenting features similar in nature to Turnitin’s Feedback Studio. PDF conversion of student-submitted Word documents is handled automatically by Google Drive, making the new Moodle assignment much more robust than last year’s version.
When setting up a Moodle assignment it is now also possible to restrict which file formats students must submit their work in. You can do this by adding in the extension name (e.g. .docx) to ‘Accepted file type’ field. However, please note that the system will then not allow uploads of any other file formats, including versions of the same software such as Word (.doc and .docx). To set multiple file formats just use a comma to separate them in the field box. If you wish to allow students to upload any file type then simply leave the ‘Accepted file type’ field blank.
By turning on the Activity Completion option (the default is off) you can now bulk edit Activity Completion settings. An example would be that if you want all your quizzes to have a new passing grade, you are now able to set this for all activities and not manually change each instance.
Moodle theme:
New Moodle Theme
The Moodle theme has been improved over the summer, with a full re-design planned for summer 2018/19. Staff can now upload a unit cover image (under Course Administration, Course Summary Files) to quickly and easily illustrate what a unit is about. The upload also triggers the inclusion of a new content filtering and navigation system.
At the beginning of each new academic year TEL receives many Moodle queries from staff – here are the top five that we’re asked:
Q1) I cannot see my unit(s) on my Moodle Homepage, why not?
A1) Are you a new member of staff or have you recently taken over the unit? Has the unit changed name/code and has it had a Moodle presence previously? These are some of the reasons you may not be able to see a unit on your homepage, to help us resolve the issue for you we will require some details about the unit(s) – the unit title and/or the unit code, the level of the access that you require for the unit(s), and your username. With this information we can add you to the unit or create a blank unit (or clone an existing one) for you to build.
Q2) My students are not attached to my unit, why not?
A2) Students are added to units in Moodle by mapping course codes and registration instances, or unit codes and attendance groups against Student Records. We do not manually add students as such access will not update should they change their units of study. Let us know if you are missing students and we will try to see if we can resolve this problem for you or bring it to the attention of your course administrators if a change needs to be made in Student Records.
Q3) I can see my students are attached to my unit, but they are saying that they cannot see the unit, why not?
A3) It could be that your unit is still hidden from student view.
To unhide your unit, go to the unit, click on the Administration tab, click on Edit settings, click on the drop down arrow in the Visible box, click on ‘Show’ scroll down and click on ‘Save and display’. Once your students have refreshed their Moodle page, students should be able to see the unit. If students still cannot see the unit, please supply the unit’s details and we will investigate to see if we can resolve this issue.
It’s also important to remember that units ending in JAN stay hidden from student view until January, so you’ll see the students on the unit, but the students won’t see the unit on their homepage.
Q4) My colleague needs access to my unit, can I add them myself?
A4) Yes you can – click on the Administration tab, click on Users, then click on Enrolled users. On this page click on the Enrol users box, a small box will appear, first assign the role you wish your colleague to have from the drop-down menu, then type their name in the search box and click on search. Find the person and click on the Enrol button next to their names, then click ‘Finish enrolling users’. When your colleague refreshes their page or logs into Moodle the unit will appear on their homepage. With Lecturer access you can give a colleague a ‘Lecturer’, ‘non-editing Teacher’ or ‘Guest’ role, you cannot assign the ‘Student’ role.
Q5) Some students can see my unit but other students cannot. I have more than one unit code attached to it, is this the reason?
A5) Yes, Moodle only attaches the first unit code automatically, other unit codes within the title will need to be cohort synced once each year. For this to happen, please email the unit details to elearn@port.ac.uk and we’ll cohort sync the code(s) to the unit.
After the stress of sitting A-level exams passes, and the last of the summer fades, the realisation dawns that you are about to start university. For many of you the first few weeks of university will constitute your first real taste of freedom away from your family home, and getting settled here at Portsmouth will be high on the agenda. You will rightly be concerned about making friends, joining clubs and societies, and exploring your new environment. Of course beginning your studies is important too, so in this article I have tried to create a quick summary of what is to come in terms of eLearning.
In this post I have picked out the top three most commonly used terms that occur around the University. There are, however, many phrases, abbreviations and acronyms that you may hear which will soon become part of your own life’s lexicon. The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team has a glossary of eLearning terms that you might also find useful.
So the three terms that will be most likely to be relevant from your first day at university are:
VLE.This stands for Virtual Learning Environment; at Portsmouth, this is Moodle. This is the place where academics and administration teams provide information, learning materials and interactive activities for you to complete during your course. Moodle is normally the place where you take quizzes, submit assignments and check your writing for plagiarism.
Plagiarism.Plagiarism is essentially the copying of other people’s work and passing it off as your own – a serious academic offence. To help with this, the University makes use of software called Turnitin. Turnitin checks your work against its vast database of past papers, journals and internet sources for similarities; although many people refer to it as a plagiarism checker, all it’s really doing is checking how similar your work is to existing sources. Our Youtube playlist looks at Turnitin and Moodle Assessment to help you understand how to use the software. If Turnitin returns your work with a high similarity score the problem might not be plagiarism, but poor academic referencing. Which brings us to the third term I want to discuss.
Referencing.Correct citation and referencing will help you to avoid high similarity scores in Turnitin – and might help you gain marks. Plenty of help is available. The University Library, for example, offers a comprehensive referencing tool to help you; and the Academic Skills Unit provide guidance and workshops on a range of subjects, including referencing – and in academic writing more generally. This video was produced by one of the ASK tutors called ‘One way to write an essay’ that will help you start, plan and execute your academic writing style.
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These definitions are just the first step into eLearning at the University. We hope you find them useful but remember they are by no means the exhaustive list of terms or services that can help you complete your studies. For instance, Lynda.com has been rolled out for the first time at the University and has increased the depth of resources for both staff and students. Read more about this provision in this blog post.
Header image taken from Unsplash.com under a free to use license.
Sarah Cooper Senior Online Course Developer – Faculty of Science, UoP
The Safe Exam Browser (SEB) is a Windows programme developed by ETH Zurich, which allows members of staff to isolate an online Moodle exam on a student-build computer. This means that no other webpages, pieces of software or programmes can be used once the exam has been entered. If extra documentation is required to complement the exam, this can be accounted for as long as it is predefined before the exam. Essentially, the academic can control what students see on the screen within the duration of the exam.
This year during our summative exam period we have used SEB widely across the Faculty of Science, with each department having at least one of their online exams run through the system, if not more. We are very glad to report it has been very successful! The process proved to be really straightforward with academics taking to the programme with great enthusiasm.
All students that used the system were easily able to get onto SEB, logging on with their normal username and password. As the exam itself pulls from Moodle, once in the system students are faced with an identical layout to Moodle quizzes, allowing them to interact with a familiar interface. This automatically puts students at ease as many of them will have used formative quizzes right up until the exam period.
Setup
Making your exam available through the SEB system couldn’t be easier. Anyone with editing rights in Moodle can set it up, be it academics, administrators or Online Course Developers. From the settings page of your Moodle quiz you will need to enable either a start and end time of your exam (the period in which the students can take the exam) in the ‘Timings’ section, or a ‘Restrict Access’ time and date. The ‘Restrict Access’ is when the exam is visible to the students (within the Science faculty, we use both the timings option and the restrict access). Lastly you will need to tag your quiz as an exam, you can do this from the ‘Tags’ section towards the end of the quiz settings. From the drop-down in this section select ‘exam-official’, select ‘Save changes’ and your exam will appear within SEB on the day of the exam.
There is one thing to be aware of – if you have activity name auto-linking set up on your Moodle sites, a word used in your exam question could hyperlink itself to a resource you have elsewhere in your Moodle unit. This will display as a blue hyperlink to the student in the exam in SEB. If the student then clicks on this link SEB will show an error message and will take the student out of the exam. I would strongly recommend turning off the auto-linking in your Moodle unit’s filter section to avoid this headache during an exam session.
Staff moderating online exams will have access to a special password enabling students to rejoin their exam attempt where the left off, however this won’t be necessary if the Moodle auto-linking filter has been disabled in advance of an exam.
Use
In order for students to access the exam, they should launch Safe Exam Browser from the new AppsAnywhere website (http://appsanywhere.port.ac.uk). Once SEB has launched the computer is locked into the restricted exam mode, until the exam has been completed. Directly after launching SEB students will be prompted to login to Moodle as normal then a list is shown with all the exams available to them. SEB will only make the exams available to the students that need them – anyone attached to that unit in Moodle via student records. Student won’t see exams from other courses, units or faculties.
The exam can have different groups of students taking it at different intervals throughout the day, achieved by setting up groups and groupings on your Moodle units and assigning these groups to the exams, as you would normally do. SEB will also pull this data through without any extra work from you, so you can run multiple time slots of the exam or have extra time students been allocated the necessary additional time.
As with Moodle exams, you can set up passwords, shuffle your questions and responses for each student and display any feedback you may wish to give them at the end of the exam. Once the students have completed the exam, they can exit the browser and the computer returns to it’s normal settings.
I would highly recommend using Safe Exam Browser for any in-class test or summative exam. The benefits of adding an official ‘exam feel’ to a familiar interface has been greatly received within our own faculty. Staff feel more at ease knowing students can’t access anything else on the computer, and have been shown how robust the system is with a massive number accessing it all at once across the campus. Students find the system very easy to log into and navigate through and say it adds a formal feeling to the exam process that they said wasn’t apparent when just using Moodle.
More information on Safe Exam Browser can be found at the links below:
Sign in using your university login details, click on ‘Log a Service Request’.
From the ‘Log a Service Request’ page scroll down to the ‘Your Services’ block, where you’ll see the ‘Moodle Request’ icon.
Clicking on this icon will take you to the ‘Service Details [Moodle Request]’ page where you can select ‘Request a new unit to be created on Moodle’. Once selected click ‘Next’.
From the next page, please ensure you complete all the mandatory fields in the request form to proceed, once you’re happy with the information you have supplied, click ‘Submit’.
If you are unsure of the information required please see our MyPort article ‘New Moodle Unit Request guide.
Once the form has been submitted you will see your reference number appear on the screen – you will also receive an email confirming your request. Your request should also be visible on your Self Service Portal home page under ‘Recent Requests’.
Elearn (TEL) will be assigned your query by Service Desk, and will email you back confirming when your request has been actioned. You’ll then be able to start creating your new unit, along with assistance from your faculty Online Course Developers should you need it.
Please Note: This system has been superseded, IS now use a system called Service Manager. The links on this blog no longer work. Please see the blog ‘New Modules for 2018-19‘ for updated links.
Header image taken from Unsplash.com under a free to use license.
Over the last few years the convenience of creating a multimedia recording has improved to such an extent that it is now very feasible to enhance the interactivity of contact time with students by recording content that can be passively consumed by students and providing it to them in advance of the valuable timetabled contact time. It requires an initial investment of time but with a bit of careful planning the recordings can be used for a number of years without the need for revision, potentially saving you time in the future as well as removing some of the stress of trying to squeeze all your teaching content into a finite number of lectures and also creates a resource for students to revise from and a reference you can use when providing feedback.
The concept is that you can pre-record content that would normally be presented as a lecture. This can be done without the audience of students which can be a stressful environment, with large lecture theatres, disruptive murmurings in the audience and audio-visual equipment not always performing as expected. This content can then be viewed by the student at their leisure, at a time when they are receptive to learning, fitting in around part-time employment and other commitments. Time that would normally be spent lecturing can then be repurposed as an engaging student-led session, affording the students time to ask any questions that may have arisen from consuming the content or by working through examples in class – important reflective aspects of learning which are all too often sacrificed in order to cover the all the content of the curriculum. Some may argue that lecture time is not saved as it is invested early in the process to make the recordings, which is true. However, producing a recording of a lecture that is presented multiple times (for example, in large courses), which can also be reused in the following semester or year, can save time on delivering content.
Here at the University of Portsmouth we have a variety of technologies that can assist you with ‘flipping the classroom’ and making your content more engaging, which will both enhance your teaching, and more importantly, improve the students’ learning.
New for the 2016 academic year we have a full lecture capture system for the first time. The UbiCast system is available in a limited number of venues and is now fully operational in the big lecture theatres of Park (Room 2.23 and Eldon West (Room 1.11). It is also available in the Grad School (Room 4.09, St Andrew’s Court) and there is a small seminar room equipped in Dennis Sciama (Room 2.02) where it is intended that content could be created in a ‘studio’ environment without the audience, i.e. for a flipped classroom. DCQE also have a mobile recording unit that can be requested via: elearn@port.ac.uk.
Members of Technology Enhanced Learning will setup the equipment in a suitable venue (please note 30 minutes setup time is required). The UbiCast system will record audio, the content of your screen and video of you presenting – which in the large lecture theatres of Park and Eldon will track you as you walk around the presentation area.
Well established at the University but often underestimated is Relay, a system for capturing screen and audio. In many cases this is all that is required for flipping the classroom – a video of the presenter does not always add value to the content. Relay is available on all standard build PCs via the MyApps portal or can be downloaded from: http://relay.port.ac.uk/ to your personal PC or Mac.
Please note to use Relay you may require a microphone (if the one in the classroom is not connected to the PC), we recommend a simple USB microphone that is easy to carry around. If you need to walk around whilst presenting try a wireless USB microphone such as the RevoLab X-Tag. If you have a webcam, then this can also be incorporated into the Relay recording as a picture in picture (appearing over the content in the bottom right-hand corner) although we would not normally recommend this as it can block some content and may be distracting to the viewer.
Fuse is a free mobile app developed by TechSmith (the developers of Relay), compatible with Android, iOS and Windows mobile devices. Fuse utilises the camera and microphone of your mobile device to record video and upload it to the Relay server where it can be processed and hosted in Compass to easily embed into your Moodle unit(s). If you don’t need a visual from your computer screen or document camera to get your message across why not utilise Fuse to add an introductory video or an interview of a subject specialist to your Moodle unit?
Moodle is based on open source technology which along with it’s thriving support community is one of the big reasons it’s so successful. It’s relatively straight-forward to mould Moodle to fit the organisation delivering it. In our case Moodle is branded inline with the University style guide but we go further than that and include usability customisations and features to improve the overall user experience and accessibility of the site, with the aim of making it a useful tool for all.
Our Moodle site is due a visual revamp. The University is currently in the middle of a re-brand consultation which will produce a new logo and visual identity to our websites. Moodle HQ are also re-working the user interface to make it more modern and user friendly. The TEL team are working with IS to migrate Moodle to a new POSTGRES database system to keep pace with increased usage of our site. We’d also like to include some handy new features in our Moodle theme (the theme is where we customise the look and feel of our Moodle site).
We’re taking a staggered approach to the visual revamp of Moodle, here’s our rough road map.
June 2017 – Moodle 3.3 environment available to staff with helpful new features
August 2017 – New UoP logo is incorporated into the UoP Bootstrap theme design along with re-worked unit header
September 2017 – Work starts on our new Boost based Moodle theme
January 2018 – Student and staff usability testing of the new UoP Boost theme
April 2018 – Advance preview of the UoP Boost theme is available to staff
June 2018 – UoP boost theme in Moodle available to staff for 2018/19
So what are these handy new unit features for 2017/18 and how will they help students and staff?
Re-worked unit header
Online Course Developers in UoP Faculties have come up with some great ideas to give Moodle units a common look and feel for each department and provide easy access to individual topics. We’d like to make this process easier and lessen the need for customisation on a unit-by-unit basis which can be very time consuming. The new unit header will allow staff to upload a cover image quickly and easily. There will be a ‘jump to’ box allowing users to skip straight to a topic further down the page and a filter box to help track down an activity hidden amongst the unit content. We’re also going to make accessibility options more visible and improve editing features for staff with a simple editing on/off switch.
At the top of this post you’ll see a mock-up of what we’re working on. It’s worth mentioning that the new header layout will only be invoked if a member of staff uploads a cover image, if not the existing unit header layout will remain, meaning customisations created by OCDs will be left intact.
Bootstrap elements front and centre
Degree Apprenticeship programmes are on the way. They will mean a lot more of our learning content is delivered online and students will likely be studying units from multiple University faculties at once. It’s important that these units have a unified look and feel along with common sign-posting. A quick an efficient way to achieve this is to make a library of common element templates available within the Moodle text editor. A member of staff will be able to add a styled text box to highlight further reading, an assessment brief or an accordion of categorised content which is styled in a way which makes it easy to spot whichever unit a student is on. Tom Cripps in TEL is hard at work putting together the library of common elements which should prove to be a really useful tool.
My Home (Dashboard)
Moodle 3.3 features a new ‘My Overview’ block which was developed to give students and staff a better view of their upcoming activities, and course progress and completion. We’re currently investigation whether the new block will be useful as a central part of the My Home page alongside or as a replacement for the current ‘My Sites’ block.
Inspiration from Snap
I was really lucky to be able to attend Moodle Moot UK in London in April. One session that really inspired me was on the Snap theme. Snap has some great ideas for modernising the Moodle interface. It’s probably fair to say that some of the features are too much of a departure from the existing user experience but we’ll certainly be looking at some of the clever features in Snap as inspiration for our own theme.
Big stuff for summer 2018
The navigation within Moodle is changing, blocks are being limited to dashboard and unit pages and the Moodle interface is generally moving closer to the Moodle mobile app. A nav draw on the left of the site will be introduced with only the most important navigation elements of units displayed. The course administration block is becoming a cog with drop-down menu, freeing-up screen real-estate and standardising where you go to make changes to units or resources. In summer 2018 Moodle should ship with a much improved dashboard (My Home page) which focusses on activity, course and assessment completion. This should become a useful tool for helping students and staff keep on track.
We hope this gives you a flavour of what’s to come in Moodle from an interface point of view (we’ll blog again with new Moodle 3.3 features coming to our Moodle site this summer). As always we’re all ears if you have ideas about how Moodle can be improved (feel free to leave a comment below or give us a call). We’ll also be looking for staff and student volunteers for theme usability testing early next year so if you’d like to be involved please get in touch.
MoodleMoot UK & Ireland is held each year; it is the main Moodle conference in the UK which focuses on collaboration and sharing best practice. This year MoodleMoot ran for three days between the 10th and the 12th April, I attended the two days that make up the main conference and missed the “hackfest” on the first day which is typically more developer-led.
The choice of sessions available to attend were diverse and interesting. I was able to visit a number of sessions that have some great ideas, which I can hopefully introduce to the team.
I’ll will try to highlight some of the most relevant or interesting information from the sessions that I attended. However I would recommend searching Twitter for the hashtag #MootIEUK17 as many people were tweeting notes, comments and observations from each session. It really enhanced the first day of the conference for me (until my phone with the Twitter account died, but that’s another story!).
The first session I saw was from the University of London. They reviewed Moodle from both staff and student perspectives, specifically looking at navigation and how to improve the user experience. An example they used was how it’s difficult getting feedback to the student when the gradebook only displays a grade and no indication of feedback. From the academic point of view they discussed how it wasn’t clear if work was marked, or whether the student could or couldn’t see it. They reviewed the new themes being developed at Moodle and the problems they may face rolling them out before they were ready.
Janice Button from Plymouth University implemented the grid format which is a Moodle plugin that hides all the topics and creates a grid view of icons. When they are clicked the relevant section of content is then displayed.
The next session I attended was presented by Lewis Carr. He demonstrated how well developed badges increase engagement, creating more gamified interactions, this was interesting at Portsmouth we have looked at creating badges within Moodle and a few in academics within the University are using them. Properly thought out achievements and goals can also improve how the student progresses through a course. It was pointed out by Janice Button that from entry courses to level 5 (second year courses) the amount of content increased dramatically, this made the progress bar more daunting and the revisiting of quizzes and similar interactions dropped off as the amount of work to be done increased. Lewis also highlighted the need of social interaction and engaging the students before, during and after the course to develop and build the learning experience.
The morning sessions were interesting and informative and gave us plenty to discuss over lunch. After we’d eaten, there were pico presentations (short and snappy when compared the the morning talks) which opened the afternoon sessions and were a great way to continue. Two sessions stood out: our own Mike Wilson spoke about Assessment Enhancement and the customisations that have been developed for our Moodle installation, and Rebecca Barrington put the “oo” back into Moodle by looking at how to keep academics on-board with the development of sites, explaining how embedding resources within Moodle is a great way to enhance and develop what you already have.
My turn to present was nearing, now, I am not normally a nervous presenter but the thought of presenting on a stage with the glare of lights and a massive screen behind me contributed to the nerves this time around! Whilst I got through it with positive feedback and managed to handle a few questions reasonably well, I felt I could have been better and should I be lucky enough to do another talk will endeavour to get those nerves in check and slow down!
Looking back, there certainly wasn’t a need to be nervous, the whole day was incredibly relaxed and just a creative hub for people who are keen educators, all looking at how we can approach our teaching, training and Moodle usage in a interesting way.
A panel discussion on getting rid of the desktop and turning to only a mobile solution ended the day. This was a very open discussion with questions from the audience and a range of views. A point that resonated with me, was the idea that we should always look at what we do for those end users on a mobile as the number of active mobile users is rising. The other side of this argument however, is that development from a mobile is not really practical. Whatever we develop should allow us to be flexible though, ensuring that our end users having the easiest and most simple experience of Moodle. The new themes and tools that are being added to the newer versions of Moodle show that this is also a concern for the ‘core’ Moodle team.
Day two of the conference saw my phone die, which meant that tweeting from the @TelPortsmouth account was curbed! The sessions I would like to draw on from the second day happened just before lunch as the second day was more sedate due to the evening festivities of the reception dinner the night before.
Mary Cooch, who is known amongst the Moodle community as the ‘Moodle Fairy’, did two sessions and I attended one entitled “10 user experience improvements since Moodle 3.1” of which I had heard of most updates. It was useful to see but essentially if you go through a versions release notes they will be highlighted there (I am sure many people don’t!)
The second session and my pick of the second day was “Competency based education a look at the features in Moodle 3.1 / 3.2”. This session was interesting, informative and above all confusing! Competencies are used to “describe the level of understanding or proficiency of a learner in certain subject-related skills”. Competencies are a new and growing feature of Moodle. TEL are researching Competencies so that members of staff in the University can possibly make use of them in the future.
MoodleMoot is a fantastic event that I would suggest to anyone involved with any aspect of Moodle. It was engaging, with a great range of subjects and everything from back end/admin level sessions to those designed to be understandable for the average user. It was also a great place to ask anyone a question, everyone was approachable and for the reception dinner, a great place to hijack the Moodle stage display and use it for photos!
