A number of the TELT community at Glasgow were able to attend Moodle MOOT. I’ve put together some of our impressions from the MVLS Digital Education Unit.

Key-take aways

We were quite impressed by the workbook that Napier University had developed from Moodle quiz. It was similar to a reflective journal, where student responses were saved and they could add to it at a later date. We’ve made contact with Napier about this. They are willing to share the code with us but it will need a bit more development from developers. Jo-Anne Murray is going to progress this through the VLE development board.

Moodle 3.1 brings a number of features which we think will be quite helpful at Glasgow including assignment marking on the same screen, LTI improvements, easier heading editing, a recycle bin (deleted activities / courses saved for 7 days), grading in screen (downloads as PDFs, works on tablet too). There is a test site at Prototype.moodle.net.

Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) shared a bit about their Moodle course templates, their minimum standards for Moodle courses and student feedback. Their minimum threshold included: reading list, assignment submission links, announcements, key content e.g. handbook. Their Moodle course templates included a number of placeholders for staff to complete. The template covered a welcome to the course, course unit information (course materials) and details of assessments. MMU implemented the minimum threshold and templates in response to student feedback. Students commented that in some courses there was poor communication from staff, materials / resources were not available in advance and materials on Moodle were poor quality / disorganised. The response to the measures implemented included that student appreciated consistency on Moodle. It also was mentioned that in most cases implementing a template was a manual process.

There was also a presentation about Moodle lesson (by an e-learning consultant, Lewis Carr) and how this could be used. The presenter had worked quite hard to use images to improve the look of lesson. See image below. It seems this create with CSS and Atto for the graphics.

While we at the conference we met the Big Blue Button(BBB) developer. He suggested that we could try the Puffin browser for the iPad and that should allow BBB to be used on an iPad. The developer approached DEU after our presentations as we mentioned we were using BBB for our online courses.

Other institutions

Middlesex University

Tools they are using: Moodle, Adobe Connect, Wiki spaces, Turnitin, Tableeau (used for data collection, pulling in from different sources) and they work with Moodlerooms for hosting and analytics.
Background: Academic developer and Learning developer for each school.
Activities: wiki, blogs, video assignments

Open University

The OU talked about improving their improving their navigation of their Moodle and how it was a key to student satisfaction. They included students as part of the design process. Feedback was that it should be engaging and simple to use.
They opted for collapsed topics with larger banner and the current week open, works nicely on a phone. Drop down menus were also included. They have modified collapsed topics so it is possible to combine a number of topics into one topic.
The OU have also developed a deleting function and a recycle bin (due to be rolled out in Moodle 3.1) and they have also managed to get sub-pages working a bit better.

University of Portsmouth

Tools: Moodle, Google apps for education.
Portsmouth talked about their use of Google apps, they were looking for a solution for students submitting large media files. Via Google apps there is Google classroom (free) there is Assignment workflow however submissions are not anonymous. The cohort size was approximately 80 students; average file submission 200MB. Disadvantage is Google classroom looks like another VLE, so it’s another system for students to get used to. Another issue was that feedback on Google classroom wasn’t good.
Portsmouth have also experimented with the Data form plug in, a bit similar to databases plug in. Student submit reflective piece then they receive response / grade from tutor.

Institute of Technology Sligo

Tools: Moodle, Panopto (lecture recording, add a block / single sign on)
Background: 54 courses online, streaming and recording of lectures. A lot of students are working full time and based in Ireland (i.e. not international).
Activity: They talked about their development of Moodle quiz including using Wiris (for Mathematics) and also the quiz has the ability to jumps to different questions depending how the student does.
Future developments: hand writing recognition.

Cranfield University

Tools: Moodle, Mahara, Turnitin and Open badges
Content: Using Mahara as a different way of displaying course content (similar to what has been done in the Vet School). They were also using Mahara for group and individual projects with set templates. All the students were able to attend sessions in a computer lab to get them setup with Mahara. Feedback was that students liked how videos could be embedded however there seems to be some complications with submitting more than one page for assessment via Turnitin and URLs didn’t open in Turnitin.

UCL

Tools: Moodle, Turnitin, Echo 360, Blackboard Collaborate, YouTube (good analytics), H5P (interactive videos, e.g. add a quiz) and Open badges.
Background: Blended learning and face-to-face course – not so much online distance learning. UCL have a central digital education team with 9 people.
Activities: Blogging, screen casting, video creating, peer review
Strategy: Fiona Strawbridge (Head of Digital Education) talked about the process for creating their e-learning strategy. At UCL they analysed their current VLE (Moodle) to see its full functionality before they reviewed any others. They also looked at what other institutions were doing, reviewed social media and what keynote speakers were speaking on. Once they created their e-learning strategy they made a video about it.
Fiona Strawbridge (keynote) recommended the book (helpful for leadership in HE), Herding cats: Being advice to aspiring academic and research leaders by G. Garrett and GJ Davies.
At UCL they found that administration staff can be influential in making change and driving e-learning.
UCL have a public-facing Moodle with shopping cart and shop merchant which is hosted by Leo. It has short CPD courses with 17,000 learners. It is also seen to be a good place to disseminate research. It is not a big money making scheme due to MOOCs. UCL are also running 3-4 FutureLearn MOOCs at moment which are being run by researchers rather than teachers.
In the talk they shared that buying into 1 blogging service rather than having a different domain per student was an effective approach. UCL are using open badges however at the moment badges weren’t really being shared out of the institution. One of the peer review activities they shared about included an activity if the students didn’t contribute to the peer activity they had to submit an additional individual piece of work.

Other

Moodle mobile app

There was a talk about the Moodle mobile app that offers offline features, page / section stored offline along with all books, SCORM, notification of file is large, forum first 10 posts are downloaded and SCORM complete support.
I (Jenny) tested the app out at the conference, it is quite limited, and e.g. labels have to be clicked to be viewed.