Right CMS, Right TOT – The key to successful elearning.

Chọn đúng CMS và Chương trình TOT – Chìa khóa triển khai thành công elearning.

Đầu năm 2009, chúng tôi vẫn còn đang loay hoay với dự án OMT của mình để (1) tìm cách điều chỉnh phần mềm quản lý đào tạo (CMS) của một nhà cung cấp phần mềm elearning trong nước cho phù hợp với nhu cầu của các giảng viên và (2) tìm cách chuyển một khóa học được coi là thành công trong môi trường đào tạo trực tiếp thành khóa học online. Cho đến tận đầu tháng 4 năm 2009, mọi việc vẫn rối như một mớ bong bong.

Bridge Office and Moodle via New Add-in from Microsoft

The Office Add-in for Moodle is not the first tool from Microsoft designed to bridge the Moodle Course Management System (CMS) with its own technologies. In mid-2009, the Redmond-based company released an open-source Live Services Plug-in for Moodle, and now teachers running two pervasive teaching solutions, Office and Moodle, have a new add-in available for download. The Office Add-in for Moodle promises to streamline as best as possible accessing documents in Moodle, as well as uploading files, straight from Microsoft Office. At this point in time, only Office 2003 and Office 2007 are supported, allowing teachers to open and save Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents to a Moodle website.  “Like Moodle, Microsoft Office is prevalent in classrooms around the world. In fact, more than 90 percent of teachers and students worldwide use Office. So we explored ways to improve how educators can intuitively and efficiently use the two products together. What we developed is simple. The Microsoft Office Add-in for Moodle provides educators an easy way to find, open, and save their Microsoft Office files housed in Moodle. It’s free and available for download at www.educationlabs.com,” revealed Jon Perera, General Manager, Education Products Group. Office Add-in for Moodle has been tested against Moodle 1.8-1.9, namely the versions that Microsoft recommends teachers use in concert with Office 2003 and 2007. Following installation, users will be able to find the Open from Moodle and Save to Moodle options under the File menu in their productivity suite components. Without the help of Office Add-in for Moodle, teachers leveraging both Office and Moodle have to perform a range of back and forth steps in order to complete basic tasks. The add-in significantly simplifies work for users relying on both Office and Moodle. “This tool was created by Microsoft’s Education Labs team. That team was established in July 2009 to quickly create prototypes of new tools, applications, and services that showcase how Microsoft technologies can meet the needs of schools, teachers and students. Sometimes we create or use brand new technologies. Other times we integrate our technologies with others’, including industry standards or even competitive technologies. For example our Education Labs team recently released applications to help teach chemistry, make digital flashcards to help students learn concepts, and also introduced the Microsoft Live Services Plug-in for Moodle,” Perera added. Office Add-in for Moodle is available for download here.  Sources: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Bridge-Office-and-Moodle-via-New-Add-in-from-Microsoft-139320.shtml

When Moodle meets Google

Moogle Apps

Posted by Joel Kerr on 05 Mar

Do you Moodle? We do.

Do you Google? Of course you do.

Do you Moogle? Er…

If you are not already aware that Moodle can be integrated with Google Apps you will be pleased you found this.

The very user-friendly Google Apps comprises email, calendar, document-creation, website creation, messaging tools etc. Moodle is increasingly becoming the VLE of choice for educators across the world. Together they offer some very exciting potential.

The integration of the two provides a Single Sign-On. This means with one sign on you will have access to your classes, activities, resources, emails, docs, sites – all in one place! Let’s not forget, like Moodle, Google Apps is free and available to all.

The Google Enterprise Blog has the following to say:

Now, they [students] can access whatever their instructors may have posted in their LMS, such as lecture notes, homework assignments, and relevant links and resources, and easily integrate that content into their workspace on Google Apps.

They can collaborate with their classmates in Google Docs, build a fully fleshed-out Google Site, or even just send an email – without having to manage multiple accounts in multiple systems. 

And, needless to say, the same goes for their teachers, professors, administrators – anyone who uses the system.

At Synergy Learning we have integrated Google Apps with Moodle for a number of our clients, with great results every time.

Mr Graham Evans from Merthyr Tydfil College, has worked with Synergy Learning to oversee the Google Apps / Moodle integration across 6 schools in the area:

“The integration is early days yet but the implications are absolutely fantastic, with the potential for each child to have their own email address.

The option of each pupil signing in and then clicking on Google Docs and an account is made for them and then they just travel seamlessly to the Google Docs page is magical. The option for pupils to share a folder with teachers makes the impossible job of keeping track of work and marking it far more practical as is the exciting option of collaboration.

All in all this is the future for these pupils and staff and Google Docs has made this possible and it’s free.

I had some technical issues setting up the Google Apps but there is a wealth of good advice on the web and Synergy did their job in setting up our Moodle sites very efficiently and very quickly which seem to be their trademark in our dealings with them. The telephone and email support from Synergy has been faultless and friendly.”

If you are interested in combining Moodle with Google Apps email info@synergy-learning.com for more information.

Source: http://www.i-newswire.com/when-moodle-meets-google-apps/29211

Tại sao phải dùng Moodle

Mục I: Moodle là gì

Được sáng lập năm 1999 bởi Martin Dougiamas. Moonle được bởi từ ( Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment ) Do không hài lòng với hệ thống LMS/LCMS thương mại WebCT trong trường học Curtin của Úc, Martin đã quyết tâm xây dựng một hệ thống LMS mã nguồn mở hướng tới giáo dục và người dùng hơn. Từ đó đến nay Moodle có sự phát triển vượt bậc và thu hút được sự quan tâm của hầu hết các quốc gia trên thế giới và ngay cả những công ty bán LMS/LCMS thương mại lớn nhất như BlackCT (BlackBoard + WebCT) cũng có các chiến lược riêng để cạnh tranh với Moodle. Có thể xem thêm thông tin về BlackCT tại http://www.blackboard.com

Moodle nổi bật là thiết kế hướng tới giáo dục, dành cho những người làm trong lĩnh vực giáo dục, Do thiết kế dựa trên module nên Moodle cho phép bạn chỉnh sửa giao diện bằng cách dùng các theme có trước hoặc tạo thêm một theme mới cho riêng mình. Do thiết kế dựa trên module nên Moodle cho phép bạn chỉnh sửa giao diện bằng cách dùng các theme có trước hoặc tạo thêm một theme mới cho riêng mình.

Moodle phù hợp với nhiều cấp học và hình thức đào tạo: phổ thông, đại học/cao đẳng, không chính quy, trong các tổ chức/công ty.


Moodle rất đáng tin cậy, có trên 10 000 site trên (thống kê tại moodle.org) thế giới đã dùng Moodle tại 160 quốc gia và đã được dịch ra 75 ngôn ngữ khác nhau. Có trên 100 nghìn người đã đăng kí tham gia cộng đồng Moodle (moodle.org) và sẵn sàng giúp bạn giải quyết khó khăn. Nếu bạn cần sự giúp đỡ chuyên nghiệp về cài đặt, hosting, tư vấn sử dụng Moodle, phát triển thêm các tính năng mới, và tích hợp Moodle với các hệ thống đã có trong trường của bạn, bạn có thể chọn cho mình một trong các công ty Moodle Partners (Khoảng 30 công ty).

Moodle phát triển dựa trên PHP (Ngôn ngữ được dùng bởi các công ty Web lớn như Yahoo, Flickr, Baidu, Digg, CNET) có thể mở rộng từ một lớp học nhỏ đến các trường đại học lớn trên 50 000 sinh viên (ví dụ đại học Open PolyTechnique của Newzealand hoặc sắp tới đây là đại học mở Anh - Open University of UK, trường đại học cung cấp đào tạo từ xa lớn nhất châu Âu, và đại học mở Canada, Athabasca University). Bạn có thể dùng Moodle với các database mã nguồn mở như MySQL hoặc PostgreSQL. Phiên bản 1.7 sẽ hỗ trợ thêm các database thương mại như Oracle, Microsoft SQL để các bạn có thêm nhiều cơ hội lựa chọn.


Để biết mọi người nghĩ gì về Moodle, các nghiên cứu về Moodle, cũng như so sánh Moodle với các hệ thống khác, bạn đọc tiếp tại: http://moodle.org/buzz/. Về tương lai phát triển của Moodle, bạn xem tại: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Roadmap

Một câu hỏi đặt ra là Moodle trị giá bao nhiêu? Một thống kê thú vị tại http://www.ohloh.net/projects/25 kết luận Moodle đáng giá 20 triệu USD nếu bạn phải xây dựng một hệ thống tương tự như thế từ đầu
Đỗ Lộc:

Tại sao phải dùng moodle

Vấn đề nay hơi thú vị, có rất nhiều trường đại học danh tiếng trên thế giới họ đã dùng BlackBoard hoặc WebCT. Sau khi moodle ra đời thì lại chuyển sang dùng moodle, BlackBoard và WebCT là hai LMS/LCMS ra đời sớm và chiếm thị phần lớn nhất trên thế giới trong số các hệ thống thương mại. Một thống kê tham khảo về thị phần các LMS/LCMS chính Moodle+BlackCT+Sakai có tại http://www.zacker.org/higher-ed-lms-market-penetration-moodle-vs-blackboard-vs-sakai

Những lý do khiến người ta sử dụng moodle ngày càng nhiều

a/ Điều đầu tiên phải nói là moodle giúp các trường đại học không phụ thuộc vào một công ty phần mềm đóng.
Đơn cử ta có thể lấy nột vài ví dụ

Ví dụ 1

LMS (Learning Management System) đóng có thể ảnh hưởng rất nhiều đến một trường đại học cho đến mức mà bạn không thể quay lại. Giáo viên thì quá quen với nó. Sinh viên và các nhân viên khác cũng vậy. Đến lúc này công ty bán LMS nhận ra sự phụ thuộc của bạn vào sản phẩm này và bắt đầu tăng giá, hỗ trợ ít hơn, bắt bạn mua các sản phẩm bổ sung và bạn bắt buộc phải làm theo, không còn sự lựa chọn nào khác. như vậy có thể nói là một điều vô cùng khó khăn

Ví dụ 2

Nếu bạn cần hỗ trợ, bạn phải dựa vào công ty bán sản phẩm cho bạn nâng cấp và chỉnh sửa vì bạn không thể có mã nguồn trong tay. Nhưng đối với mã nguồn mở, bạn có thể tự sửa hoặc trả cho các công ty khác hỗ trợ bạn, thường thì rẽ hơn vì bạn có thể chọn được nhiều công ty. Hơn nữa, nếu bạn không hài lòng với một công ty, bạn có thể tìm các công ty khác để hỗ trợ. Moodle có khoảng 30 công ty có thể hỗ trợ bạn. Hơn nữa, nếu bạn có những chuyên gia tin học tốt thì bạn không cần thuê bên ngoài

b/ Moodle được hỗ trợ tích cực bởi những người làm trong lĩnh vực giáo dục

Họ là những người có trình độ IT rất tốt và có kinh nghiệm trong giảng dạy. Họ chính là những người dùng LMS và có thể hỗ trợ bạn.

c/ Chất lượng

Nhiều khi phần mềm mã nguồn mở, như trong trường hợp của Moodle và Sakai, bằng hoặc tốt hơn Blackboard /WebCT trong các khía cạnh. Bởi cộng đồng các nhà giáo dục, chuyên gia máy tính, và các chuyên gia thiết kế giảng dạy chính là những người phát triển Moodle, và kết quả là bạn có trong tay một sản phẩm đáp ứng tốt các yêu cầu người dùng. Ví dụ, Moodle có các tính năng hướng tới giáo dục vì chúng được xây dựng bởi những người làm trong lĩnh vực giáo dục.

c/ Hỗ trợ

Các mức độ hỗ trợ cho một phần mềm mã nguồn mở tốt thật đáng kinh ngạc. Cộng đồng, nhân viên IT có sẵn, hoặc các công ty bên ngoài là các lựa chọn cho bạn.

d/ Tùy biến được (Customizable)

Moodle có thể tùy biến và cấu hình mềm dẻo một cách đáng ngạc nhiên. Mã mở được đưa ra công khai do đó bạn có thể tùy biến hệ thống để phù hợp với các yêu cầu đào tạo và thuê lâp trình viên làm chuyện đó thay cho bạn.
Ví dụ, nếu trường đại học muốn xây dựng một module XYZ thì họ có thể tự phát triển bên trong hoặc gửi yêu cầu đó lên cộng đồng mã nguồn mở và một người lập trình viên có thể xây dựng module đó miễn phí . Ngay cả khi bạn không phải là một lập trình viên, bạn vẫn có thể cài đặt Moodle trên một server , tạo các khóa học, và cài thêm các module bổ sung, và gỡ các rắc rối với sự trợ giúp của cộng đồng Moodle.

e/ Sự tự do:

Bạn có nhiều sự lựa chọn hơn và không bao giờ có cảm giác là ‘nô lệ’ của phần mềm

f/ Ảnh hưởng trên toàn thế giới

Bởi vì Moodle có một cộng đồng lớn như vậy, phần mềm được dịch ra hơn 75 ngôn ngữ và được sử dụng tại 160 nước khác nhau. Bạn rất ít khi tìm được một phần mềm đóng thông dụng được dịch ra hơn 10 ngôn ngữ khác nhau

h/ Mã nguồn mổ sử dụng miễn phí

Mã nguồn mở dùng mô hình kinh doanh khác với mô hình mà chúng ta từng biết. Ví dụ, bạn có thể mở một công ty tư vấn Moodle và thuê một lập trình viên để phát triển phần mềm và chia sẻ nó miễn phí cho cộng đồng bởi vì càng có nhiều người dùng nó công ty của bạn càng có cơ hội kinh doanh

Và một điều vô cùng quan trọng nữa là giúp các bạn sinh viên khoa máy tính có thể tham gia dự án phát triển một module cho LMS Moodle, Sinh viên có thể xây dưng module cho LMS Moodle và chia sẻ nó cho cộng đồng toàn cầu. Nếu module đủ tốt, nó sẽ được tích hợp vào phiên bản mới Moodle thường được phát hành 6 tháng một lần. Bởi vì Moodle thiết kế dựa trên module, xây dựng module mới cho Moodle khá đơn giản nếu bạn biết PHP. (Ví dụ như sinh viên Phạm Minh Đức - Đại học BK Hà Nội đã phát triển thành công module SCORM 2004, sau đó đóng góp cho cộng đồng Moodle).

Vui một tý  onion-head61 onion-head44
Bạn có thể phỏng vấn Martin Dougiamous,người sáng lập Moodle và hiện tại vẫn đang là người điều hành chính Moodle, về tương lai của Moodle tại http://technosavvy.org/?p=329.

Nguồn: http://www.toanangiang.net/mysite/forum/index.php?topic=171.0;wap2

Using different kinds of feedback in a Moodle quiz

Moodle quizzes enable you to create different kinds of feedback. Let's define the different types of feedback, and then, let me suggest some best uses for each kind.

Types of Moodle Quiz Feedback

Different Feedback for Each Answer

You can have feedback for each of the answers in a question, so if the student selects answer "A" the feedback is different than if the student selected answer "B." Let's call this kind of feedback "choice specific," because it changes with each answer that the student chooses.

Different Feedback for Right and Wrong Answers

A less specific type of feedback is using one feedback message for the correct answer to a question, and another for all of the wrong answers to the question. Let's call this type of feedback "right/wrong," because the feedback changes according to whether the student got the answer right or wrong.

General Question Feedback

General question feedback gives the student the same feedback no matter what answer they chose.

Different Feedback for Different Quiz Scores

You can also have feedback based on the student's score for the quiz. For example, if the student scored greater than 90 percent, the feedback might congratulate the student on a great score. Let's call this "overall feedback," since that's the term Moodle uses.

Uses for Moodle Quiz Feedback

Best uses for different types of feedback in Moodle quizzes.

Type of feedback	Usage
choice specific and right/wrong	For right answers, tell why that choice is correct, in case the student selected the correct answer by guessing. For each wrong answer, there's a reason the student would think that it is correct. In the feedback for that choice, I address that specific reason. For example, take the question "Which is the smallest planet?" If the student selects "Pluto," then my feedback will state something like "A few years ago, your answer would have been correct. Pluto was considered the smallest planet, until it was downgraded to a pluton. Now Uranus is the smallest planet." The challenge for me is in creating feedback that addresses the probable reason the student chose that answer, without assuming that reason. If I can't do that, then I fall back on just using that same feedback for all wrong answers.
general question feedback	Give students background about the knownledge the question was testing. Or give a link to more information about the knowledge that was tested.
overall feedback	Whole-quiz feedback is difficult for me to make meaningful. If I want to tell the student anything more than, "You passed with flying colors," the quiz needs to be very very focused on a narrow topic. For example, what if the student scores low on a quiz on the American Revolution because (s)he missed all the questions on dates? And what if the student answered every other question correctly? The computer doesn't say, "You did great with concepts and names, but you seem to have a problem memorizing dates." But if I break that quiz up into mini-quizzes, and one of them is "Dates of the American Revolution," then I can say something meaningful in the whole-quiz feedback.

Articles About Using Feedback to Help Learning

Since we're talking of using question feedback as a learning tool, you might be interested in these articles that I found online: "Effects of immediate self-correction, delayed self-correction, and no correction on the acquisition and maintenance of multiplication facts by a fourth-grade student with learning disabilities." Also, "Effects of immediate and delayed error correction on the acquisition and maintenance of sight words by students with developmental disabilities." If you use question feedback, and make the quiz short so there's not a long delay between answering question number 1 and submitting the quiz, then I think that qualifies as "immediate error correction." Even more immediate would be to use a lesson, with one question per page, which the student answers before moving on to the next page in the lesson. That's my preferred way of creating immediate error correction. Partly because a lesson page is more flexible than a quiz question. And partly because each lesson page is "submitted" before moving to the next, making the feedback/error correction truly immediate.

Sources: http://williamriceinc.blogspot.com/  

Developing an Online Course in Moodle as Quickly as Possible

I had a reader send me a question about how to estimate the time it will take to develop a course in Moodle. I'd like to share her question and my answer with you. As always, your comments and experiences are welcome.

Her Question:

I am just about to embark on my masters dissertation project, and am looking a web-based tutorials for teaching. At the moment I’m considering putting together a tutorial as part of the project using moodle (I have copies of your books in front of me now).

One question I cannot seem to find an answer to, is realistically how long would it take for me to construct something like this? I have seen reports stating that construction of online courses can take up to 18 months, but I think these were from scratch as opposed to using a software programme such as moodle. I am fairly Internet literate, and have created basic webpages before, but have never done anything like construct my own online course.

I am studying via distance learning and also have a full-time job. I have between now and June/July to work on my project (including analysis and user-testing, etc) – do you think this is something which I can realistically achieve in this kind of time frame?

My Answer:

In my experience, the old methods of determining how long it takes to develop courseware were never very accurate. With the variety of tools available to us today, the many different situations, and the many different expectations from learners and stakeholders, those old recommendations are even more inaccurate.
I no longer ask, "How long will this take me to develop?" Instead I ask, "How long before the client needs it?" And then I determine what I can do between now and then. It sounds to me like you have a few hours a week to spend on developing an online course, between now and June. That's not much time. So instead of dwelling upon how long it will take, let's talk about how to maximize your output in the time that you do have.
First, try to get out of installing Moodle yourself. If you can use an outside hosting service, find one that has a one-click install for Moodle. If you must use your organization's web server, try to get the web admin to install it for you. When Moodle installs without trouble, the installation goes quickly. When it gives trouble, you can spend hours tracking down the problem. If you pay a few dollars a month for a hosting service that will install Moodle for you, I advise it.
Second, resolve to stay within Moodle's built-in capabilities. Some of the add-on modules add great functionality. But for a project working against time constaints, I advise you stick with Moodle's built-in functionality and not get bogged down in trying to get add-ons to work.
Third, make as much use of existing material as possible. As a librarian, I'm sure you can locate web pages that you can use as course material. I think there's nothing wrong with a course whose learning material consists entirely of links to external web pages, video, and audio. For example, if I was teaching a course on public speaking, I might link to a funny Youtube video of public speaking bloopers, tips from Toastmasters, and famous speeches. Creating your own multimedia takes especially long, so I would search Creative Commons for media I could use in my course.
Fourth, I would try to use Moodle's built-in Web page editor (Web page Resource) to write a short description of each resource that I link to, and what I want the students to pay attention to while viewing it, and what I'd like them to get out of it. To ensure that they read this before going to the resource, I would put the link to the resource on this web page instead of on the course's home page. Then, the students would need to go through the web page that I write before clicking through to the external web page/video/audio.
Fifth, I would follow up each reading/viewing/listening resource with an activity created in Moodle. For example, I might ask the students to:

1. contribute to an online discussion, and to rate other students' postings in that forum. (Forum activity)
2. take a short quiz on the material (Quiz module)
3. write a summary of the material and upload it (Assignment activity)
4. record a snippet of speech and upload it (Assignment or Workshop activities).

Sixth, I would use outside services for things that Moodle doesn't handle, or that it handles only with plug-ins. For example, after the students have completed viewing the resources and doing the follow-up activities, just before an exam, I might schedule a summary lecture with WebEx or GoToMeeting. The lecture could include a slide show of the material that will be on the final exam, whiteboarding, and chat. If possible, I would record the session and offer it to the students as a download.
Seventh, I would offer an online exam open only at a given time, to ensure that students don't take the exam and pass along the answers.
That would be my model for rapid development of an online course. And if I could, I would choose a topic for that course based upon the amount of good material freely available online.

Sources: http://williamriceinc.blogspot.com/ 

Did You Know Moodle 2.0 Will….? (Online Educa 2009)

I have written about Moodle 2.0 before. But last week in Berlin I had the opportunity to attend two more presentations by Martin Dougiamas about the plans for the next major version of Moodle and I have gotten a better idea of how things will work.
Moodle.com is completely transparent about their plans. You can read the roadmap and view the latest version of the planning document at any time. 16 developers are in Prague right now, making sure all of this will actually happen (search for #moodledev09 on Twitter).
My overview below is not complete. It is just some of the things I thought were interesting. Here we go! Did you know Moodle 2.0 will…

• …look much better. The way that themes work will change completely. This will allow for much more flexible templating and theming. Moodle has Patrick Malley as the theme coordinator. He has been commissioned to create 20 beautiful themes that will ship with Moodle 2.0. Moodle will not ship with any of the old themes. The old icons will be replaced with a new set based on the Tango guidelines. All of this is great news as most Moodle sites do use the default themes (see this 12.6MB image of registered Dutch Moodle sites for examples).
• …break most things. The 2.0 release is seen as the chance to do things differently. A lot of code will be refactored. There will be a smooth upgrade from 1.9 to 2.0 for the core code, but any customisations and extra modules will more than likely need an update. Examples? Every designed theme will need to be updated, 1.9 backups will probably not restore in 2.0 (update: there is a workaround) and old ways of getting files into the system (FTP anyone?) will not work anymore.
• …allow you to search for Flickr images with a particular Creative Commons licence and will add the license to the image itself. This is one of my pet favourites, because it shows how anyone who is willing to be part of the dialogue around Moodle development (regardless of whether they are a developer or not) can influence the feature set of Moodle. I created a request for this feature in the Moodle Tracker and Martin demoed it in both his presentations in Berlin. We still need to get the user interface right, but the functionality is there.
• …have the concept of a finished course. In current versions of Moodle there is no way to let the system know that a particular learner has finished the course. The concept just doesn’t exist. A lot of people require this functionality. It could be used as a trigger for sending the course grade to some other system, or could trigger the creation of a certificate.
• …allow for conditional activities. In 2.0 you can make the availability of activities and resources for a particular learner dependent on certain conditions. These conditions could be the completion status of a particular activity (what completed means depends on the type of activity) or a grade for a particular activity. Finally it will be possible to set up your course in advance and then let it run by itself! No facilitation required! If Skinner is still your educational philosopher of choice, you will be very happy with this functionality! On a more serious note: this will allow for even more flexible Moodle course setups and that is never a bad thing.
• …import external blogs. I believe blogging should be done on a platform that is as open as possible. This way your audience can be as large as possible and that means the interactions and dialogue around your blog will be at its most valuable. This is the reason why I don’t use the internal blogs that my employer provides me with and why I don’t have an active blog on Moodle.org or on any other Moodle installation. Not only will Moodle have a proper RSS feed for your internal blog, it will also allow you to import an external blog (based on a feed URL and on tags) and make it available internally. Moodle will make sure that the posts are in sync: so if you delete a post on your internal blog, it will also be removed from your internal blog. Brilliant!
• …have a decent HTML editor that works in more than two browsers. HTML Area, the HTML editor that current versions of Moodle use, is old and crusty and does not work in many browsers. Moodle 2.0 will integrate TinyMCE, an HTML editor that has a larger and vibrant development community. It will work on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome/Chromium. All Moodle users will really appreciate this change (even if they might not be aware of it).
• …allow comments on everything. This is the pedagogical big winner for me. It is possible to add a comment block to nearly every resource/activity in Moodle 2.0. This will allow for a lot of peer feedback which can then be aggregated in different places (in the course, in a users profile?). I recently did a course on Rapid e-Learning Design where one of the core activities was commenting on other people’s work. The richness of interaction that this created was amazing. I am just hoping that the development team will think real hard about some of the user interface decisions around the comment API: that will make all the difference.
• …have a workshop module that you are not scared of using. Currently the workshop module is broken. I would not recommend anybody to use it. The peer feedback concept that it embodies is not broken though! David Mudrák has completely rewritten the workshop module and the first comments are very positive.
• …will have a built-in feedback/survey module. Modules that implement survey functionality in Moodle have always been the most popular add-ons. Andreas Grabs’ Feedback module will become part of the Moodle core code from 2.0 onwards.
• …will not eat disk space if a file is used or uploaded multiple times. We all know the problem. You have a course that has a 300MB presentation in it. The course is duplicated for another run. Now you have two courses with 600MB of presentations. This problem is a thing of the past in Moodle 2.0. All information about files and where they are used is stored in the database (drastically improving the security around who can access a particular file). The files itself are stored on the filesystem. A SHA-1 check on each new file will make sure that identical files are not stored twice.
• …have a completely new way of navigating. The way users navigate a Moodle installation has gotten a complete rewrite. Tim Hunt has done a very commendable job involving the community in his design plans and there is an excellent page in the Moodle Docs explaining what it is going to look like. It boils down to a more consistent navigation bar, a new Ajaxy navigation block which allows you to jump to any resource/activity in any of your courses in one step and the moving of many of the module related settings that were hovering at the top right corner of the page to the administration block.
• …be a reinvention of itself as a platform. Moodle was approaching the end of its life cycle as a “Walled garden” product. Moodle was ahead of the game in 2001, but has been passed by many of the developments on the Internet since its inception. When Moodle was first conceptualised things like WordPress MU, Ning, Flickr, Delicious and Wikipedia did not exist. Moodle needed to reinvent itself. The repository and portfolio APIs in combination with the Web Services layer will allow Moodle to become much more a platform than an application. Moodle will keep its relevance or will become relevant again (depending on your viewpoint on the state of educational technology). I am already imagining the Moodle App Store.
• …change the world of education (if nothing else). I think that Moodle already has had a very positive impact on the world of education, but if the Moodle Hubs scheme works, it will be a lot easier for teachers to share the share their best practices and collaborate with other teachers the world over.

I am certainly looking forward to its release! Are you excited yet?

http://blog.hansdezwart.info/2009/12/10/did-you-know-moodle-2-0-will-online-educa-2009/ 

A Design Concept For a Mobile Moodle Application

Arjen Vrielink and I write a monthly series titled: Parallax. We both agree on a title for the post and on some other arbitrary restrictions to induce our creative process. For this post we agreed to create a design concept for a mobile Moodle application. The concept should include screen mockups. You can read Arjen’s post with the same title here. This month we are delighted to have two guest writers writing about the same topic. Marcel de Leeuwe (read his post here) and Job Bilsen (his post can be found here).
Mobile applications have taken off. This is largely due to the trailblazing work that Apple has done with the iPhone and the App Store. If you have been watching my Delicious feed, you will have noticed that I too have succumbed and will be part of the iPhone-toting crowd (I will write more about me losing my principles later).
Nearly every web service that I use has a mobile application. Examples are Last.fm, Flickr, WordPress, Dropbox, NY times, Paypal and more, the list is endless. Moodle, the web application that I use most often, does not have a mobile app yet. There have been a couple attempts at creating themes that display well on a mobile (such as here). These mobile themes usually try to deliver all of Moodle’s functionality, which often limits their phone specific interaction and their user friendliness. Other applications use JAVA applications that gives people access to specific Moodle functionality (examples here and here).
It would be great to have a true mobile Moodle application. Here are some initial thoughts for a design.
Audience
The audience for this Moodle application would mainly be students/participants. I want the functionality to focus on things that are easily delivered on a mobile platform. I don’t think grading and reporting interfaces lend themselves well to a smaller screen. The things that people like to do with a mobile device are usually: seeing what has happened/is happening, plan and communicate. This Moodle application will enable the users of a Moodle installation to do exactly those things.
Getting rid of the course paradigm
Moodle is extremely course centric. I have always thought that this has some great advantages, mainly that all the learning is very contextual. Students, however, often have to “multi-course” (doing multiple courses at the same time). A mobile application should make the most urgent or current events, actions and resources bubble to the top. This requires the application to get rid of the course paradigm and show a personal page per user.
People that have used Moodle for a while might know of the “My Moodle” page. This page also tried to pull up the most relevant information for a particular user, but would still display this information on a course by course basis.
This application will consist of four main screens. Each screen has its own icon at the bottom of the screen that stays available at all times. Each screen could of course lead to other screens that take you deeper into the Moodle installation.
1. Recent activity stream
Facebook and Twitter have really taught us the use of activity streams. These pages display short status messages about what is happening in reverse chronological order. Moodle has had an activity stream since its inception: the recent activity block. This block shows what has been happening in a particular course. Examples are forum posts, work being handed in or materials being added by the teacher.
This screen will work in a similar way, but will include all the courses a user is participating in. I would imagine that each update on the screen would include a date and a time, would link to an extended version of the update and would include a user image if the update concerns another user, or an activity icon if it concerns a particular activity. The newest updates would be at the top of the screen and the user would be able to scroll down to see older entries (very similar to Twitter). See below for an example:

Recent Activity

You would have to think about each Moodle module and decide what a status update would look like for that particular module. Some examples of events that could trigger a status update:

• A forum post is added to a course of which the user is a member.
• An activity becomes available (either because it was added or because it had certain time that it would become available, like the choice or assignment activity) or a deadline has passed.
• An entry is added to a database activity or a glossary that the user has access to.
• A topic or week has been made current by the teacher/facilitator.
• A message has been sent to the user.
• The user hands in work for an assignment, fills in a choice, starts a lesson, gets the results for a quiz or starts a SCORM object.
• A change is made to a wiki page that the user has access to.

These status updates could announce themselves on the home screen in a similar way to how the mobile platform shows that you have new email messages: by showing how many new updates are available.
2. Upcoming events
This screen is also an extension of existing Moodle functionality made course independent. Conceptually it is what you would see if you would scroll up on the recent activity screen. Upcoming events that can be displayed are:

• Anything that is in the user’s calendar.
• Activities that will become available or that have a deadline.
• Courses that will start and that the user is enrolled in.

This screen would look very similar to the “Recent Activity” screen as shown above.
3. Social: contacts, interests and messaging
A mobile device is used for communications and a mobile Moodle application should facilitate that. This screen is an alphabetical list of all the users that a student/participant shares a course with, combined with an alphabetical list of all the interests that a user has put in their profile and all the courses the user is enrolled in. See example:

Social

Selecting a user will take you their profile page. This page will focus on the ways that the user can be contacted. You can message the user from here, call (or Skype) them, send them an email and click on the links to their external websites (a blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.). See this example:

Profile page

Selecting an interest or a course will apply a filter to the alphabetical list. It will now only show users that share this interest or this course. It might allow the user to contact all these users in one go (if this role has been given the permission for this capability).
4. Browsing courses, activities and resources
I really like a side scrolling drill down navigation (examples are the way that email works on the iPhone or the “Slider view” on Grazr). A mobile Moodle application should allow the user to navigate to activities and resources in their course by constantly drilling down. This can be done it two ways: course centric or activity-type centric. The application should probably support both.
The first screen shows a list of all the courses the user is participating in and below that a list of all the activity types that exist in Moodle.
Clicking on a course will make the previous screen slide to the left and display a new screen. The first option on this screen will be called “Course overview”. If you click on this you will see all the section/topic summaries, all the activities and resources and all the labels in their correct order (blocks are completely ignored in this mobile application). Below the course overview are links to the overview pages of each activity type. Clicking these will display all the instances of a particular activity or resource.
If you click on an individual activity or resource you will be shown that activity (again by making the screen slide to the left). What is shown here and what interactions are possible is dependent on the activity module. The minimum it would show is the title and the description. This would probably be the case for SCORM modules for example or for “upload a file” assignments. You would not implement a mobile SCORM player, nor will people likely have files for upload on their phone. The one activity that would benefit from being a bit richer would be the forum activity. It should be possible to follow and contribute to a forum discussion from the mobile Moodle application.
Technical considerations
The (start of a) functional design that I describe above will certainly have technical consequences (not to write obstacles). Below some of my first thoughts:

• What platform? The nice thing about web applications is that you only have to develop them for one single platform: the platform that the server is using. Of course it would be possible to create a mobile version of a Moodle site, but this would negate some of the great things that a native application can do. We are now in the unfortunate situation that we have multiple mobile development platforms. The two obvious choices for mobile development would be an iPhone app and an app for Android. But what about people who use a Blackberry, or a Symbian or Maemo phone? I have no knowledge of how easy it is to port an Android app to the iPhone, but I do know that multiple platforms will be a reality in the next couple of years. You better write portable code!
• Where does the code live? It is easy for Facebook to create an iPhone application. They run a single installation and can have server-side code and client-side code to make it all work. Moodle’s install base is completely decentralised. That means that Moodle installations will have to get some code that will allow a client to talk to it. In the client you will then need to be able to say what Moodle installation you want to connect to. This poses a couple of questions. Will a mobile Moodle app require a special server module? Will Moodle 2.0 expose enough of itself to an external API to make a client like I describe above possible? Should one client be able to plug into multiple Moodle installations at the same time? I am not a software architect, so I would not have any answers to these questions, but they will need to be resolved.
• Performance? Moodle’s data structure is course-centric and not user-centric. Moodle currently does not have internal functions that deliver the data in a format that the Moodle client can use. I think that the query to deliver a recent activity feed that is cross-course and has the perspective of a single user is very complex and will create a huge performance hit on the server. Again, I am not an architect, but I would imagine that this requires a special solution. Maybe more push and less pull? More database tables? Server-side pre-caching? Who knows? I certainly don’t!
• Roles/permissions/capabilities? Any new Moodle client that uses existing Moodle data (as opposed to new modules) needs to be very aware of any existing capabilities. All of these need to be checked before information can be shown to the user. I am sure this has further performance implications.
• Online/offline? A lot of mobile applications cache their information so that a user can continue to use the application even if an Internet connection is not available (e.g. the New York Times app). Even though it might be useful for a Moodle application too, I wouldn’t put any initial effort into solving that problem. Smartphones that have decent application support function well in a context where there is persistent mobile broadband. It is therefore okay for the first version of mobile Moodle application to assume that it is online.

A note on prototyping/mockups
I used the excellent Balsamiq to create the mockups that go with this post. This easy tool delivers quick static results, although it lacks a bit of precision that I would like to have added. Moodle has Balsamiq integrated into the Moodle Tracker, making it trivial for anybody to add a user interface mockup to any issue. There are other tools that could be used to do iPhone prototyping. This blog post gives a good overview.
Continuing the dialogue
I would really like an application like this (or something similar) to come into existence. I look forward to working with other people with a similar interest (bored developers? Google Summer of Code students?). Let’s make this happen! Any and all comments are welcome…

Source: http://blog.hansdezwart.info/2009/12/01/a-design-concept-for-a-mobile-moodle-application/