digital lifeboat

It’s been over a month since the end of the MSc and having had a much needed break, time to consider where and what and how to blog on.

So first a round up of what I have been doing.

I have been setting up my own hosted domain and a Moodle installation which has been very useful experience. (I got the Moodle on a stick thing working ok for my coursework submission.)

I have a number of purposes in mind for my Moodle. To archive my MSc work, and other courses I have developed at work over the past couple of years. To continue to develop my admin skills for Moodle. To keep a record of ongoing e-learning project developments at work.

My original plan was to also host a Wordpress install and transfer my blog to there. That’s a possible project for the summer, however I am getting as much personally out of writing and recording in Moodle as I did out of keeping this blog. The only difference here was the aspect of posting into a community. That seems to have run its course.

So barring finding another community to join,… all suggestions welcomed,  and probably popping back to read one or two blogs I still follow. This might be the last post so to speak.

If so goodnight and thanks for all the fish, if not see you next time.

Just wanting to capture a few notes on the twilight session by making some very generalised observations. I will be looking in detail at the avalanche of feedback over the next couple of weeks.

 I had two hours to introduce the course to the target group. Half worked in the ICT suite on computers the other half on laptops via a wireless connection in the room next door. We began the session with some introduction and explanation of the project for the benefit of new staff.

 The school has a 2Mb Internet connection.

Testing

I was not able to test with an inexperienced user before the training session. This would have highlighted some of the issues which arose on tne night. In effect the training session became a usability test by the target group. I now have data from a wide range of users in terms of ability, age and experience.

 Logistics

 The group of over 20 was too big to manage on the night working in two rooms, and I could not keep up with the number of issues that were going on simultaneously.

One new laptop was missing software needed for the activity. 

One person attended unexpectedly and did not have a log in.

 Bandwidth

It is not clear if the Moodle server is correctly setup for streaming video. Testing prior to the training night revealed widely varying download results. With multiple downloads on the night the alternative smaller flash movie was needed. More info needed to follow up further.

 Moodle

Found an unexpected (untested) aspect of the chat room that the participants were identified by initial not name, leading to confusion.

Course Content

I had way too much material for the 2 hour session and did not need any of the extension exercises I built in. I think there is scope for dividing the material up in to a beginners and advanced course.

 On the whole the group worked much more slowly than I had anticipated. Over familiarity with the content had led to an underestimate of the time needed to complete different topics. Failure to achieve the first assignment objective, was mainly due to lack of time.

The journaling reflective activity seems to have been useful.

There was positive feedback about the interactive tutorial which was a novel learning experience for the group. The group saw the benefit of active learning in that activity.

More basic instructions were required on navigation and orientation in the Moodle environment. (too much for the 2hr training but to be developed further for the course ongoing.)

 It is too soon to make any judgements about how the training went overall until the data is analysed. There is a wide mixture of experiences and feedback. There were bugs or technical hitches in almost every area of the course on the night and the materials were thoroughly tested, pretty much to destruction!

It was an exhausting experience, and not an easy one for the subjects, but I do belive that I can see ways to solve most if not all of the issues which arose. 

I think a number of principles were tested in the different activities in the course and many proved useful for further development. The discussion acitivy was the least sucessful on the night. There were too many unknowns for the participants to deal with for them to properly engage with the task I set, but hopefully an experience to build on in the future.

 More to follow… 

Posting has been delayed recently due to efforts to complete and put aside activity for part 1 assessment.

I have been working on the literature review for the main project and now have a draft that I can put aside while I focus on completing the work for the course.

Out of this review came two main themes which have influenced the planning of the course I am developing. Firstly the importance of situating the learning within the learners experience, and secondly the value that teachers place on collaborative learning.

It should be possible to ensure both these aspects are well focused in the CPD course I have planned.

I found the CompendiumLD planning tool very helpful for thinking through the course structure and the order and content of learning activities. I find myself constantly referring to this map now as I start to build the course for real.

I have now built the skeleton course structure, most of the instructional linking materials, and now am working on the learning objects, video, quiz modules etc.

After a very hectic time up to submission of part 1 assessment which went on over the school Christmas holidays, and an even more hectic start to the school term. Things are finally settling down enough to allow for a little personal reflection.

I am glad to have stopped juggling three different threads of course activity, weekly activity, and two assessments running simultaneously. Though there is less interaction with my course colleagues now there is so much work to do I am not feeling the loss as much as I feared.

My motivation levels have been fluctuating due to stress and distraction and the holiday season. I feel my focus beginning to return now a number of these have been put aside.

One enthusiasm which is growing is for Moodle on several levels. I see the developing awareness of the staff I am working with to the potential of Moodle. It is slow but sure and like a rolling stone I feel is gathering momentum. Apart from impact of training for the staff, my colleague and I have both started to develop courses in areas of interest to ourselves eg, using animation for social stories and a celebration of the school Eco Schools week. The ICT Co-ordinator is now getting her classess to log in and out of moodle each lesson and as more material is developed and they get to see courses which are fully functioning their enthusiam rises. The number of log ins by the pupils from home is increasing slowly as this process develops.

I have been researching  how we might bridge the digital divide for our pupils as previous posts describe. Just in the last few days I have realised that Moodle might have an answer for us there. It will be fairly easy to provide a laptop for pupils to loan, what would be much more difficult is to provide internet access to a home. Now I have begun to investigate Moodle installations on USB sticks. Such a sticky Moodle and a laptop could provide a complete learing package which replicates the on line version.

I am very excited about the potential of this idea, but still grappling with the installation in a steep DIY learning curve. However I am learning a lot and hope to have a demo implemented shortly. Watch this space for the report.

I have been working on a number of design documents looking at the software design and the instructional design for my project.

It seems that designing a Moodle course does not sit fully in any of the familiar software design methodologies. I am looking at a hybrid of Software Prototyping and Rapid applications developement, married to some form of Instructional design methodology.

It would make an interesting research project in itself building up a rationale which can be justified for how to go about the design. Figuring out the learning objectives is straightforward. The tricky bit is mapping out a learning sequence before diving in to build it so that I can document my decisions clearly and illustrate any itterations to the design.

I have found a couple of  sources for describing a sequence of learning activities such as course construction. They appear to have potential for my project.

Searching for applications of learning design related to Moodle course building tapped into the e4inovation blog post Moodling about.

On from there to look at the  JISC funded OU research programme the Open University Learning Design Initiative.

http://ouldi.open.ac.uk/index.html

Happily their ongoing research has already borne fruit in the form of a learning design planning tool CompendiumLD which I will be experimenting with.

I the course of preparing for a recent presentation came across Guidelines to construct a Learning Design Sequence Oliver (1999) at The Australian Universities Teaching Committee Learning Designs Project

http://www.learningdesigns.uow.edu.au/project/learn_design.htm

From the project overview-

Thus, for the scope of this project, a learning design comprises three key elements: the content or resources learners interact with, the tasks or activities learners are required to perform, and the support mechanisms provided to assist learners to engage with the tasks and resources.

I like the way Oliver’s Model uses a Venn diagram to explore the interactions between the content tasks and supports, and also the more linear flow charting method which clearly helps to conceptualise what is going on over the progress of a course

As I have been working on my draft specification, I have been thinking around the subject of how to engage the motivation of the teacher students on the courses I will be developing.

In my report last term and in the project specification, are lots of questions which focus on identifying the problem to be solved. The answers are biased towards the technical, and practical issues. Work is already in progress to identiy the gaps in knowledge that the training materials need to address.

There needs to be a corresponding Why? to the What of all the above.

I want to make sure I give attention to the motivational areas, the needing and wanting area as in Race. If the teachers gain a few skills, but do not gain any concepts which they find personally relevant to their own teaching I feel I will not have served them well.

I have been thinking in general terms about the introduction areas of the courses. Here is where I think I should focus on motivation, by making sure that the relevance of the topic in question to their own teaching and learning is explored.

Christopher Sessums extensive research into teacher education leads him to this observation

“I have seen teachers absolutely panic over having to learn how an application works (unlike their students who willingly push buttons to see what happens) rather than looking ahead to see how such a medium might be useful.”

He also askes the question

“Is it possible or realistic to expect teachers who do not want to enhance their basic computer skills to be compelled to do so without any incentives? What’s in it for them?”

Cultural Implications of Social Software Teaching and Learning, Ready or Not

http://eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog/144604.html

In his blog post “Web Learning about Web Learning for Teachers”, Terry Anderson notes

But I wish we could learn to spark interest in the most exiting and revolutionary technology ever to be used for formal instruction, in ways that were just a bit more designed to fire the imagination and engagement of users – both as learners and as teachers.

http://terrya.edublogs.org/2008/09/08/108/

Here is my motivation if any were needed to ensure that the benefits of understanding how to use a particular piece of software or employing a particular tool are stated very explicity in the course materials. Now to think about the means of achieving that.