Flexknowlogy – Jared Stein

I conducted a 1hr demonstration of the open source learning management system Moodle 1.9.5 for higher ed folks in Utah and the Utah Education Network. The demo went well enough, and I hope some of my colleagues from around the State got a little taste of Moodle, especially as it compares to Blackboard/WebCT Vista. UEN facilitated this presentation to State participants via Wimba; I simultaneously streamed the session via Ustream using WebCamMax and recorded it for anyone who is interested: Moodle 1.9.5 Overview on Ustream.

As I reviewed the video I noticed I had made a handful of mis-statements that I should correct here:

• Martin Dougiamas is from Australia, not New Zealand.
• The book I reference at the beginning as inspiring me to rethink Moodle was Jason Cole’s “Using Moodle”
• Our Banner system talks to Moodle via a Luminus Message Broker plug-in, not LDAP (we use LDAP for WordPress MU)
• When I talk about adaptive quizzing, I meant to refer to educational research on web-based/hypermedia learning from the last decade or so.
• Though the Workshop tool has been dropped from Moodle 2.0, its functionality will not be replaced in the Assignment tool–instead a new Workshop tool is in development for 2.0

Jon Mott blogged about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the course management system (CMS, aka LMS or VLE) and a personal learning network (PLN, sometimes associated/equated with PLE). The LMS/PLE “dilemma” has been itching my brain for some time now, so Jon’s post was a timely motivator to begin to think the issue through in print (more…)

This semester I elected to test Instructure’s (pilot? beta?) learning management system with my own online course, DGM 2740: Web Design, the third course in the Digital Media web development track at UVU. Instructure is showing us how it’s done with strong AJAX enhancements for more streamlined user processes (more…)

As I begin the pilot of our WordPress MU installation for Utah Valley University, questions naturally arise as to expected usage of the system. This led to the idea of running a short survey for students, faculty, and staff that asks if and how they would use such a community publishing platform. I then wondered if students or faculty who already had a blog would use the institutional system as a blog, whether in addition to or as a replacement for their own (even if only to meet a course requirement). This, of course, led me back to the idea of “creepy treehouses” (more…)

The UVU campus is nearly uninhabited today as we swing into spring break. There’s no spring break at BYU, though, so I took advantage of my lightened workload to make it up to David Wiley’s IPT 692r – Intro to Open Ed course early, motivated in part by the fact that Russ Carlson, President of Blackboard, would be joining us in a discussion of the future of the learning management system (LMS) with respect to open education (more…)

The OpenShare block in Moodle

Tonight I’ve released the first all-new version of the OpenShare modification for Moodle 1.9, which I demonstrated last week at OpenEd 2008.

You may view OpenShare documentation or simply download the OpenShare mod now.

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Our Chief Information Office, Ray Walker sent me an article in The Chronicle: Blackboard Customers Consider Alternatives. It’s a great read to gauge the current state of the corporate LMS leviathan.

One passage in particular percolated my sense of irony. In addressing the idea that institutions may have more flexibility to innovate with open source solutions, Michael Chasen… (more…)

UEN and USHE are hosting a showcase of current learning management systems tomorrow, August 14th, at the Marriott library in Salt Lake City. I get to present Moodle at 9:30am, so here’s a quick link to my Moodle Demo presentation page, which includes an overview document and a backchannel for chat.

Today I am presenting at the SFo MoodleMoot on how Moodle can be used to deliver Open Educational Resources, especially through our modification of Moodle, the Open Meta Mod.

Presentation slides are now available and you are welcome to participate in the backchannel through the chat window provided below.

Presentation Slides

openmod.ppt

Web Sites Referenced

• OpenCourseWare Consortium
• Open Educational Resources Commons
• David Wiley’s OpenContent Wiki
• David Wiley’s OpenContent blog
• Utah Open High School
• Creative Commons licenses
• MIT’s “Making the Case for OCW”
• Why a Reputation Economy?
• UK’s Open University LearningSpace
• OpenContentDIY
• Leigh Blackall’s slide on Another Way

P.S. After my presentation was over, I came back to my hotel to find this bus in the parking lot. It’s nothing less than a sign for a questioning open education convert.

After a year-long developer famine, we now have a new Web developer who is assisting us on revivifying the Moodle Open MetaMod project as part of his duties.

In a nutshell: the primary goal of the mod is to allow individual resources OR activities within a Moodle course to be “open” to either non-authenticated visitors or a custom role called “Open User”. There are a number of secondary goals related to intellectual property metadata (e.g. Creative Commons). Much of the information posted here is based on the “official” Open MetaMod page at our Meta Web site.

Project Status

• We have recently corrected errors in the 1.8x version for use in Moodle 1.84.
• The current version of the mod works only on mySQL, though Mr. Sergio Sama Villanueva at Universidad de Oviedo in Spain has added PostgreSQL support, and so adding that to our install package and testing is a high priority.
• Mr. Villanueva has added other features as well, which we plan to test and evaluate.
• We also have a short list of usability alterations and feature enhancements to implement.
• We are working on an update for 1.9 this spring. We hope to present that broadly for feedback from the Moodle community, starting at the June Moodle Moot in San Francisco.
• We plan to host a Moodle 1.9 public instance with several UVU opencourses, and providing pre-made user accounts for teachers, students, and “open users” to test the mod.

Download the Open MetaMod for Moodle 1.8x

Users interested in testing the latest released beta version of the Open MetaMod may download the following ZIP file:

Open MetaMod for Moodle 1.8x

Note that this version of the mod works only on Moodle 1.8x installations on mySQL. A PostgreSQL version is forthcoming. Additionally, unlike previous versions, this version of the mod does not have an installer, and files must be modified manually. In short: use at your own risk!

Detailed Overview of the Open MetaMod

Open MetaMod is a modification for the Moodle learning management system that provides instructors and designers with the ability to mark individual Resources or Activities within a Moodle course as “private” (only visible for registered students) or “shared” (allowing anonymous guest viewing).

A new third option for Moodle Activities, “open”, allows registered non-student users to interact with the class in Moodle activities. This is different from “shared”, as it allows authenticated users on the Moodle system who are not officially registered for the course to interact with students and instructors on the discussion board, take quizzes, complete activities, contribute to wikis, etc.

Instructors and designers can mark resources or activities as “Copyright cleared/Creative Commons” and as “shared” either individually through the normal course module/block interface, or en masse through the Open Settings in the Administration block. All Creative Commons license types are supported in the latest version of the Open MetaMod

Tagging Individual Resources/Activities’ Copyright Status

Note: The default tag of all resources and activities is copyrighted. This is done intentionally to inhibit the accidental sharing of copyrighted course materials.

1. To tag individual resources or activities with a copyright status, first enter your Moodle course and click Turn editing on.
2. Next to each resource or activity you will note either a red “C” indicating Copyrighted or a green “CC” indicating Copyright Cleared/Creative Commons:

   

   • Clicking the red “C” or the green “CC” will toggle the copyright status of this resource/activity.
   • Only resources/activities tagged as “CC” are eligible to be “shared”.

Marking Individual Resources/Activities as “Shared” or “Private”

Note: Changing the copyright status of a resource marked as “shared” from “CC” to “C” will automatically disable the shared status.

• After a resource/activity has been tagged as “CC”, the grayed-out door icon will become clickable.
• “CC” resources/activities default to “private”, indicated by a brown closed door icon.
• Clicking the door icon will toggle the private/shared status of this resource/activity.
• “Shared” resources are indicated by a glass door icon.
• An open door icon, which indicates a fully “Open” status.

Making Copyright Status and Shared Status Changes En Masse

Tagging and marking individual resources seems pretty onerous, right? Well, this is purposefully the case so that instructors/designers are forced to consider the copyright status of each and every resources or activity.

However, we’ve also accomodated the need to tag and mark multiple resources and activities simultaneously with the OCW Settings link, found in the Administration block.

• To tag a subset of resources/activities as Copyright cleared/Creative Commons, simply click the checkbox next to the resource/activity group.
• At the top or bottom of the page, click Save Changes.
• Clicking Save Changes on the Copyright Status page takes you into the Private/Shared Status page.
• Only resources/activities marked as “CC” will be eligible for “shared” or “open” status.
• To toggle a subset of resources/activities as either “private” or “shared”, simply click the appropriate radio button next to the resource/activity group.

Terminology

C

Copyright This indicates that a resources or activity is protected by copyright law, and should not be made available to the general public. For one’s own protection, one might best assume that all resources or activities are de facto copyrighted<./dd>

CC

Copyright Cleared or Creative Commons license. This refers generally to the idea that a particular resources is legally eligible to be made available to the general public. Ensuring the Copyright Cleared or Creative Commons license status of a resource and activity is solely the responsibility of the instructor or course designer.

private

Indicates that a resource or activity should only be available to registered Moodle users who are also enrolled in the course.

shared

Indicates that a resource or activity should be viewable to both registered Moodle users who are also enrolled in the course as well as anonymous Moodle guests.

open

Indicates that an activity should be fully accessible to registered Moodle users regardless of whether or not they are officially enrolled in the course. If a course allows “Guest access”, anonymous Moodle guests may view but not interact with “open” activities. Note: This feature is not available in the current version of the Open MetaMod for Moodle.