Here at Solent hope hangs on versions and availability so final decisions
are waiting until April.
Summer 2010
Hope: Upgrade to Moodle Version 2.0
Reality: July too late to impliment so await 2011
Thoughts: We have got a second server/service coming online for a small
number of courses - this may see 2.0 first - if we're brave enough.
Hope: Turnitin deep integration
Reality: Still testing, but looking hopeful
Thoughts: Current 'turnitin in a frame' integration is a little buggy and
un-customisable, new integration hopefully solves this.
Hope: Mahara
Reality: Pilot going very well
Thoughts: need to sort business end - support, server space, alumni
access, may be a soft roll-out, pending management decisions.
Hope: Much improved Moodle integration with business systems (student
records etc etc)
Reality: ICT project up and running, loads to do, but going in the right
direction
Thoughts: Its the humans! There are sooo many exceptions to the 'rule' of
how people want to use moodle, that building something flexible enough,
but automated is going to be difficult.
Hope: Summer housekeeping made easy - maybe this year we'll find a better
(less manual) way!!
Reality: It'll never be easy (see above, humans/exceptions to rules)
Thoughts: Life Long Learners - how long should we keep this stuff? in what
format? with what access?
Hope: TELSTAR for reading lists etc
Reality: Going to be beta testing along with some other solutions
Thoughts: Going to need some work as its developed for postgres and we're
mysql
Not only, but also... a hundred and one other projects that need to be
done too!
Looks like we're all facing similar challenges.....
Roger Emery
Learning Systems Developer
Learning Technology Unit (LTU)
Southampton Solent University
East Park Terrace
Southampton
Hampshire
SO14 0YN
Telephone: +44 (0)23 80319778
Fax: +44 (0)23 8022 2259
Email: [log in to unmask]
"Pope, Alison" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: Moodle in UK Higher Education <[log in to unmask]>
01/02/2010 13:00
Please respond to
Moodle in UK Higher Education <[log in to unmask]>
To
[log in to unmask]
cc
Subject
Re: Moodle Development Plan 2010
Hi Fiona,
We?ve just been revising our course management policy based around the
idea of a Moodle course space lifecycle and I?m the process of writing
this up for our internal stakeholders. Once it?s been reviewed and
approved I?m sure we should be able to share with this community and
perhaps present something on it at the MoodleMoot.
In essence we found that:
· Staff and Students were confused if we kept older courses in
Moodle for a long period and often kept going to older courses rather than
the current instance of the course.
· We?ve developed an academic course lifecycle whereby a course is
active for a year, archived for a year (read only but available in Moodle
to those who participated in the course), then removed from Moodle but the
database records and content are stored in file store for a further five
years before being destroyed.
· We?re starting to create courses for a new academic year earlier
in the previous session to give academics more time to prepare course
material.
· We made some changes to the Course List Block so that a user?s
list of courses are grouped by categories with the current academic year
courses at the top, then academic support courses, then archived copies of
previous year?s courses. Each course also has a different coloured disc
as an icon (green for current courses, grey for archived courses) to make
the most current courses the most prominent.
Regards,
Alison
From: Moodle in UK Higher Education [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Fiona Strawbridge
Sent: 28 January 2010 10:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Moodle Development Plan 2010
Likewise we are very interested in other institutions' development plans.
At UCL major activities in the coming months are:
- integration of Moodle with our student information system (SITS) based
on the external database approach developed at Bath
- Moodle housekeeping (removal of redundant courses and accounts,
reorganisation of categories)( Alison's housekeeping issues really chime
with us)
- introduction of 'Moodle only accounts', possibly with a
self-registration option (at present only those with UCL computer accounts
can enrol on our courses)
- provide a read-only archive instance of Moodle at the end of each
academic year so that staff and students can refer back to/review their
learning/courses (at present archives have to be restored from tape)
- planning for Moodle 2.0
- get the remaining 2500 taught courses (of a total of 4500) into Moodle -
by Sept 2011...
We'd also be interested in how other institutions deal with archiving of
previous years' courses.
We've done the Turnitin integration and it's working well (and we think is
going to boost uptake of both Moodle and of Turnitin)
Fiona.
On 28 Jan 2010, at 09:39, Pope, Alison wrote:
Dear Nitin,
This is very interesting ? thanks for sharing!
We do something similar each year, normally publishing ours in March
(internally ? we are not yet very good at publishing stuff more widely on
our website). We are just starting to do the necessary workshops and
consulting with stakeholders to find out what there annoyances and
wishlist items are so far this session. It?s a bit more complicated this
year as we are trying to draw library, el-learning and repository activity
more closely together into a more co-ordinated plan and vision for the
user experience across learning resource systems so I am waiting for the
formation of that joint project board before we can confirm plans in those
three areas.
I?m expecting this year to be reasonably quiet for us on the Moodle front
this year after we did a lot of housekeeping on course management and
retention last year, and like you we will be evaluating version 2.0 over
the coming months with a view to a big upgrade (probably to 2.1 by then)
next summer.
We will almost certainly be looking at SSO this year, enabling seamless
access between learning systems to make resource discovery and use easier
for tutors and students. We also have the issue with user housekeeping
having a growing database of users who have never been removed. We tried
to get the user synchronisation script working this year to at least
suspend accounts for those no longer in LDAP but I haven?t been able to
get it working against our Active Directory. We really want to get this
working as academics want to see fully populated participation lists in
Moodle. Also hoping Moodle 2.0 will have the hard delete functionality
to allow total user removal once the system can check there are no orphan
records for them.
Other things on our backlog (I?ve got no idea which ones we will schedule
this summer yet) include:
· Turnitin Integration
· Trying out the Microsoft Live@Edu plugin now we are moving
student email over to that.
· Trying out the Telstar reading list module produced by the Open
University
· Automating course synchronisation from the student system
· Integration with Equella our new institutional repository
Regards,
Alison
Alison Pope
Business Analyst
IT Business Development
Computer Centre
Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham
Surrey
TW20 0EX
[log in to unmask]
01784 414925
From: Moodle in UK Higher Education [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Nitin Parmar
Sent: 27 January 2010 15:58
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Moodle Development Plan 2010
Dear Colleagues,
Just to let you know that the University of Bath?s Moodle Development Plan
for 2010 is now online and available at:
http://go.bath.ac.uk/moodledevplan2010.
I was wondering if any other HE institutions have developed a similar
plan, and if they are available online? Perhaps, there are areas, stated
in our plan, of mutual interest where institutions might be willing to
share good practice with us (and others)?
I?d certainly be interested to hear thoughts (on- or off- list) and
discuss any item further.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Nitin
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Nitin Parmar
Acting Moodle Operations Manager &
Learning Technologist [e-Learning team]
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Learning & Teaching Enhancement Office
University of Bath
+44 (0)1225 384 392
[log in to unmask] | go.bath.ac.uk/nitin
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