http://www.moodlenews.com/feasibility-study/

Already a dozen sites have participated from around the world: in the US, UK, Isreal, and New Zealand.

And nearly 60,000 students attend the participating schools.

Help us spread the word!

A long and fruitful road.  Here’s to many more years!

• Check out Helen Foster’s post for some more details on the history of Moodle, http://helenfoster.wordpress.com/
• Send in your wishes at http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=156255

It’s a short survey, but from it we hope that Moodle administrators will help us to answer the important evaluative questions like:

• How much does Moodle cost per student?
• what are the hardware costs for Moodle?
• how many staff members should we have ready to support/administrate Moodle?

MoodleNews is conducting this survey in collaboration with Michael Fisher a graduate student at the Oregon Institute of Technology. All results will be shared publicly once the survey has ended on 8/31 (two weeks).

If you could send the survey link onto any Moodle administrators you know, please do!  Here’s the link: http://goo.gl/F3ly

Truth be told, the correct title of the presentation (which was not listed in the printed schedule as such) is actually “Research and Best Practice for the Design and Delivery of Virtual Instruction”.  The presentation is available online at this link: http://goo.gl/CNEt.

Perhaps one of the most controversial pieces covered in the recap were the 12 Principles (Students learn better when…) which is on page 6 of the document.  The 12 principles are:

1. Coherence: Eliminate extraneous visuals and sound
2. Signaling: Highlight essential information
3. Redundancy: avoid text & narration
4. Visual Contiguity: Text next to graphic it describes
5. Time Contiguity: Simultaneous words and pictures
6. Pacing: Learner pacing better than system pacing
7. Pre-train: Advance learning of conceptual information
8. Modality: Graphics + Narration not text + animation
9. Multimedia: Narration+ Pictures – not narration alone
10. Personalization: Conversational style – not formal
11. Voice: Human voice better than machine voice
12. Self Explanation: Ask learners to explain why

Unfortunately we have learned that it is not likely that a recording of the keynote will be released (due to poor audio quality).

• Getting Structured and Timely in Moodle [http://moodlemoot.org.au/course/view.php?id=16] by Michael de Raadt
• Moodle in a k-7 School: Show and tell [http://moodlemoot.org.au/course/view.php?id=60] by Sandy Skinner
• Using Moodle for post-graduate education with eBooks and Smartphones [http://moodlemoot.org.au/course/view.php?id=44] by Tom Worthington
• Supporting Moodle in k-12 Schools [http://moodlemoot.org.au/course/view.php?id=58] by Yvonne Murtagh
• Moodle for Opera Singers [http://moodlemoot.org.au/course/view.php?id=35] by Grazia Scotellaro and Grazia Micciche
• Suggestions for future Moodle analytics [http://moodlemoot.org.au/course/view.php?id=33] by Ken Clark

NOTE: you may need to login as guest to view the course information.

There are many more and it’s a wealth of resources if you’re looking  to get a feel of the great presentations at a Moot.  Enjoy!

A new event was recently posted at MoodleMeet (http://grou.ps/moodlemeet).  The event runs from September 17th through 24th and is put on by CEET (Community of Expertise In Educational Technology).

A free and open Professional Learning Potluck to share examples of moodle courses, ideas, best practice, course snippets and get advice and moodle support.

Complete the online Registration Form. We will send you login details closer to the course start date.

Show off your skills and sign up now.  Event link: http://grou.ps/moodlemeet/calendar/event/235411

gather the Moodle platform users (Administrators, teachers and students) around academic presentations for better use in the virtual education [link].

Costs are less than $55 USD for the event.

http://www.moodlemoot.org.co/

The presentation focused on recapping the original findings and what their continued research (which will be released next week at http://oscmoodlereport.wordpress.com/).

Report Part I

This report is available for download here.   A few background details

• NCCC is the 3rd largest state CC system in the US
• NCCC began evaluating Moodle in 2006
• The “Open Source Collaborative” provides training, pilot hosting, and some guidance to schools as they are trying Moodle
• The majority of NCCC sites are still Bb clients

The original Moodle Assessment Report, asked if Moodle was a viable alternative to Blackboard.  It answered this question by evaluating Moodle based on it’s ability to facilitate communication, to hose content, it’s core functionalities, ease of use, and navigation.  The report found that Moodle and Blackboard (in these terms) are fundamentally similar.  The biggest difference was due to students’ perception of the instructor’s comfort with the LMSes.

Another important finding was that the faculty preferred Moodle over Blackboard.

Report Part II

This will be available on http://oscmoodlereport.wordpress.com/ next week.  Mr. Sweetin’s presentation focused on it’s goals and findings.  This second report’s charge was to evaluate Moodle and Blackboard in terms of sustainability, 3rd party integration, compatibility and interoperability, upgrading, migration and total vendor cost analysis.

They found that on several aspects Moodle and Blackboard were again similar.  In terms of cost however they diverge significantly.  Migrating from Moodle, it was estimated, increased LMS costs initially but were subsequently followed by as much as a 75% decline in annual expenditure.

In terms of cost per Full Time Student Equivalent (FTE), Blackboard figured at over $15 per FTE per year while Moodle (based on costs associated with contracting official Moodle Partners) cost per year, per FTE was less than $4.  There was no estimate of how much expenditure was necessary for self-hosting.  Jonathon went on to mention that post migration satisfaction rates directly correlated with using a vendor and taking longer to accomplish the migration (more time, with help = higher satisfaction with the LMS).

Conclusion

The presentation concluded with a quick overview of the growth of distance enrollment at NCCC and it’s correlation to the disruptive innovation as described in Clayton Christensen’s “Disrupting Class”.  The books thesis was that truly disruptive innovation exponentially grows until it replaces an existing technology.  This, as evidenced by the growth at NCCC, was corroborated (at least in the microcosm of North Carolina Community Colleges).   It was a great presentation overall and I look forward to the release of NCCC’s Open Source Collaborative Moodle Assessment Report (part 2) next week.

This post and all posts from the #mootustx10 were made possible with support from Wiris.com and Moodlerooms.com.

His opening was preceded by a special treat: a sing-a-long song about Moodle to the tune of “Thank god I’m a country boy“.  The song was then immediately followed by Martin’s best southern sounding “howdy y’all”.  As usual, a high level overview of the Moodle.org, .com and Partners structure was provided for newbie Moodlers.  An interesting fact is that while Moodle’s official programming staff can be counted on two hands, over 250 developers have various permissions to submit and post code to the Moodle core at Moodle.org (a sizable workforce!).

Martin then summarized the benefits (as he sees them) of Moodle 2.0:

• Security
• Performance
• Media and File Management
• Integrations
• Improvements and major rewrites

Aesthetics:

Among the improvements (here in started the demonstration of a live Moodle 2.0 running locally on Mr. Dougiamas’ Macbook) were aesthetic.  Martin even went so far as to call Moodel 1.X “ugly” (many would agree).  2.0, from the visions provided on Martin’s screen and the various 2.0 themes around the web (here and here) certainly prescribe to that notion: Moodle 2.0 is much more aesthetically pleasing.

Navigation:

Martin went on to show the various changes to navigation.  what I previously did not realize is that the Navigation block is a personalized utility that allows the deepest opportunity to drill down, even to individual Forum posts from anywhere on the site.  It’s like a teleporter for your Moodle account.

My Moodle and Private Files:

Perhaps one of the most exciting feature overhauls is MyMoodle and the addition of the private files block.  Private files provide a file structure (similar to that of a course in 1.X) for each individual user.  A mini-portfolio if you will.  This block can be located into MyMoodle, effectively giving all student not only a convenient “jump off” or starting point on the site, but a digital backpack replacing the need for any thumbdrive or external storage.  Truly a utility worth exploring.

Media/File Management:

Probably the feature that will cause the most waves and controversy is the redesign of the file structure for Moodle courses.  The structure has been changed completely, which Martin admits, may force a change in training and methodology of how teachers manipulate courses (but in the end he hopes it will be seen as overall beneficial).  Adding files to Moodle can now be done from various file repositories (Google Docs, Flickr, Youtube¹, or a organizations own private digital repository) and was designed to eliminate duplication of files from course to course.  In one pilot, by eliminating duplication of files which were used in multiple courses (and allowing those courses all to call the same file) reduced the digital storage footprint of the site by 30-40%.

Messaging:

Messaging as well received an overhaul, a few highlights,

• No more popups
• Provides an “inbox” for students
• All messages go through Admin (I believe this was what Martin said)
• Notifications provided as Ajax popups immediately when logged in (can even set that notification to include new forum posts)

Other Features:

Other various improvements included,

• Ajax popup of Moodle documentation and help (the ever present ? button).
• Conditional activities and course completion.
• The retooled Workshop Module (which is equally functional but now includes a step by step “how to” displayed on each step of setup and implementation.
• New Enrollment plugin system; this last one provides course level enrollment options including unlimited group specific course enrollment keys, Cohorts, and a revamped UI for managing course roles (which is pretty slick).

Before launching into a demo of the Mooch (http://hub.moodle.org), Martin talked briefly about the workload of Moodle developers and how he hoped that once 2.0 was released that they would start managing community produced code more (rather than spending the majority of their time developing the code for the community).  This would allow them to focus on creating a more fully featured Moodle.org, including the capacity to rate, vet and manage plugins, blocks, themes and whatnot (and to manage their other long term projects).

An exciting feature in the roadmap (sometime in the future) is the inclusion of Admin ability to search, review and download/install Modules directly to a Moodle installation, which would be similar to the current capabilities of WordPress.  This would truly be a game changer for LMSs.

MOOCH:

Finally Martin touched on and demonstrated the Moodle.org Course Hub (Mooch) software plugin which will allow 2.0 users to share and adopt or search and locate constructed courses to use in their own classroom or enroll in for PD/learning, respectively.  It’s a feature that’s been “in the works” for several long years but will finally come to fruition with the release of 2.0.

In conclusion, Martin gave a keynote that was very much focused on the release of 2.0 and the roadmap thereafter (which presented a vision of a dominant Moodle LMS).

This session was recorded and will be posted as soon as it is available from the conference organizers.

¹This calls to question the practice of districts in the US (and worldwide?) blocking Youtube and other open repositories of information, images and content.

This post and all posts from the #mootustx10 were made possible with support from Wiris.com and Moodlerooms.com.

I wasn’t able to attend the session by Dr. A. T. Wyatt (@awyatt) which focused on the Microsoft OAM [http://www.educationlabs.com/projects/officeaddinformoodle/].  But the slides are available online.  The session focused on how to use/install the MS OAM, it’s pros and cons and future release information.