MoodleMoot Oklahoma

I didn't get to attend MoodleMoot Oklahoma, but it looks like I really missed out on some good learning for myself and my organization. Thankfully some of the learning is still available as an archive, minus the human interaction that occurs at an event like this (which is where the real benefit is, in my opinion).

Web 2.0 Platforms Keep Growing... and Growing...

I first used web 2.0 technology in 2002 when I setup my very own Mambo server as a school technology coordinator. I wanted to create an online community for my students to interact within as well as to for technology lessons and to communicate with parents and the community. My students took to it like ducks to water. And I realized that something really big was brewing here because I didn't understand one bit of PHP, yet I administered this server and this website and it was easy and powerful!

Since then I've used Joomla and Drupal and enjoy both platforms. I've also deployed WordPress, TWiki and MoinMoin servers at my organization. I administer an internal Moodle server. I dabble with Elgg and Jabber. I do this so I can keep updated on the newest web 2.0 technologies. I still don't know any PHP. (Crazy, right?)

At home, I use Blogger.com because it integrates easily with my Google lifestyle, but I'm seriously considering using WordPress. Blogger just doesn't seem to have the feature set that WP has and it doesn't seem to have the community support that WP has. Plus it seems so much easier to tweak the themes or templates or whatever you wish to call it - in WordPress.

I know Blogger will grow and feature sets will be updated. But I can't wait that long! I need to do some things with a web publishing platform that I believe only WordPress can do. Sorry Blogger. (that doesn't mean I'll quit blogger here - but I will start another blog using WP).

My Moodle Mindomo Mind Map

I created a Mindmap on Mindomo.com for Moodle and haven't done much with it. But I will add stuff to it as I learn things about certain topics. I think this thing would be much more powerful if all the Moodlers on Moodle.org would join and collaborate on this. Please contact me so I can send an invite to you, if you want to collaborate.

• My Moodle Mindmap on Mindomo.com

Moomis

Just read this from Clive and wanted to repost it here.

Sent to you by everdream via Google Reader:

Moomis

via Clive on Learning by clives@fastrak-consulting.co.uk (Clive Shepherd) on 7/28/08

As someone who uses Moodle as a tool to support blended learning projects for several of my corporate clients, I was interested to hear Mark Tointon's speak at the recent eLearning Network showcase about some new add-ons for Moodle which are specifically designed to support corporate use of the tool. As Mark explained, there are good reasons why Moodle has a hard job reaching out to corporate users:

• the mortorboard logo
• the naive font
• the friendly name
• its origins in academia
• the fact that it is free!

These problems of perception can be overcome, but corporates may still be frustrated that, although Moodle is an excellent course delivery tool, it was never designed to tackle the sorts of problems that many corporates face, and which generally lead them to a conventional learning management system.

Mark's company, Aardpress, could have regarded this as an opportunity to create and sell expensive add-on functionality for Moodle. But luckily they didn't, deciding instead to contribute their own tools to the open source Moodle toolkit.

Moomis, their Modular Object-Orientated Management Information System would you believe, adds all sorts of corporate LMS-type functionality, in the form of simple Moodle blocks:

• A groups function which allows administrators to allocate any number of users to any number of different groups and designate any number of managers to each group. Once users are allocated to groups, administrators and managers can use the Report Creator to obtain management information for those groups including courses completed, quiz scores, levels of access and Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
• CPD hours/points are added automatically to users' records for any e-learning courses they complete. Furthermore, users can add CPD accrued from other events to their own records as required.
• Administrators and managers have access to smart communication tools, which comprise an email module to enable emails to be sent to specific users or any group of users and a simple 'digital Post-It note' module enabling messages to be posted to individuals or specific groups of users.
• Businesses can use the Competency Manager to assess and track levels of competence and then use the Performance Manager to set and assess personal objectives for each employee that reflect whole business objectives.
• The Events Manager can be used to create 'real world' events (face-to-face) that can be allocated to users either as standalone events, linked to competencies or linked to personal objectives.

I expect Aardpress hope to benefit by providing supporting services and good luck to them in that. From my point of view this is yet more great functionality that neither I, nor my clients, will have to pay for.

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Using Moodle: Integration with Captivate

A use on the Moodle forums asked an interesting question about Moodle and Captivate - just exactly what we're attempting to do at my organization. I figure I'll put this up on my blog for posterity's sake.

Allowing Non-Students To View Grades In Moodle

I've been visiting the helpful Moodle community and asking about how to solve a particular problem I face in deploying Moodle successfully in my organization: viewing students' scores. Teachers, Admins and Students can all view scores. Teachers can see the scores of all students in their classes; Students can only see their own grades and Admins can see anyone' grades. But what about non-Students who are also non-Teachers and non-Admins?

My organization is not unique in that we have Supervisors who need to see the grades of their employees. Also, we have Human Resources personnel who need to see the grades of any or all students. The groups may not be Teachers or Admins. In fact I'd rather they not have any Administrative access at all. How to resolve this problem?

The Moodle community says setup special Roles for these users. You can view the post here.

Learning to Tweak Moodle: It Sucks Less Than Others

I'm still a Moodle newbie. I feel I must jump into this application and really learn how to harness its power as both an Administrator and an Instructor. I know this app is powerful and can serve my organization's needs as a Corporate Learning Managment System, since so many other organizations are using it that way successfully - and these are much bigger, more complex deployments than what I'm attempting.

But I'm also a geek who likes to tweak. Does that make me a geak? Or tweek? I think the key to my successful deployment of Moodle is to learn how the programmers envisioned the application to work; learn the modules; learn the framework, structure and parameters of the app. Then, tweak it to fit my needs.

This requires a balance of IT geekiness along with solid Instructional Design understanding; and that must be paired with the specific learning requirements for my organization: mid-sized community hospital.

First, I'm tasked with eliminating our current LMS which is very costly to use and update - and its not user friendly (no one likes this application!). Since that application "sucks", hopefully I can create a solution in Moodle which is significantly less "sucky".

I think a combination of built-in Moodle modules (content and quizzes mostly, along with some forums and wikis) and Adobe Captivate for software simulations will do the trick. I plan to also add other multimedia such as video or Flash and perhaps a PowerPoint or two.

In the upcoming weeks I shall endeavor to see how much Moodle sucks less than our previous LMS. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. And I'm thankful for the helpful Moodle community of users and Admins.

Why Moodle for Corporate?

This blog post is in response to a question asked of me (privately) here. Rather than respond only in private, I though a blog post would help other Moodlers.

Richard,
Would you mind sharing how you arrived at an open source solution as your best option; and how Moodle ended up as your top choice?

The answer is simple: there has not been a corporate vision for learning at my organization beyond the required/mandated learning for maintaining certifications and compliance with standards. We have an LMS for that purpose but we are not satisfied with it. It is hosted offsite and it is not easy to update (takes considerable time and money each time).

Then, we began to look at upgrading our entire hospital medical information system and realized that would require training for which our current LMS was not a suitable solution. We would either have to keep our existing LMS as well as deploy a new one for the new training, or look for a way to migrate our existing LMS courses into our new LMS.

I am a fan and user of Open Source Software, so I naturally looked to Moodle to solve this problem (especially since I have a background in education as a Technology Coordinator and Educator). Moodle appeared to have the features that we needed so we decided to go forward with a beta-test. Moodle met with approval from the VP's since it was "free" and our current commercial LMS wasn't meeting their expectations (they didn't see a reason to spend more on another LMS which might put us right back in the same situation). I am still in the process of creating that beta-test for approval. If it meets the stakeholder's expectations then I will proceed with creating more content and importing existing content, after migrating from a sandbox server to a production server.

One of the first things I hope to test soon is authentication with Active Directory. There's documentation on this here.

Informal Learning :: Ageless Learner

I discovered this excellent resource about Informal Learning today.  The author includes eLearning as a Formal Learning model along with classrooms and meetings.  This is a great discussion starter article.  I suggest all people interested in Educating / Training people to read this as a starting point.

If you can agree with the definitions of this article, then many Web 2.0 applications might qualify as formal, but unexpected learning.  I might argue that formal learning takes place in a controlled environment, where the Instructor has the control.  Informal learning then occurs outside the boundaries of that type of control.  Blogs, Wikis and Social Networks / Communities would be Informal Learning models in my definition since the instructor doesn't necessarily control those environments.

The instructor can, however, have significant influence in these informal learning models.  For example a mid-sized business can setup an intranet portal and Learning Management System with blogs and a wiki.  The classes offered on the LMS are formal training whether they take place online or in a classroom.  But the instructor can encourage students to use the blog to journal about their learning and then summarize their learning on the wiki, where all other students can edit the final wiki.  The instructor can also edit the wiki.  The learning community becomes important, if not foundational to the learning process, but it is in an informal manner.

I would include both these formal and informal learning methods in a global Knowledge Management plan for an organization.  If you've not thought about Organizational Knowledge Management, get this PDF or visit this site.  Learning Management is only a portion of the Knowledge Management plan, and both Informal and Formal learning must be a part of that plan, to the extent that the more an organization plans and implements informal learning, the better they can influence and control the informal learning methods.

Does anyone have other thoughts on this?

Moodle For Me (For Now)

I've been beta-testing Moodle at my organization since mid-2007, version 1.7.2. I like that Moodle is Open Source Software. I've now officially joined the Moodle forum and even posted in a forum for corporate users of Moodle. I don't have any experience on other Learning Mangement Systems, but I have 8 years experience using Content Management Systems starting with Mambo, then Joomla and now also Drupal and about a year's worth of time using blogs such as Blogger and Wordpress. I've found that Moodle is comparable to managing those other systems, but I'd like to have a little more control at block positioning like I can with Joomla.

One problem I have with Moodle is the categories / subcategories / courses displayed on the front page. I have many items to fit into each of these and I'd like a way to expand/collapse that on the front page. I think it's overwhelming for my users to see all those options and I'd like to limit their choices. In Moodle you either see them all or you don't see any. I can restrict to show only categories, but all the subcategories will display with them. That is still too overwhelming for a user interface.

My solution was to code a table in HTML and insert icons from the Nuvola series and use this as my course navigation tool. Users can click on an icon/category to view the courses and subcategories in each. It's much prettier this way; easy on the eyes; not overwhelming for users. Here is a screenshot of it:



Another problem I've found is the implementation of the blog and wiki modules. I'd like the blog module to be more like Wordpress or Blogger - full-featured. The Moodle blog could be very valuable as a site-wide blog if it had more features and lived "outside" of the Moodle world instead of always being tied to courses. The same could be said for the wiki module. Both are good ideas, but need to be further developed. As it stands I won't be implementing the blog or wiki features of Moodle. Instead I have deployed TWiki and WordPress on Linux sandbox servers.

Too bad about the blog and wiki modules, because I'd like to use Moodle as a complete Knowledge Management platform at my organization. Instead we have a hodge podge mix of using Shared directories, Outlook/Exchange, SharePoint (the free one), and now Twiki and WordPress - all hosted onsite on our own servers.