{"id":2185,"date":"2013-02-27T21:38:24","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T21:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/?p=2185"},"modified":"2013-03-04T10:28:42","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T10:28:42","slug":"e-learning-team-presentation-at-moodle-moot-dublin-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/2013\/02\/27\/e-learning-team-presentation-at-moodle-moot-dublin-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"E-learning team presentation at Moodle Moot Dublin 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case our Moodlemoot Dublin\u00a0abstract<\/a> has\u00a0left you salivating but you have found that our presentation wasn’t recorded, we thought we’d give a quick overview.<\/p>\n

Sussex University is a research-led Higher Education institution using a customised Moodle install called Study Direct. We have 1,500 editing tutors, 15,000 students, 2,099 2012\/13\u00a0Moodle courses \u00a0and 13,500 unique hits per day.<\/p>\n

The e-learning team is a team of five including two developers, one front line support officer, one teaching support officer and one manager. We don’t have any departmental learning technologists like many institutions.<\/p>\n

What does that mean?<\/h2>\n

One, we cannot train all our tutors to make beautiful sites<\/p>\n

Two, before we made changes to our interface, many of our hard working,\u00a0conscientious\u00a0tutors made Moodle courses which were long lists of links (#listofdeath, c.f. #scrollofdeath). The courses our tutors created gave our students a poor experience and left tutors, who had tried their best, unsatisfied and demotivated.<\/p>\n

What if our tutors made BBC web pages?<\/h2>\n

Would BBC pages stop looking like this?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And start looking like this?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We decided we couldn’t rely on training to ensure that our tutors would create rich learning resources for our students. We needed something cleverer.<\/p>\n

Implicit and explicit calls to action<\/h2>\n

We started to look at other content creation tools.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPeople using word processor applications would struggle to create a learning resource that looked like a Moodle course.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPeople using spreadsheet applications would struggle to create anything that wasn’t a spreadsheet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Presentation software has explicit\u00a0calls to action <\/em>such as<\/em> “Click to add a title” which help people create understandable presentations.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Blog editors have explicit and implicit calls to action<\/em> such as title input boxes and text editors which make it obvious how to create\u00a0understandable\u00a0web pages with text and images.<\/p>\n

We concluded that an interface has the power to explicitly influence the shape, design and type of content the user creates.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Moodle calls to action <\/em><\/h2>\n

So what does the Moodle interface look like and what are the calls to action<\/em> on the busy academic tutor when he or she come to build a Moodle course?<\/p>\n

Well, if they work out to “Turn editing on” this is what they get:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hey! The primary call to action<\/em> is to add a resource or activity. Yes, they could choose to add a label but what is a labe<\/em>l<\/em> anyway? Or they could add a summary to their section but how do you do that? Can you guess?<\/p>\n

Should we be surprised that our tutors created lists of resources and activities without context?<\/p>\n

Adding calls to action to Moodle<\/h2>\n

What would happen then if we added the calls to action<\/em> that helped our tutors to create engaging learning courses. What might that look like?<\/p>\n

Well, this is what our Moodle install looks like:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What are the primary calls to action<\/em> on this page? If I were a tutor what would I do first to create a learning course for my students?<\/p>\n

I see that there is an implicit call to add a section title and section content. I think I’d start with that. What about you?<\/p>\n

And guess what. When I am adding the title and content I am adding contextual online learning material and not simply adding to the “list of death”. Nice start!<\/p>\n

What then?<\/p>\n

The bright green colours give me a clear steer.<\/p>\n

It is asking me to add a site image. That sounds nice. I can add a visual representation of my course much like the cover of a book.<\/p>\n

I can also see how I can add another section.<\/p>\n

The “add activities” and “add resources”\u00a0are large green calls to action<\/em> at the bottom. They boldly indicate how I can add interactive content and detailed materials that I would like my students to drill down into.<\/p>\n

Ah and then there is a dashboard<\/a>. That is where I do the administrative gubbins for my course.<\/p>\n

So what has this meant for our users?<\/h2>\n

We have found that, in many cases, these prominent calls to action<\/em> have changed the habits of our tutors. The courses they create are more similar to the first image of the BBC<\/a> than the second<\/a> – more similar to content people are used to seeing on the internet.<\/p>\n

We are seeing an increasing number of tutors create engaging online learning sites with content and context.<\/p>\n

We think our changes have substantially\u00a0improved the tutors’ workflow and our students’ online learning experience.<\/p>\n

We have made other changes, briefly covered in our presentation, such as ‘pages’ opening in an ‘accordion style’ so this content always has context,\u00a0but I’ll leave these for another post.<\/p>\n

Future<\/span><\/h2>\n

We know we haven’t got it right yet and we have a long way to go, but we have great ideas.<\/p>\n

For example, should the resources and activities go directly into the web editor?<\/p>\n

We are not sure, but if they should it might work like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Or even like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite having loads of good ideas we are faced with the same dilemma as all developers using Moodle – whether to improve the tutors’ and students’ experience of our VLE\/LMS or stick with the Moodle core. We are walking a tight line, but we want Moodle to become something like our Moodle install – in fact something better.<\/p>\n

We know if Moodle is to continue to be successful it will do this – it is just a question of time.<\/p>\n

As a small development team we can’t contribute much code ourselves, but these blog posts hope to generate ideas and help steer its direction.<\/p>\n

Finally, I\u2019d like to extend a big thank you to the organisers of MoodleMoot Dublin<\/a> #mootie13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case our Moodlemoot Dublin\u00a0abstract has\u00a0left you salivating but you have found that our presentation wasn’t recorded, we thought we’d give a quick overview. Sussex University is a research-led Higher Education institution using a customised Moodle install called Study Direct. We have 1,500 editing tutors, 15,000 students, 2,099 2012\/13\u00a0Moodle courses \u00a0and 13,500 unique hits per […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,35,64],"tags":[90,131,21,92],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2185"}],"version-history":[{"count":97,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2302,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2185\/revisions\/2302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/elearningteam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}