Moodle @ University of Bath

e-Learning team
Learning & Teaching Enhancement Office
Moodle @ University of BathNitin ParmarLearning Technologist[ Tuesday 13 July 2010 ]
go.bath.ac.uk/nitin | @nrparmar

e-Learning team
Aims & Objectives
To provide an overview of Moodle, its use at the University of Bath and how it is managed and supported.
To give an insight into the Moodle-related work undertaken during the 2009/10 academic year
To discuss an outline of the work to be potentially undertaken during the 2010/11 academic year

e-Learning team
About me
Been working with Moodle since mid-2005 across within both the Further and Higher Education sectors
Joining the e-Learning team in October 2006, Acting Moodle Operations Manager for the majority of the 2009/10 academic year
Interested in the management of change within education with respect to the implementation of applications to support technology enhanced learning

e-Learning team
What we’re doing
e-Learning services, pilots and projects
Moodle
Classroom Technologies
Online Unit Evaluation
e-Portfolios
QR Codes/Mobile Learning
Moodle
Open Educational Resources
e-Learning Authoring Tools
Desktop Conferencing
ARS
SMS
Lecture Capture

e-Learning team
A brief history
Moodle introduced as the institutional VLE at the beginning of the 2006/2007 academic year
Users authenticated via SSO
- 13,000+ active users
- 4,000+ Moodle courses
Integrations
- Moodle-SAMIS - Panopto
- Edutxt - Second Life on development server- Turnitin

e-Learning team
Moodle
A free, open source Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
First released in 2002, it is used at nearly 45,000 [registered] sites in 75 languages in 207 countries
Offers a range of tools to support learning and facilitate collaborative activities online
Currently, version Moodle 1.9.9+ - version 2.0 in due to be released within the next couple of months

e-Learning team
Moodle activities
Assignments
- For online submission of work; includes ability to give feedback on submitted work
Chat
- for real-time synchronous discussion
Choice
- Quick poll or voting activity
Database
- Build, display and search a bank of record entries about a topic
Forums
- For asynchronous online discussion
Glossary
- Allows participants to create and maintain a list of terms and definitions
Lesson
- Allows creation of conditional pathways through material
Journal
- A person reflective tools; students contributions are private and can only be seen by the teacher, who can offer feedback and grade entries as required.
Quiz
- Allows for design and setting of quiz tests, and includes a range of question types and reporting options.
Wiki
- Enables documents to be authored collectively.
Workshop
- Peer assessment activity, allowing participants to assess each other’s projects, as well as exemplar projects in a number of ways.

e-Learning team
Integrations
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Moodle-SAMIS
Integration with the SITS based student records system
- maintained and supported by the e-Learning team
Functionality
Moodle courses automatically created and populated from/with SAMIS data
Unit/programme mappings can be added to any Moodle course
Students within any mappings created, can be added to a Moodle group

e-Learning team
Integrations
}
EduTxt
- Contact students within a Moodle course. Facilitates feedback, student reflection.
Turnitin
- For plagiarism detection; integrated within Assignment activity
Panopto
- Lecture capture solution
- maintained by the e-Learning team
- supported by internal units

e-Learning team
Moodle Operational Team
Andy Ramsden
Head of e-Learning
Moodle Operations Manager
Learning Technologist (0.5 FTE Moodle)
Learning Technologist (0.4 FTE Moodle)
Educational Software & Systems Developer
(0.5 FTE Moodle)
Educational Software & Systems Developer
(0.5 FTE Moodle)
BUCS Unix Team
e-Learning Development & Support Officers
Internal units

e-Learning team
[new] Team approach
More structured through the inception of the Moodle Development Plan
More agile, more responsive to user needs - but within a given framework
Inception of a Moodle Advisory Group
Increased level of trust and openness within team, between the team and our users, and with other internal units

e-Learning team
Hardware
lego and duplo [Production]
Machine: Sun Fire X4150
CPU: 2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5440 @ 2.83GHz (quad core)
RAM: 8 GB
4x 146 GB hard drives (each pair of hard drives is mirrored and the second set is used for the MySQL binary replication logs)
[OS: Solaris 10, PHP 5.2.11, Apache 2.2.8, MySQL 5.0.51b]

e-Learning team
Hardware
soba [Test]
Machine: Sun Fire X4200
CPU: 2x 2.8 GHz AMD Opteron processors
RAM: 8 GB
2x 68 GB hard drives (mirrored by Solaris)
[OS: Solaris 10, PHP 5.2.11, Apache 2.2.8, MySQL 5.0.51b]

e-Learning team
The Hardware
Production
Test
Development
web server
lego
multimedia
soba
database server
prototype
duplo
lteo1

e-Learning team
Tracking development & support
Moodle Technical meetings: weekly :
Moodle Operational meetings: fortnightly :
Trac: bug tracker :
Request Tracker: helpdesk :
Email
Phone

e-Learning team
Staff Development
Moodle related seminars and workshops
Introduction to Moodle
Further Moodle Skills
Moodle for Administrators
One to one sessions
Moodle FAQs based on phpMyFAQ

e-Learning team
What we’ve been doing [2009/10]
Improving service performance
Improving communication with users
Moodle Development Plan 2010
Other initiatives and projects

e-Learning team
1. Service Performance
Moodle database server
Query overload
Sluggish response
Unreliable uploads
Credit:This graph was first presented by James Barrett at Moodle Day 2010 at the University of Bath.

e-Learning team
1. Service Performance
A discussion related to this issue appears in the Moodle.org forums at: http://go.bath.ac.uk/pati
Credit:This graph was first presented by James Barrett at Moodle Day 2010 at the University of Bath.

e-Learning team
2. Improving communication with users
@eatbath
updated via Twitterfeed
Moodle Service blog
http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/moodle
Moodle
http://moodle.bath.ac.uk

e-Learning team
Key dissemination & information points
Moodle Advisory Group
Moodle Operational team
Directors of Studies fora
Learning & Teaching Committee
Other UK HEIs
online
JISCMail lists
Moodle.org
conferences
MoodleMoot UK

e-Learning team
3. Moodle Development Plan 2010
Why?An outcome of the e-Learning Operational Plan 2009-2011
Prior to this, few coordinated specific or measurable targets for Moodle related development - pedagogical or technical
Continue the process of giving the university community an opportunity to be consulted about developments

e-Learning team
How?
Moodle Operational team: identification :
The widere-Learning team
: identification :
Users
Institution
Moodle Advisory Group: discussion & prioritisation :
∑MoSCoW x Impact x Priority x Time Taken
Moodle Development Plan 2010: outcome :

e-Learning team
What? When?
Category Key
ESP Enhancing Service PerformanceFE Functionality enhancementMAP Moodle Advice and PlanningSD Staff Development
[ http://go.bath.ac.uk/moodledevplan2010 ]
Integrating changes to Moodle in light of Academic Restructuring
Preparing to deliver a high quality service for the 2010/11 academic year
Development of Archiving & Backup policy
Moodle community merge(s)
Essential Projects

e-Learning team
Monitoring, Reporting & Evaluation
Responsibility for implementation lies with the Moodle Operations Manager
Key Milestones
- Interim report on Moodle Development Plan 2010 – due September 2010
- Moodle Evaluation Report 2010 – due December 2010
- Moodle Development Plan 2011 – due January 2011
Dissemination
Moodle Service blog
Directors of Studies Taught Programmes forum
Moodle Advisory Group

e-Learning team
4. Other initiatives and projects
Moodle Assignment Activity
Moodle4iPhone evaluation
Moodle Day 2010

e-Learning team
1. Moodle Assignment Activity
Early adopters
Local challenges and good practice
Understanding of stakeholder needs
Varying processes
Credit: This information was first presented by Vic Jenkins at Moodle Day 2010 at the University of Bath.

e-Learning team
The figures!
The full blog post related to this item can be found at: http://go.bath.ac.uk/vlmo

e-Learning team
Outcomes
1. FAQs, Case Studies and How To Guides
2. Working Papers
Factors to consider for the effective use of the Moodle assignment activity in online submission of work [http://opus.bath.ac.uk/18370/]
Future functionality required from an online submission system for student work [http://opus.bath.ac.uk/19610/]

e-Learning team
2. Moodle4iPhone evaluation
A community effort led to the development of Moodle4iPhone, in effect, a CSS stylesheet (termed a "web app")
This was intended to be a short evaluation project consisting of:
The Moodle Service blog to initiate interest and disseminate the results of each stage,
Google Forms and a focus group to gather data
A mailing list to contact interested colleagues and students
A test bed for the approach to Moodle 2.0 implementation

e-Learning team
3. Moodle Day 2010
http://go.bath.ac.uk/eatbathmd10

e-Learning team
What’s next?
2.0

[ slide presented at MoodleMoot UK 2010 ]

e-Learning team
Other Projects (so far)
Moodle-PebblePad integration
Evaluation of Moodle-Turnitin integration
ARS Data Visualisation project

e-Learning team
Nitin Parmar
Learning Technologist
N.R.Parmar@bath.ac.uk | +44 (0)1225 384 392
http://www.slideshare.net/tag/eatbath

Moodle @ University of Bath

by Nitin Parmar

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