Moodle Moot UK & Ireland

1. Enriching the learning experience through
interactive course content
Kyle Goslin
Markus Hofmann

2. Overview
 What we do
 Course content filter using metadata
 Visual map tool for Moodle
 Deaf studies lecture presentation tool

3. What we do
 Over the last number of years we have been
developing Moodle plugins for a wide variety of tasks.
 Main aim of our research is to enrich the learning
experience of users
 Moodle related research and development has been on
going for a number of years at the Institute of
Technology Blanchardstown.
 Today you can see 3 of the plugins we developed!

4. Course content filter using
metadata
Aim: Allow educator to tag learning objects that can be
dynamically filtered by the learner
Solution: Add a filter to the top of the course page

5. Course content filter using
metadata
 Some learners do not want to see all of the learning
objects at the same time.
 The scroll of death causing problems - (we’ve seen
some nice solutions yesterday!)

6. Course content filter using
metadata

7. Course content filter using
metadata
 Things do not always work out as we would have
wished.
 Although a very nice tool, one main draw back is that
additional fields need to be added into the editing
process to allow the learning objects to be tagged.
 Works really well with a defined set of resource that
you know will be added. E.g. HTML Page / Files / text
page

8. Visual Map Tool for Moodle
Aim: We wanted to find a way to visualize the learning
objects on a Moodle course page.
Solution: Create a flash based visual map tool for
Moodle.

9. Visual Map Tool for Moodle
 Learners, especially those with learning difficulties find
visualization to be very useful.
 Visual mapping tool have exist, but none that allow for
resources to be easily mapped.
 Two Modes:
 Simple Viewer mode for students
 Editing mode for educators

11. Visual Map Tool for Moodle
 All available resources on the course page become
blocks in visual map tool.
 Simple grouping of blocks.
 Simple XML based structure created and then parsed
to generate the visual map.
 Allows for customization of colours.
 Custom text for groupings.

12. Deaf studies lecture presentation
plugin
 Aim: Create a presentation tool that allowed the
educator to display signed video content and marked
up lecture content at the same time.
 Solution: Simple Moodle plugin with embedded
Jwplayer in a lecture based format

13. Deaf studies lecture presentation
plugin
 Collaboration between the Institute of Technology
Blanchardstown and the Trinity College school for the
Deaf.
 Simple tool was need to allow signed video content to
be displayed along with course notes
 A simple lecture based format where each lecture
contains a number of individual pages.

15. Questions Comments?
All our projects are available for demo at:
• If you are interested in the source to any project, we can
make that available! (GNU License)
• White papers also online