To be? (A Moodle course) or not to be? (A Moodle course) That is…
Choices...a design question.
…a design question discussed at the March 5th FLN meeting which continually comes up from teachers in Moodle training.
“What format should my Moodle course be?”
The answer is it depends, what teaching need do you want to use your Moodle course for?
For flexibility Moodle courses should not be locked into any particular format so the SWSI ITEL sat down and examined the pros and cons of the formats we advocate to teachers namely:
- One Moodle Course = Individual UOC
- Moodle Course = Whole TAFE Course i.e.. contains all UOC’s in one place (Cert 1, 2, 3, 4 AQF etc)
- One Moodle Course = Focused Content (i.e Class)
- Moodle Course = Network Hub, an Emergent (Dominant?) trend.
At the moment we sit in two camps working within the limitations of Moodle 1.9.7 and the promises of new Moodle 2.0 functionality to fix all those bug-bears, the pro and cons .ppt covers these variables and some design solutions.
View: Moodle Course Format Pro and Cons .ppt (This is a Collaborative Powerpoint, contributions welcome).
Long story short SWSI has different approaches to strike a balance between flexibility and maintenance of learning design and quality control in Moodle 1.9.7 administration, I’ve added these to the FLN wiki for feedback, input is welcome.
View: Moodle 1.9.7 master course administration and learning design cycle wiki page.
Yammer closed micro-blogging vs open micro-blogging (i.e. Twitter)
I have just had a play with http://yammer.com, marketed as the twitter for corporate organisations. What this means is anybody who has the @det.nsw.edu.au email (i.e. Everyone at TAFE) can easily log in and be a part of a DET microblogging network, no wrestling with set up .
What I liked about Yammer :
- Enables easy access to a http://yammer.com using existing DET email
- Provides networked communication between many as apposed to 1 to 1 communication (i.e Office Communicator)
- Not blocked (Touch wood) via DET network
- Enable file attachments
- Enables threaded discussions around posts which can be hidden or expanded.
- Enables creation of groups (i.e I created a DET group for the MUG Moodle User Group).
- Yammer provides a desktop client for real time updates on DET network posts and targeted publishing to Yammer groups (built with Adobe Air), it’s really user friendly.
- Yammer provides an Outlook integration app for updates and publishing to network (Not as user friendly as Desktop app).
Yammer - Desktop Client Software - Very useful
What I dislike about Yammer:
- It’s a ‘Free’ CLOSED Environment, if you don’t have a @det.nsw.edu.au email you can’t join the network.
- To manage the DET account more granually i.e to add guest accounts for users without DET email, change administration settings etc. it costs….$3 dollars per person per month! (They have to make their money I guess).
- Posting directly to groups does not seem to be possible without downloading the Yammer Desktop Client.
Conclusion “Have your cake and eat it” – Publish to open and closed networks
Yammer as a closed Environment is both good and bad. Yammer is good for DET employees who want to talk shop on DET stuff in a closed environment and bad for those who recognise the benefits of being visible in open networks such as http://twitter.com but like everything it’s your individual choice what you want to do. Fortunately there are many tools which make publishing to your favorite open, closed space (Including Yammer) a sinch.
I like http://www.shareaholic.com/ with the plugin you can post to the network of your choice (Open or closed) via your browser of choice (IE or Firefox), you choose.
Shareaholic - Publish to your Network of Choice
Have your cake and eat it
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