Augmented banality

By the end of today I need to have some initial materials for nine new units or modules ready for students. You guys teaching Maths or History don't know how lucky you are that, for a large extent, the content is pretty constant. I've got to cover some at Level 2, some Level 3 and for a new HNC programme a couple of modules at Level 4 in things like web development or the impact of IT on business where, even if the technology hadn't changed much (which it has!) there are brand new sets of criteria that students have to meet this year so even if I had done it last year my stuff would need changing and, for the ones I have taken over, the last chap wasn't exactly hot on publishing material.

"It all has to be on moodle," announce managers. That seems to be the Holy Grail nowadays. "Stick it on moodle and we'll be able to tick the E-learning box for OFSTED." But have you tried making a reasonably attractive job of displaying materials on moodle? It's not easy. First it can take an age to upload every image that you want to work with and rearrange things on page and then you're faced with making moodle web pages look reasonable, which requires more than a little skill and some diving into the html code, and often finish up doing what every else does which is to make a list of Office documents and presentations. I understand that moodle 2.0 makes life much easier but we haven't got that.

I can see how it is a good idea to have a central one-stop shop for students. They log in and can get what they need. But that does depend on us all putting what they need there in the first place. And doing so in a way that is a bit more interesting and appealing than the contents page to a textbook with links to text documents that not only take an age to open but, when they do eventually appear, don't actually say much more than the textbook or an Edexcel web page says already. I have seen super examples of moodle being used well but invariably there's either a web design team or expert geek supporting them or even doing the display work.

Even then there are examples of nonsense. Well-designed, but still nonsense. As in the school that e-mails parents about some important announcement with a link in the body of the e-mail. You click the link and arrive at a beautifully laid out and themed moodle page. There is another link to click for the important announcement. PDF time. Long PDF time. Hurray! It's opened, and it's a size I can read without moving back six steps with a pair of binoculars the wrong way round. Two paragraphs. Important, yes. Glad I got the message but ... why on earth didn't they simply stick the text in the e-mail?!

Then I hear that some tutors in institutions get told to put their schemes of work somewhere completely different as well (or instead, I haven't figured out which yet). Not only is that place some drive on the staff server where they probably haven't visited since the 1990s but it's not somewhere they can access from home, and home is the only place they can actually get any work done in peace and with some reasonable software and equipment. As I said, I'm teaching web design, presenting information using IT and other modern, design-led modules like that where how I provide materials should be an example of the very same good practice I am trying to teach them!

My only solution is to produce all my stuff as I had planned, using all sorts of new ideas and applications that present it nicely and publish that on various blogs and web sites as before, and just putting links to it on the moodle pages for now. I can probably make the moodle pages, assuming someone has remembered to give me editing rights to them, and, indeed, has actually created the new ones I'll need, look a bit smarter with some images and design text for links rather than the odd default fonts and sizes with incorrect line spacing settings that display headings in larger fonts incorrectly when they require two lines. But the actual material will be somewhere else where I find much simpler to work with it all.

Of course that will land me in more trouble as I am apparently breaking some E-safety rule by using my own web spaces. If I remove any reference to a non-institution e-mail or non-course-related sections of my site then I may escape the men with the black bin liners. For a while, at least.

And there I was, getting quite excited about augmented reality after a super session at the Eastern Region E-learning Forum. I can probably mange to keep my students happy and well-provided for and stay in a job. But some colleagues I was speaking with really are still struggling, despite all the wonders of the new things happening around us. It really is time that someone has the courage to tell managers who reckon that adding Microsoft Office documents or PDFs and presentations to moodle and shared network drives is good E-learning practice in 2011 that they're wrong. It's just augmented banality.

Why I'll take a year's break from moodle

Moodle 2.0 is coming along well according to Martin Dougiamas's presentation and I particularly like the proposed integration with Google Docs (see slide 27). Unfortunately, all the good work looks like continuing through until 2010 and will it even be ready for the crucial early summer of that year when tutors will need to become familiar enough with it to use at the start of the academic year?

Even if it is that still means another year of frustration. Principal woes are the drag of uploading documents individually to each course. I write notes, task sheets and things that lots of people can use and I finish up staring blearily at a screen and trying to remember to choose them and sometimes get so fed up at having to enter this or that time and time again that titles get more and more abbreviated and as for descriptions, well, forget it!

Then there's the business of making the page look reasonably professional. You know, add a few images, consistent fonts and arrangement of things on the page. You've got the images but upload them at your peril as most will be too big either in pixels or KB. Yes, you should have done that before hand but there you are, with editing windows open and ready to roll and the temptation to say 'sod it' and forget the pictures is pretty great. As for figuring out what font or size you may or may not get from the odd information supplied on the toolbar - well even I get fooled by that more often than not.

Something lots of people ask is to have links on the page to other course pages which I can do but, boy, it takes ages. I do try and explain to some of the more web aware how to make the other page if it doesn't exist (and, yes, do all the assigning roles and mind-numbingly repetitive admin stuff each requires) and then note the long, weird-looking url which can be used as a hyperlink for an image or text. Honestly, I do try but mostly feel sorry for them and just do it myself which takes about the same time.

Then there's what actually gets put on to most pages. Word documents abound. PowerPoint files everywhere. Loads and loads of lines of text links to documents that often are far too big anyway and take a while to load, sometimes in one window, sometimes another. Anxious not to give my students the same mundane experience, I use pdfs, web pages, Google docs and slide shows that are there, ready to roll, on the page. However, especially if I want to arrange things a little, I have to work in html view and tables can be so confusing but necessary. 

To cut what could be a long moan short, I have for a while realised that I can create nicer looking and more usable areas on wikis and web pages far more simply. I want students to start in moodle but I get them out again which rather defeats a lot of what moodle was intended to be all about. But do I care about stats for who's visited which page how many times? No. I know my students and can see for myself how they're doing from coursework and simple observation. I can make quizzes with other software and provide feedback on their results automatically. I can handle a bit of extra admin storing the results if need be but none are used other than for refreshment. Forums? Much nicer with social networking apps or something like lefora. Calendars? Again, much nicer in Google or many others. 

I'll get criticised for students leaving the moodle frame but I'm not convinced that other tutors keep them in either with myriad external links and documents opening in new windows. All I lose really are those ruddy stats but so much more to gain. 

Logging in? This became a huge issue this year. It even resulted in having to pay someone else to host it as no-one could really manage the database. All the problems of people not being able to log-in for a couple of months while we decide if they're staying on a course, user names and passwords, incorrect e-mails I shall wave goodbye to. They can add themselves to pbworks courses, forums etc and, whilst I'm happy to share all that I create, if there is something to hide or restrict circulation for then I can do so sufficiently well elsewhere. Anyway, I'm not suggesting we abandon moodle completely so they'll still probably log-in when they can but I shall leave my courses open to guest access anyway. I honestly cannot see that the benefits outweigh what will be the advantages of a much more modern, professional and interesting alternative that might even inspire a few. Who knows, if I can get facebook allowed, the fun will really start and I'm very tempted to experiment with some DIY games apps there.

Not being the ILT Co-ordinator has its advantages! I can just be a tutor and do what I like instead of feeling obliged to set a good example within the party line. Another year of that would be depressing. Instead, I'm actually quite looking forward to the challenge. And 2010, of course.

Moodle VLE . . . or is it?

Have a look at these two links:

Moodle

Joomla

Interesting.