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Contributed by Art Evans Laurel H Turk, Professor of Modern Languages and Professor of Modern Languages

I have two very large Blackboards, developed over several years. And I now find myself (somewhat grumpily) in the process of having to “migrate” them to Moodle. One course is my Honor Scholar FY seminar on science fiction; the other is an upper-level French seminar on the history of French song (1940-present). Scheduled to teach the latter course again this spring, I spent most of Winter Term 2008 converting the materials for this French song class from Blackboard to Moodle. Here are some things I learned.

Moodle’s three-column architecture is very different from Blackboard’s. Whereas Blackboard requires a kind “Russian nesting dolls” structure for organizing your materials (box-within-a-box-within-a-box), Moodle’s structure is more wide-open: the main “topic” boxes containing your materials are next to one another, running vertically down the screen. Personally, I don’t care much for Moodle’s three-column interface, but it’s open structure makes it much easier to navigate through the entire site. It is important to realize, in switching over to Moodle, that you will probably need to make some basic design changes to your original Blackboard course.

I found that there is no easy way to import foreign-language files from Blackboard to Moodle without a lot of cleanup. Some materials can be imported directly into Moodle’s “Files” repository. But, for me, opening both systems side-by-side and simply cutting and pasting from one to the other proved to be the fastest and most reliable way. Blackboard has always been notoriously unstable concerning accents and other diacriticals (I had to reenter them twice over the past three years); Moodle does not seem to have this problem, happily.

In addition to text and graphics, this French song course also contains approximately 250 music recordings in “streaming audio” format. These presented a special challenge. They were not functioning well in Blackboard—e.g., students using Macs could not make them work properly and sometimes, even in Windows, they tended to activate at odd times. To solve this problem, the original CDs were re-ripped, and the sound files saved in .mp3 format and then stored on a special streaming server (thanks to Roni Pejril). Throughout this process I discovered that Moodle offered one improvement over Blackboard in that the button to activate each song now could be placed on the same page as the song’s lyrics, allowing the student to follow along while listening. Bottom line: we have so far experienced no glitches at all with the “streaming audio” component of this class, a constant source of difficulty when they were in Blackboard.

I also include daily online mini-quizzes on each of the 50+ singer-songwriters featured in this Moodle site. These quizzes are short, consist of several true-false questions, and are timed at 5 minutes each. Since certain upgrades were added to Moodle in January, these quizzes and the gradebook have also been working perfectly. The students seem especially to appreciate the “countdown clock” that appears on the screen when they are taking a quiz, letting them know exactly how much time they have remaining.

I have not yet experimented with many of the tools available in Moodle (wikis, forums, workshops, etc.). But I must confess that the more I work with Moodle, the less grumpy I am becoming about having to migrate away from Blackboard.

Contributed by Lynda LaRoche, FITS Specialist & Moodle Support Coordinator

This year’s FITS Spring Workshop will be on Saturday, March 15th from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Julian Center.

The workshop will focus on Moodle and provide opportunities for both faculty members just starting to use Moodle as well as those wishing to enhance their current Moodle expertise. Breakout sessions will focus on topics such as the Moodle gradebook, steps in Moodle page design, an introduction to Moodle, copyright issues, and more. Also, there will be hands-on sessions where participants can work on their individual course with the aid of instructional technologists. By the end of the workshop, participants should feel comfortable enough with Moodle to build course sites.

To register for the 2008 FITS Spring Workshop on March 15th, please complete the short survey at http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB227HQ7YZKGC by March 11, 2008. Your feedback on this survey will help us identify on which features to focus during breakout sessions.

Also, we regret that this workshop is scheduled on the same date as the Women in Science Reunion. If you are involved with Women in Science, we encourage you to attend the reunion and we will be happy to find another time to help you with Moodle. Additional Moodle opportunities are listed at http://www.depauw.edu/univ/fits/events/events.asp#oncampus. You are also welcome to email us at moodle@depauw.edu to request a department visit or a one-on-one session.

We hope to see you there!

Contributed by Michael Gough, Instructional Technologist and Coordinator of START

During winter term, FITS added two new enhancements to Moodle that faculty members expressed great interest in at the Moodle User Group (MUG) discussion sessions.

Gradebook Plus add-on

The “out of the box” Moodle gradebook proved functional, but was limited in that you could only add an assignment generated outside of Moodle by adding an “offline activity”, which adds an icon to the course site. While these offline activity icons could serve as reminders to students, they also can clutter up the course space. Another limitation was the original gradebook did not allow for easy grade changes. Faculty members wanting to change a grade had to open the submitted assignment to change the grade. This was somewhat unintuitive and an inconvenient step for instructors who naturally would go to the gradebook to make grade changes.

The new gradebook,” Gradebook Plus,” solves both of these problems. First, it has a “Manage Graded Events” tab. This allows instructors to add an assignment to the gradebook without the need for an offline activity. This enhancement did not replace the offline activity option, as some users still use it as a reminder tool for students. Second, the new gradebook has an “Edit Grades” tab. When you click on this tab, the gradebook loads the grades into editable text boxes where you can change a grade quickly and easily without having to leave the gradebook to go to an individual assignment.

If “use advanced options” is turned on, you will see 2 new tabs, Edit Grades and Manage Grade Events.

Finally, the new gradebook came with enhanced statistics as a fringe benefit. You can now view statistics on individual assignments as well as the overall final grades by clicking on the stats button next to the assignment. Students can also view these statistics if they wish.

The Feedback Module

The Feedback Module, our newest enhancement to Moodle, offers you the ability to build customized surveys for your students. You can choose from an assortment of different online question types to build your survey. You can also choose to make your survey anonymous and show or withhold results with the students. This could be a great way to gather quick informal feedback, or even build your own course evaluation survey.

If you have any questions about these new features or Moodle in general, please email moodle@depauw.edu.

Contributed by Michael Gough, Instructional Technologist and Coordinator of START, and Dave Berque, Tenzer Family University Professor in Instructional Technology, Professor of Computer Science

Seventeen faculty members participated in the FITS fall workshop on November 17, which consisted of a condensed day-long look at two different technologies gaining use at DePauw, Moodle and Tablet PCs.

Using Moodle

To start the workshop, the 11 faculty members shared their goals for using Moodle in their teaching. Their ideas ranged across a variety of applications using Moodle, such as distributing course materials and library reserves, engaging their students in online discussion outside the classroom, or exchanging students’ papers electronically rather than in printed versions. They then spent the rest of the day in a variety of mini-sessions focused toward those goals.

A sample highlight from the workshop was a hands-on activity focused on how to set up Moodle to enable students to submit completed assignments online The faculty members were able to experience what Moodle is like from both the student and instructor perspectives. They first worked as a student and submitted mock assignments and received feedback on those assignments. Then, during the second half of the activity, they received assignments as an instructor from mock students and sent their feedback to the students.

At the end of the day, many participants were well on their way toward building their own Moodle courses and FITS instructional technologists will follow up with those faculty members throughout the coming weeks help them finish their courses.

FITS will also have a Moodle track during the Winter Term workshop. For more information on the Winter Term workshop see the next article.

Exploring Tablet PCs

The six faculty members who participated in the Tablet PC track had a full day of activities. Each participant was given a Tablet PC to use during the workshop. After learning how to use the Tablet’s digital pen to add ink to documents, participants heard from three colleagues who regularly use Tablet PCs to support their teaching. Participants also had hands-on experience with a variety of Tablet PC software applications and were able to practice annotating Word documents, Power Point presentations, and PDF files with digital ink. Each participant also took a “Tablet PC Deep Dive” which consisted of spending some time grading a student assignment, preparing an actual PowerPoint or DyKnow presentation, or annotating a research article.

Contributed by Michael Gough and Dave Berque

This year’s FITS fall workshop will be on Saturday, November 17^th from 8:30 to 2:00 in the Julian lab spaces on the first floor of Julian. We will have two different tracks, Tablet PCs and Moodle, running simultaneously. A continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. See descriptions of each track below. We ask that you sign up for only one track. To register, click on one of the links at the bottom of the article.

Tablet PC Track:

Participants will explore the ways Tablet PCs (essentially laptops with pens) can be used to support teaching and learning. Specific applications will include (a) using a digital pen to annotate student work and other material using Word, (b) using a digital pen together with standard tools such as PowerPoint to make classroom presentations more spontaneous, (c) using DyKnow classroom collaboration and notetaking software to engage students, and (d) using LectureScribe to make electronic answer keys. We will devote a significant amount of time to discussing the pedagogical implications of using pen-based computing. In addition, participants will be encouraged to bring electronic versions of papers that they need to grade (there will be time to get some grading done during the workshop) and/or electronic copies of professional reading they need to do, and/or classroom material they need to prepare. More details will be provided to workshop registrants.

Moodle Track

Faculty members will learn how different Moodle features could best meet their course needs while gaining hands on experience creating their course(s). Breakout sessions on popular topics will focus on the pedagogical uses of Moodle’s features and give a brief technical overview on how to use them. Participants should come with a goal for how they would like their course set up. Lots of time will be devoted toward individual course building and one-on-one support. By the end of the workshop, participants should feel comfortable enough with Moodle to meet the needs of their course goal. To register, click on the link below to take our short pre-registration survey. This will help us identify what features to focus on.

Register for the Tablet PC track

Register for the Moodle track

Contributed by David Diedriech

On Wednesday, October 3rd, FITS held its first Moodle showcase in the Julian auditorium. Three instructors – Matthew Balensuela, Jeff Hansen and Dave Guinee – presented examples of how they were using Moodle resources that were comparable to features in Blackboard. One of the many highlights included Dave showing the Moodle site that he uses as part of a collaborative class through NITLE. Several of those present offered suggestions and observations from their own courses. It was a great discussion!

Upcoming Moodle Showcases and Workshops:

Wednesday, November 7th
Moodle Showcase
“What I’ve learned about Moodle”
3:15 p.m. Julian Auditorium

Saturday, November 17th
FITS Saturday workshop
Click here for details