There was great buzz at our November Moodle Group evening. Around 70 delegates from a wide variety of commercial organisations, charities, schools, the public sector and others attended. Various stages of Moodle development were represented and there was much sharing of Moodle experiences. 

Alistair Cockroft (E-Learning Manager Salford Royal NHS foundation Trust) started off the evening outlining how he and his team had quickly implemented a Moodle site to support Manadatory and Statutory Training  at the Trust. Content for the project was authored in SCORM format using Adobe Captivate and Alistair expressed his delight it had all "just worked" with Moodle. The team will be exploring the wider functionality that Moodle offers in 2012. In question time after his presentation there was discussion about how to approach a similar project, although the benefits of planning we stressed, Alistair recommended delegates to get hands on early. He found Moodle forgiving and adaptable if revisions were needed.

Alistair used a Prezi presentation to illustrate his talk.

Carl Hodkinson from HowToMoodle related his experiences in implementing projects in the local government sector. Carl shared useful tips on ‘Getting it right first time’ and the importance of building the project on firm foundations such as agreed project objectives, stakeholder consultation etc. etc. In Carl's experience these aspects are often set aside in the rush to implement and can hamper the effectiveness of the implementation later. Carl's slides are here.

Tim Hunt Leading Developer at the Open University and Moodle Quiz Maintainer was our keynote speaker.

Tim provided an expert demonstration of the Moodle quiz and how to use it effectively, as well as introducing delegates to the expression "eating your own dog food" in the process! Of great interest was the new-in-2.1 Certainty Based Marking. Tim shared lots of tips and insights into current and future development of the question bank and quiz (too many to recall here...)

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We had some great comments following this week's Moodle Group Seminar, as ever the blend of varied speakers and attendees made the presentations and networking slots fascinating. There were representatives from global educational organisations, independant schools, content developers, higher and further education, the charity and business sectors.

Ross Midgley from People and Business Developement kicked off the evening with a presentation about the path taken to establish an elearning site to complement PBD's thriving eportfolio based business. A key issue was to ensure there was a clear distinction between the elearning site and the eportfolio site where activity is evidenced and assessed. Ross explained how he commissioned a specialist author to write content and how he was able to licence soon to be defunct content from Learn Direct and adapt it to meet the revised qualifications.

The title of Ross's presentation was "Moodle Minimalism" and he explained how he carefully pared down the functionality used on the site so that it precisely matched his specific business requirements - Ross estimated that he's only using 5% of Moodle's functionality to achieve his objectives. Choosing the right 5% was crucial! Careful consideration of user managment techniques and a custom theme from HowToMoodle mean that Ross can provision a new client with a customised look and feel from within the site in no time at all.

When you're working with Moodle all the time it's easy to take some things for granted when designing courses, in my presentation I shared some tips that keep coming up with clients. My slides are below - there are some comments in the notes when you click through to SlideShare.

Rounding off the evening was Ruth Adams, Global Head of Online Professional at the International Baccalaureate Organisation. Ruth shared a wide range of insights from recent research that provided food for thought about how technology is used today and how that use has developed over time. Interesting facts included:

• 1994 was the year: Mid-year 2,738 websites, over 10,000 by the year end.
• 82% of the UK population are internet users.
• Between 2000 and 2010 the number of internet users in Nigeria grew by 21,891.1% (yes the comma is in the correct position!).
• Average time spent online per month in the US by age:
  • 12 - 17 yrs: 22.3 hours
  • 45 - 54 yrs: 39.3 hours

We're looking forward to the next event in November 2011 and will be confirming speakers here soon.

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Our next seminar is on 7th June 2011 in London booked and again we have a varied and interestng array of speakers. As ever there will be plenty of time for networking. Early bird discounts available... Here's the outline from our website.

Ruth Adams, Head of Global Online Professional Development, International Baccalaureate

Educational Technology’s Unfulfilled Promise: Yesterday’s dream, the present reality and one futurist’s vision

One of the first “Apple Distinguished Educators” in 1996 by Apple Computer, one of the “Top Twenty Educators of 1999” by 21st Century Magazine and having served as one of the twelve members of Microsoft Computer’s Education Advisory Committee, Ruth Adams is a recognised pioneer in the integration of technology into the classroom.

Currently Head of Global Online Professional Development for International Baccalaureate, Ruth is a respected leader in the field of online education for the past 15 years. Ruth will engage the audience in a discussion of how technology has both enriched and depleted the quality of our lives and will lead us in exploring possible ways we can impact its future.

Presenting with some of the latest research findings on online learning, Ruth will share what the experts say works best and will have the opportunity to share their own suggestions for improvements going forward.

Ross Midgley, Director PBD

Moodle Minimalism

PBD, a training provider specialising in early years and playwork which makes extensive use of e-portfolios and e-learning. A former geneticist, lorry driver and accountant, Ross - together with his wife Alison - set up a group of children’s nurseries in 2001, which they subsequently sold to a large national provider before starting PBD.

Ross will discuss the reasons for selecting Moodle, the pros and cons, the development journey and the compromises which he made – and those which he resisted - in realising the vision.

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We're looking forward to our next Moodle Group Meeting on Tuesday 16th November 2010 we have an interesting range of speakers who will be sharing their real world experiences of implementing and maintaining Moodle sites.  Full details at:    http://www.howtomoodle.com/moodle-groups

Richard Summers, Pickfords Group Compliance Manager will be explaining how Pickfords made the decision to migrate to a Moodle based platform in 2009, migrating from an existing system. The entire evaluation, development and roll out has been achieved using internal resources and pre-existing materials.

Pickfords is the leading removals firm with a 400 year history. Both personal and business clients rely on high levels of knowledge and customer service to ensure that all goes well at this potentially stressful time. Pickfords are Commercial Mover of the Year 2010.

Lorne Stather, Director of Education at The Gemmological Association of Great Britain will share the issues faced by Gem-A as part of its migration, including choosing a system that could grow and expand to encompass future expectations while ensuring ease of use for both students and tutors, migration costs, database interaction with existing systems and the increased administration requirements of running an on-line system.

Gem-A offered its first on-line course on Moodle in September 2008 and two years later it is still developing and improving its on-line education facilities.

Plus I'll be doing a short session on considerations for managing a busy stand alone Moodle site.

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via tdalton.co.uk

A great review of our Course Creator Reference Manual by Tim Dalton. Thanks Tim!

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via screenpresso.com

I'm a long term advocate of SnagIt for screen shots but if your needs are casual then Screenpresso is likely to have everything you need. If you need a bit more the paid for version is only US $10.

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We had great evening on Tuesday at June's seminar. Will blog about it more when I have a moment but in the mean time here are a few snaps from the evening.

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Spotted this brand new development for themes added to Moodle 2.0 Preview 1.

As you can see in the screenshots the theme has some drop-down menus in the header. The neat thing is that these are already incorporated in the theme and can be edited and extended by the site administrator without access to the server.

Excellent. I'm sure this will be really popular and be massive aid to site navigation.

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We have a situation where we want to allow a facilitator (who is assigned to the the Non-Editing Teacher role for the course) to be able to edit a label on the course page so that they can personalise their welcome message. However we don't want them to be able to have permission to be able to change any other aspect of the course design.

These are the steps:

1. Login as admin or another role that allows role assignment.

2. Create the label with the default welcome message, save and return to course.

3. Re-open the label.

4. Click the "Locally assigned roles" tab.

5. Click Teacher and assign the facilitator to that role.

The facilitator will now see the "Turn editing on" button and when in editng mode they will be able to edit the required label to personalise their welcome message. As the Teacher role was only assigned for the label they won't be able to adapt other resources or activites.

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If you're using Moodle 1.9.x (sorry 1.8. users) tucked away at Bulk User actions (Home -> Administration -> Users -> Accounts -> Bulk user actions).

Filter users as required and add them to the "Selected" column and then from the "With selected users" drop-down select "Add / send message" to bring up the messaging interface.

One thing to watch out for is that the messaging system at Home -> Administration -> Security -> Site policies must be enabled.

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Over the last year or so we've been working with Samaritans, a charity that offers 24-hour confidential emotional support via volunteers to anyone in emotional distress.

Samaritans has developed a series of elearning courses to provide a cost effective and convenient way for volunteers to be trained at home.

Read more in our case study here

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February 23rd has come and gone and so has our first seminar....

We had a really interesting group of speakers and attendees from a broad range of sectors and organisations.

The evening kicked off with a presentation from Gary Mahon, Director at Enovation Solutions (our technical partner) with an overview of extensions and integrations that we can now offer to Moodle users to manage different groups of users across the site into programmes with a host of additional management options such as dependencies, course catalogues, waiting lists and periodic reminders (which is really handy for the compliance type scenarios). Gary also provided an overview of integrations with Alfresco to overcome the long standing issue of sharing files across courses and JasperReports a business intelligence application that enables the ability to generate a vast array of reports from the data already captured across a Moodle site.

My overview of new course based functionality that's coming up in Moodle 2.0 was an interesting one as we'd fully expected that Moodle 2.0 would be in beta by the end of February. Nonetheless there are enough interesting tweaks that should be in the eventual beta and subsequent full release to talk about. However one feels about the programmed release of activities and resources as a method of managing learners' progress through a course, there's no doubt that this is some of the most frequently requested functionality for Moodle. The "conditional activities" code has been developed at the Open University and has been around for quite a while and works very nicely (I can now reveal that there was a bug that caused me a lot of issues when testing my demonstration setup that was only fixed on the day of the seminar. Phew!). What's more this dovetails nicely with the dependencies between courses that Gary covered in his presentation.

Our final speaker of the evening was Squadron Leader Andy Perkins of the Royal Air Force. I first met Andy in September 2008 when we were asked to deliver some training by BT (who host the RAF's Moodle site which links into the Defence Learning Portal) at the Defence Academy, Shrivenham. It's great to hear how Andy and the wider RAF team have embraced the challenges they have in their move to transition to online learning.

Separately from the onsite training that we provided, we were commissioned to develop a course to develop the online facilitation skills of the RAF personnel. Andy recounted the impact the online discussions had in moving the understanding of the issues forward, especially as there had been countless internal meeting and many of the participants were physically located just a few feet from each other or in office next door! We have a case study that expands upon this which will be in the HowToMoodle website soon.

Edit: RAF Case Study now on website.

I can't remember all of the HowToMoodle inspired tips that hade found their way into the RAF's own courses, but one that stuck out was the use of the Moodle wiki to create spaces for reflection. Apparently these are put to good use and are very popular. Great stuff!

So, on the list for the next seminar on 22nd June are to find a more spacious venue and to look into some food for the evening (early feedback is that this would be welcome. June will soon be here!

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Do you ever get the feeling that you're living in a cave? Screenr http://screenr.com/ just came into view in the Articualte Rapid Elearning Blog newsletter.

How long has that been out there?

It's really neat, works on PC and Macs, zero install. Posts to Twitter with other sharing options too.

Had a bit of confusion on publishing (RT wen not tweeted yet) but got there in the end.

http://screenr.com/Zj1

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First of all set up your support page somewhere where it is readily accessible e.g. using the "Compose a web page" resource from the Main Menu block on your Moodle site's front page. Copy the URL of this page, you'll need it later.

Ensure that a welcome email is sent out when the user self enrols in a course. This is the default position, you can check it on your site from the Site Administration block at Courses -> Enrolments -> Common settings. The Send course welcome message setting should be set to “Yes”.

To direct users to the support page we are going to modify the welcome message that users receive by email when they self enrol in a course.

From the Site Administration block visit Language -> Language editing. Check that the language pack that you want to edit is selected in Current language and then click the Edit word or phrases link above it. From the drop-down select moodle.php

Search for /welcometocoursetext/ and change the text in the text box on the right to include a suitable message and the url of the support page. Save changes.

Once a user enrols on a course, they are now sent a customised message that includes a link to the support page.

One thing to bear in mind is that the url may not always appear neatly in the users email. This depends upon the email client used by the recipient.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Here's a tip contributed by our client Karen Shackleford.

Multiple choice questions are probably the most frequently used question type in quizzes. One of the issues is that the answer in the choices presented to the candidate.

Karen suggests using "None of the above" as the final choice in the question and also that quizzes using questions constructed in this way should contain questions where the answer (key) is present and also where it isn't (Sneaky, or what!).

If you use this suggestion make sure the "Shuffle the choices?" checkbox is not ticked when you set up the question.

Thanks, Karen!

If you would like to see your tip here email us on tips@howtomoodle.com

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Not really had chance to blog about this since we put it on the website last week, but have been delighted with the repsonse so far.

Full details over at: http://www.howtomoodle.com/seminars

Places are limited and there's an early bird discount.

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Here's a simple way to generate a complete template for your bulk user CSV file.

In a 1.9 series Moodle site, log in as an administrator and find the following location on the site administration menu:

Users > Accounts > Bulk user actions.

Select a user in the "Available" column (any account will do) and click the "Add to selection" button. With this user in the "Selected" column move down the page to the "With selected users..." drop-down, select "Download" and click the "Go" button.

Next click the "Download in text format" link and save the CSV file generated.

You now have a complete CSV file ready for populating with user details (you'll still need need to add a "password" column, and don't forget to remove the details of the user you selected earlier to generate the file).

If you've added bespoke User Profile fields to your site these are also included with the correct field names.

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Just a quick "thanks" for everyone who's been in touch with feedback about the tips on this blog. The Moodle Tips item was the most clicked item on our recent email newsletter! www.howtomoodle.com/newsletter

If you have any tips you'd like to see here email me at tips@howtomoodle.com

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Following on from my recent post on this I've been asked about information that appears in users' profiles that's not in the list on the User policies page.

The chances are that this is a bespoke field set up with User profile fields. (Login in as an administrator - Site administration > Users > Accounts > User profile fields.

Open the field for editing and change the "Who is this field visible to?" to suit your needs.

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When participants with "student" level access view each others user profiles they see most of the information entered. As this could include a
range of contact, address and access information there may be concerns about privacy and compliance with data protection legislation.

The good news if you're concerned about this is that the site administrator can configure the site so that some of the relevant fields are hidden from other students (the course facilitators will still see the information when they view the user's profile).

Navigate to the following setting from the Site Administration block: Users > Permissions > User policies: Hide user fields, click the required fields and save.

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