Jorum Workshop

Today I observed a workshop for introducing Jorum, a little bit of CourseGenie and some other repository resources. The idea of a learning object and its potential were discussed first. There were some interesting views. Learning objects were discussed as reusable learning objects (LOs) which I found strange as reusability is, for me, an inherent feature of learning objects. The idea of conforming to a standard was also perceived as being important. One participant had the practical perspective, that they, LOs, enabled last years course materials be used in this years courses.

After a demo of using Jorum participants were asked to search for some objects that related to their needs. The majority seamed to manage this ok. On of the LOs discovered was so well presented that it covered about 60% of the course material required, not bad going. Concerns about Jorum, included: evaluating the quality of a LO and copyright and restricted use.

 

There were some concerns as to whether these repositories are accessible by students and how that would impact on fairness and students accessing material out of sync of the intended course format. This is an interesting question. I feel that LOs are a positive resource for students as well as teachers. If the idea of learning/teaching styles is to be believed, it is very difficult as a teacher to adapt your style to appeal to all students. Students who are having difficulty with understanding a teaching style should seek alternative sources. Its no different to going and finding a none course text book to explain a concept you didn’t understand in the lecture. Alternatively LOs give teachers the opportunity to give alternative content presentation without the extra work.

 

There were some positive responses to CourseGenie as it made section up a document really easy. Presenting content as clickable web pages rather than a word doc was felt to be a more student orientated method. A questionnaire has been placed online and some of the participants have agreed to complete this later.

 

This week … reviewing repositories

This week I have been mostly been … reviewing repositories. Three of the repository demos were held this week; unfortunately I missed one of them. Of the three that I have thus far attended I found the search facilities associated with them their weakest point. Demos have been focused on document upload and site customisation. Each had its own unique features, from social bookmarking to embedding the search interface in other web based applications. Currently in the process of writing a report on each, for those of you who have been unable to attend. This should be our in the next week or so. Two more demos will be presented in the coming week. 

 

The second eCat workshop was also held this week, with a strong turn out. Meg indicated that it had gone well. I attend the end of the session to promote the Evaluation Questionnaire which went live on Thursday. So far one participant has completed this. The next workshop is on February 19th, 9.00am – 10.30am, GJ110. For those of you who experienced eCat or using search facilities (any) please feel free to complete those parts of the questionnaire. Please enter the code SPM01 (for streamline project members) so I can identify you from other participants. Thanks. 

 

The Emerge project meeting is happening at the end of this coming week. Janet and I are put together a poster for promoting the Streamline project. In the coming week I will be focused on completing the repository evaluations.

Moodle continued…

Just back from the Christmas break this week, so have been mainly catching up on emails, and reviewing current position of everything. The Moodle look and feel was completed before Christmas now we need to finish off some of the functionality. The search facilities need to be enhanced, backed by user input. This will be one of my main foci in the next couple of months.

It occurred to me that while we are doing this for our own repository, it might be possible, with a little more effort, to make this an official Moodle plug-in. I think this has been mentioned before. Some of the functionality needs to be made configurable by site managers, and some help documentation needs to be put together. The rest of the work needs to be done for our own use, so there’s not much needed to make this a releasable product. Since part of our brief is personal resource management this might fit well. As far as I can find there is only one other repository based plug-in for Moodle. This links Moodle to a second server-based application know as Door. More details are available in the Moodle Review report. Feedback on this would be welcome.

I have also been working on a survey on learning objects and metadata for the participants of Meg’s eCat workshops, due to start on Tuesday 15th. Finally I have been preparing a set of questions/criteria to evaluate the six repository demos that are taking place as part of the Leeds Met JISC Repository startup project over the next week or so. The first one was held yesterday via audio conference it was very interesting. I will be reporting on each of the demos and will add documents here as they are ready.

eCat Workshops

eCat workshops have been organised for Leeds Metropolitan University staff on the following dates:

• Tuesday 15 January 2008

• Tuesday 19 February 2008

• Tuesday 13 May 2008

Time: 9.00am – 10.30am.

Venue: Headingley Campus , James Graham Building room 110. 

See this document for more details. 

Booking forms available here.