Agenda and issues discussed at the latest meeting of the group

1. Moodle User Group
Phil Hardcastle
Go to View > Header & Footer to edit
www.rsc-em.ac.uk November 15, 2012 | slide 1
RSCs – Stimulating and supporting innovation in learning

2. Agenda
 9:30 – 10:0 Coffee
 10:00 – 10:15 Welcome
 10:15 – 11:00 Moodle 2.3 and Private Files
 11:00 – 11:20 Coffee
 11:20 – 12:00 The Lesson Module in 2.2
 12:00 – 12:30 Catch up - what have you
been doing?
 12:30 Lunch
November 15, 2012 | slide 2

3. Moodle 2.3
 New features:
– Improvement to file systems
• Drag and drop, file picker
improvement, icons, thumbnails, alias/shortcuts
– Repository improvements
• Equella supported
– Course pages
• Courses can show sections on individual pages
• AJAX editing cleaned up
• Direct editing of course element names
– Assignment, Book, Quiz, SCORM and Wkshop updated.
http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_2.3_release_notes
November 15, 2012 | slide 3

4. Private Files
 New to Moodle 2.x
 Allows personal storage of files – could be for use
in courses, but not necessarily so - learners could
store files on the system also
 Issues:
– Control of amount of files stored on the system
– Moodle becomes its own repository
 Potential benefits – one file can be stored and
linked to. Changes to this file will be replicated
elsewhere (2.3)
November 15, 2012 | slide 4

5. Administration of Private Files
 The size limit for each user's private files area is
set by a site administrator in Settings > Site
administration > Security > Site policies.
 If a file is uploaded into your private files area, it is
possible when using it elsewhere on Moodle to
select it as an alias/shortcut. This means that if
you update the file in your private files area, it will
automatically update elsewhere on Moodle.
 Issues regarding a transient tutor population –
their/other courses may depend on private files.
November 15, 2012 | slide 5

6. Structured Lesson
 The Lesson activity
– Allows content – text, pictures or video, to be mixed with
questions and branching.
– Needs planning before and testing afterwards
 Could be used
– as a revision aid for a particular topic
– as an introduction to a topic
– to recap material already covered in a session
 Takes time to plan and set up
– Only invest time and energy in a Lesson activity when it
is going to be re-used
November 15, 2012 | slide 6

7. Lesson Module
 Demo from:
– http://moodle.rsc-em.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=124
November 15, 2012 | slide 7

8. LTI
Learning Tools Interoperability
 The future for Moodle?
– Moodle as a bridge to
wider web tools
– Don’t create more tools
– Simplify and add
external tools as
needed
November 15, 2012 | slide 8

9. Moodle 2.2 supports LTI v1.1
 LTI is a standard way to securely and
seamlessly integrate an external learning
application with a VLE
 A user logged into Moodle can connect
to, say, an external wiki or blog and be
automatically authorised
 The blog/wiki and account can automatically be
provisioned
 There is a plugin for Moodle 1.9+:
basiclti4moodle
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10. How does this work?
 LTI is simple to use, it is just an activity in a
course. As a teacher, turn on editing and add an
“External Tool”
 Three items are required
– Launch URL
– Consumer key
– Consumer secret
The above are supplied by the learning tool provider
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11. Add External Tool
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12. Privacy
 LTI can send user’s role (e.g. student or
teacher) and so remote tool can use this
information, e.g. different privileges in
WordPress
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13. Some LTI enabled Tools
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14. Benefits
 Benefits for learners and teachers:
– seamless integration of VLE and external products
– empowerment of teachers
 Benefit for administrators and developers:
– administrative efficiencies
– single integration will support any VLE
 Scale Benefits
 LTI Demo with Noteflight:
– http://moodle.rsc-em.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=124
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15. Anchors
Returning in 2.4?
 Alternatives for avoiding the long scroll to a topic:
– Collapsed topics: It allows students to collapse or
expand the topics’ contents so that all the list of topics
can be easily identified.
– Tab course format: This is probably not good if you have
15 topics, as it creates a tab for each topic.
– Grid format – but has problems – fouls up the backup
system
– You might consider creating your own links using
hyperlinks and adding the section number by adding
"#section-3" or "#section-16" etc in the URL, e.g.
yourmoodle.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=24#section-3
November 15, 2012 | slide 15

16. What’s been happening?
 What have you been doing over the summer?
November 15, 2012 | slide 16

17. Next Term
 Next Meeting: Wed. March 6th
 Venue
 Topic suggestions: Linking to Google Docs
 phil.hardcastle@rsc-em.ac.uk
 http://moodle.rsc-em.ac.uk
November 15, 2012 | slide 17