What to See in Cambridge (UK) in July

Any suggestions as to what to do in Cambridge (UK) in July? I have visited twice before by bus and bicycle.

I will be at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, 21 to 26 July 2015, to present a paper at the 10th International Conference on Computer Science and Education (ICCSE 2015). Normally when speaking at a conference I also give a free public talk for government, professionals and academics, hosted by a local body. Anyone willing to host a talk please let me know. On a previous visit I talked at the Cambridge Computer Lab.

The paper for the conference (prepared with Hao Wu), is "Time-shifted Learning: Merging Synchronous and Asynchronous Techniques for E-Learning":

E-learning techniques are usually classified into two broad categories: synchronous and synchronous. The core question of this research is how to combine synchronous and asynchronous techniques in e-learning software, so it can have a stronger connection with constructivist education. The benefits and drawbacks of existing e-learning software is looked at broadly. Three popular e-learning packages used at the Australian National University are investigated: Adobe Connect (synchronous), Moodle and edX (asynchronous). The results of a brief survey of edX students is reported. Using the results of this work a team of students at the ANU Research School of Computer Science is now implementing enhanced asynchronous software to be plugged into Moodle and other asynchronous e-learning packages.

Worthington, T. & Wu, H. (2015, July). Time-shifted Learning: Merging Synchronous and Asynchronous Techniques for E-Learning. In Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 20152 10th International Conference on (accepted paper). Preprint: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/13554

ps: Any suggestions on where to stop and speak on the way from Australia to Europe would also be welcome. For example, in 2008 I stopped off in Kuala Lumpur and filled in for a missing speaker at the 2008 World Congress of Information Technology.

Putting an e-Learning Course on Auto-pilot

As I will be overseas at a conference and perhaps unable to access the Internet for some days, I had to consider how to look after the students in my on-line ICT Sustainability course. Obviously, there is a second lecturer, as with any course, to step in. But I took the opportunity to see how much of the course routine could be automated. This also requires dealing with the confronting fact that much of what a teacher does the students do not notice or value.

1. De-clutter the course page:  On-line courses can suffer from confusing content. Moodle in particular has by default one long web page, which can result in all the important information disappearing off the bottom of the screen. I arranged the course page with future modules hidden until the week they are presented. Each week I would manually reveal them. But even so I realized I had a paragraph of summary text for each module which took up space, but was not really needed. So I put this text in the HTML "TITLE" tag of the module name. This way the description will popup when the student puts their pointer over the title. Also I put a hypertext link on the title to the relevant section of the course e-book, for student who wants to read ahead. This way students can prepare for later sections of the course, but are not confronted with a lot of intimidating looking material they do not need to worry about yet.
2. Set dates on the weekly content, so it will be revealed automatically each week: Rather than manually reveal the content of the module each week, I used the feature of Moodle which allows this to be hidden until a set date. Unfortunally Moodle does not seem to have a way to do this by default. If using a weekly course format, it would seem logical to have a way to hide each week's content until that week starts. But instead I had to set a date on each item of content for the week. This does allow for fine tuning, as I actually reveal the new week's work on Saturday, although the course weeks officially starts on the Monday (some students students like to get a head start working on the weekend).
   
3. Set dates for assignment and survey reminders: Normally I would post a reminder a few weeks before assignments are due and a stronger one in the final week. I was able to use the same hide feature to automate these as well.  Also I included a reminder to do fill in the student feedback survey in the final week. One problem is that these reminders only appear on the web page. There does not seem to be any easy way to have them sent as notifications to students (such as by email).

These may sound like obvious and easy steps to take. But getting automated reveals to work is error prone. It could be very confusing for students if the forum needed to post their work does not appear at the right time, or the notes to help them disappear.

It would be interesting to take this automated approach further. As an example, the weekly marks for student forum postings could be changed from tutor to student peer assessment. This just requires a simple change in the Moodle settings. The education research literature shows that peer assessment is at least as good as tutor assessment. But would require providing the students with more guidelines on how to peer assess.

It may hurt my pride as an educator, I suspect that student's learning will not suffer from such automation. Feedback for common problems (such as forgetting to contribute to weekly forums) could be automated and also perhaps an automatic  "congratulations" to students getting top marks. While education forums are full of discussion of MOOCs with video lectures and highly sophisticated AI feedback, I suspect it is these simple techniques which will make the difference.

On the subject of Massive Open On-line Courses, after giving my "MOOCs with Books" talk at CPUG last night, I popped into the computer student club room next to the famous room N101 at the ANU Research School of Computer Science. Several of the students mentioned how they were taking MOOCs, as part of their ANU degree. There seem to be some informal arrangements where lecturers agree students can do a MOOC instead of part of the ANU course. Obviously the student would still have to provide evidence of their learning at the end of the course, as most MOOCs have no formal assessment. But this shows the students are leading the way with new educational techniques, and the staff have much to learn from them.

MOOCs with Books: Syncronisation of Large Scale Asynchronous e-Learning

This is to invite corrections and suggestions for my presentation "MOOCs with Books: Syncronisation of Large Scale Asynchronous e-Learning" for the 8th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE 2013) in Colombo in late April (web slides also available). The basic idea is that use of "real time" delivery of e-learning places an unnecessary burden on the Learning Management System (LMS) and networks used and is also not good for the students. Most supposedly "synchronous" education, on-line and in the classroom, is not really "real time". Relaxing the restrictions this imposes on the system will allow millions of students to be accommodated and also provide better learning. An easy way to explain this is with the example of an eBook, which the student can download and read when they want, attempt the exercises in the book and check their answers. It is only after doing their "homework" that the student needs to interact with the LMS, their fellow students and perhaps a teacher. Rather than build complete new Learning Management Systems for MOOCs, packages such as Moodle, can be upgraded to handle the load, using existing technology, such as SCORM and HTML5.

 This started as a scholarly paper on "Synchronizing Asynchronous Learning". But since submitting the paper last year, I have given a few presentations on how to have large on-line courses scale (both in terms of software and pedagogy), under the title "MOOCs with Books", so I added this to the conference presentation as a postscript. If anyone is interested I can give a practice run of the talk in Canberra, Sydney or Singapore.

Description: On-line learning uses the terms synchronous and asynchronous to describe tools and learning activities. This research looks into the origins of these terms, their use today and asks if these are the correct terms to use and if the use of these terms has held up the development of better tools and techniques. It is proposed that the use of syncronisation of asynchronous learning is particularly applicable to address issues with large scale e-learning, such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
Keywords: Asynchronous Learning; Synchronous Learning; Electronic Learning; Web Conference; Videoconferencing; Pedagogy; Massive Open Online Courses, MOOC.
Please cite as:

Worthington, T. (2013). Synchronizing Asynchronous Learning: Combining Synchronous and Asynchronous Techniques. In Proceedings of 2013 8th International Conference on Computer Science & Education (ICCSE), 26 Apr - 28 Apr 2013 , Sri Lanka.
Preprint available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/9556

Software for MOOCs

After looking at the technology and techniques used for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), it would be useful to see if these could be applied to the ordinary e-learning courses I run and in turn if those courses could be adapted to MOOCs. My courses are already on-line and open (in the sense that anyone can download the content. They are not "Massive" in that they are designed to have a human tutor interact with the students, which is not feasible with hundreds of thousands of students (especially were the students are not paying for the course and thus there are not funds to pay for the tutor). Also it is not clear if the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) will support large numbers of students (especially where the students are no paying for the course and so there are not funds for a large server).

Course Releases

The issue of supporting large numbers of students on a server should be able to be dealt with by using project management techniques applied in software development. Software is carefully planned, tested and released in versions: you do not simply make changes and hope for the best. Similarly courses which have large number of students can't be developed in an ad-hoc way. A change in a course will effect hundreds of thousands of students and so needs to be carefully tested before release. This then allows the LMS to be more efficient. An LMS, such as Moodle, is designed on the assumption that the tutor may make a change to a course at any time and that change has to be instantly reflected in the live system. Also it is assumed the student will be supplied with the latest live content interactively.

An LMS could instead use a "release" approach, where changes are made in a test environment and then "released". The student would be advised of the new release and may have to download a new module (or their computer will do that automatically). This way the student does not need to interact continuously with the LMS, instead they work on a downloaded module and upload their contribution. This would greatly lessen the computing requirements for the LMS server. It would also reduce the technical database requirements, as the LMS just as to make sure the student gets the module and the LMS uploads the students input as one chunk of data.

Also some of the security restrictions of the LMS could be relaxed. As the course content is "open" there is less need to be able to hide it from the student. For educational purposes you might still only show a little at a time, but this need not be via a highly secure system. As an example, I set Moodle to show students the course material a week at a time, so as not to overload them. But the entire course content is also available in an e-book, so the students can read ahead if they want.

As a thought exercise, it would be interesting to see what Moodle (or any LMS) would look like if modified for this approach.

Less Reliance on Video: Text First

Most MOOCs seem to be heavily reliant on delivery of content through recorded video. This is understandable as it mimics conventional classroom lectures. However, the video requires large volumes of data to be streamed from a server and may overload the system.

An alternative I propose is "Text First": that is a text based document (with still images) in a format such as a web page or e-Book (preferably not PDF and not Flash) is used to provide the educational content. This then has optional video. The student should be able to undertake the entire course without downloading any video.

However, research indicates that video does not improve students results. The students may like the video, but it does not improve their learning. In addition some students can't see the video, due to limited bandwidth or disability. The students who can't see the video require it in a different form (Australian disability law and that of some other countries require this). Some people can't hear the sound and for which closed captions can be provided. However, if the closed captions and text alternatives are embedded in the video, this may still block access.

Interactive Lessons

The most common way for MOOCs to provide interactivity is with short quizzes. These have been shown to greatly improve learning, when interspersed with the content. Moodle has a "Lesson Module" which allows content to be presented to the student, interspersed with short quizzes. However, there is no need to have the quizes delivered live from the LMS, if they are used for formative purposes (that is help the student with their learning during the course), rather than summative assessment (that is test the student at the end). The quiz content can be downloaded to the student's computer, either on its own, or as part of a lesson module. Any results which need to be recorded can then be uploaded.

It should be noted that LMS, such as Moodle, are not designed for creating course content, but for controlling its delivery to the student (along with other interaction). There are packaged formats which can be used, such as IMS Content Packages (an education specific form of eBook) and SCORM Packages (which can include quizzes as well as course content). Moodle (and other LMS) have provision for installing IMS Content Packages and SCORM, then delivering it to the student interactively. However, this will then place a load on the LMS and so it might be better to have a standalone IMS and SCORM program on the student's computer.

Moodle can create some packaged content for export, in a limited way. As an example, Moodle Book modules can be exported as IMS Content Packages. However, rather than use the Moodle Lesson Module, more specialized tools may be needed for Creating SCORM Content.

One problem is that most SCORM delivery software is designed to be part of a centralized LMS such as Moodle. While a SCORM "reader" would not be much more complex to develop than an e-Book reader (like the eBook ePub format, SCORM uses zipped folders of HTML). However, most SCROM software is written for closed for-fee education with centralized administration and student tracking, so an open down-loadable reader would not be welcome.

An alternative to a standalone SCORM reader, would be to convert the SCORM package into HTML, which could then be downloaded. A careful selection of HTML5 features should allow for content which can be downloaded and used off-line in the web browser and with the student's results of the quiz then uploaded next time they are on-line. This could be made compatible with desktop computers, tablets and smart phones, without the need for any extra "App" or custom software, just the standard web browser.

As the course content is open and the quiz results are for formative purposes a high level of security is not needed off-line course reader. HTML5 has built in features for caching content off-line and storing data locally. The results of a quiz will take very little storage and only the simplest form off-line storage will be needed. The course content can be retained as native HTML. Content in other formats, such as PDF or Powerpoint can be retained in their original format and the default viewer used, thus avoiding complex conversions which are usually used with course creation systems.

Online Distance Education for the Mature Student

I just attended a USQ focus group to get the views of students on technology used by the university (I was a USQ education student for two semesters). The focus group was conducted online via Blackboard Collaborate and worked well. It appears that I am a typical mature student who does not want mobile apps, twitter or Facebook, just ordinary old fashioned Moodle, email, lecture recordings and video conferences. ePortfolios appear to be popular and MOOCs may be appealing as a supplement to normal courses. I urged USQ to keep producing well designed online courses, delivered by well trained staff and not get distracted by e-fads.

Future of Moodle from Moodle Founder

Greetings from the Inspire Centre at University of Canberra where Martin Dougiamas, Moodle Founder is speaking at the MoodlePosium 2012. Martin started by attributing Moodle's success to it being free, flexible, personal and open. He suggested that 20% of the features were used by 80% of the people and we don't know about the learning outcomes from Moodle.

Martin suggested that Moodle was an attempt to re-engineering education, with 26 people at Moodle HQ. They look at the Moodle forums, bug tracker, commercial partners, conferences and social media. The first Moodle Research Conference was in Heraklion, Crete, Greece in 2012. The idea is to address education issues and what e-learning can do.

Moodel is made up of a core, Mods, and plugins. There are then interfaces to other software, preferably using standards. Moodle 2.4 will concentrate on performance, with a Moodle Universal Cache (MUC). There will be Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) for icons (in theory this is a good idea, but I suggest in practice it will cause problems). Course formats will be redesigned to allow developers to modify the course look (by default they will look the same as before). Plugins will be upgradable via a web interface. Netspot has contributed new assignment features, such as groups and blind marking. The calandar can import iCal. Enrolment can synchronise cohorts to groups, so you can easily manage groups of students. The editor will have configurable buttons and plugins.

Martin suggested that timely feedback is essential to education.He suggests the feedback loop can be tighter by using better analytics and reporting. He emphasises this was not about automating the teacher, but giving them better tools to identify where students need help.

Martin described work for Moodle 2.5 and 2.6 with "Outcomes", which can be used for skills assessment, as is done in vocational education.  With this approach, the student needs to demonstrate they can meet each individual requirement, not just get an aggregate mark which passes the course. However, This "reductionist" approach is not as well regarded in higher education.

Moodle HQ is having another attempt at a Mobile App for Moodle. The previous attempt was an iPhone app which was then adapted for Android. The new approach uses HTML5 and JavaScript. This is a better approach, but I still doubt the value of having a separate Moodle application for mobile devices. It would be better to just have one interface which adapts for mobile devices. However, if the Mobile App works well it could be sued in place of the standard Moodle interface. It may also be a good way for educational institutions to provide a mobile web interface, rather than products such as Blackboard Mobile.

An area where I suggest Moodle needs to be improved is support for real time ("synchronous" in educational terms) and near real time learning. This would address Martin's wish for timely feedback. At present Moodle works in a store and forward mode (asynchronous). Where synchronous learning is required a separate software product is used, As a result the features of Moodle are not available for the synchronous session and many of the same Moodle features have to be duplicated in the other software. Making Moodle real time would be difficult, so I suggest making it near real time.

ps: The mix of features creates a technical issue for massively online open courses (MOOCs). The overhead of the LMS can cause problems with large numbers of users.I suggest this could be improved with some computer science techniques such as compiler optimisation and run time optimisation. With this the course materials would be automatically examined to see what features of the LMS software were actually going to be used and then those features not used would be left out. This would make the software run better.

Online Research Supervision using Moodle

These are some notes for an unconference session at  MoodlePosium 2012 on the topic "Online Research Supervision".

Moodle can be used for well structured course-work, but can it be used for supervising more fluid student projects and postgraduate research?

Tom Worthington has designed and run award winning on-line courses. He is now looking at how to apply this experience to supervising university student projects and postgraduate higher degrees, as a way to promote social inclusion.

A year ago I set out to look at "Learning On-line Tertiary Teaching for Research-Led Education" (August 20, 2011).

Some thoughts:

1. Teach all degree students to communicate, mentor and lead (ie: teach them to teach).
2. Blend vocational, higher education coursework and research, using online tools (Moodle and e-Portfolios).

See: "On-line Professional Education For Australian Research-Intensive Universities in the Asian Century".

Fifteen years of online education

Greetings from MoodlePosium 2012 in Canberra, where Dr. Shirley Reushle, Associate Director of the Australian Digital Futures Institute  is talking on fifteen years of online education at USQ. She made the point that students like active learning and interaction with other students, which is possible online.

Dr. Reushle broke out of the usual Powerpoint mode of conference presentations by running a live feedback session using Polleverywhere.  She asked the question "How is interacting and collaborating online different to collaborating in a face-to-face situation?" and invited the audience to respond by SMS or web. This worked remarkably well.She then showed a number of videos from here students discussing the topic, which was less useful.

Dr. Reushle was describing a very personal version of online education, which I have had the benefit of. However, my worry is that a more mechanical version of online education, designed to reduce costs and teach "facts". Australian educators may produce excellent online courses, only to find they are replaced by MOOCs from overseas, simply because these are cheaper.

There is a tendency to have an idealistic view of new communications technology changing education. Beat Generation authors Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs expressed a view on instructional technology in Chapter 7 of their 1945 novel "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks". One of the characters expresses the view that recordings of university lectures will be broadcast by radio 24 hours a day, allowing access for anyone. The narrator of the story expresses skepticism over this idea. That skepticism was well founded.

Australian National University Going Mobile

Greetings from MoodlePosium 2012 at the the University of Canberra where about 200 educators from the tertiary sector are looking at e-learning. The theme of this year's conference is how to how to enhance the use of the Moodle learning management system. The key speaker is, of course, Martin Dougiamas, Moodle Founder and Lead Developer, Moodle HQ.

As first speaker, Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at ANU announced that ANU will be introducing Blackboard Mobile, with applications designed for accessibility and well as use on mobile devices. Also Equella and Turnitin will be introduced. Also BlackBoard Collaborate is being evaluated.

I will be demonstrating my ANU on-line green ICT course materials which are designed for accessible and mobile use at 11:50am in "A Green Computing Professional Education Course Online with Moodle" (being just back from seeing how to do this in Indonesia).

Professor Nick Klomp, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education), University of Canberra, then discussed the use of the Mahara e-Portfolio tool for students to plan what they wanted to achieve at university. He proposed working jointly with other universities to enhance the Mahara software, which is open source, to improve it use for universities. It happens I will be leading a discussion of this topic at at 4:20pm:

Moodle can be used for well structured course-work, but can it be used for supervising more fluid student projects and postgraduate research?

Tom Worthington has designed and run award winning on-line courses. He is now looking at how to apply this experience to supervising university student projects and postgraduate higher degrees, as a way to promote social inclusion. See: "On-line Professional Education For Australian Research-Intensive Universities in the Asian Century".

ps: The audience is made up mostly of staff from University of Canberra, ANU, CIT and USQ. For the last year I have been a student of ANU, USQ and CIT, as well as attending seminars at University of Canberra. So I feel very much at home.

MoodlePosium 2012 Canberra with Moodle Founder

The University of Canberra is hosting MoodlePosium 2012, 22 to 23 November 2012 in Canberra. The key speaker is, of course, Martin Dougiamas, Moodle Founder and Lead Developer, Moodle HQ. I will be leading an open discussion on "Online Research Supervision" on the first day. On the second day I will give a short talk on "Green Computing Professional Education Course Online", being just back from seeing how to do this in Indonesia.

Totara Corporate Version of Moodle Learning Management System

Totara offer an interesting commercial open source distribution of the popular Moodle Learning Management System, tailored for corporate training. Moodle was originally developed for universities and so does not have the compliance features needed for vocational and corporate education. Normally the organization installing Moodle has to add extra packages and customizations (there are specialist companies which do this, such as NetSpot and BrightCookie).

Totara appear to have packaged up their customizations and are selling these bundled with Moodle (note that Totara is commercial open source, that is when you buy it you get to see the code, but it is not free). It is not clear how much of Totara is really a unique product and how much is the same open source add-ons which are normally used with Moodle.

e-Networking the National VET E-learning Strategy

The Canberra Institute of Technology hosted a National VET E-learning Strategy "e-Networking Night" at their Reid campus on 14 June 2012.

Jyothi Jayaram, ACT toolbox champion, provided an introduction to the National VET E-learning Strategy.

The National VET E-learning Strategy is an excellent federal, state and territory initiative to improve vocational e-learning. However, in my view, the terminology used for the "strategy" is unnecessarily confusing, with most potential users of it blocked from access because they are unable to understand the terminology used.

Next was Annie Gregg and Graeme Steadman on "Academy of Real Estate: Dos and Don'ts, Challenges, Support and Lessons Learnt in implementing e-learning".

They took a unit of competency "Appraise Property" and worked with "All Homes" to design a Moodle based course. They pointed out that there is more to e-Learning that just putting a lot of resources into a learning management system. Also they suggested checking that you check your IT people are providing the same version of the LMS you are planning to use (many educational institutions have got around this issue by outsourcing the LMS to a specialist company). Also it was suggested to spend time on the structure around the LMS to help the students. The point was made that with vocational courses, the students are very focused on getting in and getting their course done so they can keep their job, or get a better one. A SCORM package was used (using Microsoft Learning Content Development System (LCDS) to convert Microsoft Word documents to SCORM), which limited the computer platforms it could be delivered for.

It seemed to me that a lot of the issues are not about preparing a course for e-learning, but about setting up an institution to use it. Also integrating the assessment into the course content can help the student learn but greatly increases the complexity of course development and maintenance. A less integrated approach might be acceptable to the students if the same set of tools is used for several courses. It also occurs to me that such packages would have potential for delivering training in other countries, particularly China and India.

Nina Allen talked about CIT teacher examples of using some of the web2.0 tools in online learning:

CIT uses the Moodle LMS, Equella repository and Wimba virtual classroom. Nina pointed out that a photo of the tutor was useful for introducing them the students. They provide recordings of the face-to-face classes with Wimba. The Powerpoint slides are also provided online. Interestingly a glossary of the main terms is provided in the Moodle page (I would have put this in the notes so it does not clutter the front page, but Nina argued that this saves the students asking). Mobile applications can be sued by the students with their smart phones wherever they happen to be. Nina pointed out that training videos of scientists in white coats are not that interesting to younger students, whereas examples from pop culture (such as the Big Bang Theory TV show segment on operant conditioning with chocolates).

CIT pedagogical examples in e-learning by Margaret Robson:

Margaret teaching vocational teaching at CIT. She suggested that pictures liven up the e-leaning content and also using images in quizzes. Students can be asked to research a topic and contribute their results back to the class.

Margaret referred to the "flipped classroom" (or flipped teaching), where the lessons are online and worked through by the students at home and then classroom time is used for practical exercises.

Margaret also mentioned Badge Stack, which awards badges to students for small learning tasks (seems to be like virtual elephant stamps).

Augmented reality: what is it and how can we use it in education - Helen Lynch and Jyothi Jayaram

Helen talked about an augmented reality camp at the UoC Inspire centre (the centre was created to teach technology enhanced learning to Canberra school teachers and seems to be having a considerable impact). The example of AR shown uses embedded invisible codes in images (Steganography), which can be scanned with a mobile phone or tablet computer, which then access online material. Helen demonstrated creating a code using layar.com.

This may be of some use where printed brochures are used. But to me this looks like a gimmick with limited usefulness. The photographs have to be accompanied by a caption explaining that there is a hidden code, so a visible code may as well be used. Also care should be taken in transporting documents containing hidden codes across an international border, as you may be arrested for spying.

Strategy developed and other free resources and how and where to find them - Jyothi Jayaram

There was not time to discuss resources, but there is a list at: https://actnationalvetelearning.wikispaces.com/

CIT Leading the Way with e-Learning in Canberra

This was an excellent afternoon of learning about e-learning. In between making these notes live at the event, I found myself writing a proposal to ANU to implement a repository like CIT's and to implemented flipped teaching for ICT students. This reminded me of events I attended inn Canberra in the mid 1990's about use of a technology called "The Internet" where it was not so much the details which were important, but the sense that this was something of practical value which could be quickly implemented.

Word Processing an eBook

Previously I tried creating an ePub eBook from a word Processing document using LuLu's new conversion utility. There were a few problems with this as I had used exactly the same word processing file I had used to create the paperback book. So I took a copy of the paper-book and started editing it to make the eBook version.

The image I had on the title page did not show up on the eBook. I had an image in the background on the page, but you can only have simple in-line images in ePub. So I changed the image to in-line. At the same time I sued a lower resolution version fot he image, as the eBook readers have much lower resolution than a printed page. Using the high resoolution imaqge just wasted space (this one image took as much file space as all the text of the book).

The Lulu software generates a table of contents for the book, so the one I ha for the printed version was redundant (and refereed to no-existent page numbers as eBooks don't have pages. So I dented the table of contents.

I found if I set the WP document to B6 size (4.92 x 6.93 inches), with margins of 0.43 inches and text at 12 point, the WP document looked about the same as the resulting eBook. The page sizes in the word processing document are ignored by the conversion process, as eBooks do not have fixed size pages, but it helps to have the document you are working on look roughly like the final result will be.

Ebook readers do not do a good job of fully justified text, so I changed the format to left justified and the Lulu converter does not support hyphenation, so I made the text left justified.

The converter turns each level 2 heading into a new chapter, whereas my book had heading 1 for chapters. I thought this was a side effect of conversion of the content from the Moodle Learning Management System. But I found I had incorrectly entered the headings in Moodle. So I went back and manually changed all the level 1 headings to level 2, level 2 to level 3 and so on.

The copyright page of the book had run on under the title page, as the copyright page has no heading (and the conversion process ignores page breaks, eBooks having no fixed pages). It was not clear what to do with the copyright page. In theory this information is contained in a separate file in the eBook, but the reader may never think to look there. So I created what is in effect the first chapter of the book called "About the Book" and put the copyright information there.

With all that done the eBook looks reasonable. But eBooks using the current ePub standard (and the Kindle format using by Amazon), look like very dull web pages, without advanced formatting. In that way they mimic black and white paperback books, but it would be difficult to produce something like a children's story book this way. The new version of ePub based on HTML 5 may fix this, but backward compatibility with low cost eBook readers will be a problem.

Giving an on-line conferecne presentation with web slides

I just gave a one hour presentation on "How to Create an International Graduate Level Course Using Moodle" to "Moodlemoot Virtual Conference" (MMVC11) via video conference. The video and audio worked fine, but I was not able to get the screen share function to work. So instead I pasted the web address for each slide to the text chat window. As with most such text chat systems, it turns URLs into links, so the participants just needed to click to see the slide. This might be all that is needed in many cases. It has advantages over a screen share, as a smaller amount of data is transmitted. Also it has security advantage, as the participant has to have access to the web page to see it. If an unauthorised person gets into the video conferecne they will still not be able to see the slides.

How to Create an International Graduate Level Course Using Moodle

I will be speaking on How to Create an International Graduate Level Course Using Moodle at the MoodleMoot Virtual Conference (MMVC11), 10am 18 August 2011 Canberra time (18 August 2011 at 00:00:00 UTC).

This presentation discusses how Moodle was used to deliver an online postgraduate course around the world, on the topic of sustainable information technology. This includes the use of less than broadband Internet links, tablet computers, smart phones and e-book devices.

Follow-me Sync-surfing For Online Push Web Conferences

On further consideration the feature I would like most in a Real Time Learning Management System is Co-browsing, with Push web pages implementing Follow-me / Sync-surfing. This is what the Elluminate product calls "Web Tours". The person giving a presentation brings up a web page on their screen and this web address is sent to all participants and the web page displayed on their screen automatically.

Real Time Learning Management System

Recently I attended a series of on-line web conferences during the day about e-learning by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework and weekly web conferences with the staff of ACS Education. Both series used the Elluminate Live product.

While described as "Web conferencing", such video conference systems do not actually use a web browser, except to to launch the application, which consists of Java software downloaded via the Internet. It is remarkable that such web conferencing works as well as it does, even on a slow wireless mobile Internet connection (set the software to use no more than 28.8 kbps and one low resolution video frame per second). However, such systems have not advanced much in terms of functionality over video conference systems of ten years ago.

Apart from audio and video, the systems offer a text chat window, a white-board, application sharing and some polling functions. A major limitation with such systems is that native documents cannot be shared. That is when a power-point slide or a word processing document is shown to the group, they do not really get the document, but an image of part of the document.

Another problem is that these applications are separate from the Learning Management System software which students will also be using. Web conference systems offer integration with LMS such as Moodle, but this integration is implied to being able to launch the conference from within the application. The LMS applications do not interact with the web conference in real time.

It does not seem to be widely realized that an LMS can be used in real time by a group. I have used Moodle live in a face-to-face classroom. I could see when a student had completed a task from my Moodle console. It should therefore be possible to expand this to provide remote real time facilities, within Moodle. These need not be closely coupled to audio or video conferencing and could be used with a separate audio or video conference product to provide the audio and video or live in a classroom.

Some of the web conference features are:

• Participant status: The list of participants and their status is shown (present/absent, happy/sad, asking a question, applause). Moodle already has an "Online Users" block, which could be expanded to add status.
  
• Polls: This allows the moderator to survey the participants with multiple choice answers. Moodle has a survey module, but this is designed for formal course evaluation surveys. Moodle also has a "Quiz module", but this is designed for complex assessments. What is needed is a simple way to create "clicker" audience response function, as provided with VotaPedia.
• Text chat: This allows any participant to send a short text message to the group. Moodle has a "Message" function, but this directs message only to one address. There are forums for groups, but these do not refresh in real time and are designed for longer more complex messages. It should be possible to provide a real time message function module in Moodle.
• Web tours: Elluminate and some other web conference systems, allow a web address to be sent from the moderator to other participants where the web pages is displayed in their browser. As most LMS are web based, this could be an easy to implement function which would be very useful.
  
• Slide show presentations: Presentation of images with a live moving pointer is the main function used in the web conference. Moodle has not "slide" function: Files for Powerpoint and other presentation programs can be provided, but Moodle can't open or control them. Providing this could be complex and use of web tours would be a simpler alternative, with web based slides.
  
• Live or Recorded Audio and Video: Audio/and/or video is played and in some cases transmitted live. Moodle has provision for video and audio playback built in. This could be expanded to control an audio/video conference.
• Meeting Recording: The audio, video, slides, text chat and all other interaction of the session is recorded. This is a useful function.
  
• Whiteboard: A drawing window is displayed which the moderation and optionally, all other participants can draw on. There is no draw function in Moodle and this would need to be provided as an extra module.
  
• Screen sharing: An application on the moderator's desktop (or one of the participants) is relayed to all participants. There is no such function in Moodle. This would need to be added with an extra module.
  

Of the listed functions, the easiest to integrate into a LMS such as Moodle, to form a a useful package, would be the status, polls, text chat and web tours. These could be used in a face to face classroom or with a separate audio/video conference system. It should be noted that such a system does not need all functions tightly integrated. Different components can be synchronized with timing, without being delivered via the same system.

What might be interesting is to add time to all relevant parts of the LMS. At present the LMS is static, responding only to user input. But there is no reason it could not be animated.

Visualisation tool for student social network

The Social Networks Adapting Pedagogical Practice (SNAPP) is a software tool from University of Wollongong which shows who talks to who in a student discussion forum. I tried it with the Moodle forums in my Green ICT course and, not surprisingly, it showed myself at the center of the network. The tool also works with BlackBoard /WebCT and operates via a Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer web browser.

As it is the tool is interesting, but perhaps a little too sophisticated for the average teacher. I would prefer something which would give me a tabular summary, rather than an interactive 3D graphic. A simple table could tell you which are the students not engaging in discussion, the key information brokers, provide some learning community metrics, and some input for marking.

Also the security issues with the software are not clear. Is the data from the password protected course web site being transmitted to University of Wollongong, or is the processing being done locally on my computer?

Using Images and Video in Online Courses

My draft notes for "Presenting a good image for your course", are now available for comment. This is for presentation at "Wattle Wednesday", at the Australian National University, Canberra, 29 June 2011.

Tom Worthington was awarded a certificate in audio-visual production for training, by the then ACT TAFE in 1990. He decided it was time to apply some of those skills to teaching. Tom discusses some shortcuts to including still and moving images and sound in courses.

Handbook of Online Learning

The Handbook of Online Learning by
Kjell E., Judith Schoenholtz-Read (SAGE Publications, Second Edition edition May 2009) provides an overview of e-learning well grounded in academic theory and research.

Some e-learning handbooks provide essentially a cookbook step-by-step guide to using a particular software package the teach little about education, whereas others are so full of pedagogy jargon that they are all but unintelligible. This work is at the latter end of the scale, with free use of terms and numerous references. However, it is readable and provides useful ammunition for those (such as myself) defending e-learning against the charge that it is shallow and lacking in academic rigour. The introduction provides a good overview of where adult e-learning is at and how we got there. It should be noted that this book is about adult learning (that is androgogy), not teaching children.

After the introduction, the chapters can be read in any order, being grouped into themes but largely independent. I found "Revisiting the Design and Delivery of an Online Graduate Program" by Judith Stevens-Long and Charles Crowell, of particular value. This discusses the use of online discussion for small groups of mature students. This is how I teach and it was very useful to find the history and intellectual underpinnings of this approach, derived from the UK's Open University, so well laid out.

The book is not perfect, in particular Moodle is mentioned several times, but the description of its origins a little odd. It acknowledges Martin Dougiamas as having created Moodle. But it suggests that he was only vaguely aware of the pedagogy it related to. Anyone who has read the Wikipedia entry for Moodle will see that Martin set out to write a PHD thesis on "The use of Open Source software to support a social constructionist epistemology of teaching and learning within Internet-based communities of reflective inquiry" and that there was a very clear theory underpinning Moodle. As to if Moodle actually depends on any such theory is a separate issue. ;-)

Table of Contents

Preface
1. The Flourishing of Adult Online Education: An Overview	Kjell Erik Rudestam and Judith Schoenholtz-Read
Part I. Changing Philosophies and Theories of Online Learning
2. Presence in Teleland	Gary Fontaine and Grace Chun
3. The Challenges of Culture and Community in Online Academic Environments	Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes
4. Evolving Technologies	Robin Mason and Frank Rennie
5. Applying Social Systems Thinking and Community Informatics Thinking in Education: Building Efficient Online Learning Design Culture in Universities	Pierre-Leonard Harvey
6. Media Psychology Controls the Mouse That Roars	Bernard Luskin and James Hirsen
7. Globalization in Online Learning	Janet Poley
8. Online Learning Research	Yolanda Gayol
9. Uncertain Frontiers: Exploring Ethical Dimensions of Online Learning	Dorothy Agger-Gupta
Part II. Implementation of Online Learning
10. Revisiting the Design and Delivery of an Interactive Online Graduate Program	Judith Stevens-Long and Charles Crowell
11. Candlepower: The Intimate Flow of Online Collaborative Learning	Barclay Hudson
12. Designing and Developing Web-Based Intelligent Tutoring Systems: A Step-by-Step Approach With Practical Applications	Kay Wijekumar
13. Synthesizing Higher Education and Corporate Learning Strategies	Bruce LaRue and Stephanie Galindo
14. Teaching Action Research at a Distance	Jenny Edwards and Sue Marquis Gordon
15. Beyond the Looking Glass: What Faculty and Students Need to Be Sucessful Online	Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt
16. Teaching Professionals to Be Effective Online Facilitators and Instructors: Lessons From Hard-Won Experience	Leni Wildflower
17. Leadership and Management of Online Learning Environments in Universities	Anna DiStefano and Judy Witt
18. Accrediting Online Institutions and Programs: Quality Assurance or Bureaucratic Hurdle?	Ralph Wolff
19. Virtual Libraries in Online Learning	Stefan Kramer
Index
About the Editors
About the Contributors

From: Handbook of Online Learning, Kjell Erik Rudestam and Judith Schoenholtz-Read, Sage, 2010