By Lisa, on November 9th, 2012% So I had this great idea that next semester, when students post their primary sources in the forum, they could tag them with a topic. I could provide a list of tags that represent larger areas, the sort of topics they can later work into historical themes: fashion, war, society, medicine, politics, economy, etc. This would work better than search, and allow them to browse the collection they’d created as they thought about their research approach.
But when I went to look at the settings in Moodle (1.9 and 2.2 and 2.3), there was no such thing as tags for a forum post, or even a glossary entry (my other new idea). Moodle only has tags for student “blogs”, which are connected only to each student’s profile and do not work in any interconnected way.
This was a big reminder that Moodle is still an LMS, and that sometimes I simply cannot configure it to do what I need. In WordPress such a thing is a no-brainer, and of course I can set this up in WP, but didn’t I just decide there was no real need for that?
It occurred to me that what I want to do represents an overlap that LMS thinkers don’t understand – the interrelationship between “content” and “activity”. The main Moodle blocks have two drop-down menus when you want to add something, and they clearly indicate the mindset:
A “resource” is supposed to be static, and an “activity” is supposed to be interactive.
A “forum” is considered an activity, a platform for “discussion”. I’m not using it for discussion, but rather for having students create a set of resources (without that nasty confusion a database would bring into play). The students are thus actively creating a “resource” that they need to search and access throughout the class. The lack of acknowledgement of such interplay is what leads designers to think of tags only in terms of blogs.
I am also setting up some secondary historical readings for my Honors class, and there’s no way in Moodle to have students annotate them together.
I just want a static resource, an article, that I’ve introduced, and have students annotate it collaboratively. The only “activity” available in Moodle would be a wiki, and it would not allow in-line commentary. I admit I’m somewhat Talmudic in my idea of what a collaboratively annotated document would look like. So I’ll be trying a circuitous route, uploading a pdf article into Crocodoc, then embedding the resulting doc in a Moodle page to allow for in-place commenting without students needing an account. It’s an awkward solution at best, and one which requires me to wear a Fair Use t-shirt and remove the articles after the semester.
The perpetuation of the division between “content” and “activity” causes harm to learning and prevents some of that innovative methodology everyone says they want. The idea that resources and “discussion” are separate gets passed down to new teachers going online, and they set up their classes that way, limiting their pedagogy.
So, note to LMS designers, including Moodle:
Stop adding internal “features” to your LMS based on webapps you see people using externally (“blogs”, “scholar”), and start rethinking why teachers use those things. Think about the interactivity between “content” (or resource or page or presentation) and “activity” (the stuff that means servers have to talk to each other).
Wrap your head around the concepts, not just the tools, of teaching online.
By Lisa, on June 23rd, 2012% The Google Talk chatback badge has been important to a number of us faculty. We are frequently logged into Gmail anyway, and the badge let us put a bit of html on any webpage and students could click and IM with us without logging in to anything. Well, now it’s gone – Google has stopped supporting it and it doesn’t work anymore. They made no announcement (except a single post in a Google Group) and the badges still look like they work, but they don’t. I found out when Pilar Hernández, my esteemed colleague, had students screaming they couldn’t reach her.
I also have featured the badge on all my course pages and my home page for years. I recently made a tutorial on how to use them.
We can discuss why Google did this, and why Google doesn’t care, but I’m confident it’s because they don’t like the anonymity of it. They want everyone in Google Plus, which requires a Google account so they can track you. Given my concerns, I’m not comfortable forcing students into Google-dom just so they can chat with me.
Pilar and I spent all afternoon today trying alternatives. Finding a replacement for Google chatback isn’t easy – it was a seamless and simple service. It wasn’t a shoutbox and it could be put anywhere, and on many different pages. Using this resource, we tried anything that was free. Meebo Messenger, Pilar’s backup, is also shutting down as of July 11, so we had to go elsewhere.
Here’s what we tried. (Note: we discovered that none of the below worked with the Google Talk feature enabled – it’s obvious Google has gotten rid of that support also.)
- Plugoo – commercial looking, big, didn’t work with some browsers
- Olark – insisted I allow it to access all my Google contacts, and I had to email them to close the account
- Zoho chat – can log in, but only puts shout box on one page
- Chatbadge.com – when we tested it, we couldn’t get the messages to actually get to their destination – it seemed like the best but we couldn’t get it to work
- Online Chat Centers – serious overkill, obviously for major helpdesks, had to log in directly and answer the phone, had a major New Delhi feel to it
- Yahoo Messenger Pingbox – not visible in all browsers, must log into Yahoo Messenger, doesn’t relay nickname properly
Our best choice was Plupper. It looked good, and has an open API. We were able to get it working by following the instructions for iChat for Mac, and Miranda for PC.
It does mean more work, since you have to have the IM client open and be logged in. Nowhere near as convenient for us, but just as convenient for students, which is what we needed.
By Lisa, on May 30th, 2012% It’s taken me almost a year to figure out what might have gone wrong with last summer’s class. I need to take a look since this summer’s class starts Monday.
Last summer, thrilled at having only 40 students to tend to in an 8-week class, I had students post their historical theses in the forums instead of on a closed essay exam. I graded them according to a qualitative scale that translated into points, and made comments on each directly in the forums, which took a great deal of time.
I was at first so very happy with this method, having spent much time setting it up so beautifully. Then the class was over, and I got the evaluation, completed by only 16 students.
Ignoring the typical one-person-who-hates-everything-I-do student, 5 felt class expectations weren’t stated clearly. A surprising 6 didn’t find the Contribution Assessments helpful (these contain direct feedback for each and every student, in private), and though 14 said they read my comments on their own mini-essays in the forum, 2 thought I wasn’t even present and visible during class. Some comments on the open essays said:
“It would be helpful if we received more feedback on our short essays instead of a general comments so that we could improve our writing skills.”
“For someone who struggles with the weekly thesis maybe a little more information but since it was a summer class it was face paced. I enjoyed the class the grading was fair just needed a better understanding of the thesis but that could just be me.”
“I think more feedback on the essays is necessary. The only kind of feedback that I received was if something was wrong with my essay, but it would be nice to know the things that I’m doing well so that I could continue incorporating things into the essays that worked well.”
“I wish there was more direction for the writing assignments. Especially the final assessment.”
It has thus occurred to me that the continual, extensive feedback I gave several times a week on the posted essays was not seen as actual feedback or guidance by some of the students.
 Keep in mind before you say I’m justing whining, that I give this evaluation every semester, and the overwhelming majority say my expectations are clear, the assignments are helpful, and the things they recommend tend to be things like “more content” or “less work”. Keep in mind also that my public comments on their essays were very specific, but kind and designed not to embarrass anyone. I also marked some of them with a bold For Everyone tag in the subject line, to provide more general comments at the same time. I thought this was brilliant — evidently not so much.
I can’t help but wonder whether doing closed essay grading instead, even if I said the exact same thing on each essay, would have led to a different result. Is it possible that forum postings from the instructor aren’t seen as feedback in the same way we view a private comment on a quiz?
So for the class that starts Monday, I have put the essays back into a standard, private, midterm and final exam format, with (as usual) the practice in the forums. We’ll see what happens.
By Lisa, on December 8th, 2011% We’ve been working at finding places for synchronous meetings of various kinds for the POT Certificate Class. Sure, we can do the usual things, like meet up in Collaborate/Elluminate (we have installations at several of our jobs), but we kinda like free and we kinda like different so lately we’ve been looking at:
Web conferencing or video/audio conversation
Google Plus hangouts
The advantage is that many people already are in Google for something, and it’s pretty easy to find Plus now, and everyone can now access it since it’s out of alpha stage. Great video and audio quality, and the camera can automatically shift to whoever is speaking, putting them in the main frame. But the maximum is 10 for talking – anyone after 10 can only watch. We liked it especially for quick meetings, kind of like Google Talk with video. One interesting thing is that if it’s public, anyone may drop by. The “with extras” option slows down the system, but lets you add viewing a YouTube together (this didn’t always work) or embedding a collaborative Google Doc, which would make presentations possible.
Big Marker
Kind of like Collaborate Lite, this one let us be on camera with microphones, but we had to have headsets upon entering the room or we got awful audio feedback. We only had four cameras on at once, but quality was good. All panels (participants, individual cameras, whiteboard) were in separate frames that could be resized. A presentation ppt could be loaded, and the presenter could zoom in or mark on it with simple drawing tools (line, box). Only one person could present at a time, and a newly uploaded presentation replaced the old one. Sessions cannot be archived with a free account.
 Facebook HOOT
We began with just Facebook group chat, which is only text chat, but then decided to try this. Hoot is an FB application that you add, and the idea is to allow students to meet up together with video and audio. We tried it with five or six people, and as we were talking the creator of the app came in and spoke with us. Spooky but cool. Created by students for students.
Second Life
Here you need a “place” in SL to meet, so it’s like Collaborate only in that sense, and there are colleges and various organizations that will let you use their space. Audio is kind of new, and the application is pretty heavy (Cris Crissman pointed me to a different viewer, called Phoenix, that worked better than the new SL viewer). Learning curve is high, but the learning experience is rich because of the simulation of an actual meeting in a simulated space. Hard to explain unless you’ve done it.
Skype group video calling
For this, one person in the group must have a Pro account.
Alternate formats for “talking” while working together
Slideshare (Zipcast)
The idea here is that the presenter schedule a session where s/he can show him/herself on video and audio while touring through a slideshare slideshow, and you can see who is attending with their icons, and they can text chat during the session. Looks like you need a Pro account to do audio conferencing.
Inside a Google Doc
We meet inside a Google Doc just by putting some text in a Doc, then making it public and letting everyone know the URL. No audio, but real time edits and chat once you open the side window, plus you can annotate. If you were logged in to Google, sometimes it would still show you in the room as Anonymous, which was annoying. The other problem is that the synchronous chat isn’t saved. But it was a great way to create a document in real time.
I’ve heard Etherpad is good for this too, but it’s been bought by Google anyway; Crocodoc is also good for annotating together.
Hall.com
We recently also tried hall.com, which sets up a room where you can do polls, to do lists, and instant message chat — it seemed to work very well.
MindMeister Brainstorming
Lets you text chat while you create a mind map together.
Qikpad
Like Google docs, but better in a way because you can change your name from anonymous instantly, and everyone’s contributions are instantly highlighted in a different color.
Shut up and collaborate
You don’t always need to be able to see and/or hear and/or text chat with each other — sometimes you just need to work at the same time. The collaborative documents can do this, and so can:
Stroome
Video collaboration, but we haven’t tried it in real time, though it says it can. 500 MB free. Lets you add clips, transitions, do cuts, etc. A little slow in rendering. Another recent option is wevideo, which we’ll try also, although it only lets 5 people work on one project in its free version.
Prezi Meeting
We haven’t yet tried it, but you can meet in Prezi to collaborate on making a presentation. Icons represent each participant, and move around showing who’s editing what.
Watch a video together
Not quite ready for prime time, or at least not any better than putting a link in a chat and telling people to go watch.
We tried YouTube itself, which now has a link in the Share options that sets up a Google hangout for watching — we have tried to watch videos together in Google Hangout and it doesn’t usually work. We often all get bounced to a generic YouTube page instead of whatever the participant is trying to load in.
We also tried Chill.com (you have to use Facebook for this), and Synchtube, which didn’t really. We were all able to watch the same video, but speed varied widely. One of our members called it “Asynchtube”. Watchittoo.com made you pay.
Your question: where and when are you guys testing all this? more in the next post!
My question: What else should we check out?
By Lisa, on November 27th, 2011% This question goes way back to the first online class I ever saw demonstrated. The instructor, instead of using our one and only technology (Webboard) as a separate discussion, had embedded her lecture and instructions into the lead post for each week. And at the time (1998) I thought, “oh wow! the whole class is inside the discussion! This is great.”.
But I didn’t do it. Blackboard encourages you to put the discussion board in separate area, and even now that you can make a separate discussion forum for each unit, people still put discussion all together as one course menu item. In Moodle, I have a separate, nested discussion board (simple format) for each week/topic.
In my struggle to determine whether it’s a good idea to switch from forum post/reply to blog/comment format for clases with students, I have assumed that I would continue to integrate discussion as I do now, by week. But in my post about using One Blog, Brandon Davis-Shannon commented on his own difficulties with the format, and noted greater depth in the Blackboard forum than on blogs with comments. It occurred to me this might be because if the whole thing was together, students would feel less awkward posting on a previous topic.
But we all acknowledge it depends on how it’s designed, and what (pedagogically speaking) we’re looking for.
So I created a Google Doc and invited Brandon to help create a chart showing some of the options, and here’s what we’ve done so far:
|
One big forum |
Weekly/topical forums |
One big blog |
Individual blogs |
| Advantages |
- May reward students posting on previous topics, deepening conversation, especially if design of the discussion encourages them to do so
- Easy to use
|
- Ties discussion to one topic, prevents tangents
- Organizes posts and replies easily
|
- Combines course info and activities in one place
- Easy to track student activity
- Easy for students to keep up with peers’ work
- Requires a single log-in to participate
- Possible feeling of collective student ownership of class blog.
|
- Student ownership of their own learning space
- Acquisition of some “just in time” technical skills within the context of actual use
- Aggregating blogs can pull whole class together
|
| Disadvantages |
- Artificially separates discussion and interactivity from the presented or informational content of the class
- May overwhelm students with number of topics, as class continues.
|
- Format doesn’t encourage students to go back to a previous topic, leading to a more superficial discussion.
|
- Student ownership is not individual
- Format may lead student posts to be lost in the shuffle
- Blog may disappear if instructor takes it down, loses account, etc[a].
|
- Unless commenting takes place on an aggregated blog (thus removing ownership advantage), the inconvenience of commenting on different blogs may be a problem
- Diffuses the conversation too much
- Discourages return to previous topics because of the nature of blog posting
- Tends to require multiple log-ins to participate in commenting unless single system use (for example, Discus)
|
| Pedagogy |
May be best suited for:
- classes where themes run throughout
- assignments that allow students to participate in several topics at once
- pedagogies that want to place the information and content directly into the forum to emphasize discussion
|
May be best suited for:
- topics that need to be separate
- assignments where everyone has a similar task, such as posting a particular link
- classes where topics have a definite progression or need to move on
- pedagogies that want to place the information and content directly into the forum to emphasize discussion
|
May be best suited for:
- keeping the class at one main website or page
- having students experience creation of one artifact with individual contributions
- pedagogies emphasizing collective development of the class
- situations where individual blogs may be of concern for any reason
|
May be best suited for:
- student ownership of their work
- pedagogies that encourage student exploration and development of their own topics or focus
- if the instructor has a blog also and content is aggregated, embeds instructor’s content into class
- a course with centralized complementary activities
|
| Variations |
- All class materials can be available as posts
- Can choose between threaded and nested in some applications
|
- All class materials can be available as posts
- Can choose between threaded and nested in some applications
|
Theme (Layout?) |
Theme (Layout?) |
Maybe this can help us make decisions on which discussion format is best for a particular class.
By Lisa, on October 27th, 2011% I have now been a student in three separate classes where I ran my own blog to do the class assignments (CCK08, EC&I831 and ds106). My classes for students are all designed with an LMS-based forum, within which outcomes have been achieved well thus far (I implemented the basic format in 2009).
So now, as I consider departing from an LMS for at least one of my classes for spring, the question is: should I have each student create his/her own blog, then aggregate them, and have them comment on each others’ blogs for discussion? That’s been the model in all three classes I’ve taken, and is the model for Pedagogy First!, where we’ve been using 90 individual blogs for the POT Certificate Class, aggregated to one central website.
But is this the best way for my own classes?
In a more typical online class, discussion takes place in a forum. This keeps things focused and in one place. People are used to forums. All the classes I’ve seen with distributed activities instead of forums have students begging for a forum, whether it’s a threaded forum in an LMS, a Google group, or a Ning. People want a central place to talk, and an aggregated blog made of up all their disparate posts can become just an information center, not a coffee house.
My brilliant colleague Jim Sullivan teaches English composition using a class blog. Students are all authors on it, and they blog there, not on their own blogs. We’ve discussed this many times, and I’ve rejected it because students don’t control their own space. I think they should, but I’m aware that the idea of helping hundreds of students with their technical problems has been a major hurdle to moving ahead. Now it occurs to me that Jim’s approach may be the pedagogically middle ground rather than just easier and more convenient for me (I like pedagogical middle grounds).
A traditional forum in an LMS is set in its pattern and closed in its format (once the class is over, you usually can’t access it). Having everyone create their own blog lets students have their own permanent space, but really doesn’t encourage discussion (as I’ve discovered running Pedagogy First!). Is the One Blog approach the middle ground?
 Is it open and available?
It can be open and as loose as I want, and since I run my own WordPress I can promise it will stay open (Jim runs his own Typepad).
Is there a sense of student ownership?
While students don’t run their own space, students may feel that the One Blog is their space collectively, rather than individually (a classroom they can help create). This could subconsciously create a feeling of community.
Does it provide a good place for discussion?
Yes — not as much as a traditional forum, but more than individual blogs, because it is in one place and everyone is signed in just once, rather than being a guest on other people’s blogs. Plus, WordPress comments are nested. I have searched long and hard and have been unable to find forum software that is free, nests the comments so you can see which comments reply to which, and will tolerate multimedia.
Isn’t Ning a middle ground?
Ning is a social networking platform, a damned good one (nested! multimedia!), but to use it for free you have to advertise for Pearson. That isn’t middle ground — if there’s any advertising in my class at all (and I think there shouldn’t be) it should be incidental, not deliberate and appearing as if I am a spokesperson sponsoring a product (in many ways, this includes Blackboard and Moodle). And I don’t have time right now to figure out how to use an open source social networking platform (such as Oxwall) on my own service.
Although until now I’ve only used blogging for class as a student, I do use the blog platforms for my History 103 and History 104 at San Elijo. They’re not actually blogging on these (in terms of reflection or graded items), but rather posting theses for papers they turn in, and working together to create collections for class presentations. I could start by expanding this set-up into the One Blog format.
Sooooo…..
what am I not thinking of here as I make this decision?
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