Moodlemoot AU 2010 – the unofficial update
Some of you might know that the 2010 Australian Moodlemoot will be happening in July this year in Melbourne, and I’m lucky enough to be on the organising committee for what will hopefully be the biggest and best Australian Moot yet. Its being sponsored by NetSpot, who I do work for, but my role in the whole thing has gradually and unintentionally morphed into being the ‘Community Advocate’, trying to make sure that in the planning phase for the conference the needs of the broader community are being met. What does this mean? I guess it means that I’ve been given a license to stand up in internal discussions and say ‘well that might be one way of looking at this question, but what I think the community would probably want to happen is…’
That’s not to say that I know what the community wants in all cases, but having been around the traps a bit I can usually put my two cents in and feel that it will be at least close to the mark.
One of the things that we’re currently trying to nut out is what the core values should be for the conference – the guiding principles that will drive things like the kinds of presentations and papers we’ll accept, what events and facilities we have at the conference and what we should attempt to be encouraging in everthing we do. So far there’s two things that stand out to me (personally) as being important values, namely:
- Supporting the Moodle Community. Sounds obvious, but one of the biggest things about Moodle is the huge, vibrant community that supports the software. This isn’t limited to just software developers either, its also the folks who ask and answer questions on moodle.org, the tracker (which is still one of the most underused community resources in the whole Moodle context), the local user groups who get together and talk Moodle and the people who get on moodle.org with ideas, complaints or suggestions that all go into the great big melting pot that is Moodle. This community has been a huge part of Moodle’s success, and the more we do to support it, promote it and encourage people to get involved in it the better.
- Advancing innovative teaching and learning. As a Moodle trainer who spends a good chunk of the year on the road looking at Moodle sites I get to see some really good, really bad and everything in between Moodle courses. Unfortunately I still see way too many courses which are effectively e-distribution and e-collection spaces rather than anything to do with learning – download your lecture notes, download an assignment template, upload it to the assignment drop box when you’re done. Then every now and then I come across an absolute jaffa of an idea like the one in this post by Tomaz Lasic which reinforces in my mind that the technology is entirely secondary to the creativity of the educator using it. This is particularly relevant in Tomaz’ post since it uses one of the more maligned tools in Moodle (the wiki, which is often criticised for being too basic to be of use for anything compared to something like Mediawiki) to great effect. Coming back off my slight tangent, I think any educator who has come up with new and innovative ways to use Moodle should be encouraged to get up and talk about it, share it, and hopefully spawn a whole bunch of new ideas within the Moodle community.
I’m sure there are plenty more values, but those two were the ones that kinda stood out to me as being of particular value to Moodle at this point in its life, particularly on the eve of Moodle 2.0 and all of the new opportunities for creativity that we’re hoping it will deliver. I would love to hear any opinions about other specific things that are of interest for the Moot – let me know in the comments section and I’ll do my best to get them on the table.
One of the potential Moodlemoot rooms. Maybe.
Then there’s the logistics of things, and now I understand why Chad Outten looked so tired after the brilliant job he did organising Moodlemoot AU 08 – its a job and a half. We can’t announce the venue, the cost, or much else in terms of detail yet as we’re still frantically finalising a whole stack of details – all I can say is that there’s a lot of paddling going on under a fairly still surface right about now and this time next month things should be a lot clearer. We also haven’t opened the website for people to submit presentations yet, but that should be happening in the next couple of weeks – we decided to at least get the information up there so that people could think about their presentations.
Its worth noting that for the first time in an Australian Moot (we think anyway) there will be the opportunity for researchers to submit a full refereed paper, which will go through a proper double-blind review process and be something that can be of use to those looking for some more publications to add to their name. That of course doesn’t mean that you can’t submit a proposal to give a shorter, unrefereed presentation as has been the norm in previous Moots, but we’ll aim to cater for a range of presentation styles.
Finally, at the moment you can’t sign up for a login on the Moodlemoot website as we’re working through the process for getting people paid, registered and enrolled in the right areas in the site before we open it up to delegates – watch this space and follow the latest Moot news on Twitter at @MootAU10 for more info as it happens.
G’day Mark,
Been meaning to comment on this for a while.
For me at the moment, value #2 “Advancing innovative teaching and learning” is the most important. As you point out too much (I’d guess greater than 90%) of Moodle sites within universities are content drops, perhaps with a lightly used discussion forum or a couple of quizzes.
However, I’m not sure that getting the innovators get up and share their ideas is the way to move this forward. The innovators are a small part for the broader group and very different from the majority.
I’m particularly interested in what is making it difficult for the broad majority to be innovative and what is it that we can do to make it more likely that they will be innovative.
In a Moodle/LMS context, the Lisa Lane paper (http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2530/2303) on the impact of LMS on teaching is one example of some of types of considerations required.
David.
Hi David,
Thanks for the feedback – definitely thought provoking, I hadn’t seen the Lane paper before and was definitely worth a read.
I was at ANU running some advanced Moodle training this week as well as doing some basic Mahara training and it struck me that once an educator gets past their ‘basic training’ in a technology then I as a trainer need to make sure that I let the use cases (in this case good teaching and learning practice) drive the use of the technology rather than vice versa. For teaching and learning support staff I wonder if the process is firstly to get the absolute basics down pat with academic staff and then to somehow work on getting academics to focus on ‘renewing’ their teaching practice rather than focus on using more advanced LMS tools.
In summary, maybe as a Moodle/Mahara trainer I should be subtly (or not-so-subtly perhaps) trying to encourage academic staff to reflect primarily on their teaching practice and then have the tools as the secondary element of the session. Somehow I doubt if that would go down too well
I’d love to hear other thoughts on this topic as well, so please keep them coming.
Mark.
I think any tech needs to enter on a needs basis.
Perhaps you give your people time to express needs in the classroom first… what would enrich my students learning experience…
Hopefully today – topics such as, ability to research, organize, communicate, collaborate, create, etc… will come up.
Moodle can address all of these…
I just think it’s important for teachers to see this as an enhancement to what they already should be trying to do – rather than an added on activity.
Just let Tom talk…
he’ll go that route.
Another thing I think is huge in pd – is that when you do share ideas, that it’s in the same vein the kids should be learning it. Teachers need to experience it – not listen to a lecture. I just attended Philly’s Educon virtually… and 2 workshops stood out for me. One was on backchanneling and of course we backchanneled the whole time. The other was on student-centric learning – and we were the students. Both had us learning it just as the kids should be.
And the obvious – whatever is shared is archived and any research, 2 min moodles, etc are logged in a wiki for all participants to take with. So they can start right away using whatever they learned.
David,
You make an interesting point: “I’m particularly interested in what is making it difficult for the broad majority to be innovative and what is it that we can do to make it more likely that they will be innovative.”
The point is that the community embrace the technology. That requires a few things: one, the education about the technology, two, the willingness to try out the new technology.
I look forward to your future updates about the Moodlemoot.
Best,
Jon
@mark.drechsler
G’day Mark,
One of my unrequited interests is related to this statement
“once an educator gets past their ‘basic training’ ”
I’ve been building e-learning systems and trying to get academics to use them effectively since about 97. One of the questions I’ve wondered about is just how many of them actually grok how the systems work.
I’ve lost count of the times when I’ve seen an academic who has done the basic training, read the manual etc (i.e. gotten past ‘basic training’), but then done or said something that illustrates that their understanding of how the system works and how to drive it is deeply flawed.
It’s my belief that most of these folk have learned, normally by trial and error, just enough to do the basic tasks (upload a file, use the discussion forum). At least if all remains the same. If something different happens – e.g. the link they normally click on has moved, been renamed or changes its appearance – they are stuck.
Rather than understand the system and how it works. They’ve memorised a sequence of steps with no understanding of what each step actually means or how it connects with an outcome.
Related to this is my concern that too much “basic training” is actually focused on teaching the steps, rather than helping people grok the system and its model.
If this is the case (it needs to be tested beyond my anecdotal experience) then I would suggest that this could be one major hurdle for people using technology for innovative practice. I believe it’s only the people that grok the system and how it works have the freedom to come up with the type of innovative example you pointed to in your original post.
I’m particularly interested to hear if anyone knows of any research that has examined this sort of thing (I don’t have the time to go looking at the moment).
I’m also interested in any attempts to research this further and questions like
Does this problem exist?
How widespread is the problem?
What effects does this problem have? Is there a correlation between grokking a system and being able to do innovative things with it?
Are different LMS more or less difficult to grok? Personally, I found Moodle harder to grok than Blackboard 6.3. But that could be related to the similarity between it and the previous system I developed/used.
Does moving from one LMS to another make it easier or more difficult?
What training approaches help people grok a system more quickly?
How can system design be changed to help people grok it more quickly?
David.
@Jon Birdsong
G’day Jon,
> The point is that the community embrace the technology.
> That requires a few things: one, the education about the
> technology, two, the willingness to try out the new technology.
A small disclaimer, my comments are within the university context. It’s where I work, and it’s the environment that drives my thinking and comments.
The point I’m trying to make is that the university environment is not conducive to creating “the willingness to try out the new technology”. In fact, I don’t believe it is conducive to trying out anything new when it comes to L&T.
There are always exceptions, there are some folk in universities that do some truly innovative things. But it is my suggestion that they are the minority. The majority aren’t innovative and this gels with Mark’s observation about the majority of Moodle courses.
And this is not a new observation, Geoghegan commented on the chasm between the innovators and the majority in 1994 – http://davidtjones.wordpress.com/2009/08/09/the-chasm/
David.
@monika hardy
I’m probably lucky (maybe?) that I get to work with adult learners in a Uni environment, so the differential between teacher and learner is (arguably!) less than what it would be if I was working with school teachers. And yes, agree that making sure any knowledge constructed during the sessions is kept and made available to participants afterwards.
Thanks for the feedback
@Jon Birdsong
Hi Jon,
Thanks for the comment – I’d thrown in a third thing, which is the willingness to reflect on current teaching practice regardless and consider how both teaching practice and technology can evolve *at the same time* to make best use of what’s on offer. Can, in my experience, be a big ask of many Uni lecturers, but I’m thinking its worth a try next time I’m delivering a session!
@David Jones
Hey David,
Very good point, and I must say that I do my best when training to explain how the structural components of how Moodle, Mahara, Sakai or whatever all hook together. In Moodle for example I try to get across, for example, the logical construct of the environment (Site vs Front Page vs Categories vs Courses vs Content, effectively the contexts within Moodle) and which bits can be added where, and which bits can be shared easily between courses (which ain’t all that much in 1.9.x!). Does this mean I’m preparing them better than if I just showed them the process for adding an Avticity/Resource to a course? I don’t know, but it seems to work well enough, but of course with the caveat that I generally don’t get to see what happens after I head home and the support is left to the Teaching & Learning Support staff. I should also say that often I am working with the T&L Support staff rather than the lecturing staff – so there’s another layer between what I deliver and what ends up out in userland.
Now that I think about it, maybe its the T&L Support staff who are the best ones to give an opinion on the first big question in your list: ‘Does the problem actually exist’?
Thanks again for the comments – happy to provide any other anecdotal evidence from the training sessions I’ve delivered, which have numbered quite a few since I joined NetSpot!