There’s been a blog post on Moodle version 2.0 that’s been sitting in my RSS reader for quite some time now that I’ve only just gotten around to reading and I’m really glad I did, because one portion of it in particular has made me cautiously optimistic.

In “Did You Know Moodle 2.0 Will…” Hans de Zwart writes:

“Not only will Moodle have a proper RSS feed for your internal blog, it will also allow you to import an external blog (based on a feed URL and on tags) and make it available internally. Moodle will make sure that the posts are in sync: so if you delete a post on your internal blog, it will also be removed from your internal blog. Brilliant!”

Potential Implications

This news is really significant if it proves to be true.  As I wrote recently, one of the main issues with classrooms blogs is how to track all the disparate conversations and reflections in a manner that can be most effectively pulled back into use in the classroom.  Individuals or small networks of people may be thriving in their blogs, but without a means of effectively aggregating and browsing through the content, most of the class will be unaware of its existence.

By (allegedly) bringing in support for external blogs, Moodle 2.0 might just provide a solution for this.  Certainly I have visions of grandeur for developing an open system that would do far more than just aggregate content and syndicate it in a manner that’s easy to browse and filter – much like what David Jones discussed here – but in reality any traction on that front is going to be a ways off.

Indeed the changes to Moodle might go a long ways to doing the sorts of things I’d envisaged.  The prospect of it being incorporated natively into Moodle is even better.

Blue Sky Speculation

The following is all uninformed speculation on my part, but is theoretically possible nonetheless.

By pulling in content to the system you would be tying the blog posts to student records, which would theoretically open the door to a number of different options.

For instance, if Moodle 2.0 were capable of supporting feeds for different tags – or better yet would dynamically recognise or interogate the associated tags within a single blog RSS feed – you might be able to automatically funnel different posts through to different courses.  This might enable instructors to quickly add a section in their Moodle course that contained all the blog feeds of their students.

You would also conceivably be able to start tying blog posts to the gradebook and assessments.

Whether it is a good idea to start assessing blog posts is a completely different matter of course, and in some regards I’m inclined to say it isn’t – however undoubtedly some people will want to, and this might facilitate that.

The point is that a solution for creating gateways to the blogging contributions of a student cohort is a must if you are going to be using blogs in the classroom, and these upcoming changes to Moodle may ultimately facilitate this.

More Investigation Required

That said, the only direct references I’ve seen to this feature are the quote from Hans de Zwart I included above, and a passing reference in the Moodle 2.0 Roadmap to the addition of “commenting to blogs (MDL-8776), as well as support for external blogs.”  So more investigation is required before the reality of these changes will be known.

References:

• “Did You Know Moodle 2.0 Will…“, Hans de Zwart
• Moodle 2.0 Roadmap (Moodle Docs)
• Student Projects/Blog Improvements (Moodle Docs)

Given my role in the TELT project as an eLearning Researcher and Educational Technologist, I should probably preempt this post by saying the opinions and perspectives contained here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of UNSW, or the individuals in the video. Basically this isn’t a formal media release; they’re just my thoughts and experiences.

This video was posted just this evening on the UNSW eLearning Channel at YouTube and I thought it was worth sharing. This is primarily to establish a point of reference regarding the landscape I work in at UNSW, but also as an indication of some evolving perceptual changes in educational technology with regard to distributed frameworks and freedom of choice; and equally significant, the fundamental relationships these factors share with the learning and teaching processes.

The clip features Robyn Jay (@robynjay on Twitter) and Director of my unit, Learning & Teaching @ UNSW, Professor Stephen Marshall and provides an overview of the Technology Enabled Learning & Teaching (TELT) Platform at the University of New South Wales.

In light of the discussions that emerged during last week’s SENG meeting (formal name STILL pending), it would appear that the trend at least at many local institutions is for a reduction in available technologies, rather than the increase we’re exploring at UNSW.

Importantly, this video discusses only the technologies that are expected to be formally supported at an institutional level. There is also the expectation that usage of cloud services will emerge as well – and this is recognised as a valid activity. The main distinction here lay between what is expected to be centrally supported, and what is not. Indeed it is also assumed that schools and faculties – even individual academics – will be exploring additional frameworks on their own, or at the local level. This too is seen as as completely reasonable activity.

The ultimate importance is how these frameworks can empower and support learning and teaching.

From a personal standpoint I see tremendous opportunities in all this, not just in the potential for innovation that can stem from such widespread, distributed experimentation, but perhaps more importantly in the potential for the cultivation and growth of learning networks that cut across the staff/student boundary, faculty lines and particularly extend beyond the walls of the institution itself.

Many of us already have vibrant, flourishing networks outside the institution that have been more or less developed in isolation. Formal recognition of the validity and value of choice and distributed interaction largely throws the doors wide open to all sorts of participation and collaboration. It’s a truly inspiring process to be a part of.

My main hope is that the exploration of new technological opportunities above and beyond – and especially outside – the LMS, such as blogs, wikis and other social media tools will inevitably lead towards cultural changes and a fundamental renegotiation of the roles and relationships that currently exist in education. Ultimately this remains to be seen.

In light of the innaugural meeting of the SENG network (formal name STILL being discussed) yesterday, I wanted to take a couple of minutes to reflect on what took place, what was discussed, and throw in a few words on my interpretations and opinions .

We dropped the ball on recording the event

I’m very sorry to say that we largely dropped the ball on recording and broadcasting the event. I’m hoping to catch up with Robyn (and anyone else who’s interested) to determine the most effective ways of capturing and distributing the discussion more widely, and thus making it more accessible.

In my view this network should be open to anyone interested in participating – regardless of their location. My hope is the fairly comprehensive notes outlined in this post will help provide an overview of what took place. We’ll try to having something set-up next time that will cater to remote participants. My apologies for anyone affected by this.

A fairly diverse turnout

Despite some last minute changes in the list of attendees we still had a fairly strong turn out of 14 to 15 people. Near as I can tell the sectors we represented included TAFE, university, and one or two people who work across all levels of formal education. So all things considered the range was fairly broad.

That said, UNSW had the highest percentage of participants – there were 7 of us, including 3 from Learning & Teaching (Belinda, Giedre, myself), 3 from the faculties (Andrew, John Paul and Emma), and 1 from the L&T portfolio in central IT (Robyn).

It was expressed and fairly unanimously agreed that the group’s planning spaces should sit outside the domain (DNS) of any one institution – thus encouraging a feeling of independence, equity and equal opportunity & representation. So the current planning page on the UNSW TELT Wiki is seen as temporary only, pending the finalisation of the group name, which perhaps not surprisingly hasn’t yet been agreed upon.

What’s in a name?

The topic of naming the organisation has proven a pretty tricky business, due to a number of factors I think. These including the fact the overarching mission, objectives and common philosophy of the group hasn’t been clearly articulated yet, and ultimately finding an acronym that you can say, hasn’t already been taken, and doesn’t carry mixed or even negative connotations tends to rule out many of the choices.

Given we’d nearly run out of time I suggested we continue the discussion online in order to finalise, using the tag/hashtag SENG as the identifier for the time being. It was pointed out that the more you use a “temporary” identifier, the less temporary it becomes – so I think getting the formal name established soon is pretty important.

Preliminary Discussions

One of the particularly nice things for me to see was how much participation there was in the discussion. Virtually everyone, I think, contributed to the conversation throughout the day – so there was a distinct atmosphere of inclusiveness to the network that I’d hoped would emerge.

A list of discussion topics is being compiled on the TELT Wiki (to be moved to its final location later), so I won’t attempt to reiterate them all here. However there are a couple of notable points that resonated with me that I think are worth mentioning:

The future of the LMS

To the chagrin of some, the topic of the learning management system came up on several different occassions – this included LMS use as a whole, rather than one specific platform or company. In most cases the context was how prevalent and disproportional the consideration for and usage of the LMS really was in policy and practice.

Interestingly (and refreshingly) I don’t recall the LMS ever being referred to in a positive light; the emphasis was on the reality of the landscape, how some institutions were in fact reverting to a primary focus on the LMS as a central or even singular educational technology.

The team who looks after Moodle at the University of Sydney, for example, appears to be under pressure to stop their use of the open course LMS/CMS and instead adopt the central “official” service.

A few people expressed interest in looking past the LMS to the more individually empowering technologies – frequently aggregated under the umbrella term, “Personal Learning Environment.”  The argument was effectively that we need to be thinking in innovative ways using empowering technologies, rather than focusing on the LMS, as is commonly the case at many of our institutions.

I definitely see the logic in this and wholeheartedly advocate the exploration of distributed learner empowerment and a movement away from centralised systems.  However to be both objective, I think engaging in discussions about the possibilities and exploration of PLE’s and PLNs without addressing, or at least recognising the complex, sometimes disappointing reality of the LMS monopoly in institutional policy and defacto practice is unwise. Yet so too is straining the point and focusing exclusively on the LMS.

The key for the network, and for education in general too I think, is to advocate change and innovation based on an informed awareness of the existing challenges and obstacles. We’re far more likely to make a difference if we know what (or even whom) we face – and as a group/network we’ll be far more capable of supporting each other if we’re aware of each other’s circumstances.

UNSW as an example

The big surprise for me was how innovative UNSW was seen in the scheme of things. Our current exploration of a distributed platform for Technology Enabled Learning & Teaching (TELT) – containing wikis, blogs, Moodle, Blackboard, and cloud services outside the university domain – was seen to be of tremendous interest to staff from several other institutions – especially in light of the decisions by some to restrict access to these technologies, rather than explore them.

Of equal interest were the experiences of the New South Blogs publishing platform being run by Andrew Murphie and Mat Wall-Smith. Andrew spoke of their experiences, and in particular how much credit goes to Mat for his tireless efforts to keep the connection of 550 blogs going in its innaugural session.

Creative Commons, Openness, Sharing and Policy

The topic of blogs quickly evolved into a wider discussion on the nature of the medium, and in particular the implications and risks they have – at least insomuch as policymakers perceive them. The discussion spanned a number of broad topics, including Copyright and IP, Creative Commons and sharing, quality assurance, open versus closed systems as well as the (in my view, appalling and counterproductive) firewalls and site filtering policies in place at certain levels of education

Perhaps not surprisingly the views expressed during the discussion were particularly diverse. Some participants expressing concern about operating without policy in place to expressly permit certain activies (aka Strict Constructionist); while others argued there is nothing wrong with acting on these ideas because innovation emerges far faster than policy, and it’s only after an activity is expressly forbidden (or otherwise incorporated into policy) that it can become an issues (aka Loose Constructionist).

My view on the matter is that policy should not be seen as etched in stone, and therefore untouchable or unchangeable. It’s not something that should go unquestioned. Bad policy or policy that caters to the few at the expense of the many should be spoken out against, if not rallied against outright. Policy should exist to help and benefit The People; people shouldn’t exist to serve policy.

Policy can change and should be aligned with what is most valuable to learners and the facilitation and empowering of the learning experience. If this isn’t happening then something’s wrong, and the matter should be discussed and questioned openly. That’s one key way that change happens – by recognising faults or deficiencies and activily seeking to make them right – in both words and deeds.

The activities we engage in as researchers are especially important here, because they can help establish and provide evidence for why these changes are important and indeed necessary.

An Unconference?

As a medium-term goal, we also broached the topic of “organising” an unconference in which we were able to explore many of the common themes in more depth and amongst a wider network of participants. This topic was not discussed in depth, but it did appear that many thought the idea was worth exploring further.

Robyn and my preliminary thoughts on the format were that we could use the BarCamp or WordCamp model in which participation by everyone is strongly encouraged, and that the process of coming together for a vibrant interactive discussion is as important as the outcomes of the unconference itself.

Future Activities and Details

It was fairly unanimously recognised that continuing to interact with one another is a very desirable thing, however many indicated that they weren’t sure how many future events they’d be able to attend due to time and work constraints. This lead to discussions about implementing a flexible model in which we alternated between synchronous online discussion and physical face-to-face meetings.

It was also suggested that the nature and general topic if the meeting be established and circulated prior to the event. This would enable people to determine whether the topic was of interest or relevance to them.

I think it’s pretty much expected that people will pick and choose what they attend, and engage with – that’s the nature of a network.

What have I missed?

Background

At some point in the next 6 months we will be starting to investigate ways to capitalise on Blackboard’s capacity to support 3rd party plugins.  While I certainly have my views on LMS’s – and Blackboard and WebCT in particular – this is what has been handed down to us (and me) to investigate; and investigate I shall.

Presently Moodle is being discussed as the mechanism to provide student access to blogs and wiki’s, however having looked into this a bit further this morning there are certain aspects of Moodle’s design that have me concerned – specifically with regards to blogs.

Note: This is not to say that I dislike Moodle.  All in all its extensibility looks very intriguing and I look forward to experimenting further.  My issue at this point is how it handles blogs and blog content.

Blogs as facilitators of life-long learning

As I discussed at length the other day, I have quite strong opinions on the importance of Digital Identity in learning and believe it is very important in nurturing the prospect of life-long learning.  Jim Groom suggested recently that they are toying with the idea of purchasing each student a one-year license for a personal domain.  I happen to think that’s a brilliant idea.

As I said:

“Particularly in the case of students, individual’s are at an institution for only a limited period of time, after which point they move on to new endeavours.  Use of a personal domain enables continuity of activity throughout their journey – wherever they go, their reflections, discussions, and content goes with them.  In the context of life-long learning this is particularly important, since the more seamless the continuity, the greater the opportunities for continued engagement and ongoing learning.”

Moodle Blogs

Moodle ties into this discussion in that it establishes an institution-centric view of blogging.  Yes the blogs are tied to the student, but only insomuch as they are students of the university.  Furthermore, the configuration of visibility settings – and therefore what options are available to students – lay with administrators, not bloggers.  Control of content is largely out of the hands of the blogger.

Continuing on the quote from my earlier post, in tying the blog content to the institution you are potentially creating discontinuities in the student’s life-long learning experiences; and arguably limiting the learning opportunities for them as well.

Exporting Content

I spent quite some time trying to locate a module or plugin for Moodle that would enable student blog content to be exported – ideally enabling it to be imported to another blog upon graduation – but so far I have not located any.  The significance of this is in retaining access to previous work, and therefore ensuring learners have the capacity to build on existing experiences.

One of the key benefits of blogging for me is the opportunity to witness growth and development over time.  This is only possible by maintaining continuity of work, and a sense of ongoing learning.  In the worst case if blog posts are tied to the institution, graduation from an institution could result in prevention of access to the content.

Open Education

Taking this conversation one step further, it is my view that any educational content that can be made publicly available, should be; and that collaborative relationships and opportunities for discussion on subject matter are not, and should not be, limited to students at the local institution only.

University staff – particularly academic staff – are frequently encouraged to develop working relationships across institutions, with the logic being that the knowledge-pool for a given subject is greater the wider and more extensive your network.  I see no reason why the same logic should not be extended to students as well.

Logistical Considerations

In saying all this though, from a course and institutional perspective there are questions that arise in the prospect of a distributed blogging model.  Namely, how can such a model be introduced without it resulting in administrative overload for instructors and institutions?  How would instructors keep track of all the dis-aggregated activity?

In light of the work of people like Jim Groom at UMW, and Brian Lamb at UBC, it would appear that a combination of Tagging and RSS aggregation in a CMS or LMS could be used to support a distributed blogging framework while easing administrative tasks.

Folksonomy and Course Specific Tags
One of the key values of RSS is as a method of distributing and repurposing content.  Many blog platforms now support use of tags, and frequently these tags each have their own RSS feed.

In the case of my contributions to Connectivism and Connective Knowledge for example, I tagged each post with the term CCK08.  So when the instructors requested the feeds for all student blogs, instead of sending them the generic RSS feed for my blog – which would have included a lot of unrelated content – I provided the feed for the CCK08 tag only.  Then any time I tagged an entry “CCK08″ the post would be included in the feed sent out to the central course aggregation tool along with anyone else who subscribed to the feed.

In such a model, a single blog could be used to support a student’s activities in several concurrent courses.  The key here is to establish a tagging convention, and ensure students use it.  It’s also important to ensure student blogs are configured to send the full article, rather than just a synopsis.

Aggregating the content
Once the tags were in place the next step would be to aggregate the content, ensuring it’s clear which student provided which entry.

While I’ve not seen an instance of this in the open web yet, my theory is that a combination of course-specific tagging and unique student identifiers (such as student ID) could be used to aggregate posts against student accounts in a CMS or LMS.  In order to do this though it’s likely to be necessary for students to provide the RSS feed for their course blog posts at the beginning of the session so they could be linked with the LMS/CMS gradebook.

Instructors could even create a single blog for a course (I believe Moodle lets you do this) and populate it with the aggregated posts of the entire student cohort.  This would would ease administrative workloads and provide a single starting point for students to view the work of their peers.

The significance of this approach – as opposed to using a native Moodle or Blackboard blog tool – would be that the student retains the original copy of the content in a space that would exist after their role at the institution draws to a close.