Metamorphosis of OLLIE 2

I am currently taking a post-midnight break from grading students in my OLLIE course "Technology for Online Instruction" (hoping to have that all finished still tonight).  As I think about the two ITEC presentations that I still have not begun (giving those in 36 hours), a thought has come to me.  It is interesting to take a look at how this course has changed over time.

The Technology for Online Instruction course introduces students to online tools, with a primary focus on Moodle.  Participants each have a "practice course" where they have to create on their own the basic attributes of Moodle (a forum, a webpage, a lesson, a quiz, etc.) 

Despite being the second course in the OLLIE sequence, I developed it first, withing the first few months I began to work for Heartland AEA (fall of 2008).  I didn't know what I was doing at the time... not that I'm much better than that now.  But at least I've tried a variety of things to improve the course over time.  Indeed, the current iteration is the 9th different time I've offered the course since then, and each time takes on a bit of a change.

THE BEGINNING:

When I first set out, the main purpose was to learn Moodle.  Actually, that was the sole purpose.  I was in a hurry to get a course out to meet the growing demand, so I grabbed a bunch of free misfit resources off the web and threw it together.  The result:

Well, it served the purpose.  We had a course up and running, my first one ever in Moodle, and with live students to work with, I figured out pretty quickly we needed to make some changes.

ATTEMPT #2:
While the next time I offered the course I still was focused on simply learning Moodle, I made several changes to the content. 

• Concise Was Better.  I had way too many resources, resulting in the scroll of death, as you can see.  I took large numbers of Moodle Webpages I had created and wove them together into a single Moodle Lesson.  The result was a leaner look that was less panic-inducing for students and made their work more direct.

 

• Simplify My Assignments.  Not only did I have too many resources, I had too many assignments.  Actually, I had way too many forums; I had 11 in the first go-round.  All students were doing was creating forum posts to topics, and not all the questions had a lot of bearing on their understanding of Moodle.  I eliminated half the forums right off the bat.

• Eliminated Downloads.  My first try featured a few Word documents and several PDFs.  Which, required the user to have to download and view those outside of the browser.  I never ran into the hypothetical student who did not have MS Word, so I was lucky.  But transferring those into Moodle webpages and lessons made the content all self-contained in the course.

My 3rd attempt was primarily aimed at incorporating another tool, Adobe Connect Pro, into the course.  We were actively pushing that as an AEA.  However, while I was able to work it in to the curriculum, it always felt like a poor fit, and I ended up minimizing it after the 4th attempt.

ATTEMPT #4
My 4th attempt featured quite a bit of change, as I was now getting better at the concept of instructional design.  I was now teaching 3 other courses online, so I was picking up several tips that I hadn't realized before.

• Embedded Video.  I removed almost all of my uploaded video from the course.  Instead, I embedded the video, either from YouTube or AEA's Eduvision.  This has saved tremendously on bandwidth and the speed by which participants can access the videos.

• FAQ Database.  I had made archived backups of all the previous courses before resetting them.  This was a wise move, as I still had access to all the past Question & Troubleshooting forum questions that students had posed.  I took all of the questions as well as the answers I provided and I put them into an FAQ database.  The number of student questions in course #4 went down by 90%.  And while I don't have as many questions, I still add them after every new course.

• Multiple Learning Paths.  The biggest change to the course was out of necessity.  I had several individuals struggle with learning Moodle, becoming overwhelmed by the added item of building their own content.  For this course, I add the "template course" option.  Specifically, I created my own template course - Basketball 101.  I also recorded myself making each of the steps.  For those participants who needed a more guided approach to learning Moodle, they could now re-create the template course, basically copying and pasting all the text (and using all the same images).  In this way, they wouldn't have to take up time developing their own text.  They could also follow my recordings step-by-step.  And, they had a finished model to work with, to compare to their own product.  This was a giant game-changer to the course, and all of the future courses I have developed have used a similar "multiple learning paths" model.

• Soft Chalk.  I finally had had enough of Moodle's lesson module, as it looked boring and was clunky to navigate.  I had access to Soft Chalk's "Lesson Builder" program, which is now known simply as Soft Chalk.  Taking the lessons that I had created in Moodle, as well as a few brand new lessons (like how to embed Google Forms into Moodle), I created a Soft Chalk lesson for them and replaced the old one.  Some might consider this a minor detail (it is just window dressing, right?).  And yet, when individuals were creating their own practice courses, they wanted to know how I had made the lessons with the neat banners and built-in navigational items.  And especially the hands-on interactives that Soft Chalk allows you to embed within it.  Being SCORM-compliant, adding Soft Chalk was extremely easy to do, and greatly enhanced the visual professionalism of the course.

 

GENESIS OF OLLIE
It was at this time, the spring of 2010, that we began to conceptualize a new way of providing professional development for online teaching.  We were putting down the foundation for AEA PD Online, and were looking for instructors.  In addition, the Iowa EdTech ARRA grant started, and we had 20 schools across Iowa sign-up to have their teachers trained.  We branded a more comprehensive initiative as OLLIE (Online Learning for Iowa Educators), a sequence of 5 courses (to be built over the next year), and built off the Iowa Online Teaching Standards.  This meant several changes for our course.

• Re-branding.  This is similar to what many other virtual schools have gone through, where a course that was locally developed and used by a teacher was now being assimilated into something bigger.  We customized our own template on our new statewide Moodle server, using the Aardvark theme.

 

• Adding Images.  This didn't happen solely in this step, but by this time, it was very noticeable.  There were now images to break up long sections of text, as well as visual elements like horizontal rules.  

• Change in Focus.  Since this course was now part of an online pedagogy sequence, the focus was placed on understanding the concept of online technology as a whole.  Some items of Moodle were moved to the enrichment section in order for participants to explore the other online tools that can be utilized within the framework.  For the first time, participants now examined a brief summary of the different categories of tools that are available for online instructors, and then chose on their own an independent proposal to examine one tool.  This, they then incorporated into their work.

• Groups & Groupings.  This was also the beginning of the gargantuan sections of OLLIE, which we've called the Cohorts.  Cohort 1 had 93 participants in it (we are currently on Cohort 5, which has 86 participants).  These large groups were due primarily to the demand and the lack of supply... I was the only teacher at this point.  Having 93 classmates will kill a participant, so I reconceptualized the course using groups of 15-20 people to make up a "class".  I then made the activities in the course accessible by group, so that they would only see their fellow classmates.  For me, since the course already used a small group assignment, this required some personal learning... I had to figure out groupings during the middle of the course, as I inadvertently set up the course wrong.  Luckily, I won't make that mistake again.

REVISIONS OVER THE LAST YEAR

The course continues to evolve, despite that familiarity that sinks in when you have taught it repeatedly.  I gave up the other courses that I had taught online, and only teach the 5 OLLIE courses, so that helps a bit in focus.

• Diigo.  When I began to develop the other OLLIE courses, I was set on doing a mixture of group work activities.  Forums were great to a point, but they weren't always the form of interaction that I wanted.  While I had used Diigo for years and had even referenced it in the course as a tool online instructors could use, it took me quite a few iterations before I finally took my own advice.  I changed our "Online Teaching Standards" forum into an "Online Teaching Standards" Diigo collaboration, which had the added benefit of familiarizing participants with another form of technology.  This hasn't always been smooth, even when I had participants do their collaboration only in a Diigo group we formed.  When the next section of the course came to the same website, they weren't greeted with a blank slate to Diigo-annotate (and after one class of 93 participants, there isn't much to annotate anymore).  I had to seek out permission from the authors to make a copy of their articles to use in the course, and then make a fresh new copy with each new section of the course that I teach.

• Adobe Captivate.  My recorded screencasts of me building different Moodle features had served their purpose, but it was time for a better tutorial.  I re-recorded them, this time with Adobe Captivate.  This allowed me to pause in between steps and annotate with words and arrows to show what I was talking about.

 

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Right now, we are still in the middle of changes.  This past summer, we began to have different instructors teach the course.  This has brought on a whole new set of challenges, which I'm probably a few iterations away from mastering.  For one, the course still references a lot of outside resources.  Those links go bad or those video clips suddenly disable embedding.  And whereas before I only needed to keep track of my own course, now I need to make changes in many courses.  

We are looking at Moodle's built-in repository feature.  This essentially allows you to keep one copy of the resource on the server, and then each section of the course links to the central repository instead of its own file structure.  Looks promising, yet we still have lots of work to do to get it to work.

That's not the only new feature that's out there.  We are looking to integrate Google Apps into the Moodle platform, so that when a person signs in, their Google Apps (mail, calendar, docs) all appear within the course.  This will allow for streamless use by our instructors over time.  But this requires curriculum changes, assessment changes in the course, and new tutorials/resources.  Similarly, we have added a audio recording tool that is embedded within the Moodle platform, which will be nice once we have it utilized.

The content itself is ever-changing as well.  Podcasting was a big deal when I created this course.  Now no one selects it as their independent proposal.  Nings have gone away, as have dozens of other tools.  Keeping the links active and the content fresh is a non-stop job.

The point here being, it is a misconception to think once you have built a course, it will never change.  If it doesn't change, it isn't a course that I'd like to take.  As an instructor, you have to have this in mind when you make the choice to teach online.

Moodle Monday: Can we have some Moodle please?

A presentation from Tomaz Lasic, Moodle entrepreneur.  Ask and you shall receive, as Moodle's array of functionality meets the wishes of many educators.

Can we have some Moodle please?

View more presentations from Tomaz Lasic.

Why Moodle?

The recent developments with both ARRA and AEA PD Online have gained many administrators interest.  However, one question that surfaces is why did we choose Moodle over Blackboard, Studywiz or other LMS products?  Both of the initiatives will be standardizing the content into Moodle.

First, there isn't much debate, that we need to standardize and choose one.  AEAs and districts have limited resources, and content and expertise are easily shared when everyone is using the same platform.  So, why Moodle and not a different one?

It is not because of functionality.  In comparison of features, many of the top platforms have very similar features.  You could argue Moodle has a wider range of plugins for installation than commercial products, but that doesn’t mean overall it has more functionality.  So, this is not a deciding characteristic.  Here is what are:

1. Cost – Moodle is open source, meaning there are no annual per pupil costs for the license to use Moodle.  This differs from commercial products, which usually range from $5-10 a student, plus the yearly license fee (and some have support contracts on top of that).  Open source doesn’t mean free, as there are costs involved to have someone maintain the server, but those costs go back to support local employees. And, while there are other open source LMS products out there, Moodle remains the option with the most visibility and support, meaning the cost is lower over them as well.

2. Present Scalability – Because of its open source nature, it allows all types of deployment.  Districts can dabble with a trial server.  An individual teacher can set up their own server.  There can be cheap hosted versions for as little as $7/month.  A district can set up their own Moodle installment, including robust options (the largest self-managed Moodle installments have up to 500,000 users).  And, there are many full-fledged Moodle hosting options a district can use if they would prefer not to host it themselves.

3. Experience & Market Share – The AEAs have each used Moodle, in some cases for over 5 years.  Leading districts in Iowa have used Moodle for just as long.  In fact, the current market share of K-12 educational entities in Iowa for Moodle is overwhelming.  Having a community of users makes for a more valuable statewide effort, allowing content, professional development, and knowledge to be exchanged.

4. Professional Development – The AEAs have developed professional development materials (including modules and courses) for Moodle.  This material can be used flexibly in either online, self-paced, hybrid, or face-to-face options.  Developing professional development for other LMS tools would be a considerable cost for the AEAs.

5. Future Scalability – Moodle’s market share, especially among open source options, means it isn’t going anywhere and will continue to thrive.  Moodle has a vibrant community adding many different plug-ins and options.  The ability to add your own individual themes, plugin tools, templates, and layouts make it a flexible option for the future. 

That's not to say a district could not choose a different platform and be pleased with the results.  But, it will inhibit that district's ability to participate in the statewide effort.

Moodle Uses for Professional Development

I mentioned in an earlier post how Moodle can be used for a continuum of ways in a K-12 classroom, and that teachers could use Moodle without being fully immersed in teaching an online course. The flexibility of the platform makes it useful for a variety of purposes.

Ditto for professional development, be it from an AEA or from the district level. As the swiss-army knife of online tools, you can use the pieces of Moodle that serve your purpose. Here are some of the main purposes for professional development that people use Moodle:

1. ONLINE COURSES
This is often what you think of. Moodle allows you a space where you can not only place your content, but you can group students, have them submit their work, and meet to discuss and get information. The built-in forums, assignments, and gradebook make this the natural tool for online courses, for which teachers can get licensure renewal credit (or graduate credit).

AEAs aren't the only ones using Moodle for online professional development, however. Districts, such as Ankeny CSD, have used Moodle to host their own courses. Ankeny has offered courses to their staff members, such as Web 2.0 technology, Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning, Differentiated Instruction, and Mentoring and Induction. The courses are hosted on their own Moodle server and are offered by Ankeny staff.

Dianne Peterson, the district coordinator for curriculum and mentoring, mentioned there are many benefits. In a large district like Ankeny, it can target specific needs of teachers and get them connected with each other, even if they are in different buildings. It also allows teachers the flexibility to work with content over the course of a semester. Working over that period of time allows teachers to implement and get coaching/feedback in ways that face-to-face professional development cannot. In this way, online courses are an essential tool in line with the Iowa Professional Development Model.

2. HYBRID COURSES
Also referred to as blended courses, this is a blend of asynchronous learning (learning when the classmates are not meeting together) and synchronous learning (when they are together). That synchronous component is often face-to-face, but with the use of Adobe Connect Pro, those meetings can be virtual.

One consultant I've had the privilege of working with is Brad Niebling, Heartland's alignment consultant. Suffice it to say that Brad's knowledge of alignment in curriculum isn't matched in the state. To connect Brad with other consultants so they could learn principles of alignment, we looked into online options. Brad found a hybrid environment to be the best of both worlds: allowing a synchronous discussion of some difficult abstract terms, and some online asynchronous work to integrate the principles into your own profession. What's more, since it is online, it is set up to be delivered to consultants and educators across the state.

Hybrid is an excellent stepping stone; for teachers who haven't had an online environment, this type of course is a safe way to wade into online professional development.

3. ONLINE REPOSITORIES
Not every form of professional development has to have a direct teacher involved. At a base level, you can use Moodle as a house to store files and resources.

When Susen Schirmer conducted counselor academies for area school counselors, she would regularly distribute handouts and links to websites to counselors. When some counselors were unable to attend (or had lost the files), this meant extra work with sending attachments. That's not to mention the amount of paper that was involved.

She now uses Moodle to hold the Iowa School Counselor networking site. Files and links can be easily updated, and any time a participant misses out on a meeting, they know where to go. And again, since it is online, it has the capability to be used by counselors across the state.

4. ONLINE MODULES
A step up from a repository would be a module. While you still don't have a teacher directly instructing in the class, you have set outcomes and a learning sequence in a module.

We have used other tools to develop modules for subjects such as the mandatory reporting of child abuse or bloodborne pathogens. Moodle is another way to put that material together. Heartland ed tech consultant Denise Krefting has created a number of these. Two of her most recent are modules on Google Sketchup and Adobe Connect Pro. In both, the module takes you through the learning in sequential order, building your knowledge of the subject.

5. ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS
I wouldn't recommend using Moodle solely for the purpose of having teachers network with other teachers... there are many other social networking tools like Ning that are simpler to use and more user friendly.

On the other hand, if you want to couple social networking with another purpose on this list, Moodle is exactly what you want. Moodle has forums and choices that allow participants to share ideas and thought easily, just like a Ning. But Moodle makes it much easier to share documents and other resources. When the Iowa School Counselors networking site was created, Susen wanted not only a repository for files, but also a chance for counselors to meet and converse with other counselors. Moodle even has a social group format expressly for this purpose.

6. FACE-TO-FACE PORTAL
Consider this scenario. You would like your district staff to spend your day-long inservice looking at the district's standards and benchmarks. Your staff will be accessing the AEA online resources and finding examples that support the curriculum. Once they do so, they will need to share their findings with other teachers in the district, and write an implementation plan. You will gather those plans at the end of the day to look at and set up observation times. What's more, since your district doesn't have a computer lab with 200 computers in it, or has a big geographic area to cover, you can't have all your teachers (and you!!!) in one space.

Even though none of this is asynchronous professional development, Moodle works great here. You can create a "course" in Moodle and label it for that day. You can post the directions for teachers in the course. You can also upload the standards and benchmarks (if they are a pdf) or link to them (if on the web). And of course, you can link to the online resources as well.

In the course, you can use a forum for teachers to pose questions or share examples of the resources with other teachers. And as the teacher work teams finish their implementation plans, they can submit them to you through a Moodle assignment. Moodle is the structure that allows all these tasks to be brought together into one place. Woodward-Granger is one district in the Heartland area that uses Moodle in this method.

7. PLC/WORKTEAM SPACE
The idea of teacher collaboration in professional development has gained roots in the concept of professional learning communities, as well as teacher quality learning teams or balanced leadership workteams. With any of these, teachers are collaborating with other teachers and driving their own professional development, instead of passively receiving it in a traditional top-down method.

PLCs and other collaborative teams are most limited by time. Bill Ferriter, a big proponent of PLCs recently reminded me via Twitter:

One of the struggles I have is that I just don't have the time--as a classroom teacher---to collaborate. They want us to collaborate---and we'd do a GREAT job---but between planning, grading, parent conferences, there's nothing left. I think many people beyond the classroom forget the crush of tasks that we have to do beyond collaborating with them!"

He's right... I was guilty of that as an administrator, and my administrators were guilty of that as well. The time set aside for PLC collaboration gets eaten up by other issues of the day.

Online learning allows you to converse when you have time and energy, because with forums and wikis, you can have an ongoing asynchronous conversation with your colleagues. Moodle can provide you a space for your group to focus on improving student learning, and in that space, you can hold conversation, resources, a calendar, and more.

8. IMPLEMENTATION SPACE
The benefits that Moodle brings for online courses--a place for common content distribution and sharing files/resources, a place for participant conversation, and a place for individuals to submit their own work--are also benefits it brings for any district implementation.

Several districts do this with individual professional development plans. Moodle can serve as the portal where you post directions for the yearly process. If a district is pushing a specific initative, such as Second Chance Reading or Handwriting Without Tears, you can provide a secure space to share digital resources (check copyright restrictions of a publisher before posting).

Teachers can then post their plans, be it individually with the supervisor through an assignment, or for all to see. Moodle can help you schedule meetings or announce deadlines. Best of all, once the structure is developed, it can be re-used the next year.

Follow up on Moodle Uses

Thought I'd quickly link to this post by Joseph Thibault. He's got some examples of Moodle courses for the eight steps of Moodle. Worth a read.

Degrees of Moodle Use in the Classroom

One tool quickly gaining the interest of schools is Moodle, the open-source learning management system. It is at the same time extremely versatile and free, making it a favorite.

However, Moodle is not for the faint of heart. After showing it to teachers, I often hear something along the lines of "Whoa, that is a lot more complicated than a wiki!"

Yes, that's true.

But, you can also do much more with it. Not just in terms of individual tasks, like a discussion board and a database, but also big-picture outlook. You have several different starting points. And best of all, you can start and just get your feet wet, or when you are ready, you can always progress in your use. There are many acceptable levels of use that improve your classroom instruction... you don't have to become fully immersed in it to use it well.

While the list below isn't all-encompassing, here's a common look at the different steps in Moodle use in a K-12 classroom:

1. Repository - Teachers often start with Moodle just by taking their worksheets and handouts saved in MS Word or as .PDFs and uploading them to Moodle. Immediately, you have a place for students to get their classroom resources, at school or at home.

2. Links to Websites - The next step for teachers is to take the handouts of classroom activities, especially those that involve browsing on the internet, and make them into a page right in Moodle. Then within that page, they can insert the live links. Suddenly the paper assignments have become digital assignments with a launch-pad to the internet.

3. Classroom Calendar - Using the calendar block, teachers can put in upcoming classroom events, such as assignment due dates or the dates of tests. This works well not only for students, but also for parents.

4. Digital Assignment Dropbox - Until this moment, the Moodle course could be used without any student accounts (open for all to see). But if the teacher takes it to the next step and has her students make accounts, the student can turn in their homework via Moodle assignments. What's nice, it allows for submission at home (at all hours of the night) and stamps it with a date & time when it is turned in.

5. Classroom Discussion Board - There are some big limitations to class discussions face-to-face. One, not every student gets to speak. Two, not every student gets to interact with every other student. Three, there is a limit on time. And four, if a student isn't prepared for class that day, they often cannot participate. But with a Moodle discussion board, a topic can be discussed at any time during the day, and it makes it easy for all to interact and for the teacher to see what each student has added.

6. Enrichment - Frustrated by trying to differentiate instruction with only 2 ears? Teachers can create enrichment or acceleration units in Moodle that offer learning at a different pace than the regular class.

7. Supplement - After one gets familiar with Moodle, they see that there are some assignments that are better done digitally online. Even though students might report to the same room, more and more of their time can be done in the digital world of Moodle. This includes online quizzes, wikis, and lesson modules in Moodle.

8. Full Online Course - The final step, but not necessarily one that leaves the school's building. Think of a senior project or a seminar done independently by students via Moodle.

Putting the tool before the purpose, illustrated

My visits with schools this fall has been permeated with my thoughts on mistakenly putting the tool before the purpose in education, and how this is the wrong way to go about things.

Case in point, straight from me. I spent a day last week working with a district about the Iowa Core and 21st Century Skills. In the afternoon, I had a session giving teachers resources and examples for using blogging and Google Docs in the classroom. After a quick bit of introduction to concepts with the whole group, I had them break out and work on topics that were appropriate to them, be it "how the tool works", "how do you assess with the tool", "how to supervise student use", and so forth.

As I was floating around to visit with teachers as they worked, one teacher asked me to help clarify whether blogs or wikis would be best for her classroom. She explained that she wanted students in literary groups to collaborate in a back-and-forth discussion over questions posed by her, and that she wanted this easily assess-able. After visiting with her a bit, we found that what she was truly looking for was a nested discussion forum, and the tool that was the best fit by far was Moodle. After an impromptu demonstration of Moodle, she was then psyched and eager to get started.

Again, starting with a set session on "blogs", or "wikis", or "insert your tool here" when the teachers don't have the purpose of integration or the place in their curriculum picked out is a waste. Had she continued to set up a blog and try to force her educational lesson into it, it would have done two things: 1) wasted her professional development time, and 2) frustrated her, possibly to the point of becoming jaded about the use of instructional tools.

This old trend is hard to get away from, as it is the old mindset for professional development. Get away from it, we must, however.