Discover: a short course in information literacy for adults
The ‘high expectations’ that John set for this task have really challenged my thinking and skills. Moodle is a LMS that I use regularly, but prior experience was a small advantage when it came to meeting the design specifications for this project and creating my “Discover” course.
Over the past two months, I have endeavoured to build HTML pages from scratch, and use some standards and technologies from the E-Learning Toolkit. In the end, after 1,784,923 iterations (*wink*), Discover is a far more customised HTML course site than I would have been able to design previously. Moodle makes it easy to just load up some web pages and pictures and consider a course done. This project has forced me to think about customising Moodle to give a better experience for learners and I am grateful for that.
Apart from customing Moodle, this project required me to design learning outcomes, an instructional approach, all content and assessments. I didn’t draw on an existing course, I’ve built one from scratch. I hope that Discover can be a commercial, online course.
Thanks go to the ETEC565A 66C community for both challenging me and helping me to advance my design skills in areas like:
– graphics
– HTML tables
– hyperlinks (linking elements across modules/pages of a course; Ken Buis)
– ‘combo’ HTML pages incorporating different types of content and resources, which are evidenced in the Study Guides in my course (most assistance from my workplace, some final coding help from Ken Buis)
– selective release of course content (a link reference from Ken Buis)
I need more time to create rollover graphics, but that’s on my to do list.
Moodle’s social tools and quizzes were relatively easy to configure for tasks and assessments. But the big challenge was to develop a ‘selective release’ module, something I’ve never done before. I did know about hiding modules, and hiding elements within modules, and using the ‘highlight’ feature to make a module that is current visible whilst hiding the other non-current modules, but I had no idea about the ‘common module’ feature and how to programme selective release of content!
The E-Learning Toolkit helped me to focus on ‘quality’ web design. I followed the recommendations and removed some mention of “welcome” from the site (but I still like welcome for learners of fully online courses). I also paid attention to text width. I ensured the width of text appearing on labels was limited to a range between 5% left margin and 15% right margin, so the text would be easy to read. Many HTML pages were built with similar text width limitations. My header images still have a width of 750px, which is slightly too wide, but these contain minimal text, so I have left them be. I need to bear in mind in future that this may pose a problem for mobile devices, and 700px is a maximum.
I noted the accessibility advice in the E-Learning Toolkit, and wanted to develop tables with TH code, but couldn’t figure out how to incorporate those commands with the other code I had to include with table design. Hence, the end result was to stick with the tables as they were. I have ensured images have ‘alternate text’ so this is one step in the direction of ensuring access for people with disabilities.
The multimedia tools that were trialed and used to create content were Voki (text-to-speech avatar software) and Stupeflix (digital story). I had no knowledge of either of these technologies prior to starting this project and it’s exciting to see the end results. I will add another Voki to my Conclusion page (next week !!).
In these last few days of course design, I have tested the course on Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers and I also tested the site on an i-Pad. I was very happy with the way the course appeared on an i-Pad (“kewl”) as I think the tabs format works well with i-Pad screens. I have not yet managed to locate someone with an i-Phone to test user experience of the course on that type of mobile device.
The course is currently 80% complete so if you see bits missing, please don’t be surprised. For ETEC565A assessment purposes, I would like Topic 3 and Topic 4 to be assessed as fully completed modules, and Topic 2 as the selective release module (linked to completion of activities in Topic 1).
My flight path had stated: “My LMS goal for ETEC 565A is to explore functions of Moodle that I am not so familiar with, which means social interaction in modes other than text (to account for different learning styles and Web 2.0 communication) and to learn about SCORM and software integration. I am curious about Moodle 2.0.”
I can definitely say that some of my personal goals for Moodle have been achieved.
Thanks to everyone for helping me and helping us all to meet this design challenge. Special thanks to Ken Buis who helped me with sticky bits and thanks to those who found the selective release clues, and thanks to everyone who encouraged me and responded to my queries.
Please visit Discover.
Janette