Ed in ETEC

Unlike last week, this week’s work with Moodle’s assessment tool proved to be time-consuming and frustrating. While some features in Moodle’s quiz function are easy to use and can potentially save an instructor’s time, there are also significant shortcomings in the quiz function.

For starters, I would definitely NOT recommend using this feature to have students do any objective-answering questions. Moodle is just not “smart” enough to handle the task of marking objective answers, and yet, you cannot tell it not to if such a question exists in your quiz (though, to its credit, an instructor can override that mark).

For a complete break-down of the “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” features of Moodle’s assessment tools, please click on the Assessment Tools page within this weblog.

You can also try out my quiz in unit 2 of my Moodle course – see how much you remember from Biology 11.

Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication

In choosing my communication tools for my LMS course site, I strive to use tools that are i) simple to use, and ii) offer significant pedagogical value to the course. From scholarly literature and my personal experience taking various online courses, I have settled into using “forum” and “chat” as my two tools. Sadly, financial constraints played a large role in my decision-making process.

As an educator who has worked in an inner city school for over a decade, it is important to point out that, although most students now have access to the internet at home, a significant number of students are from families who cannot afford high-speed internet services. As a result, although I can expect students to use a LMS as a supplementary component to their courses, it is also very important to build a LMS that would not have a very high demand for internet capacities from my students. This is a big consideration when I am choosing the various synchronous and asynchronous communication tools – I need to keep the communication tools simple to allow every student access to the LMS at a reasonable speed. This is the reason why I have chosen the synchronous chat function, as well as the asynchronous forum function in my Moodle site.

From the course material, it is clear that the exclusive use of either synchronous or asynchronous communication tools would create educational deficiencies for students. Using exclusively synchronous communication tools, for example, would prevent students from having the time to reflect carefully on their responses. From the Anderson’s article, I would argue that this would even prevent discourse from happening altogether. On the other hand, if a LMS relies exclusively on asynchronous communication tools, students very likely would feel disconnected to the learning community, and that is not an ideal situation either. In light of these potential pitfalls, I have chosen to combine the use of a synchronous and an asynchronous communication tool. I believe the two would complement each other, and would address the shortcomings of each individual communication tool.

It is also worth noting that, if a LMS is used as a complementary learning tool to a f2f class, the problem of an asynchronous communication tool such as forum is reduced quite significantly. When students have the opportunity to interact face-to-face during class time, the time they spend on a LMS asynchronously may actually enhance and deepen the discourse that educators are trying to instil.

My reflections on communication tools have now been posted.

You can click on the following link to take a look. As always, I appreciate your feedback, any feedback.

Ed’s Reflections on Communication Tools

Proposal for: Mr. Chris Kelly, Superintendent, Vancouver Board of Education (SD# 39)

From: Ed Leung, Science Department Head, Counsellor, Templeton Secondary School

Re: Recommendation for the Implementation of a Learning Management System (LMS) for Templeton Secondary School

Rationale for the Proposal:

Within the mission statement of Vancouver Board of Education (formerly Vancouver School Board) is a pledge to provide educational opportunities for all learners. In recent years, severe shortage in funding from the Ministry of Education has seriously hindered various programs secondary schools can offer to their students. One area that is in great needs is special education. Many Vancouver high schools, particularly those in the Sunrise region, have a significant number of students with special needs, many of them are learning-disabled, as designated by the Ministry. Unlike other schools in the district, however, these “inner city schools” often lack the corporate and parental support that could help to offset some of the financial challenges they face. As a result, students with special needs are often not receiving the support to which they need to maximize their learning. As Chickering and Gamson (1987) have suggested, good educational practice includes using active learning techniques, and respecting diverse ways of learning – although their framework focuses on post-secondary education, these aspects are generalized goals that any school should adapt to. A Learning Management System (LMS) is one of the educational tools that can help address some of these goals. An economic LMS, meanwhile, would be an ideal application for a school that is strapped for funding.

Proposed Learning Management System (LMS) to Adopt

The Learning Management System I am recommending the VBE to adopt is Moodle, an open source LMS that is developed with constructivist learning principles in mind. As an open source software, schools that choose to employ Moodle need not pay a licensing fee, as long as it does not remove the original license and copyright, and apply the same license to any derivative work. While the minimal cost schools need to adopt Moodle is definitely an appealing feature of this LMS, the reason why I am choosing Moodle as my choice recommendation is because it fulfills the requirements set by the SECTIONS model proposed by Bates and Poole (2003) in a very positive fashion. In the following paragraphs, I will outline how Moodle meets these criteria well:

S – Students

In choosing a proper LMS for the targeted students, it is important to know that the technology chosen is appropriate for this targeted group. As a LMS that offers a variety of learning methods, including synchronous and asynchronous messaging, streaming of audio and video segments, etc., Moodle offers a level of excitement to the students while providing essential learning supplements as well.

E – Ease of Use and Reliability

Moodle was first developed in 2002, and has been used by many educators. With proper training, instructors can learn to operate the basics with relative ease. Students in the digital age generally learn how to use any computer interface extremely quickly. With some support, they would easily access and use Moodle as a powerful learning tool.

C – Cost

As mentioned, Moodle is an open source LMS, meaning that the board does not have to pay for any licensing fee. To pilot the use of Moodle in a school such as Templeton Secondary with 1100 students, the board’s current server capacity and computer hardware should suffice. Because Moodle offers a collaborative community for Moodle users for support through forums and detailed users’ manuals, the resources required for tech support in implementing Moodle would be minimal, if not nil altogether. A more detailed break-down of the cost of implementing Moodle will be given at the end of this proposal.

T – Teaching and Learning

One of the more challenging tasks classroom teachers face in teaching students with special needs is the variety of learning needs that these students have. Moodle offers a wide array of learning platforms to allow students of various talents and skills to learn. For example, visual learners can benefit from video streaming of lessons and demonstrations. Students who are challenged in certain learning areas can also use Moodle to foster development in a non-threatening way, as the learning will not be done face-to-face, reducing their anxiety and their fear of failure.

I – Interactivity

Moodle allows for a variety of ways by which students can interact with their teachers and their classmates. Asynchronously, students can participate in discussion forums, and send messages to their peers as well as teachers. Textual transcripts of lessons and virtual classrooms can also be downloaded by students. Synchronously, students can participate in class or group chat (an excellent place for collaborative learning), and can learn in live classroom and forum.

O – Organizational Issues

As many students in special education are currently traveling in cohorts from class to class, organization is not a big issue when Moodle is implemented. The adapted/modified students in the school can use their skills development class (SDC) to go to the Moodle Room to have a session, in similar ways as how the literacy program Fast ForWord is currently being offered at Templeton. Special needs students enrolled in regular class can also be pulled out should remedial needs arise.

N – Novelty

Though Moodle has been released since 2002, the LMS has been continuously upgraded and modified to meet the needs of its users. The most updated versions of Moodle, Moodle 1.9.5 and 1.8.9, are released as recently as May of 2009.

S – Speed

Downloading and installing Moodle into a school would require minimal time. As for the actual speed in running Moodle, it would be much dependent on the school board’s server’s capability. As the board regularly upgrades its server, so would the speed in using Moodle be enhanced as well.

Cost Breakdown

The biggest cost in implementing Moodle lies not in the purchasing of hardware nor software, but in the training of a staff to set up and run Moodle, and to offer troubleshooting assistance to teachers who are using the LMS. The cost breakdown is as follows:

• EOC Coverage for the Moodle Trainer to install and set up Moodle (estimated to be around 2 weeks, or 10 school days): $200/day x 10 = $2000
• EOC Coverage for the teacher trainer to train teachers in using Moodle (during teachers’ spare blocks): $200/four-block-day x 2 = $400
• EOC release time for teacher trainer to troubleshoot for staff using Moodle: $200 x 3 days = $600 (this amount is the same as that given to the scheduler who creates the school timetable)
• EOC Coverage + Conference Fee to provide teacher trainer with professional development opportunities in using Moodle: $200 for EOC + $300 Conference fee = $500
• Contingency Technology Support = $500
• Total = $4000

Conclusion

Many studies have shown clearly that students with special needs are not intellectually inferior to their peers. The challenge a public school has always faced in the past is that there does not exists the technology and resources that are needed to allow these students to realize their learning capabilities. As a LMS, Moodle does not solve all of the challenges faced by an under-privileged, special needs student in an east-side Vancouver school. It does, however, offer a chance for this student to identify and to foster an area of strength, while providing remedial and practical intervention strategies in helping this student catch up in areas that he/she is challenged.

Reference:

Bates, A.W. & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In Effective teaching with Technology in Hihger Education: Foundations for Success. (pp. 77 – 105). San Francisco: Jossey Bass Publishers.

Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39 (7), p.3 – 7.

Moodle.org: About Moodle. (n.d.). Retrieved June 4, 2009, from http://docs.moodle.org/en/About_Moodle

Moodle.org: News. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2009, from http://moodle.org/news/

Moodle.org: Support. (n.d.). Retrieved June 10, 2009, from http://moodle.org/forums/

Some Easy Parameters for Trinh

From reading the description of Trinh’s challenges, and having felt that disconnectedness in taking an online course, I think there are a couple of relative simple solutions for Trinh:

E-mail: Because Trinh is delivering her museumology course via Vista, and Vista offers a “mail” feature for instructors, all Trinh needs to do is to make a public announcements to students that course-related comments and questions would only be answered if they are made through the mail feature used in Vista. This announcement should have been made at the beginning of the course, or explained in the course outline, etc., but from my experience with online learning, students do understand the need for adjustments throughout the course and would compile to the change.

In light of the fact that Vista offers a good discussion forum feature and live chat rooms/forums, Trinh should also take a proactive approach in encouraging her students to engage in collaborative discussions on the discussion boards, and participate in live chat rooms and forums to exchange ideas with other fellow students. This, combined with the above-mentioned method, should help re-direct some of the traffic that Trinh need not handle directly.

Office Hours: While live chat rooms and live forums can both be used as a virtual office hour period for Trinh, the biggest challenge she faces is that many students are taking the course from different time zones, making it almost impossible to engage everybody at the same time. However, I think 100% engagement in every opportunity is not even necessary. Even for students who are living and working in the same place, it is often difficult for the instructor to expect all of them to be present at the same time. The best I think Trinh can do is to offer different times to be present in live chat rooms/live forums (e.g. Tuesday mornings, Thursday evenings) to accommodate students with different schedules. Another thing she can do is to produce a text transcript of the live forum sessions for students to download. This is a feature that I am seeing in ETEC 531. The transcript would allow students who are not able to attend the synchronous communication channels to at least “stay tuned” to what is happening. As for general enquires that sometimes take place during a regular f2f office hour, I believe most of these questions can be answered through e-mails.

My Four Prongs of Learning

Anderson’s article describes four different attributes in learning. According to him, “good” learning occurs when the learning is learner-, knowledge-, assessment-, and community-centered. In my experience taking online courses both at the undergraduate and now at the graduate level, I notice that it is difficult for any particular course to be strong at all of the attributes. Some educators design courses in such a way that a certain attribute is noticeably stronger than another. While I would agree that a good online course should not be lacking in one of these attributes, I would also suggest that it is not necessarily a bad thing if one of these “prongs” of learning is significantly larger (or more emphasized) than the others, providing that this imbalance is intentional.

When I took a family counselling course online while doing my diploma in counselling guidance, the community of peer helpers was one of the key aspects in the learning that took place in the course. The instructor would post weekly topics onto the course’s discussion forum, and students would collaborate to discuss and come up with strategies to address each of these scenarios. Whether active learning could occur or not was determined significantly by the learner community. As the course progressed and people got to know each other better, the learning that took place became more in depth. Students who did not choose to participate in the discussion forum a lot often found themselves unable to understand course materials.

To probe into the prior knowledge of students entering the course, the instructor asked us to do a self-survey, as well as an introduction to ourselves. The introduction to self was very similar to some of my MET courses’ introduction, where students need to write a bio of himself/herself. By instructing the students to specific the prior knowledge and the expectations for the course, the instructor got a sense as to the people who he was working with.

In the above example, I could observe that the instructor appeared to have placed a much heavier emphasis on the Learner- and the community-centered approach. For a counselling course, I believe these two attributes can be viewed as marginally or noticeably “more important” than the other two attributes. Having said that, I do not disagree with Anderson’s notion of a four-attribute approach. As long as the other attributes are not ignored, and that the course design takes into the account the discrepancy that may occur, the four attributes need not to be emphasized in the same fashion.

Costs that Anju Need Not Pay

While there is no doubt that the creation of an informational DVD would allow Anju’s customers to have easy access to the resources Anju wants to present to them, the cost that Anju needs to incur upon her will be a continuous one, and is not necessarily sustainable. While the camcorder and the computer Anju bought can be used for her personal use, the DVDs she has to produce for her clients will cost her time and money. Assuming that Anju is conducting her diabetes workshop as a public service, and assuming that she will continue to host similar workshops (perhaps annually or semi-annually with updated information), it is not far-fetched to guess that she will need to produce a batch of brand new DVDs each time to give away. For a dietician working on her own computer, the time this would take would be enormous.

Many camcorders include softwares that would allow the camcorder to be connected to a PC/Mac through USB to easily upload videos into files that can be played on the computer. Once these files are uploaded, Anju can still burn the files into a DVD. My computer comes with Nero 7 Essentials, which is a fairly user-friendly software that would allow media files to be burned onto a DVD playable on DVD players and computers. The software also allows for the creation of a fairly simple, easy to navigate menu page. If Anju’s DVD requirements include the straight forwarding recording of her workshop and the creation of un-edited footages of her workshops, a DVD can be created within minutes of her return to home from such a workshop.

As I have said, however, the creation of such DVDs will cost Anju a lot of time, and to a lesser degree, a significant amount of money (a single DVD costs about a dollar, but if she has to mass produce these DVDs every time she presents a workshop, the cost would add up). I would suggest that, while she can still produce a small amount of such DVDs for some people (e.g. senior citizens who do not have a computer), the better approach would be to upload these videos onto a video sharing website such as YouTube.

While some may fear that people who are not fluent in written English may be afraid of using the computer, they often forget that a service such as YouTube is actually not language-specific. People of different ethnicity all use YouTube to post videos, and they can search for a specific type of videos in their own language as well. Once Anju creates an account, others just have to subscribe to Anju’s channel, and all of her videos can be watched whenever a person sits in front of a computer with internet access. Should the person chooses, he/she can even use a video-capturing program such as Video Piggy to download those YouTube videos. No more burning of DVDs by Anju.

If using YouTube is the method of transmission of choice for Anju, all she needs to do is to mention this information during her presentations. Or, if she chooses, she can prepare little business cards or brochures with instructions to subscribe to her YouTube channel. She could include screen shots to lead people into her channel. This, in my opinion, is a much cheaper way to do the same thing, not to mention that it leaves a smaller environmental footprint by taking the information to the digital world.

Resources and Support are Keys to Success

In reading Lenora’s scenario, I feel it would be advantageous for her to first research on the costs that she would need to incur to run a website, and the amount of support she will receive to maintain the website before she decides if establishing a website is the way to go. Further, she needs to learn about her targeted audience’s access and computer literacy in using her resources to determine if the format she is choosing is the most appropriate.

From the case study’s background information, it appears that Lenora is living in a place where high-speed internet is not readily available or that there are financial challenges that make the access to high-speed internet not feasible. This would substantially hinder the chance of developing and maintaining a very graphics and/or video-rich website as upload would most likely be a problem. I would argue that a significant portion of Lenora’s audience would also face similar technical challenges as well. If that is the case, then the creation of a website, much less one that features extensive display of graphics and large-sized files (for sounds and videos) may also be not suitable. A text-rich, free-hosting “holding place” such as a blog, therefore, may become more suitable.

In the design of the blog, Lenora can use multiple categories to classify the various topics on bullying against aboriginal people. To increase collaboration, she can grant access (user name and password) to other educators who wish to contribute to the compilation of resources as well. If, among the group of collaborating educators, there are people who have better access to internet services, services such as Google docs can be used as a storage place for sound tracks and videos. All Lenora has to do is to create a blog entry with the proper links to these documents on Google docs. Educators with access can download these files, while educators who do not can bypass them.

Wiki is another possible destination for Lenora’s work of collaboration. Similar to a blog, Lenora has to grant access to fellow educators to enter and modify the information of the subject specific wiki.

Neither a blog nor a wiki require extensive technical support and maintenance. I would argue that many blog websites provide a fairly adequate online/textual technical support. Other members of the collaborative team can easily receive assistance, and Lenora nor her employers would need to worry about paying for someone to provide that technical support.

A One-Term Course Requires One Term to Develop… At Least

While I have never designed a course online or face-to-face, I have tried to prepare the teaching materials for a course I have never taught before. From that experience, I would say that, for each week of lessons (two or three lessons at 80 minutes each), I would need about the same amount of time (i.e. 4 hours) to prepare the teaching materials.

Translating that to Benoît’s scenario, assuming that the business writing course is a 3-credit, 13-week course, I would think Benoît would need about 13 weeks of preparation time working at 5 hours a week. At first glance, the estimate may seem a little conservative because university lectures are only 50 minutes in duration, generally speaking, so Benoît technically only needs to prepare the equivalence of 150 minutes of teaching materials per week, and yet he has 5 hours of time to do so. However, this estimation does not account for the additional time of technology-related work that Benoît must do, which I believe, in the developmental stage, would take substantially longer to put in place than a face-to-face course.

This is of course not to say that the development time is not worthwhile. Similar to a face-to-face course, where once the materials are developed, the subsequent implementation would require a shorter amount of time, I see the same thing happening to Benoît’s business writing course. Once the foundation of the LMS is in place, future delivery of the course should be much easier.

Finally, a “curve ball” that may be thrown in is the delay that Benoît would need to endure for technical support. If he uses WebCT/Vista and has to wait for the very sparce technical support, a little glitch can take him hours to fix. If using Moodle that is not supported by his institution, then the research he needs to do to find the solutions to any technical problems can take hours to deal with… In short, I think a term’s worth of time to develop a one-term course may even be too generous of a timeframe to give to Benoît.

Benoît and LMS

“How might Benoît go about deciding whether to go with Moodle or WebCT/Vista? What questions might he ask himself?”

The most pressing question Benoît must ask himself when choosing a LMS is, “How much technical support would I receive when I choose a specific LMS?”

As an educator, Benoît is responsible mostly for the delivery of the online course. While we do not know the competency and the level of computer literacy that he owns, we can safely assume that managing the daily operation of the LMS would not be a task that is high on Benoît’s mind. If Benoît is working for an institution (e.g. a university, a school board, etc.) that has a network of technical support personnel for a particular LMS, regardless of how Benoît himself is competent and confident in using the other LMS, it would still be ill-advised to go against the institution’s flow.

The strengths and shortcomings of the individual LMS aside, almost everyone who has taken an online course can attest to the challenges faced when the LMS is down for various reasons. Signing onto a LMS that is not supported by the institution is almost suicidal in terms of an educator’s time, and I would argue, sanity as well. With a supporting team providing the technical support, Benoît can focus on the development of the course, and the delivery of the course.