Greetings,
The purpose of this post is to inform the Moodle community that we are close to completing a new Moodle block that is designed to facilitate the design of competency based curricula. This work has been funded through a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant and is about two years in the making. The tools will support several functions:
* Design of curriculums maps relating Competencies (a.k.a. educational goals), Professional Abilities (a.k.a. learning objectives), Learning Activities, and Assessments.
* Submission of learning activities (a.k.a. lesson plans) by educators with associated searchable metadata.
* Review of submitted materials by an editorial team, with support for revision cycles.
* Searching and browsing of curriculum maps and their related learning object repositories.
* Rating of learning objects by editorial staff and/or public browsers via a star rating system.
* Checking out materials from the learning object repositories via a shopping cart model.
* Packaging of selected curricula items, with a dynamically created curriculum description including links to learning activities and assessments.
* Tracking of downloads and follow up surveying of users.
We plan to submit this toolset to the Moodle development community for review in the second quarter of 2009.
Intended uses of this tool are for organizations to design curriculum maps and develop associated learning object repositories, either for internal use or external distribution.
Future plans, pending new funding, are to provide the ability to publish sections of a curriculum map as Moodle courses, with weighting of assessments toward measurement of competency.
We will post more information as the project continues to evolve.
John Jackson
Dir. of Educational Technology
Univ. of Virginia School of Medicine
Hi John,
This is a very impressive initiative. I especially like the goal-oriented, curriculum-based framework you are attempting. That is good for my institution needs, but individuals with spontaneous, flexible learning styles may not be as excited.
At Sapporo Gakuin University we released the Sharing Cart last week and soon the internal Repository (in April). In addition, six months ago, the Project Course Format was released for teachers developed project-based content (sharing packages of mixed types of resources/activities). All of these may be of interest to you and your project. They are intended to meet the need for sharing Moodle-based activities and resources. The Moodle 2.0 Repository API however seems to be aimed at connecting external banks of activities, not necessarily Moodle based.
The beauty of the Sharing Cart is its ability to act as a window to transfer Moodle items between sites. What we miss is the connection to competancies, so I am eager to study your plans. Do you have some links to proposals, requirements papers, screenshots? Will you be offering this Curriculum Mapping Block as GPL? Since others may be interested, you might post some of these links onto the Moodle Docs, too.
Thanks, Don
This is a very impressive initiative. I especially like the goal-oriented, curriculum-based framework you are attempting. That is good for my institution needs, but individuals with spontaneous, flexible learning styles may not be as excited.
At Sapporo Gakuin University we released the Sharing Cart last week and soon the internal Repository (in April). In addition, six months ago, the Project Course Format was released for teachers developed project-based content (sharing packages of mixed types of resources/activities). All of these may be of interest to you and your project. They are intended to meet the need for sharing Moodle-based activities and resources. The Moodle 2.0 Repository API however seems to be aimed at connecting external banks of activities, not necessarily Moodle based.
The beauty of the Sharing Cart is its ability to act as a window to transfer Moodle items between sites. What we miss is the connection to competancies, so I am eager to study your plans. Do you have some links to proposals, requirements papers, screenshots? Will you be offering this Curriculum Mapping Block as GPL? Since others may be interested, you might post some of these links onto the Moodle Docs, too.
Thanks, Don
We do plan to release the Curriculum Mapping Block as GPL.
We are applying a new CSS to our demonstration site at the moment. Once that is completed I will post a link here so that anybody can try out the public view.
Thanks for the links to the tools you have developed. We'll take a look and see if there might be some linkages.
Our tool is designed to support curriculum designers, regardless of what LMS is used to deliver courses. When designing a curriculum map, you can upload any type of document as a learning object, or point to the URL of a learning resource that resides anywhere. So while there will be some advantages if an institution already uses Moodle, the tool will provide the bulk of its functionality with any other LMS in place as well.
John Jackson
We are applying a new CSS to our demonstration site at the moment. Once that is completed I will post a link here so that anybody can try out the public view.
Thanks for the links to the tools you have developed. We'll take a look and see if there might be some linkages.
Our tool is designed to support curriculum designers, regardless of what LMS is used to deliver courses. When designing a curriculum map, you can upload any type of document as a learning object, or point to the URL of a learning resource that resides anywhere. So while there will be some advantages if an institution already uses Moodle, the tool will provide the bulk of its functionality with any other LMS in place as well.
John Jackson
Do you know when this Block will be released? We have a lot of interest in our region on this. Any assistance would be appreciated.
Ray Miller
Ray Miller
This plugin/extension sounds like exactly what we need. Has it been released yet? What's the current status?
Since we are now a year later, I would suspect that this block is now available. But I didn't find it on the Moodle plugins page. Can you tell me what the status is, or where I could find it?
Gert:
I think John is no longer 'enrolled' in this forum and may not receive this. But this link may be helpful to follow up on this. http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/education/medical-students/ome/edtech/edtechstaff-page
I did find this link as well: http://www.editlib.org/view/32702 but the whole article is passworded.
I think John is no longer 'enrolled' in this forum and may not receive this. But this link may be helpful to follow up on this. http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/education/medical-students/ome/edtech/edtechstaff-page
I did find this link as well: http://www.editlib.org/view/32702 but the whole article is passworded.