Tips for having a Course layout??

Tips for having a Course layout??

by David Coates -
Number of replies: 9

Hello,

 

My name is Lee, and I am the project lead for UDK Learning University.  We just switched over to Moodle 2.1 and found it very useful. 

We are having a difficult time getting our instructors to adopt a standard on how to set up the classes, so the flow well and the students get the best out of the courses.

So, this is my question to all of you seasoned Moodle users.  What formula or layout do you use for you written aspects of the courses?  Do you have a standard on how the courses should be laid our? And if you do, what is it?  

 

Thanks ahead of time,

 

Lee

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In reply to David Coates

Re: Tips for having a Course layout??

by Michael Stapleton -

David,

We are at the same crossroads only our courses will be used by sales people in a business environment. The issues we have been having is that many of them are not all that crazy about taking "courses", they just want to go out and sell. Their sales managers are making it clear that not taking the course is not an option. So, we are trying to figure out ways to make it as painless as possible, simple to use and in implementing as many tools as possible to keep it interesting. One of those tools would be Flash

The biggest dilemma I have right now involves the iPad and Flash

  1. We had been planning on incorporating all kinds of Flash into our courses including Flash presentations, flash quizzes, flash this, flash that.  The problem is that the iPad will not play Flash and does not look like it will any time in the near future. (See this comment posted by the late Steve Jobs about Flash and the iPad).
  2. We have been told that many of the sales people that will be taking the course use iPads constantly especially when in airports, lobbies...

This is our quandary. Wondering if anyone else is dealing with this and how they are handling it.

Regarding your question about ideas to make your courses "flow": We have been testing the Collapsed Topic format plug-in and really, really like it. It keeps the screen very clean and does not have a learning curve to use it as either Admin or Student. The only downside is that I find it a little harder to move Topics up or down in the list with Collapsed turned on so if I am going to be moving topics I go back into Settings, turn on the standard Topics format, do my moves and then come back in and flip to Collapsed.

There is also a Collapsed Weeks version  but our courses are not laid out in weeks.

Good luck on your situation.

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In reply to Michael Stapleton

Re: Tips for having a Course layout??

by Richard Oelmann -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Another option a number of my colleagues like to use is the Book module, while I quite like the look of the grids format (although I haven't tested that or the OneTopic- tabbed format yet).

As for the flash issue - if your sales staff use iPads, I think not seeing it 'any time in the near future' may be a trifle optimistic! smile lol!

It may take more work in the setting up - or at least in finding a developer who is comfortable with it - but HTML5 may need to be a route you look at for developing some of those 'flash' resources. And depending on the level of interactivity needed - you may be as well off with some good graphics, theming/styling and wel constructed quizzes/resources, supplemented by videos, or web presentation tools like Prezi, in the place of the flash presentations?

Good luck, I'd be very interested to hear what path you end up going down smile

Richard

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Tips for having a Course layout??

by Michael Stapleton -

Just a little heads-up regarding the Grid format. Check out this post. We had a problem where we could suddenly not delete any old courses. It turns out it started just after we had installed the Grid plugin. See response from Mary and then how our delete problem went away after uninstalling Grid. I am not technical enough to figure out why the two were related but, according to Mary's comment, there were other forum discussions regarding the Grid.

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In reply to Michael Stapleton

Re: Tips for having a Course layout??

by Richard Oelmann -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Thanks for the heads up Michael.

I had installed it this afternoon - along with a variety of other plugins when I put Moodlle2.2 on my test system, but hadn't yet got around to testing it. Following your comments I will still probably try it out (as requested by a member of staff), but I'll expect the worst and will know what to do if the problem still exists smile

Richard

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Tips for having a Course layout??

by Michael Stapleton -

Suggestion: Since you have the Grid format installed try this: Create a dummy course using the standard Grid format. Then try deleting the course. If the course deletes business as usual then you might be OK down the line. If the course doesn't want to delete then you might suspect more problems down the line. My attempts to delete got hung up at the tail end of the delete process just after I confirmed it was OK to delete. This occurred even if I changed the format back to the standard Topics and then I even created a new course and never used the Grid at all and even those courses would not delete. Once I uninstalled the Grid I was able to delete all courses.

Go figure?

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Tips for having a Course layout??

by William Hamilton -

I tried to bluetooth a PDF file to a student so he could have a look at some material-- as he did not have a laptop, thumb drive, etc.; and was told that his iphone could not interface with other phones that way (using bluetooth) unless it was another iphone/pad. Smart phones, eLearning platforms and such are supposed to make learning and access easier and more transparent, not more difficult! This kind of mentality reminds of the old PC/Mac issues from long ago revisited! We all know how that turned out.

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In reply to William Hamilton

Re: Tips for having a Course layout??

by Richard Oelmann -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

I think having an issue with the fact that iPads/Phones/Pods are so restrictive and then lumping in all SmartPhones and eLearning platforms with that experience is just a little sweeping generalisation, don't you?

Although, if your point is that iPxxxxxs (or any other specific technology which blocks standard uses rather than allows variety) get in the way of lots of things then, yes I agree - I have recently had a number of students telling me that they can't be bothered bringing their iPads to lectures or getting them out for working on, because they know they can't access content properly, or do the tasks set for them on their iPad - The flexibility is no good to them if they can't access the materials when and how they want anyway, while friends with supposedly more basic netbooks/smartphones (linux/android/winxp) are able to access those materials in lectures, around the campus etc.

I can easily bluetooth files from my my moodle course to my (relatively low-spec) htc android phone and back to another non-internet linked laptop when I need to (I'd left my usb memory stick in work last summer and wanted to work on some files while I was away in the caravan with no internet access - there is a logic in there somewhere! :D)

Having to redesign existing course materials for a specific platform (whether that is the iPad, or people still being forced to use IE6/7) can be a major hurdle for tutors who just want a straightforward way of delivering online content which their students can access. Of course, new content can be designed to cater for those needs when it is being developed, but in so many cases, material often already exists and staff want to use it and deliver the teaching and learning and not spend additional time redevloping content they already have in Flash or other formats.

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In reply to Michael Stapleton

Re: Tips for having a Course layout??

by Frankie Kam -
Picture of Plugin developers

Hi Michael

I'm a fan of the Collapsed Topics plugin myself. The fun part is customising the color of the horizontal section tab to match your theme.

>The only downside is that I find it a little harder to move Topics up or
>down in the list with Collapsed turned on so if I am going to be moving >topics I go back into Settings, turn on the standard Topics format, do
>my moves and then come back in and flip to Collapsed.
>
This begs for a hack that will,  whenever the user clicks on the Edit Settings button, automatically convert the Collapsed Weeks format into the standard topics format. And then it should convert the foramt back into the Collapsed Weeks format when the user has finished editing the course page. Impossible? Worth hacking into the code. That kind of hack will only serve people like us who have like the Collapsed Weeks, but face the inconvenience of having to turn to the Standard Topics format in order to use the AJAX drag-and-drop feature.

That hack would work like an Excel macro, executing two or more commands with just once mouse click. Hmm...come to think of it, why doesn't Moodle have a macro recorder?

These links may provide the answer to simplifying your routine work of drag-and-drop in Collapsed Topics format, Michael:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=162192
http://seleniumhq.org/projects/ide/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/molybdenum/
More power to the people, comrade Michael!

Frankie Kam

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In reply to David Coates

Re: Tips for having a Course layout??

by Paul Ganderton -

Hi Lee,

Can't say I've used grid but I can offer a few thoughts on your original post. I run a number of courses on the same subjects but different years so many of the problems I face might well be applicable to you:

  • find out what your people actually need. I find so many of my colleagues go straight into using Moodle without thinking how/why and what they set out to achieve;
  • plan on paper first so you can see the flow of activities before you commit to Moodle. This will allow you to see what the main areas of concern are, what modules etc. might need to be used;
  • design a common look and feel for the courses so that as people move, they find the same stuff in the same place. This reduces their learning time (which is where the focus should be IMHO) which translates into a better PR for your sites;
  • make sure you add heaps of forums. feedback etc. Moodle is far better when using the more social sides. This also means they can get rapid answers to questions;
  • if there's a lot of material to go for, keep each topic unit small. Use the book (my favourite module by far!). If the participants are forced to wade through long lists of pdfs etc. then they will engage less with the course.

Hope that helps. I'm happy to be more specific if you need it.

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