Frances Bell

To Chris and Richard,

Having taken an Easter break, I have come in a little late on this one.  Although this thread has not had obvious links to e-learning, it does not seem to contravene any proscriptions stated for the forum.  Even when we are clearly discussing e-learning I would contend that we often air "our individual political views" - we can't help it, as our dialogue is contextualised and non-neutral.  IMHO, it's better if we make that clear as many posters have within this thread, without becoming personal or offensive (I don't think anyone as done that).

Online forums may very well want to take action against personal offence or maybe spamming/graffiti attacks.  What is off-topic could be dealt with by ignoring it - an off-topic post being by definition one that everyone ignores.

I think it would be a mistake to try to define what is an accpetable topic on this forum.  Remember the response to events like the Tsunami - that was a good exchange I think.

To answer your question Diane, at http://www.cabweb.net we are using Moodle for Tutor Community of Practice and Student Collaboration Spaces.  As you will see from the naff interface (unlike others shown here), we only edited the terminology (in configuration) to change courses to spaces and teachers/students to facilitators/participants.

Some Moodlers may be interested to note that we have an online discussion event starting this Friday, facilitated by Jan Visser, entitled "To school or not to school, is that the question?", and another on LAMS in May.

"One has to read the manual in order to use the software correctly. "

That is one way of learning to use software but not everyone's way (certainly not mine).  How many moodlers jump in and experiment, referring to documentation and help forums only when they get stuck.

IMHO, the bext thing about software manuals is a good index to minimise the amount of technical writing one has to read.

Maybe you could link your "chunks" of learning to an FAQ (using the glossary) with autotext links to activities that will help answer their questions.