XCRI-CAP Demonstrators – Moodle Block My Final Blog Post

Context

As part of the JISC Making the Most of Course Information – Stage 2 project Plymouth College of Art has also been undertaking an additional project to develop an XCRI-CAP Moodle block demonstrator. The College took the opportunity provided by the ITT in order to build upon, and make use of, the existing work the College is undertaking within the Making the Most of Course Information – Stage 2 Project.

As the XCRI-CAP demonstrator project is now complete, this blog post provides an outline of the project and our thoughts about how this project worked, how it will assist the sector and the value that it has brought to the overall JISC programme.

The context of the JISC programme was to enable students to be better informed through the provision of easy to see and comparable information relating to future study opportunities. This is therefore the perspective from which the Moodle block project was proposed.

  Why the Moodle block    

We decided to seek to develop the Moodle block as an XCRI-CAP demonstrator because we felt this would clearly demonstrate to stakeholders within both our own institution and across the sector the manner in which the XCRI-CAP feed can have value and can be utilized by institutions in order to display course data in new ways.

The Moodle block therefore sought to determine relevant learning opportunities available for students who are on current undergraduate provision at the institution and who would be seeking to progress to a new course. The Moodle block would utilise the information contained within the XCRI-CAP feed to enable personalized suggested “next steps” to be shown to students on their Moodle home page.

As this demonstrator was utilising Moodle this resulted in it being a usable development for a wide range of institutions as any HEI or College utilising Moodle and developing the XCRI-CAP feed would be able to use the code, uploaded to Github https://github.com/ULCC/moodle-block_xcrisearch/ as both its development and the nature of Moodle encourage community development and open source work.

 Project Outline

This project was due to be a short and rapid development project. Throughout the project time delays have caused issues which resulted in the project overrunning. The development was however able to be shown at the JSC Show and Tell Event which was held in January 2013 at Aston University Birmingham.

The objectives of the project were as follows:

·       The creation of a Moodle block which highlights progression opportunities available within the home institution

·       To ensure students are able to access additional and relevant information from the block if they wish to find out more information.

·       Disseminate the development of the Moodle block

To determine which fields from the XCRI-CAP feed should be used

We were also able to disseminate this development at the UK and Ireland Moodlemoot 2013 which was held in Dublin in February 2013. Through the peer review process this development was described as:

“something new and cutting-edge….. something innovative and potentially important for the future.”

        Use Cases

In order to provide a bit more information about how the Moodle block works the following case studies are provided. The first use case describes a “sunny use case” in which everything is available within the block for a perfect result to be seen. The second case presents a “rainy day case” in which there are no specific courses for the Moodle block to suggest and how this is handled within the Moodle block is shown.

   Technical Details

                                       

The Moodle block is relatively simple to install and use for developers who are familiar with Moodle already. The Moodle block requires a unique ID to be present and the same in both the XCRI-CAP feed and Moodle in order to combine the results from both. The Moodle block then uses the following fields to make recommendations of the next suitable learning opportunity.

<Subject>

<Creditlevel>

Both of these fields are mandatory within the XCRI-CAP 1.2 schema and should contain data in all XCRI-CAP feeds.

If relevant suggestions can not be found the user will be given the option to use the “course finder” to search the full course database for opportunities.

In all cases a web URL will be required for students who wish to access additional information.

        Conclusions and next steps

This development is now ready to be used by other institutions who may be using Moodle and the XCRI-CAP feed and interested institutions are invited to download the code from Github https://github.com/ULCC/moodle-block_xcrisearch/ and try the block for themselves.

It is hoped as new institutions begin to create XCRI-CAP feeds that the Moodle block will be more widely used and will enable students to see relevant learning opportunities that they may have not been aware of and may wish to find out more about before deciding to study at the next level.

Moodle Moot - where Moodle minds mix for Moodle matters

Moodlemoot Dublin 2013

Plymouth College of Art are presenting at the Dublin Moodle Moot in February.  The concept has been welcomed as something new and cutting edge which the Moodle community will find interesting to discuss further.  

Looking forward to what experts in the field have to say on this and will keep you all posted!  

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has powerful muscles, but no personality."

The title of this post is a quote from Albert Einstein.  I actually felt that is summed up what we are hoping to achieve by the extension the feed of a 'Deliverer' field.

Students in the Art and Design community are inspired and driven by their tutors as we discovered in Stage 1, not just their qualifications.  So now it was time to address the lecturers in our college and sell them on this concept.

We were extremely lucky as when our Principal heard of what we were doing, he was enthusiastic and volunteered to be project champion; so we were already on the right path!  This meant that when we arranged our staff workshop we had a mock up of what the staff Mahara profile would like with the principal as a guideline.  Within this we were able to call up examples of best practice using http://workflow.arts.ac.uk/ as an example of best practice.  Some of the University of the Arts students had a real grasp on how to make Mahara work for them and will be a good foundation for inspiration with our staff.

It was good to use this workshop as an opportunity to feedback on the extremely positive comments made by the students, whilst evidencing that this is a concept that has sprung from student feedback, and educational institutions should be about the student - our customer.

To engage our staff further and ensure that images on tutor profiles were both creative and professional, we recruited a photography student (Joanne Cookney) to take staff portraits.  Also, in response to the Stage 1 findings, where students talked about the intangible elements of the college such as atmosphere being so much more than they expected, Jo would also be capturing teaching sessions, examples of work and college life.  We have a set format in terms of lighting and style, but we have said for tutors to be as creative as possible in their photos to capture their personality.  Staff are incredibly excited about this aspect of the project.

On reflection the session went very well and although we hoped to have a working version of our bespoke Mahara system, the staff got a feel of what we hope to achieve and why.

A few concerns were raised about having information about them in a public place, due to identity fraud and security.  This issue will be addressed as it is a fine balance between keeping staff information secure and publicising what makes out tutors so unique.

We also discussed our Moodle Block project with staff, and they are looking forward to seeing how this will work in practice.  

Next steps....

1.  Take all academic portrait photos
2.  Arrange a workshop for staff once PCA Mahara system is developed
3.  Have a good sample of staff profiles and any feedback on the system


Our Staff Mahara Workshop slides can be seen here, although some of the slides have not translated very well to slideshare.

Don't be fooled by the Blog that we got...it's still Moodle from the Block

We have now met with ULCC to discuss and move forward with the Moodle Block project.

The XCRI-CAP project has been a useful tool of looking at internal data the ways and places it is stored, validity, transparency and usefulness.  It has been a mechanism for implementing change management and working more effectively and efficiently as a college.

Using the XCRI in the Moodle Block has ultimately meant looking wider than our own needs and consider more fully the issues facing other institutions as the Moodle Block will need to be something that fits all institutions. 

We hope to have a working version by January, but with so many steps in between, there will plenty of food for thought and blog about! 

Block that Moodle!

We are very excited to have received funding from JISC to develop a Moodle block. 

This block will allow students currently studying at the college to receive information on additional opportunities and course progression relevant to their study choices; this will be identified through the use of ‘key words’ such as subject and type fields, using the XCRI feed

A good use for this will be students wanting to make the natural transition from undergraduate courses to postgraduate study.  Since we have recently established new postgraduate course that the students may not be aware of this project has come at a good time.  We shall also seek to incorporate the progression opportunities for those in Further Education wishing to start an undergraduate qualification.

We shall be looking at how this will look soon and will post a picture in the next coming months.