Sunday, December 06, 2009

Ascilite2009 - workshop on Moodle 2.0

Workshops day for Ascilite 2009 at University of Auckland run by Human Development Resources NZ with Stuart & Tabitha. HRDNZ is a Moodle partner.


Moodle 2.0 probably still a year away for Southern hemisphere with updates coming up on Moodle tracker. Draft release notes on a roadmap and a tracking document.

Moodle 2.0 is a major release & needs PHP 5.2.8 to install plus upgrades to the files API, Repository API & Portfoliio API. Improvements also provided for blocks, pages, themes, tabbed interfaces & menus. Provides for better navigation, consistency, usability, performance, backward capability , allows ‘dependencies & forced/structured pathways through activities, progress tracking.

Changes to ‘activities’ including update to wiki (yeh), feedback module for course evaluations, many improvements to quiz (report enhancement, navigation, flag questions, edit, tagging etc.),and gradebook, blogs now allow commenting and support external blogs, messaging, secure RSS feeds, workshop (sets up assignment with an example, complete activity either individually or in groups including peer assessment – to allow students access to all other students’ input, use database).

Also a major change in the HTML editor which works better with more browsers. Backup also updated to increase speed. IMS CC import & export also improved. Site-wide groups now possible. Administrator improvements, internal clean ups etc. plus hopefully also a student information API, Moodle voice(?) & learning design export (?), Turnitin integration.

Demonstrations of the various Moodle 2.0 followed. Many reveal some thought into making Moodle interface much more user friendly to both students and teachers.

After lunch, an opportunity to do some hands-on exploration. All in, a good day to do a catch up on the ways to maximise uses of Moodle.

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