Playing Nice with Other LMS

Despite what you may gather from many of my posts about Moodle superiority in the LMS market, I do learn and try to play nice with other systems. Because I'm primarily concerned with sharing high quality content I thought I'd share this with anyone outside of the Minnesota Partnership for Collaborative Curriculum.

We do our best to develop content that is going to work well for districts regardless of the LMS selected. Aside from Moodle I'm working primarily with districts using Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom and a couple others. Here's how we make sure that what we create works for everyone...

We develop pretty much all of our content in Google Drive (you could just as easily do it in HTML pages) and then embed those (published) pages into iframes in Moodle Pages, Assignments, whatever. I set the width to 95% and the height to accommodate all of the content on the resource. (You can also embed the Share link this way to keep your formatting it just comes with the Google Doc toolbar.)

To the end user it looks like text on the page in the LMS. When I back up the course and restore it into another LMS we don't have to worry about any of the content not coming over (stick to Pages, Assignments, Forums and Quizzes). Some LMS allow Moodle backup files (Canvas, Schoology), some will need the IMSCC backup files.

Either way, any edits to the content made in Drive automatically populate in all copies of the course that exist. If a user wants to make any changes they simply duplicate the page and do with it what they'd like. It does not affect the original.

It works pretty well for most of our purposes. I'd still rather everything be in Moodle to take advantage of things like the Lesson module, auto-linking, Glossaries and completion tracking, but some people made a decision to go with something with less features and this process accommodates those platforms.

In another post I can share why I still think that this same instructional content would be far superior if it is completely self-contained in a Moodle environment. We're currently working with over 180 school districts in the state and this is what has worked best so far.

Using Moodle for Standards Based Grading

Apparently some LMS out there is touting their ability to handle Standards Based Grading and some people were asking me about doing that in Moodle. Just to be clear, I don't actually have my courses set up for that so what I'm about to share is a demo version of what I would start with and some suggestions I have for those who wish to accomplish the task. So take what's useful and abandon the rest.

First, you'll want the site admin to enable Outcomes this is really at the heart of being able to achieve this practice. Then you have a few decisions to make. I'm guessing that other systems will pre-load things like Common Core standards or even standards for your state into your system, this method requires a little more DIY. Moodle does allow for a bulk upload of outcomes but it works a little differently than the files I've used for bulk user upload/enrollments.

---

Technical side note: the way I made it work was to upload my outcomes to a spreadsheet in LibreOffice and when I went to save it as a CSV file I selected Edit Filter Settings and set Character to Unicode (UTF-8), the Field delimiter as a semicolon and the Text delimiter as a quotation mark. I mention this because previously for uploading CSV files to Moodle I just used a Google Sheets template and downloaded CSV. This one didn't work the same way and this was how I made the upload work.

---

I mentioned a choice to make...You'll have to decide if you want your outcomes to be made available site wide or just in the course itself. That's likely a discussion for your curriculum directors or department chairs. I would probably make the CSV file available for that subject area to those teachers so they can upload them to their own courses and select the ones that are applicable. I mention this because making all subject area benchmarks available site wide could be messy if there is a lot of scrolling. I would also suggest sharing those templates across districts so others don't have to duplicate the work of putting all of the standards together.

Second, in the Moodle gradebook I would create a category for particular standards clusters. For instance, in English/Language Arts the first three benchmarks fall into the category Key Ideas & Details. I created a category in my course called, Key Ideas & Details. In the assignment settings for all of the summative assignments that measure student mastery of that area I can tag each outcome that I uploaded to the site.

Third, when grading the summative assessments you can assign a value not just to the overall assignment using a scale or points, but also to the individual standards being assessed. First you have to go into your assignment settings and select which outcomes you want to measure in the assessment. Since this is an example, I've only uploaded three and not all of the ELA Standards addressed in the course.

Once you save those assignment settings you will see a separate item in your gradebook for each benchmark. Since all of these are from the same cluster I moved them all into the Key Ideas & Details category.

Some other decisions will have to be made about what should appear in the aggregation for course totals and what items should be visible to students. If it were my course I would probably have all formative assessments visible to students but have the grades weighted as zero. I might also only set each benchmark to appear in the course once for my SBG documentation, otherwise things could get long, but you can minimize categories in the gradebook view.

At this point, I think I just might be scratching the surface for what is possible here and I would welcome the chance to discuss this in further detail with an expert in Standards Based Grading. My biggest objective with this post is to assure people that it is indeed possible using Moodle. It is and you have options.

Here is a sample of the spreadsheet I used to create my CSV file:

outcome_name	outcome_shortname	outcome_description	scale_name	scale_items	scale_description
ELA 11.4.1.1	ELA 11.4.1.1	Key Ideas and Details 1	Letter Scale	F, C, B, A	F=Does not meet, C=Approaching, B=Meets, A=Exceeds
ELA 11.4.2.2	ELA 11.4.2.2	Key Ideas and Details 2	Letter Scale	F, C, B, A	F=Does not meet, C=Approaching, B=Meets, A=Exceeds
ELA 11.4.3.3	ELA 11.4.3.3	Key Ideas and Details 3	Letter Scale	F, C, B, A	F=Does not meet, C=Approaching, B=Meets, A=Exceeds

There may be better ways to create/label the standards. I'm just getting started with all of this...

Feedback Loops, User Data, Personalization and Why Moodle Matters

There is more research every year about the importance of feedback; making it instant, providing it often, allowing for more than just data on if a response is right or wrong. We have the tools to integrate these kinds of responses into just about every system. I'm way into the idea that frequent quizzing interrupts forgetting. If a student does something in a course it generates data; as a teacher you should be able to view/analyze and use that data to target improvements to your curriculum. Students should also be able to see how this data relates to their overall progress in a course. These kinds of features should be automated and provided in real-time. Sadly, these kinds of detailed analytics are not readily available in all systems. After having spent a few months immersed in multiple learning management systems it seems that open source wins out again. The detailed reports and progress indicators that students receive and that teachers can view in Moodle are essential to any personalized learning initiative.

It sounds silly, but even the illusion of progress can greatly increase the chances of a person actually completing a task and even the speed at which they work toward their goal. Building those into curriculum is going to be key to student success and likely even being able to cover much more content in a given timeframe than might otherwise have been possible with traditional tools in traditional settings.

Feedback must be provided frequently so that there is time for adjustments to be made before it is too late. Here's how I build these elements into a Moodle course.

1: Completion Tracking - Setting course items to be marked complete based on conditions allows for a simple checklist of course items. In one course I helped redesign we took a page that went from 14% of students accessing it to 96% with the simple addition of the item in this checklist. (Edit to add: Setting the passing grade for items in the gradebook will give a student a completion check but it will appear in red if the target has not been met. I've had students re-submit work for that reason alone. They just couldn't stand to see the red mark vs. the green one. What is interesting to me is that the grade was not the motivating factor; it was all about getting the green marks and the consistency of the checkmarks on the course page. Thanks to Toni Soto in the comments below for the reminder!)


2: Quizzes - Providing quizzes is nothing new, but the use for them now has less to do with an academic grade than it does as an important tool for presenting content. For instance, in a traditional model a quiz might be used to see what a student knows at the end of a lesson and then that score is entered in the gradebook and the course moves on. If you didn't get a chance to click on the first link in this post here it is again. Providing frequent, multiple choice assessments in courses that build on previous units is a proven way to get students to remember course content. Building in the review options that Moodle allows for is an important part of this. They don't just see that they got an answer correct or incorrect, they see detailed feedback based on the response. If it's an incorrect answer they are directed to the information they should have learned and if they answer correctly it is an opportunity for the feedback to reinforce that knowledge. The quiz has built in progress indicators in a side block as users work through the questions.

3. Lesson Modules - This is one of the most dynamic Moodle elements because it allows for a personalized pathway through content with questions that can direct learners to content based on their responses and interactions with the material. They take some time to set up but they are exactly the kind of feedback loops that learners expect when using digital curriculum. With the setting to include it in the gradebook or not they become flexible resources that allow for practice opportunities while still providing data back to the learner. They include progress bars which, as stated previously, is essential to completion. These modules have become my preferred activity in courses I now design.

4.  The Checklist Module - While not technically part of Moodle, one of the strengths of the system is that it allows for so many wonderful plug-ins. The Checklist module allows for real-time data on completion of activities with the addition of a progress block so that students always see how much of a course has been completed. The developer/maintainer, Davo Smith is incredibly responsive to user needs and makes frequent updates to the tool.

All of these tools and indicators help support student working through course content in ways that exceed what a teacher can provide for individuals in a course without the use of digital curriculum. These tools go beyond content and make the use of a Learning Management System (LMS) (particularly Moodle) an essential component to learning (On a side note, it's why I don't consider Google Classroom to be an LMS).

What it means for a teacher:

I can use that completion data to identify which students have completed the content and which students are falling behind. I can identify elements of my course that are being under-utilized and make them more compelling resources to access.

I can use course completion block reports to quickly identify how many users in a course have completed the requirements (I rely on this heavily for professional development courses in my district in which we have over 800 users enrolled in a section).

User Reports offer me data on who accesses materials when to help identify support requests where users report little information that helps me diagnose their issue. Following up on when they accessed materials and filled out a support request often leads me to the resource with which they need support.

Quiz and Lesson statistics provide additional information down to the activity level that can help me make judgements about the effectiveness of my curriculum and questions.

Looking ahead, I was pleased to see just how seriously Moodle developers took the community feedback on their Grade Reports. I tested the features of the Moodle 2.8 gradebook today on a development site and was impressed with the types of information that can show students even how much a single activity in a course is worth in relation to others and how much of the course total it's worth.

tl;dr? If you do something, you should see something that indicates what you did and you should see it right away.

Moodle & Schoology Moves That Limit Collaboration

Here's my report of what I found when trying to restore a course from 2.6 to a 2.5 site yesterday along with my work-around to actually force it to happen and a Moodle developer's response.

Lest anyone think I'm blind to anything dysfunctional in Moodle, this is a prime example of developers ignoring various types of use within a classroom or institution. In a move to leap frog their competition, Moodle has been on a fairly aggressive update schedule for the last couple of years. While these updates have brought many new features and improvements, there are ways that this can actually hinder districts who wish to collaborate.

I understand that moving backups of courses from version 2 to version 1 would be problematic. There is so much that is completely different. Moodle's official stance is that they will not support the transfer of backups from any version to a lower version. While this really hasn't been an issue as it was easy enough to import a 2.5 course to a 2.4, 2.3 or even 2.2 site before, this is no longer the case with Moodle 2.6. A backup made on a 2.6 site does not even restore on a 2.5 site, which is only 6 months behind the new version's release. Seriously?

Here's why it's a big deal:

Most districts only update once a year, some once every two or three years. This is because the IT departments in many districts have little, if anything to do with curriculum groups or teaching and learning departments. Some districts pay a vendor to host Moodle for them and updates are usually scheduled for the summer. This prevents those districts from using courses shared with districts using a newer version.

I'm working on a project that is facilitating the creation of 40 core, year-long courses from grades 3-12 for Minnesota districts that will eventually become Creative Commons licensed. Does all of that development really need to happen on a site with a version of Moodle that is no longer supported just so that we can make sure that everyone is able to use the course backups?

Is it really too much to expect that a file from versions six months apart really cannot work together any longer?!

Now for Schoology, I've been hearing rumblings of dissatisfaction with Schoology since they've limited what is possible with their "free" version. Districts are not back in the hunt for a solution and it seems looking to switch back to Moodle.

Here's what's bugging me lately...

I was just at a conference where someone was showing off her Schoology course as an example of a course that aligns with a Quality Matters rubric. It was ugly to navigate and to look at, but let's say I wanted a copy of her course, how would I get one? Can she back it up into a backup file and share it with me? No. It would appear that the only way to transfer courses between districts would be to create a shared public resource and then import it into a new course. This import does not include assessments like quizzes. This type of sharing isn't always possible, desired or legal.

The other move Schoology made this week that raised my eyebrow was that they are now requiring users to verify their accounts. This isn't just a link in an email you click on. They actually wanted me to upload a signed teacher consent form and a scan of my school ID or driver's license. That's not going to happen. So ends my work to transfer shared courses into the Schoology platform for districts who aren't able to complete that process on their own for whatever reason.

On a side note, I've been at a few conferences since my last post and the first thing I've still been hearing from vendors and users of Schoology alike when they describe the product, "It's a lot like Facebook." Might be time to change the company line on that. It doesn't have quite the same punch as it used to.

More Schoology Thoughts After Actually Using it and not Just Playing Around

Since my district continues to receive solicitations from Schoology and I've spent a fair amount of time in that platform over the last month or so trying to share courses with some other districts in MN, I thought I'd write a little more about my experience and why we definitely won't be switching.

First, here are some actual comments from Schoology users at a workshop on digital curriculum.

• How do I know if I have a course? (a teacher already logged in)
• How do we log into Schoology? (Someone already on the homepage)
• Do I have to click on my name to see my profile to see if I have any courses?
• Where is my copy of the course?

So much for the much touted intuitive aspect. This is before people even start to use the tool itself. Seems to me like these things should be apparent once someone logs in. Now, to be fair, I had to set up these options for people in Moodle, but that's just it. I can do those things.

Unfortunately, I had to spend some time converting a shared course over because Schoology admins in the district I worked with found the process difficult and time-consuming. I was ultimately able to figure it out relatively quickly but I'm not sure why it was such a daunting task to others. I also created some additional support materials for teachers to find copies of the courses that I posted to the Public Resources so that they could import them to their courses (more on that in a moment).

Other things I find frustrating:

• The lack of a label to designate different topics of content. Everything seems to be a page with has the text of the title and then repeats the text as the contents of a page.

• No embedding of SWF? All of those items were broken which is problematic when so many videos of value continue to use this format. I had to replace embedded videos with links. Adding clicks makes things worse as far as digital curriculum is concerned.

• Pages allow for embedding links in the WYSIWYG Editor, and as an additional resource to be attached to the page. I've found that almost no one embeds the links they way they probably should if they are a newer user. Probably more an element of training than an issue with the product itself.

• Difficulty in sharing course assessments. Resources posted to the Public section strip them out. I'm not yet sure how to share those. Any help from you Schoology people would be appreciated by many teachers in MN. I will definitely pass along the info. What I'm not comfortable with is when someone says, "Here, let me do that for you," I want to know what's happening and I want to know how to do it myself so I can work efficiently and quickly and I want to be able to tell others how to do it as well.

• Is there really no course backup feature? Someone tell me this is not the case! I have resources to share across organizations that I can't yet assign CC license to; not to mention all of the NROC materials we can use with our state license. I can't just publish it all to the Public folder, and I have no real way of knowing who specifically to share the items with.

I am still of a mind that a well-designed Moodle course is more visually appealing and engaging and takes fewer overall clicks to navigate and the ability to customize still makes a compelling argument to stick with that tool. I've not yet used it with any students, but I do still teach online using Moodle and I just can't imagine teaching a course with rolling enrollment on the Schoology platform. I think the initial reaction to students seeing all of the course content presented in these folders would result in a lower completion rate and higher drop rate of the online class.


I still hear people say, "It looks just like Facebook!" as if that's a selling point, but that's not Schoology's fault, it's likely a teacher who is disconnected from what kids are actually into these days.

I won't say that I'm coming around on it, but I do understand why it's comforting to districts to use a tool when they focus on face-to-face, traditional classroom delivery and are looking for a vendor supported platform to offer supplementary materials to their students who will have other means of access and not just online. I would say that for that kind of use it likely works very well and is easy enough to navigate. I just don't think that's the future of education for the same reasons I hate Interactive Whiteboards. Recreating the traditional method of instruction used for hundreds of years is not efficient considering the ability to personalize and digitize so much of the educational experience. We can leave the face-to-face time for community building and making other connections and let the digital platforms handle content.

I give Schoology credit for improving their Moodle backup importing. This ultimately means that districts that have made the decision to use them can still use all of the content being generated by the Moodle community. I would say that it's very close to working seamlessly and have noticed drastic improvements over the last year. Kudos to their programmers. I'll bet they could make some awesome Moodle plug-ins ;)

Restoring Many Copies of Moodle Courses Quickly

Semester after semester I am faced with creating copies of all of our courses for the new term. We do this because students are still finishing up in older sections and we need to have everything from prior semesters available for review and counselor access. Simply having an archived version of the course backup file wouldn't be sufficient since we'd have to waste so much time restoring one. For a lot of reasons it nice to have all of the old courses available for us to access. Additionally, it lets our instructors work on the next semester's version of the course to make improvements to layout or design, or swap out certain resources or activities.

Having said all that, unless you have to, I'd just train teachers how to make backups of their courses or grade books with user data and then reset their existing courses. This is what we do for our non-online classes.

What follows are the steps I now take to make new copies for the next term. Two years ago this process took me a couple of days to duplicate around 100 courses. I recently just completed the process for 114 courses in just under 3 hours. What follows are the steps I take to speed up the process:

Step 1: Turn on auto-backups. It doesn't really matter if you have them include user data or not. If you back them up without it will save an extra click per class, but whatever you have it set at will be fine.

Step 2: This may or may not apply to you...Create a new category in which you'd like the new courses to go.

Step 3: Click on the category from which you'd like to duplicate courses. Click on Manage this category. That will bring up a list of the courses with the editing icons (Settings, enroll users, backup, restore, etc.)

Step 4: Here's the big time-saver. Go down the list and for each course right-click the restore icon and then open in a new tab. You can do this with as many courses as you feel comfortable. I usually will do about 20 of them, but it makes no real difference.

Step 5: Go through each tab, scroll down to the backup copy from the automated backups. Click restore. Click on the next tab and repeat.

Step 6: Go back to your first course restore, Click Continue; select your category. Uncheck user data and click Next; move on to the next tab and repeat.

Step 7: Run through the tabs again, Name your new course and scroll through the list of course items and continue.

Step 8: You'll do the same thing again now that all of the items in the course have been selected. You probably don't want to click restore in the next tab until the previous one has finished.

Close all of your tabs and repeat, when finished, you can go back into the courses and add your teachers.

Once you get it down you can move through them pretty quickly. The reason this is so much faster is that you don't have to wait so long for screens to load when you run through the process one course at a time. Having all of your tabs pre-loaded with what you need saves lots of time in a number of situations in which repetitive clicking must be done.

Initial Thoughts on Moodle 2.5

At the risk of turning this into a Moodle blog (I'll move on to other topics soon enough), it's worth mentioning the release of Moodle 2.5 and what's new since many districts may not be considering an upgrade at this time or may not be able to until some time over the summer. Of course anyone can read the release notes from Moodle if you just want a list of new features. With the last few updates it seems that Moodle is quickly distancing itself from its competitors.

I'm thinking that the biggest addition most people will be interested in will be the integration of Open Badges. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. As with everything else, there's a right way and a wrong way to integrate a badge system with courses/students. The whole idea of getting badges for simple things that you would've done anyway would be the wrong way to go about it. More on that in a future post. The ability to customize this though makes for some interesting possibilities.

For me, the most significant addition to this version of Moodle are the improvements made to the Forms. What I mean by this is that whenever you add a new course, resource or activity the list of options for individual settings has been overwhelming to many users, new users especially. 2.5 has successfully been able to compact those options significantly so that the new or occasionally user won't even notice those things as long as the default settings have been set mindfully by a savvy Moodle Admin. As I wrote in my last post, the ideal LMS will allow new users to integrate the tool quickly while still allowing innovators to customize and tweak until things work exactly as they want.

What this means in terms of Moodle training is that people can excel even faster or learn to use the tool on their own more easily because they're not overwhelmed with options. Having said that, I think in some cases people should just suck it up and learn some of those options because that's what's best for kids.

More Moodle vs. Schoology; Innovation vs. Stagnation

Looks like I hit a nerve with some people over the criticisms of Schoology. I stand by all of them. It is not a sufficient resource to build courses to create an educational experience or offer blended and online instruction. Design matters. Moodle allows for engaging design options in ways that many other systems do not. In addition, the Open Source movement will only increase over time even as new and flashy options enter the market.

Here's what really bothers me: People maintain that Schoology is more user-friendly or intuitive. Now, I disagree with that fact that Moodle is not but let's just assume for the sake of argument that it is more intuitive. So what? It doesn't do some of the most important things that one could do with Moodle to turn curriculum into something interesting and engaging. There are two reasons why the adoption of Schoology over Moodle matters to me...

First, and this is the most important reason, students are worth it. They're worth the extra couple of hours it spends for me to add interesting design elements, auto-linked course glossaries, and better navigation. What you're saying if you want to go with Schoology is that you want to take the easy path because it's simpler for you. There is probably no way at this point that I could be convinced that it can offer students a richer educational experience if they are in blended and online settings. Students interacting with the platform more than they'll see their teacher need extra supports built into the curriculum. Buck up, learn how to create a Page and an Assignment in Moodle and learn how to embed a few things. From there you're only a couple hours away from incorporating significant improvements to course navigation.

Second, if a district or organization chooses Schoology over Moodle they are reaching out to their laggards and not their innovators. They are effectively shutting innovators off from the ability to create some incredible resources just to placate a minority that will likely not use the tool effectively anyway. Should an organization choose Moodle than all those laggards have to do is drag/drop their (what must be incredibly amazing) documents into Moodle in one motion and their course is finished. The innovators can spend the extra time to create rich and meaningful experiences for students.

The adoption of innovation is a real and predictable thing. The go-getters in the institutions should be the ones we strive to serve and eventually others will climb on board once they see the new way of doing things working. It should never go the other way around. Think about where you want to be in a year, two years or five from now and what tools will help you get there. As I learned from my favorite book Dune, Fight the temptation to choose a clear, safe course. That path leads ever down into stagnation. 

Moodle vs. INSERT LMS (Part III)

Continuing from my previous posts here and here...

Being aware of features in other systems helps. Then people can go back and try to improve upon what they have. I would say that using the default for any course is probably a fairly low level of integration. I'm encouraged when I see examples of coursework that presents things in new and interesting ways. I've been making some connections in the D2L world as well because MN K-12 districts could receive access to that system thought the MnSCU license. Being able to move content between those systems will be important (right now D2L doesn't play nice with the latest content package but there is some hope there).

Back to business...I've seen responses in various social networks that offer some other ideas about why someone might still go with Schoology so I want to be sure to address those points as well...

It may be that distrits simply don't have much vested into any system at this point so it would be a compelling time to change if there are teachers requesting another system. It's easy enough to get everyone moved over to another system if they don't really have anything in a platform like Moodle to begin with.

My biggest fear for any system is that an administrator mandates an Online Presence and then all a teacher does is drag some files/handouts to the virtual classroom. When I have recently watched teachers present on using Moodle and Schoology, this was basically the level of tech integration I saw. I have to say, if all I knew about any system was based examples I've seen lately then I don't think I'd be all that interested in any of them. If all one wants to do is to post handouts for a face-to-face, synchronous course then it will probably be fine. Students won't use any system very effectively, if at all, when they are simply file repositories.

While I have seen examples of Moodle units that take design and engagement into account, I've not seen an example yet in other systems, and it's not due to lack of looking at finished courses. The best you can hope for is to recreate something like a web page a few clicks in.

I've also heard that people like the mobile apps for Schoology or Edmoto. Again, it's my view that the default view for just about anything is trash. Moodle courses can be designed with those users in mind so that no app is required and they can still have a positive experience.

I'm also aware that there is a Parent Portal to Schoology that others like. That functionality can be recreated in Moodle with the Mentee Block but I'd be in favor of parents finding what they need in a Student Information System rather than the site for courses anyway.

Schoology or Edmoto are not full functioning Learning Management Systems. There's a reason why you don't see colleges switching over to them, or any kind of adoption in the Online Learning arena. It's the same reason that course developers are not pushing out Schoology versions of their content. Over the course of writing these posts it has become apparent to me that systems like D2L and (the as-of-now-supported) Angel, do provide some of the functionality I find so important for building effective curriculum. If that is the case then the argument becomes, Why use Moodle if another system can do the same thing? That is something with which to wrestle. What prompted me to start writing about this topic was the fact that so many are now in the process of adopting systems and putting out RFP's or entertaining sales pitches from all over and it didn't really seem like there was any strong argument being made for Open Source. I kind of took it upon myself to be a Moodle Evangelist to hopefully allow others to take a look at what they might miss out on with an open tool.

Getting a pitch from a sales person isn't quite the same as seeing it for one's self and some conversations I've had with vendors have really bothered me.

Ultimately, I think learning about how any system addresses a need can spur new ideas and innovation. Here's why I'd still favor Moodle:

• What you put your time and effort into should be something that you control. If you run out of money for your subscription you don't lose the functionality of all your stuff.

• The community of Moodle users is a larger pool of users for content and support. Roughly a third of the districts in MN are using Moodle and those are just the ones I know about. Being able to leverage that into curriculum development has been promising. This has the potential to save millions across the state on curriculum costs. If these same projects can be leveraged across the country we'll really have something disruptive.

• Paying someone to manage the installation as part of his/her day is far less expensive than support contracts from a vendor. I manage 3 Moodle installations for a district. While I could always spend more time on them, it takes me less than 5 hours a week once the installation is up and running for things like upgrades, hacks, student support, troubleshooting, etc.

• Having Moodle administration in-house results in shorter turn-around time for support requests. A student in the systems I work with generally waits a couple minutes before given an answer. In a vendor model that might take over an hour to a couple of days since a student would notify a teacher, that teacher would notify the district person managing the account and that person would contact the vendor who would then send the answer back down the  chain.

• Flexibility. Whether it's for Professional Development; resource sharing; troubleshooting; coursework or curriculum development, Moodle is flexible enough to provide a rich experience for them all. It also integrates nicely with PayPal.

• It allows the the level of personalization that I need for classrooms of the future. This is the most important reason of all.

I've had a few conversations in the last week with people who do not think that any LMS will be required in the future and learning objects will be directed through the use of repositories. Here's why I think that, at least for now, they are wrong. An LMS allows for a customized pathway through learning objects. Students can be presented with an experience rather than an object to view/interact with. Context to the objects is everything and an LMS is where that context is provided. The ability to backup entire units and courses for reuse and sharing makes it much more attractive than a list of how you might go about re-creating what someone else has done. I would also add that the value of having analytics, reporting, gradebooks and communication through the site are also attractive features.

As always, I'm open to looking at examples where something beautiful has been created and shared. My future posts will likely address what real technology integration looks like for a face-to-face classroom. The examples I give will most likely be from Moodle, so hopefully your LMS can keep up ;)

Why Teachers Might Desire an Inadequate LMS

Before I get back to why I think Moodle is superior to other Learning Management Systems, it might be worth exploring why a teacher might request his/her district to grant access to a school-wide account to one of the other lesser performing systems.

In an earlier post I mentioned that teachers tend to favor systems like Schoology or Edmoto because of their simplicity. There's a lot to be said for things that are simple but probably not in this case. Teachers gravitate to these tools because they're used to learning new things in isolation. They choose things they can figure out on their own. Systems lacking in features are easy to use but what will almost certainly happen is that as systems like Schoology grow they are bound to increase the number of features offered just to keep up with user requests/demands. Then guess what happens...they become more complex; harder to use and less intuitive. Then they'll require more intense training or those using the system will simply ignore what they do not understand. They may even learn some of the new features as they are launched, but what about the new teachers just getting into it. They'll look to some other simple tool that is out there, right around the time the current systems are bought up by Blackboard ;) It took me about 3 years to become proficient with Moodle and there are still probably things I don't know. That's just the way it is. You may have had a similar experience with Microsoft Word or PowerPoint; how many of you know what every setting and option is for in those programs? Do you need them all? No. Do some of those options come in handy for specific purposes? Once you learn the other functions is what you create even more dynamic?

There's a reason why Moodle has so many features and options. The developers and the Moodle community have been contributing additions and improvements for the last 10+ years. What it lacks in simplicity it more than makes up for in features and flexibility.

I believe that most teachers are overwhelmed with the day to day tasks they must perform and are looking at tools through the lens of what can help them in the moment. I'm taking a little bit more of a longer view. It may very well be that what people need right now is an online space to post course handouts. Here's what's important to keep in mind, education is evolving as will the demand from students, parents and communities. We must personalize everything (as quickly as possible). What kid in 3-5 years is going to sit still for some boring lesson that doesn't take them into account? Only the one who was going to do what you told him to do anyway. That's probably fewer students than will put up with it now (about a third). Students need choices, they need to work at their own pace, they need a place to share what they've created and they need it in a space that looks engaging and thoughtfully constructed. They need options. Did I mention that they need to work at their own pace?

That means that staff development must include information about content development, design and time to transform resources.

That can't be done in a Facebook for PDF's and PowerPoints.

Moodle vs. INSERT LMS (Part II)

Ok, picking up where I left off...

Anything an LMS can do Moodle can probably do; some of the important features of Moodle cannot be replicated by another LMS. Some of these I mentioned last time.

Rather than getting into some of the relatively simple features and tasks any of them perform I'll stick with highlighting what Moodle offers and where I think the others fall flat.

More and more I am able to build feedback loops into my courses (a number of them automated). Do the other systems do that? I am referring to things like the Lesson module, quiz feedback or the restricted access features. Sure, setting it up can take some time, but I more than make up for it when the student receives immediate feedback. I can also use that data to follow up with students.

Just the other day I was at another LMS discussion where I heard that teachers like the Facebook/LinkedIn feel of Schoology. Again I found myself thinking, so what if it looks like those things? Those things likely won't be around for the long haul. I don't know very many kids who still use Facebook. It's something they see their parents and grandparents using. It's a place to connect and maybe find out about things going viral, but that's pretty much it. I've never run into a person who tells me about something awesome they learned on Facebook or LinkedIn the other day. I do hear that from people taking classes in actual Learning Management Systems.

So like I said, a thing they can do Moodle can do. If you want to create a more social atmosphere to your Moodle environment you should work on finding ways to do that by setting up various types of forums, using the tools that allow for collaboration like Glossaries or Wikis. You could set up an RSS Feed to various social networks, maybe tweak some permissions so that you can have multiple users editing a page. Assignments now allow for group submissions; you might also want to look into some of the Moodle add-ons; there's one to enable badges. I would also suggest these two articles from Moodle News: How Moodle’s social networking features became a “virtual hangout” for students and Opinion – Can Moodle replace social networks in educational settings? Here's a presentation about Making Moodle Social and Fun.

Again, I hear people say that Moodle is ugly or clunky without really hearing what that means. I'm guessing they'd say the same about D2L or Blackboard but here's my reply: Your site probably is ugly if you are saying that, but you are speaking for yourself. If your Moodle site/course is ugly it is your fault. I wouldn't create a new web page upload a file to it and some lengthy URL to link to and say, this is ugly. I would do something to make it more attractive. I guess I'm missing something because I happen to thing that the default anything is ugly.

I've also heard the concern that people that are using iPads would have a better experience using Schoology or Edmoto. And to a certain extent I agree if we want to continue to offer students the whole inch deep/mile wide curriculum that schools are often criticized for. I do not. I want my students to have a deep and meaningful understanding of content that they can connect to the real world and their own lives. I want them to experience something and create things to share with the rest of the world. I'm not interested in giving them the Twitter post version of topics, talking points, snippets or cutting things down to the point where they lose all meaning. That's not how you connect with learners; that's how you appease people who aren't engaged in the subject matter. Also, if you want your course to work well with an iPad I can think of two suggestions, design your course so that it works well on an iPad or use a Moodle app (There are a few out there and one can be enabled as a default part of your Moodle installation).

That segues nicely to my final point for this post (there will be more to come!), Most teachers aren't designers. It took me a long time to finally get that and to actually believe it. I didn't want to believe it but it's the sad reality. Many teachers do a wonderful job finding content to supplement existing lessons, but in terms of creating something from scratch and making it visually appealing, it's just not that common. I've written about what makes for good content and design in previous posts, but since there aren't that many doing it well that means that we need to find those who are doing it and connect them with each other to build new courses. I'm unaware of any active user groups for proprietary systems; there are a number of them for Moodle.

Collaborative Curriculum Building is relatively new because of how easy it is now to create and find Open Educational Resources. To go along with that, people working within an Open Source Community are typically more likely to share what they create because they most likely received help from someone else in that community when they got started. They realize that the value in what they create is not just for a handful of their students but for the thousands who will use what they share. It saves money, you can edit what you use, it's just as good if not better than vendor content and it helps connect talented people all the while giving districts more highly trained staff that are likely to continue to create and share their skills with others. There's really no downside.

Next time, more on hacks, plugins and site customizations...

Moodle vs. INSERT LMS (Part I)

This is going to be a long one, but it's overdue and very important to the work we're doing with students. I've been concerned as of late as I hear school district representatives discuss which Learning Management System (LMS) they want to use in their districts.

I've heard Moodle, Schoology and Edmoto discussed. I've also heard about some districts in MN looking into a Desire 2 Learn (D2L) license.

We're well beyond the point of avoiding the discussion on whether or not a school should have a LMS. They should. There's just no getting around it. It's a necessity for teachers who want to make curriculum available to students anytime/anyplace. Web pages just don't cut it.

I find myself now being a Moodle evangelist for a number of reasons since I know how to use the tool relatively well. Here are some of the arguments for using various tools (not D2L, I've not heard any of these related to that LMS):

• Our teachers like it/We like the layout
• It's easy to use
• It's free

If there are others I'd be glad to hear about them and discuss them in a future post. For now, I'll just take these one by one.

Our Teachers Like It

My first question would be, "Why do they like it?" What is it about the tool they find useful? Have they looked at other tools and to what extent? Are they aware of all the tool's features? If they're just playing around and posting handouts for students I'd bet that there's a lot that they don't know.

If they like the layout are they aware that the layout of various systems can be changed? Usually this is an issue of training. People make their minds up pretty quickly and often without the kind of information that is necessary when a district is launching flipped/blended/online initiatives.

Every time I ask the question why I hear, "It looks like Facebook," so let me address that right now:

So what? If something looks and acts like Facebook then why wouldn't someone just use Facebook? Do they really think that students are going to be excited to go to a class page because it looks like Facebook (which by all accounts is not as popular with the kids these days anyway)?

Does looking like Facebook allow you to create interesting and engaging content and personalize it for your students? If you have an example I'd like to see it. I'm guessing that it's just not out there. Facebook and tools meant to look like it aren't flexible and robust enough to teach a course; especially if students are moving through content at their own pace (which is what the trend seems to be).

It's Easy to Use

I'm guessing that this has to do with simplicity. I don't want to discount it entirely, but easy to use without training throws up all kinds of red flags for me. I think what is most likely is that the limitation in features makes it simple. When we want to develop content for students we should want lots of possibilities and features to address different types of content/assessments/students.

Anything is easy to use once you learn how to use it effectively. 

It's Free

Can we just kill this argument once and for all? Nothing is free. Everything takes time to learn, develop and access. We don't want to chose our tools based on the fact that it's free (even though it's not).

What follows are some of the features for which I use Moodle. If the others can even come close to this, again, let me know. I'd love to see some examples so I can compare.

• Customization of Roles

By this I mean a few things. Within an existing course I can create roles for students to ignore time limits on quizzes when required by an IEP or 504 Plan.

I can create a role to limit students from messaging who may not be allowed to use that feature due to various restrictions placed by parents, treatment facilities, or students who've abused privileges. I have roles for counselors or people who want to upload users; and review student grades. Other customized views can be created by tweaking permissions on existing Moodle roles. This kind of flexibility is absolutely necessary for the different types of users our sites have. It also allows me the ability to set up resources for sharing so that others can observe, download and spread.

• Customized view of content

Using Moodle's Groups/Groupings feature I can designate which students get to see which content. This is great for students who need remediation, are working on different activities or need to take modified assessments. Having all of this content available in the same course allows me to save time making copies of resources and monitoring multiple courses.

• Course content completion tracking and restricted access to activities

These are two newer features in Moodle that I use quite a bit. The goal for most districts is Personalized Instruction. These settings help me with that. Not only can a student see at a glance if something has been marked complete, I can restrict access to content for which the student is not yet ready. Students can work on mastering content before they're able to move on. This eliminates the need for giving an F or moving students on before they are ready (which by all accounts, happens with about a third of the students in this country).

• Course Layout/Design

This matters, maybe more than it should, but it matters. I can make my courses look and behave more like webpages because of Moodle's labels and auto-linking. If we look at the factors relating to Diffusion of Innovation this one relates to Compatibility. Designing courses in a way that students are used to if they are regular web browsers allows them some familiarity and increases the likelihood that they will access the content. If you use an LMS to try to recreate the classroom, you're doomed for failure. You can get rid of files to download, lists of handouts and walls of text/links greeting your users that so many online courses are guilty of. The default setting for most courses, no matter your LMS, is allowing for the scroll of death which should be avoided at all costs. In Moodle, if your course is ugly it's your own fault; in another LMS if your course is ugly, there's not much you can do about it. Here are some other courses I've been working to improve from semester to semester: Advanced Composition for the Digital Age and Frank Herbert's Dune. It only takes a couple extra hours once the course is set up.

• Gradebook Flexibility

It's easy enough to allow a Student Information System to integrate with Moodle, but within the LMS there are many features that can be utilized. Course categories can be weighted and aggregated in multiple ways. The assignments integrate Rubrics and Marking Guides into assignment submissions.

• Sharing resources

I want to share as much as I can. It's ingrained and part of who I am. Because of that I find it helpful to stick with tools that also easy to share. I'm a believer in the Open Source movement and the quality of Open Educational Resources. When content is built within a proprietary system, what is the likelihood that it will be opened up and shared with the rest of the world? Being able to take content made by others and then have complete control over it so that I can edit for my students is invaluable. 

• Real world preparation

While the argument can be made that one particular LMS or another would be used by the most colleges, many of them do use Moodle. What about when a student leaves college? I've had the benefit to see Moodle being used by a great deal of businesses and agencies. They don't necessarily advertise the fact that it's Moodle, but having exposure to it means that when students are faced with it in training sessions that they'll have a familiarity with it. I'm actually not all that concerned with this one since using one (Moodle, Blackboard, D2L) will give you enough of the tools to use another. I mention it because I can't name any large organizations besides schools that use Schoology or Edmoto for their professional development platforms.

The sad fact is that most Moodle administrators are teachers that have used it themselves for only a couple years (I'm not knocking them, I'm one of them). There is a gap in professional development to encourage its use because people don't know what it's capable of or what they can safely avoid. To combat this I only ask teachers to learn a few things. We go over the WYSIWYG editor, creating a Page and creating an Assignment. That's it. With those simple features one could complete a pretty decent course. Then we can work on things like layout and design. I'm not saying the other features aren't great, but if you want to get people moving quickly and without much hassle those are the two big ones.

The world wide community of users is standing by to answer questions, make YouTube videos and share courses/support. Many of them are pushing the limits of what can be done with today's technology and finding new ways to push the LMS to do things it wasn't necessarily intended to do. It's those users who are also suggesting improvements and contributing plug-ins that can make it do even more.

I have even more to say about the advantages of Moodle and some of the things I love about what it can offer but I'll save it for another post. If we want to differentiate instruction and personalize it for individual students and use the student data to inform our own course edits/improvements, at this stage in the game you'd almost certainly have to use Moodle.

More on that and integrating a social aspect to Moodle later...

More Course Improvement Suggestions

Well, it's done; I've looked over every online course and am back with some more suggestions.

While many of these come from looking at online courses, I've seen hundreds of Moodle spaces for face-to-face and blended/flipped courses as well. I think it's safe to say that most courses started out as a supplementary resource for students that were in class every day. Eventually all of the course resources were uploaded and then that meant that they were ready to be used as an online class. Thankfully, the courses I've reviewed are quite a few steps beyond that but I think that what is relatively consistent is that the design as content was put into Moodle stayed that way.

When taking curriculum courses for my undergrad and Master's degree I remember hearing over and over again how much color and images can facilitate student engagement, help them remember information and make things look more interesting. That's probably even more true in the online setting since there is no teacher there giving the supporting commentary as the lessons/activities are being handed out.

One of the things I've really encouraged teachers to take advantage of is to align images next to content in their Moodle courses (on and off the main page).

Moodle 2 image hack: This will allow images to be aligned within text in Headers: course/format/topics/format.php &  course/format/weeks/format.php  Files have been altered so that  $summaryformatoptions->overflowdiv = true; has been changed to $summaryformatoptions->overflowdiv = false;  Warning: There are two places in each file this edit needs to be made.

It is a shame that it now requires a hack in order to get them to embed next to text on the main page of a course. It's well worth the 3-5 minutes it takes to make it though. I would argue that images that relate to the content can help facilitate faster navigation because a student can quickly scroll (don't get me started on scrolling) if need be and not have to read the text but look for an image that means something to them. It also just looks so much nicer and why wouldn't we want that?

Speaking of Navigation, the Topics in Moodle can now be renamed so it is worth the time to take that text that was in your header and using it to name your topic because this also shows up in the Navigation Block. Better to say something about the content than Topic 1. Speeding up access to content will make it more likely that a student will find it without problem. If there are problems then the content gets ignored.

One of the things I've been working on in my own courses is to use the formative assessments as another mechanism to reinforce concepts and ideas. No matter the student response to a question the feedback that is generated is reminding them of the correct answer. I'm hoping that this helps save me some time next year when I'm trying to teach 20 students in different places within my course how to create a proper Works Cited page. If the quizzes on these topics are easy and fun then taking them is not so bad and it all helps them fill in their progress bars.

More course suggestions on the way in the coming days...

Moodle vs. Schoology

I recently sat in on a Schoology webinar which caused some to believe that my district or I would be switching over. I can assure you that it is not the case. Though it is worthwhile to be informed of one's options. I'm not going to trash Schoology here or any other systems since ultimately the decision will be made about how you can best serve your students.

Here are some of the reasons why I would continue to recommend Moodle over other LMS platforms:

Open Source: this is a big deal for my district and for me. We believe in the principles behind the Open Source Movement that leads to innovative developments. This is also important as it allows us the ability to make subtle changes to the core software to better suit our needs. We don't do a lot of hacking to our sites, but we do enough that it would likely not be possible to expect those services from a vendor solution.

We can self-host: Another big deal in my district. Because of the integration with other tools it makes sense to have full control over our LMS so that we do not have to submit requests for help. Having FTP access to our site also allows for countless hours to be saved when importing content, IMS packages, large courses, etc. There is the added pressure that if something breaks then we don't have anyone to yell at, but I'm confident in our teams ability to problem solve (this is another added benefit of the open source movement. There are hundreds of people in the Moodle community who are willing to help).

Adoption of Moodle in other districts: Moodle appears to be the overwhelming platform of choice for K-12 districts across Minnesota. This allows for some unprecedented levels of collaboration and content sharing. In my district where we try to serve the needs of our member districts it is imperative that we provide expertise in the systems in which they and our students are familiar.

Customization of course layout and design: This is probably the biggest reason we will be sticking with Moodle. We can make it look however we want. We stress the importance of course design to increase student engagement and easy navigation. No one wants to log into a course and be greeted by a wall of text or links. It's ugly, intimidating and stresses out learners. Just because an interface may look a little more like Facebook doesn't mean it can be adapted for multiple uses...

Flexibility: The ability to customize to serve a particular purpose. This is a must for teacher preference and differing outcomes between programs; staff development; resource sharing. We use Moodle for many different type of groups and learners. 

Add-ons: In the event you need Moodle to do more than it does out-of-the-box, there are multiple add-ons that provide the desired functionality. I'm a big fan of Checklist, BigBlueButton, Lightbox and more. They're easy to install and update, just like Themes and the Moodle software itself.

I've tried not to reference Schoology specifically in the argument for why we use Moodle, and it's not that it cannot do some of those things I mention above. It just does not do all of them, nor does it do some of them as well as Moodle. Schoology has a great social networking feel, but in many cases it will require too much work for teachers to continually make updates that could already be finished and ready to go in Moodle. If you have students who may only log in once or twice a week; or students who may be coming in at anytime throughout the year then the social networking layout is quickly one of your biggest navigation concerns.

It would be difficult to create the kind of context we currently strive for in a platform that was made to look and feel like a social network. This could be an interesting approach to aces with a group of highly motivated and engaged learners if that is the population you serve.

The ideal is to move toward a more individualized and asynchronous approach to education, that is not the role that social networks provide. They can be an important element of learning, but the skill building resources must be offered in other ways for those programs with rolling enrollment and people who are looking for "just in time" resources/learning.

It should also be noted that if a teacher wanted to, they could set up their Moodle course to operate more like a social network, but I think they'd quickly find that this isn't what they are looking for. It could be one part of the total solution.

With the new features added in Moodle 2.2+ like course completion; conditional activities; mobile recognition and rubric grading, it is probably still the front-runner in terms of what can be accomplished with students.

The bottom line is that many Moodle users/teachers aren't trained and supported sufficiently so people tend to think that Moodle is ugly or doesn't work. That's not the problem of the software. You'd likely think the same way about any software without someone coming along and telling you what is possible. At my district, we've made significant progress in this area and have shared it with the rest of the world. We provide even more resources to our own staff and member districts. Very soon we are likely to have a large number of incredibly talented course creators that will produce content that exceeds what can be accomplished by using vendor materials.

Too many districts are going to fall for the initial look and feel of other platforms and quickly regret the decision when they are ultimately locked out of the incredible community of content creators and multi-district initiatives that are currently being started in Minnesota.

More on Moodle Zen (Compact Design)

During/After the presentation by Jen Hegna today I have some thoughts to add to the discussion:

I think having a reason to design a course like this is important. Not all courses would benefit from this type of layout. Here's why I do it:

• I have students enrolling all year long so it is necessary to leave an entire semester's course open. It cannot be used synchronously with an entire class.


• Even though almost everyone will go in order, I want to support users who don't want to.


• Some people only need access to parts of the course and not the whole thing. I'm way into the "just in time" idea. When someone wants to know something, I want that part of my course accessible to them.

To add to Jen's list of Pro's/Con's:

Visual appeal matters. Like it or not, teachers have to learn some elements of design to sell their content. I had an interesting discussion with an IT person once who asked why I spend so much time on layout/design of content. I could just upload the text/PDF files the old way. He couldn't wrap his head around why someone would not just read what they were supposed to. Even if they did, I would still argue that participants will remember more of the content if they are visually engaged.

There was a question about how much time this adds to the process and how teachers will fit this into their schedules. Once you wrap your head around how it fits together, it really doesn't take much more time. I've written about my design process before, but compacting a course really only adds another couple hours to the process. It's worth it in terms of what you'll make up by engaging learners. In the end, I believe this extra time up front will save students/teachers time, not to mention result in higher participation and completion (an issue that continues to elude much of the online learning community).

Some things break upon restore. This isn't so much of a con for me as they're usually quick fixes, like updating the course number (which is easily accomplished in the HTML version with a Find/Replace or a couple quick edits. The nice thing is that the errors are consistent so once you know where they are then it's easier and easier to fix them when they're restored for others. Another quick way to check for errors is to change the course theme and click on the links. You'll know right away if any are broken since your course will look different.

Shortcuts I've learned:

I've now designed at least 7 courses like this (3 of which are available on MoodleShare), and I can say that I'm still finding ways to speed things up.

1. Get your unit pages created first even if you leave them blank.
2. Put commonly used HTML code in a label or text file to have quick access to.
3. Get a second monitor and use your landscape to have different parts of your course open at once.
4. To avoid restore errors you can host your media on another server or in places like YouTube or Google Docs.
5. Use the Resources block to get quick access to different pages in your course. This will be very helpful once you close the extra topics.

Here's a link to a post about my own course design process.

Thanks to Miguel Guhlin for putting this together for the Moodle Mayhem Podcast.

There was a comment in the chat about Picasa links being problematic. I've noticed that when I try to use the "link to this image" link that it doesn't embed, but when I click on the image, then right click on it and copy link location that this will work. I don't know why the URL's are different but I guess they are. There was also concern about Flickr being available and some schools blocking it. There are lots of ways to share files as mentioned in the presentation, I would just add that you would use any number of free spaces to upload/share content, they can't block them all! :)

Edit Moodle Content with an HTML Editor on an iPad

I got my iPad a few hours ago and was bound and determined to be able to edit Moodle content on it with the HTML editor. After upgrading to 1.9.11 I thought this might just work automatically, since it now works with Chrome & Safari but it didn't.

Now I can. 

1. Download the Terra browser. It's free. It looks better than Safari (more like Chrome).

2. Click on Settings, it looks like a cog just like on the homescreen on the top right.

3. Click Identify As

4. Select FireFox 3.6

5. Now so can you. 

I'm sure there's more to come, but this is the most important as far as I'm concerned. This thing just paid for itself.

Edit: The only thing I can do at this point is to select text and affect the changes that way. To bring up the keyboard you have to click settings, and identify again as Safari Mobile and use your keyboard there. You can get the keyboard to pop up if you want to type in HTML mode.

Unfortunately at this point it involves a little toggling back and forth.

Developing Moodle Content

I've been getting some great feedback on the English Composition course I posted and would love to hear what anyone else thinks about it. I've made some changes already and am planning some larger changes already.

On a related note, I've received some questions about the course design/layout that I wanted to address in a little more detail.

How long does developing a course like this take?

It depends. I had a loose framework in my head for a few years from a course I used to teach face-to-face and then on Blackboard and then in Moodle. It was really just the assignments themselves without any additional information. I had the luxury of relying on paper and in-person monitoring of students/work. I ended up not using anything from that course other than a few videos and organization of the units because it was just a bunch of PDF and DOC files. My thoughts on those are documented. 

I also think that adding the online context is important even if you have face-to-face interaction with students. This fits in with my whole Save Yourself Time meme. The more context you can add to your course/assignments/resources, the fewer potential questions you'll have to answer. You can use that saved time for more meaningful feedback. Looking back at that course I'm actually surprised just how little was in there. It was definitely not what I thought it was when I first opened it up.

Back to the question about 35-40 hours I'm guessing. I worked on it on weekends so had time during the week to think about how everything was going and any changes I wanted to make.

Do you have any tips for people developing courses like this?

Here are some of the biggest time savers I can think of to take what used to be a 60-80 hour course down to something that takes half the time.

1. Start out with very few specifics in mind. Things evolve so quickly and are driven by more than just the curriculum you'd like to offer.

2. Get rid of everything in your course and start with a blank slate.

3. Don't worry about course navigation quite yet. Just start making Web/Assignment/Forum and put them in order. This is just creating a web page, calling it unit 1 and moving on. For now these are just place holders for your actual content. As you start filling in specifics later things tend to evolve so you don't want to have to undo too much effort.

4. Put everything in topic 2. You're just going to close it off anyway so there's no sense in having to work with organizing content in the 10 topic boxes that is a default Moodle course (Even if you're developing a standard Moodle course, this can be helpful because you can just drop/drag your content around later).

5. If you use files, zip them and upload them all at once.

6. Copy/paste your text into the HTML mode and then copy/paste the line break code right there
. It saves time trying to lose the formatting from another page/source and it's really fast if you use keyboard shortcuts. (I actually rely quite a bit on keyboard functions to save time for copy/paste/bold/undo/find)

7. In my case, much of the design and layout evolves from the theme and images I find. It's worth taking some extra time here to search for the right images because that can help you decide how it's all going to fit together. (For example, I had no clue what English Composition was going to look like until I found those free clip art images on a creative commons site. http://openclipart.org, http://archive.org,http://wikipedia.com are all good sources for images in the public domain. This same thing happened with Web Tools and the Google Docs course I created. Once the I chose my images and design, things really took off.)

8. Use the tabs in your browser. I routinely have 4-5 tabs open at the same time so that I can jump back and forth grabbing links to pages and inserting them into other pages for ease of navigation. The other HUGE time saver is copy/pasting HTML code and not text. If I have a link back to the Home Page on most of my pages that includes an image and text, I would've spent over an hour re-creating that. I just copied the HTML code for the text/image/link once and pasted it right into all of the other pages and it took 5 min.

9. Group repetitive tasks together rather than working on one thing at a time. You'll get a routine and it actually becomes relatively mindless so that you can enjoy radio or television while you work.

10. Think of how you would want it to work if you were taking that course. Inter-linking content really doesn't take very long and it goes a long way to improve the usability of the class.

There might be more. Some of it just takes me less time because I've spent a lot of time up front learning how it all works. Being flexible during the creation process really helps it evolve as you develop. It can really take some cool detours if you're not locked into a specific plan.