Message-ID: <14000895.1182488892861.JavaMail.joeescobar@joe-escobars-computer.local> Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2006 02:38:17 -0700 (PDT) From: lovejm Subject: The challenges of Moodle Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_Part_1284_14446605.1182488892858" GWItemID: 45216AA9.LCC-Mail.MC_PO3.100.1346735.1.1ADE.1 ------=_Part_1284_14446605.1182488892858 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Tamara, and all, Like you, I have been having trouble getting adjusted to Moodle after sever= al terms of using (and liking) WebCT. The problems you encountered with the= formatting of your documents sound like ones I've been troubleshooting for= the past week or so.=20 I have been trying to resign myself to these issues, since they stem from t= he college's need to save money. But like you, I have been channeling hours= each day into trying to get my documents in a reasonably readable form on = my Moodle course site. Since I already spend a great deal of time on my onl= ine teaching, responding to students, sprucing up the site, and familiarizi= ng myself with its features, the "online course time commitment" I am makin= g is currently huge. That said, I do have a few thoughts/ideas/suggestions about some of the iss= ues you raised: Unhappy student issues . . .=20 - I think that keeping students informed about the fact that Moodle is new = to a lot of us, and that we are working (with the strong support of Joe Esc= obar and David Walton) on getting adjusted to its whims and ways, is the be= st we can do to curb students' complaints about the formatting problems the= y're seeing. We can't fix these problems instantly, and students can learn = patience, and perhaps be asked to "read around" (when feasible) some of the= more minor formatting glitches as we get accustomed to this quirky new lea= rning management system. Technical issues . . .=20 - I agree that saving Word documents as web pages works pretty well for Moo= dle. Like you, though, Tamara, I have been having the problem with the HTML= coding "slipping into" my web-saved documents here and there. I assumed th= at this was primarily a Mac/PC conversion problem (I use a Mac at home), bu= t now I am thinking it probably has more to do with the variety of Word pro= grams out there, and the fact that some of them have bugs and so forth, and= are basically not all compatible. I also notice that Moodle has a variety = of bugs of its own and functions more poorly (failing to show incoming emai= l, for example--a huge glitch, as far as I'm concerned) from my home Mac th= an from my office PC. But that's another story. A technician from Rent-a-Nerd, Doug Hoss, came over to my house the other d= ay to try to fix the problems I was having, including quotes and apostrophe= s in my Word documents turning up as odd characters and/or html in my uploa= ded web docs, when viewed on a PC. Doug showed me that, at least on a Mac (= and maybe PCs have a similar feature), you can open the "Tools" menu in Wor= d, go to "AutoCorrect," and then to "AutoFormat as you type." In these "Aut= oCorrect" and "AutoFormat" areas, you can un-check the boxes to "replace st= raight quotes with smart quotes" and other features that tend to be difficu= lt to convert and to result in unwanted characters in web documents. Basically, from what I've learned, if you have any slightly unconventional = formatting elements in your documents--quotes, bolding, italics, ellipses n= ot separated by spaces, and perhaps others--you may want to get into "AutoC= orrect" and adjust some of these features. - I did need to change my home computer's browser to be able to use Moodle = without my browser crashing while I was on the site. The Firefox-Mozilla br= owser is free and doesn't take too long to download. (On my office PC, I us= e Explorer, which seems to work fine with Moodle.) I'm definitely not a Moodle expert, so a lot of what I've written here is b= ased on a couple weeks' worth of experience, some help from tech folks, and= hunches. But I hope it may be helpful to you.=20 Meanwhile, I like the idea of setting up some sort of Moodle support group = on campus. I don't love Moodle, but I think I can learn to live with it equ= ably if we can keep up the campus-wide communication about how to work arou= nd its problems.=20 Thanks, Jennifer Love Jennifer M. Love, Ph.D. Instructor of Writing Division of Language, Literature, and Communication Lane Community College 4000 E. 30th Ave. Eugene, OR 97405 Email: lovejm@lanecc.edu Office phone/msg.: 541.463.3393 Homepage: http://teach.lanecc.edu/kenz/llc/staffpage.html?userid=3D48 >>> Tamara Maahs 10/02/06 5:06 PM >>> First of all, let me apologize for the group reply for those of you who do = not like group e-mails or those of you who are getting along with Moodle ju= st fine. I am speaking on behalf of several former Web CT users/designers who are ha= ving trouble adapting and not getting any answers or solutions to the probl= ems we are encountering with Moodle. I understand and accept that the coll= ege is saving money by using Moodle, but if I continue to have problems, an= d have to start sending all my materials to the print shop again instead of= posting on the web, then I guess the college will have to absorb that cost= . After the upgrade, all the html documents I had uploaded started appearing = with a ton of question marks???????????????in all the blank spaces (tabs, c= entered text, etc.) So, I started uploading my documents as word documents= . =20 They download fine and look dandy here at home where I have a nice computer= , but the computer in my office at school won't even open them (I have Wind= ows XP with Service Pack one instead of 2, so updating Internet Explorer to= IE 7 is impossible, and I hear using Mozilla as a browser might help, so I= guess I will get to that in my SPARE time...). =20 So, I tried copying and pasting my documents into a web page option under r= esources, and initially it looked great, I was so happy I finally figured o= ut the best way to make my documents look good...that is until I got to sch= ool today and opened them up and they have all the html encoding mixed in w= ith the documents. Students are complaining to other instructors in our de= partment that the html encoding is showing up in their documents. One inst= ructor looked at hers (on her computer in her office) and at one moment it = looked fine, then on a second check, voila, all the html encoding showed up= . The students are going to have a variety of computers they are using and= I am sorry, but this is just not acceptable! Not only that, my computer i= n my office at school freezes up regularly when I am attempting to open som= e documents in Moodle (I have never encountered problems with this before a= t Lane, and this only happens when I am in Moodle) and I found out today fr= om another instructor (I was in her office to witness it) she has encounter= d the same problem several times. Finally gave up, shut 'er down and went = home! In fact she just called from home (as we speak) and now this is happ= ening at home (the html encoding showing up, AND her computer froze up). I used Web CT for four years and did not encounter these types of problems,= and it was easy for the students to navigate the site. I feel like I am s= pending much too much time trying to troubleshoot the problems, and we have= been told that we are supposed to use the web based programs for our cours= e materials, but I personally do not have enough time spending hours on som= ething that looks fine one day, then open it up the next day and have it lo= ok like crud and have to re-do it all. I guess I just wonder if I am the only one having trouble adapting to Moodl= e, and would like some support with this! Tammy Maahs, F & HC ------=_Part_1284_14446605.1182488892858--