Message-ID: <2184088.1182532592553.JavaMail.joeescobar@joe-escobars-computer.local> Date: Fri, 11 May 2007 21:44:15 -0700 (PDT) From: waltond Subject: Making Moodle more accessible to students Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_Part_159_8952237.1182532592553" GWItemID: 4644813F.LCC-Mail.MC_PO3.100.1346735.1.3E22.1 ------=_Part_159_8952237.1182532592553 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Folks, Cynde Leathers's recent letter to instructors about orientation sessions for online courses has lead to some discussion about problems with students getting access to Moodle for their online courses. In some cases, instructors noted that students ended up dropping courses...because they simply didn't know where they had to go to log in. After reviewing the situation, I have to say that I agree that we don't have anything in place that really helps online students get where they need to go, unless they already know where they need to go--which doesn't really make much sense. So, I've identified two ways we can improve things, and I'm writing because I want to be sure that all interested parties are included in the discussion, and because I'd like to hear your thoughts about my proposals. The first thing I think we should do is to make give Moodle a presence on the main home page. We're talking about putting an "Online courses" link near the bottom of the left-hand navigation bar to do that. The exact wording of the link is open to discussion; the linked page will probably be something like a brief discussion of the different online options ("Most online courses taught at LCC use Moodle; if you are already enrolled in an online class, go to moodle.lanecc.edu to log in; to enroll in a class, log in to ExpressLane; in addition, some courses taught through Distance Learning may actually be taught by a different host institution; for more information about these classes, go to www.lanecc.edu/distance"). The actual contents and text of the page can be fleshed out later; the main point is that we should have a single page, easily accessible, that tells students what they need to do to log in to their courses. The other thing I'm exploring is providing links directly in ExpressLane so that students who are enrolled in Moodle courses, or courses offered through Distance Learning, can click on the course right in ExpressLane, and be taken to the login page. (Note that I'm thinking of displaying links only students who are already enrolled, not those who are shopping for courses.) What I'm envisioning here is a link that passes the CRN of the course to a fairly simple script that I can write, which could exist either on the Moodle server or the web server. Here's how it would work: - The script will take the CRN, use it to determine where the student needs to go, and automatically go there. If the course is offered through Moodle, it can send the students directly to the Moodle login page. For DL courses offered through other institutions, it can take them to the appropriate LMS, or even go to a page with instructions on logging in. Or, it could even take the student to an instructor's web page, where there might in instructions or information that the instructor wants the student to see. - Behind the scenes, the script can do a dynamic lookup on the Moodle database to determine whether a CRN has a corresponding, visible course in Moodle.* But it will also consult a table of CRNs which may have alternate URLs specified: for DL courses taught at other colleges; or for instructors who may want students to first go to a page on teach, for example. That list can be completely arbitrary, and it allows us simple, fine-grained control over the script's behavior. So: when a student clicks on the link, the script will a) determine where to send the student, based on information in the Moodle database and on the list of alternate URLs; and b) automatically take them there. The student won't need to look through a list of courses to determine where to go. Now, here's where I'd like your input. To move forward with putting links in ExpressLane, we need to discuss the proposal first with Student Core team, and then we will need to discuss this with faculty to make sure we deal with any objections they may have (most likely, by presenting to Faculty Council). Do any of you foresee any problems that might arise with the scheme I've discussed? Objections that faculty may have? Usability issues? Incredibly obvious technical concerns that we need to deal with? I want to make sure that it's clear to everyone how this will work, and that everyone thinks that it would be a good idea, before we move forward. So I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts and suggestions about any of this, including how we might want to rethink it to improve it. If you have any thoughts on the content of the "Online courses" page for the main home page, I'm also interested in that, but the ExpressLane links plan is the more urgent one, because we need to talk to Faculty Council before the end of the year. Thanks in advance for your time. David *Ron Rourke and I already have a fairly straightforward system in mind for determining which courses are 'visible'--those that would display a link in ExpressLane. That process will: - Identify which courses really have an online component and hence should display a link. We will ignore all of the inactive course shells in Moodle, for example, since we don't want to provide students with a link to what is basically a blank course. Since this process relies on the actual state of courses in the Moodle database, it can be dynamically queried and hence automatically updated when a course is made visible. It does, however, rely on faculty to make sure that their Moodle courses are set to be visible to students; we'll need to continue educating them about the importance of activating their courses on the first day of the term. - Allow the course to have a URL which doesn't point to the script I mentioned above. The Learning Communities courses, for example, already have a URL in that field; what Ron and I are doing won't overwrite it. =============================================== David Walton Moodle System Administrator Lane Community College For enrollment, course creation, logging in, or general server issues, email moodleadmin@lanecc.edu For faculty assistance using Moodle, email online@lanecc.edu Voice: 463-3367 =============================================== ------=_Part_159_8952237.1182532592553--