Creating (WebLearn) content using Xerte: Webinar 8 April @ 17:00

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Adam Marshall

Xerte_thumbXerte is an (ALT-C) award winning suite of browser-based tools developed by Nottingham University that allow anyone with a web browser to create interactive and accessible learning materials quickly and easily. Xerte is a new project to Apereo, currently working through the incubation process.

In this webinar, the Xerte developers will introduce themselves, and the software, to the Apereo Community. Julian Tenney will  say a little about where the project came from, and how it came to be an Apereo project; Ron Mitchell will provide an overview and demonstrate the software’s key features and Tom Reijnders will show some of the new developments currently taking place.

Links

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You Tube Channel For Sakai (WebLearn) Showcase Webinars

Posted on February 25, 2015 by Adam Marshall

longsightOver the last year or so, one of the Sakai commercial partners, Longsight, have been running regular Webinars about different aspects of Sakai (the software which under-pins WebLearn).

All of these sessions have been recorded and uploaded to You Tube in the Sakai CLE Channel, you may find these videos informative.

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WebLearn upgraded to Version 2.10-ox2.1 on 19 February 2015

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Adam Marshall

WebLearn was upgraded on 19th February 2015 to version 2.10-ox2.1. If you want more details then please contact the WebLearn Team. For more detailed information and other minor changes, please looked at the detailed release notes.

If you would like to suggest further improvements then please do so by contributing to the WebLearn User Voice feedback service.

The following list also includes some issues that were fixed on 10th January as part of the 2.10-ox1.4 release.

Improvement / New Features

  • Surveys can now be transferred to a new owner (User Voice request)
  • Lessons Tool: new Forum Topics can now be created (User Voice request)
  • Direct Tool link (Short URL) to a Lessons tool page is now present (User Voice request)
  • Google Analytics support has now been added – we intend to use this to report on how WebLearn is being used
  • The ‘Contact Us’ tool email now includes the URL that the user was trying to visit – this is important when the user has been given an incorrect URL or is not a member of the site at the end of the URL
  • Softly Deleted Sites are now retained for 400 days – the Recycle Bin for deleted sites is available in My Workspace > Worksite Setup
  • Deleted files in Resources are now retained for 400 days – the Recycle Bin for Resources is available via a link at the top of the Resources Tool

Bug Fixes

  • The “Lock Tool” icon has now been removed and tools which have previously been hidden via the “Light Bulb” icon can now be unhidden.
  • New lines are no longer being auto-inserted in the description of a Resource
  • Assignment Tool: Turnitin reports will now not erroneously show the blue (0%) icon for resubmissions
  • Poor formatting of Forum posts is now fixed
  • Direct Tool (Short) URLs will now work correctly for all tools
  • Problems with accessing files using Internet Explorer 8 should now be resolved
  • The ‘Contact Us’ tool should now work for sites where a maintainer has apostrophe in their name
  • Foreign characters are now correctly saved by the WYSIWYG HTML editor
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A recipie to display a Google Calendar in WebLearn

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Adam Marshall

It is quite easy to surface a Google Calendar within WebLearn – you may want to do this if you find that the default WebLearn calendar doesn’t quite do what you want. The Conference of Colleges use this approach, they have decided to use the “Agenda View” rather than the more traditional view.

confoHere is what you could do – this will create a link in the LHS “page menu” which is a web page displaying your calendar.

1/ Create a Google calendar – you may like to create a new Google account which you share amongst your colleagues so that if you’re off, somebody else can update the calendar.

2/ Add one or two events but don’t add everything just in case you decide the abandon this approach.

3/ Click on “Share this calendar” in the drop down list next to the calendar name (LHS of the page), select “Make this calendar public”.

share-googie

4/ Back in WebLearn, in the Resources tool (in a folder if you like) create a new HTML page which will be called “calendar.html”.

5/ Click on “Source” (top left) then by following the instructions on this page: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/41207?hl=en grab the embed code for your Google calendar (click on “Calendar settings” alongside the calendar then copy the HTML code in the “embed this calendar” row. (By default, the size is 800 x 600 – you can change these dimensions if you like.)

settings-googie

googie-cal

6/ Paste this code into the WebLearn HTML page that you’re editing then save and give the page a name.

7/ Alongside the file in Resources select “Make Web Content Link” from the “Actions Menu” – call this link “Schedule” (or Calendar) and save. There will now be a link in the LHS “page menu”, you can use Site Info > Page Order to move the link’s position in the list.

8/ You can now edit the calendar.html  page to add some explanatory text and if everything is good, return to your Google calendar and add all your events.

If you want to use the agenda view then have a read of this page: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/make-embedded-google-calendar-show-agenda-28685.html

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WebLearn unavailable on Thursday 19 February 2015 from 7-9am (date change)

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Adam Marshall

It is planned to upgrade WebLearn to version 2.10-ox2 on Thursday 19 February 2015 7-9am. There will be no service during this period. Please note that this is a change in date.

We apologise for any inconvenience that this essential work may cause.

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WebLearn Improved Student Experience (WISE) project

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Jill Fresen

left_right brain

The WISE project will support departments, faculties, colleges and units to fast-track the development and improvement of their WebLearn presence in order to deliver an enhanced (and consistent) student digital experience, as per recommendations from previous projects.

The project aims to increase the uptake and optimise the use of WebLearn by units across the university, to support teaching and learning. Specific objectives of the project are:

  • To promote staff engagement with the tools and features offered by WebLearn to enrich teaching and learning
  • To enhance the student WebLearn experience
  • To work closely with selected units to fast-track their use of WebLearn for teaching and learning
  • To facilitate the use of WebLearn according to best practice
  • To provide improved tools and templates to support best practice
  • To establish a peer community of WebLearn champions (enthusiasts)

The funding will allow the central WebLearn team to employ two fixed-term learning technologists to work closely with departments, as well as developer resources to focus on technical enhancements and unit-specific templates.

The proposed package of dedicated support will encompass the following (at no cost to departments):

  • Day 1: fact finding to get the know the unit and existing teaching and learning needs that may be met via WebLearn
  • Day 2: meeting, white-boarding, planning, with input from stakeholders and experts in the unit
  • Days 3-4: WebLearn team produces a prototype of the design and a template WL site for  the unit
  • Day 5: present and discuss the prototype with stakeholders and experts in the unit
  • Days 6-8: WebLearn team develops the site/s with required features and content provided by the unit
  • Days 9-10: Evaluation of and adjustments to the site/s, together with stakeholders and experts in the unit, and signoff.

Please contact weblearn@it.ox.ac.uk with the subject line ‘WISE project’ to express your interest in participating in the project.

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WebLearn unavailable on Tuesday 3 February 2015 from 7-9am

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Adam Marshall

WebLearn will be unavailable for a short time on Tuesday 3 February 2015 between 7-9am for essential system maintenance.

We apologise for any inconvenience that this work may cause.

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Proposed Reading List Tool Improvements

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Adam Marshall

This post has been made on behalf of the Social Sciences Library

Developing an Online Reading List Management System [ORLiMS] at the Bodleian Social Science Library

orlimsThe Bodleian Social Science Library [SSL] has applied for and received an award from the University of Oxford IT Innovation Group to support the creation and development of an online reading list management system [ORLiMS] for Social Sciences. This is one of four ideas that have recently benefitted from the ‘IT Innovation Seed Fund’ which has been set up to finance digital projects that can increase or enhance access to collections held by ASUC departments and/or help to create a digital community within the University.

Reading lists are fundamental to the majority of students and course convenors within the Social Sciences Division, as it offers eight undergraduate programmes and over 80 taught postgraduate courses. Purchasing resources for taught courses is a core service at the SSL, which currently supports more than 450 reading lists. This project seeks to improve the existing processes of reading list delivery and subsequent library provision, and ultimately improve student learning by enhancing access to the literature they need to read to excel in their courses.

The ORLiMS will benefit students, course convenors and library staff alike, as it will facilitate access to library resources and optimise the SSL’s purchasing activity. The system will provide a central location for students to access their reading lists. It will provide real-time information on the location and availability of texts, and a convenient place for teaching staff to update their course content. The system will also indicate where the provision of particular texts is low, informing the library’s decisions on purchasing additional copies.

This is a pilot project using reading lists received by the SSL from the academic departments it supports for courses running in Michaelmas Term 2015. It can be seen as a proof-of-concept with the potential for wider adoption across the University.

If you are interested in becoming involved in the project then please contact us via: weblearn@it.ox.ac.uk

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WebLearn is now using data from SITS

Posted on January 21, 2015 by Adam Marshall

Credit https://www.flickr.com/photos/kali-ma/123323729/

At 6pm on Friday 16th January 2015,  WebLearn  switched over to using “Course Groups” that originate from Tribal SITS instead of OSS; in other words, WebLearn has switched over to using Oxford’s new student record system. Due to circumstances beyond our control there are a very small number of changes in the membership of some of course-based Participant Groups.

The migration work involved mapping old OSS course codes to new SITS course codes and revealed that there is actually not a one-to-one mapping of courses between the two systems. As an example, where there used to be ‘Course X’ there may now be two courses: ‘Course X (full-time)’ and ‘Course X (part-time)’; there are also other more extreme examples.

If you couple this with the inevitable minor differences that have crept in when migrating course data between OSS and SITS, you can see how the membership of some of the new SITS-based “Course Groups” may differ from the groups that they replace. Most groups are identical; for groups which are not identical, the difference is only one or two group members.

Unit Groups, ie, members of departments, faculties and colleges are unchanged as they do not originate from SITS.

If any students make contact and complain that they no longer have access to one or more WebLearn sites, then we would urge you to check that the Participant Group(s) contain the correct members. If they do not then you should contact the WebLearn team and report the anomaly.

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WebLearn Transferred to New Resilient Hardware

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Adam Marshall

wl-goldOn Saturday 10th January 2015, WebLearn was moved to brand new hardware which is distributed over two physical locations. This was a major undertaking and is the culmination of a number of months of work by both the WebLearn and Infrastructure and Hosting teams within IT Services.

WebLearn is now located in both Banbury Road and the University Shared Data Centre and will ultimately have duplicated database and search servers plus four worker nodes each running two virtual machines. The worker nodes are located behind a Citrix NetScaler Application Delivery Controller which ensures an even distribution of load across all workers – there are actually two of these machines in case the primary machine fails.

The WebLearn file store is also duplicated over two sites.

This new infrastructure will be more resilient than the previous set up due to the hardware duplication, co-location and move to a higher number of (virtual) workers each supporting a smaller number of users.

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