WebLearn Was Upgraded To Version 2.8-ox10.1 On 13 May 2014

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Adam Marshall

WebLearn was upgraded on Tuesday 13th May 2014 to version 2.8-ox10.1. 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.

General Improvements

Bug Fixes

  • The ‘Resources Browser’ in the HTML WYSIWYG Editor should now work with Internet Explorer 11
  • The issue preventing PDF Survey reports being generated has been fixed
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Large WebLearn Tools Icons (aka ‘Large Silk Icons’ or ‘Large Fam Fam Fam Icons’) are now available

Posted on May 12, 2014 by Adam Marshall

Have you ever wanted to use a WebLearn tool icon in a document or web page and been dismayed that, at a size of 16px, it is too small and therefore not suitable for use? If so then you may be pleased to know that we have developed a set of larger icons (45px, 90px and 120px) for the most popular WebLearn tools.

Examples, Resources tool:

16px https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/access/content/public/images/silk/folder.png 45px 21_resources 90px 21_resources 120px 21_resources_xl

There are 35 larger icons all available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 licence:

Here is an example of use within a WebLearn site:

<img alt="Polls tool icon" 
  src="/access/content/public/images/silk/1-large/90px/18_polls.png />

The original (small) icons are also freely available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 licence and are known as ‘Silk Icons’ or ‘Fam Fam Fam Icons’. The original download is available from: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/

You may find other large silk icons at: http://fatcow.com/free-icons.

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WebLearn and Turnitin Report: Jan 2014 – Apr 2014

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Adam Marshall

 Training and Guidance

Trinity term’s programme of training has been announced:  http://wp.me/p1K8WQ-SZ

Turnitin

The TurnItIn Academic service suffered from poor performance throughout the whole of the last week of April; by the end of the week the problems appear to have been solved. The problem resulted in a backlog in processing student papers, but the UK service was back to normal within two days. This time the Turnitin providers sent out frequent status updates, and we fed the information to status.ox.ac.uk.

WebLearn

Have you got a suggestion to improve WebLearn? If so you may like to contribute to the WebLearn User Voice feedback service which available from the WebLearn Welcome page: “Suggest an Improvement”.

The WebLearn team plans to publicise the weekly Computer8 sessions to encourage users to make us of the free, individual consultation time on offer. Also, we would like to strongly encourage departments and colleges to enter this year’s OxTALENT awards in the category: “Use of WebLearn to support teaching, learning, or outreach”.

There has been an upgrade to WebLearn since the last report (to 2.8-ox10). Since the WebLearn developers are focusing on a move to sakai 10 over the Long Vacation, the ox10 release was a modest affair.

Improvements and New Features in WebLearn 2.8-ox10

General Improvements

  • All pages created via the HTML WYSWIWG editor in Resources are now delivered in ‘standards mode’ – a blog post explains the rationale for this change
  • ‘Read resources’ permission can now not be removed from the ‘maintain’, ‘contribute’ and ‘access’ roles – a blog post explains the rationale for this change
  • The ‘Switch to access role’ option is now not shown for unpublished sites
  • The ‘Graduate Training Tool’ is now known as the ‘Researcher Training Tool’ – all documentation has been updated
  • The ‘Resources Browser’ in the HTML WYSIWYG Editor should now work with Internet Explorer 11

Bug Fixes

  • Editing an existing survey no longer loses  previously selected option
  • Replacing an existing file which is available to ‘All Oxford Users’ using WebDAV no longer modifies access rights

Projects / Plans

The much delayed Groups Store project has now started. This project is being carried out by the Identity and Access Management (IAM) team; it is hoped that WebLearn integration will be forthcoming and at this stage we hope to offer basic integration by Jan 2015.

Work to move WebLearn from version 2.8 of Sakai to version 10 of Sakai in time is progressing smoothly with much progress being made, however, there is stall a large amount of work outstanding.

Planning for the project to work with Sydev to improve the resilience of WebLearn is just about complete. The project manager will be Gabriel Hanganu and the project should start on 1st June. When the work is complete this should offer greater service stability and quicker recovery times in the event of an outage.

The WebLearn team are currently investigating how students and staff would like to use WebLearn on their mobile devices. If you have a view on this then please get in touch and we will come and talk to you.

Others

Nick Wilson has joined the WebLearn team as a Java developer. Nick used to work for Right Move and, in our opinion, has made, er, the right move in joining the team.

Nicholaas Matthijs from Cambridge University gave a presentation about the Apereo OAE on April 3rd to a crowded ISIS teaching room. Apereo OAE is a brand new platform that aims to support academic collaboration and academic networking. It is being developed by the same organisation that oversees Sakai which of course is the software which underpins WebLearn. The talk was recorded and is available for viewing now.

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WebLearn unavailable on Tuesday 13 May 2014 from 7-9am

Posted on May 7, 2014 by Adam Marshall

It is planned to upgrade WebLearn to version 2.8-ox10.1 on Tuesday 13 May 2014 from 7-9am. There will be no service during this period.

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

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WebLearn OxTALENT Awards

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Adam Marshall

The annual OxTALENT Awards are presented each June. The deadline for entries is mid-day 16th May 2014.

This year we are pleased to announce six open award categories, and we encourage you or your colleagues to enter examples of Oxford Teaching And Learning Enhanced by New Technology. In particular, we are seeking innovative ways of using WebLearn to support and enrich the student learning experience.

This year’s categories are:

  • Use of WebLearn to support teaching, learning, or outreach
  • Apps and mobile technologies
  • Student IT Innovation
  • Videos created independently by students in support of their learning, research or teaching
  • Conference posters
  • Interactive infographics

Winners will be profiled on IT Services and other University websites, interviewed by the University podcasting team to produce a case study, and receive a prize at the red-carpet awards ceremony in June.

This is an opportunity to have your creativity recognised, so take a look at the details for each category and how to enter, at http://tinyurl.com/oxtalent2014.

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WebLearn and TurnItIn Courses in Trinity Term 2014

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Adam Marshall

A variety of taught courses are offered by IT Services to support the use of WebLearn and the plagiarism awareness software Turnitin.

Course books for the formal courses (3-hour sessions) can be downloaded for self study.

Places are limited and bookings are required.

Click on the links provided to book a place, or for further information. Bookings open 30 days in advance, but you can express an interest in a course and receive a reminder to book when booking opens.

WebLearn courses:

Three hour courses

WebLearn: Fundamentals  Thurs 24 April 2:00 – 5:00

or

 Thurs 22 May 9:15 – 12:15

or

 Wed 11 June 2:00 – 5:00
WebLearn: Surveys Wed 28 May 2:00 – 5:00
WebLearn: Design and content (formerly called ‘Making your site work’) Mon 23 June 2:00 – 5:00

Byte-sized lunch time sessions:

These focus on one particular tool, with plenty of time for questions and discussion

WebLearn Bytes: Site Management and Resources Tues 6 May 12:30 – 13:30
WebLearn Bytes: Surveys Tues 13 May 12:30 – 13:30
WebLearn Bytes: Assignments Tues 20 May 12:30 – 13:30
WebLearn Bytes: Tests and Quizzes Tues 3 June 12:30 – 13:30

User Group meetings:

Come and air your views or discuss questions you may have at one of the user group sessions. Bookings are required (click on the link provided).

WebLearn User Group Mon 7 July 2:00 – 4:00 PM + cream tea

Express an interest!

The following courses can be arranged if there is sufficient demand for them. Visit the link to express your interest in a particular course:

WebLearn: Tools to support teaching and learning This course focuses on WebLearn tools for tutors and lecturers to use in communicating with students, arranging tutorial sessions, conducting course evaluation surveys, providing reading lists, organising learning materials, and tracking site usage.
WebLearn: Assessment and feedback There are several ways to assess student work in WebLearn. This course looks at the e-assessment options available to lecturers and tutors: how to configure the tools, use them to mark student’s work and deliver feedback.

Plagiarism awareness courses (Turnitin):

Plagiarism: Interpreting Originality Reports using Turnitin Mon 12 May 12:30 – 13:30
Plagiarism: WebLearn and Turnitin Thurs 15 May 12:30 – 13:30
Plagiarism: How to avoid it (for students) Mon 19 May 2:00 – 4:00
Plagiarism: Turnitin Fundamentals Tues 3 June 2:00 – 5:00

User Group meetings:

Come and air your views or discuss questions you may have at one of the user group sessions. Bookings are required (click on the link provided).

Turnitin User Group Mon 30 June 2:00 – 4:00 PM + refreshmts
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Proposal: Automatic Generation Of A List Of WebLearn Coordinators

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Adam Marshall

After positive feedback from consultations with our users, we are now pressing ahead with our plans to start publishing automatically-generated lists of ‘Local WebLearn Coordinators’ which are created by processing the membership of Administration Sites.

This replaces our current approach of attempting to maintain a manual list which can be found at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/weblearn/admin-sites-list.xml. We use this list when we need to liaise with a unit about WebLearn matters and we point users (staff/students) at this list when they need support from the WebLearn Coordinator of the unit in question.

It has always been difficult for us to keep this list up to date. In the last couple of months it has become apparent that it is way out of date which is not helpful to us, our users and the units who have no valid contacts.

We intend to solve this problem by auto-generating this list. What we plan to do is the following:

  1. Create a new role called “coordinator” for Administration Sites; this role would be identical in all but name to the current “admin” role – this has now been done.
  2. Request that each unit check and update the membership and roles in their Administration Site.
  3. Manually assign this role to all Administration Site participants who we know to be Local WebLearn Coordinators where this has not been done already.
  4. Add some programming logic so that every Administration Site must have at least one participant with the “coordinator” role.
  5. Form a list of WebLearn Coordinators by extracting members of each Administration site who have the “coordinator” role and use the names (not email addresses) and the associated Administration Site names as the basis of the new list. A web page containing this information would replace the current page and would be updated nightly.
  6. Send system messages to this list instead of the manually maintained ‘wl-coordinators’ mail list.

What does this mean?

  1. The change implies that anybody with the “Coordinator” role in an Administration Site will now be viewed as a Local WebLearn Coordinator. Units need to update the membership of their Administration site and take on the responsibility to assign this role to their preferred contacts in the future.
  2. Members of the ‘wl-coordinators’ mail list who do not have the “coordinator” role will stop receiving emails via this route. To mitigate, we will identify and add these people to the WebLearn User Group email list which receives the same messages.

Drawbacks

A small number of units, specifically, Archaeology, OII, Medical Sciences and Exeter College supply a generic email address as a contact point, unfortunately these will cease to appear as WebLearn is unable to support generic accounts as site members.

Action

To help us achieve our goal, we would be very grateful if you could update the membership of your Administration site and set at least 2 people to have the new ‘coordinator’ role. The current list of coordinators can be found at: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/weblearn/admin-sites-list.xml.

Please feel free to contact us with any other queries that you may have via: weblearn@it.ox.ac.uk

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Designing accessible web pages

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Jill Fresen

The next meeting of the WebLearn User Group (Monday 7 July 2014 – booking required) will focus on two issues:

  • Writing accessible web pages
  • Copyright of learning materials

assistive-956x256

The Disability Resources and Services (DRS) unit at Temple University in Philadelphia USA provides many resources, videos and additional helpful information about students with disabilities. Have a look at their website: http://www.temple.edu/studentaffairs/disability/

Did you know that “Careless use of HTML tables to provide a columnar page layout can result in confusing presentation of information in non-graphic browsers, where the effect might be of reading from left to right the first line of each column of a newspaper, then the second line of each column, and so on” (Sloan, 2002).

The attached guide from DRS (web-accessibility_Temple University USA) provides information and a collection of resources about Web Accessibilty, including how to check the accessibility of the web pages you want students to use.

Reference:

Sloan, D. (2002). Creating accessible e-learning content. In L. Phipps, A. Sutherland & J. Seale, Access All Areas: disabilitly, technology and leanring. JISC TechDis Service and ALT. Available at http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/evidencenet/Access_All_Areas-Disability_Technology_and_Learning

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WebLearn was upgraded on Tuesday 15th April 2014 to version 2.8-ox10

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Adam Marshall

WebLearn was upgraded on Tuesday 15th April 2014 to version 2.8-ox10. 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.

General Improvements

  • All pages created via the HTML WYSWIWG editor in Resources are now delivered in ‘standards mode’ – a blog post explains the rationale for this change
  • ‘Read resources’ permission can now not be removed from the ‘maintain’, ‘contribute’ and ‘access’ roles – a blog post explains the rationale for this change
  • The ‘Switch to access role’ option is now not shown for unpublished sites
  • The ‘Graduate Training Tool’ is now known as the ‘Researcher Training Tool’ – all documentation has been updated
  • The ‘Resources Browser’ in the HTML WYSIWYG Editor should now work with Internet Explorer 11

Bug Fixes

  • Editing an existing survey no longer loses  previously selected option
  • Replacing an existing file which is available to ‘All Oxford Users’ using WebDAV no longer modifies access rights
Posted in Sakai, WebLearn | Tagged | Leave a comment

WebLearn unavailable on Tuesday 15 April 2014 from 7-9am

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Adam Marshall

It is planned to upgrade WebLearn to version 2.8-ox10 on Tuesday 15 April 2014 7-9am. There will be no service during this period.

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

Posted in Downtime, Sakai, WebLearn | Tagged | Leave a comment