Sharing Survey Templates

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Adam Marshall

Over the last year or two, the most requested enhancement to WebLearn has been the ability to share the authoring of survey templates. The good news is that we have made enhancements to make this possible.

In this case, collaborative authoring works differently to most WebLearn tools; templates are shared by being passed from one individual to another. To do this, simply click on the ‘Change Owner‘ link on the ‘Templates’ page.

Next you are asked to supply an email address or username of the new owner.

When ‘Save’ is clicked the template will be transferred to the new owner. In order to be able to access the template, the new owner must be have the ‘maintain’ or ‘contribute’ role in at least one site.

A copy of all questions is made and added to the new owner’s Question Bank; if the questions are not used by the previous owner in other templates then they will be removed from their Question Bank.

The new owner can make edits and then pass the template along to a future owner (or back to the original owner).

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Introducing the OxCAP Project

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Adam Marshall

OxCAP is a JISC funded initiative to expose data (as an XML feed) about courses at Oxford. This project has the explicit backing of the PVC for Education and the Registrar.

It is agreed that we concentrate on graduate training opportunities.

JISC want public information about courses in XCRI-CAP format so that they can offer a portal which aggregates feeds from “all UK institutions”. This will serve 2 purposes: (a) to allow hard-to-find distance learning courses to be found and, (b) to allow fee-paying students to compare what courses institutions offer so that they can make an informed decision about where to go.

Advantage for Oxford: this will show the world how much excellent graduate training is on offer and will help us to attract the best students

Individual training providers will supply details about their courses in electronic format (RSS, XCRI-CAP, CSV etc) to the Oxford Open Data platform which is managed by OUCS. Information about the courses will be stored and will then be available as a series of data feeds; there will be an authenticated feed for internal use (by WebLearn’s Student Enrolment System (SES) tool) and a public feed (containing slightly fewer courses) which can be consumed by anybody that finds a need. In addition, we will generate supporting software artefacts (improved SES tool and JavaScript library for displaying courses on departmental websites).

The service will be piloted from January 2013 and all aspects will be improved based on user and community feedback.

Process and policy guidance will be developed in conjunction with the training providers to ensure all the outputs from the project are sustainable.

Advantage for Oxford: this will allow students to take full advantage of the training on offer leading to better trained researchers and academics and will make improved use of university resources.

The project is managed by Adam Marshall (OUCS) and Bridget Taylor (Social Sciences) and overseen by the Student Enrolment System Steering Group, reporting to the Education Committee.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oxforduniversitycricket/5786649005/

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New Guidance Site

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Adam Marshall

2012 sees the introduction of a brand new look for the WebLearn Guidance Site.

We have tried to make the site easier to navigate and also make it look more visually appealing. It should be easier to find what you are looking for as the front page contains links to all sections laid out in a clear and concise manner.

We have added a navigation panel to each and every page so it is easier to jump around the site.

All content from the previous incarnation of the site is still present and each page has been categorised so that it falls into one of six logical groupings.

The Site Administrator’s FAQ (an essential tool for all site participants with the maintain or contribute role) has been extended and given a new look.

We have also created many new pages such as this one which provides an entry point by particular task rather than specific tool.

The site contains the 40 ‘bite-sized’ videos that were completed last year. These are intended as rapid guides to a whole host of the most popular tools.

We are very keen to garner feedback so please drop us a line and tell us what you do and do not like by sending an email to the WebLearn team.

The site was created within Dreamweaver using WebDAV to synchronise with WebLearn. All pages are also stored within Subversion for version control and all photographs were taken by WebLearn’s own Dr Jill Fresen!

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WebLearn Service Level Description Updated

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Adam Marshall

The WebLearn Service Level Description has been updated. The following changes have been made:

  • section 1.1 – Bodington now read-only
  • section 2.7 – users cannot now upload into Bodington
  • section 2.13 – add HFS as a related service
  • section 2.14 – as advised by the Proctors Office, back-ups and acrchives will be kept for a period of five years
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Tweet tweet

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Adam Marshall

If you’ve ever fancied using Twitter then this hand guide for Academics from LSE may be useful:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/files/2011/11/Published-Twitter_Guide_Sept_2011.pdf

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WebLearn unaffected by recently announced changes to email service

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Adam Marshall

The following note was sent by OUCS on 13 December 2011.

WebLearn is unaffected as it uses oxmail to send messages and does not connect directly to smtp.ox.ac.uk.

As we can’t rely on people not to give away their SSO credentials in phishing attacks (the rate is very small already but it only takes one for hackers to have a spamming field-day!) we have decided to put the following into place on Thursday morning (15 December 2011) around 9.30am:

1.  Each Oxmail node will rate-limit each sending address to 1000 messages in any 3 hour period.  This is per recipient, not per message, so a message with n recipients will count n against that 1000 limit.  This will ONLY apply to email sent to it from smtp.ox.ac.uk or from Nexus.  Departmental and College systems that use oxmail.ox.ac.uk as their onward MTA will be unaffected.  Nexus and smtp.ox.ac.uk users  going over this limit will get messages saying emails are delayed that they will eventually be sent.

2.  Nexus will change to allowing a maximum of 250 recipients per message.  If messages have more recipients than this they will be refused with a message saying that there are too many recipients.  In that scenario messages will need to be re-sent with fewer recipients by the user.

We appreciate that some of these measures may cause some problems and we may revise them after the Christmas break if it seems appropriate.  If they are going to cause you or your users any problems before 3 Jan 2012 then please contact its3@oucs.ox.ac.uk for advice BEFORE the end of next week.  The change itself should not interrupt service.

We are sorry about the short notice on this but we want it to be in place for a while before we close for Christmas to make sure there are no unforeseen problems.

Thank you for your cooperation, Tony Brett

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Open All Hours – New University of Oxford Podcasts portal launched

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Adam Marshall

At the start of November the OUCS Podcasting Service launched a new web portal to showcase nearly three thousand audio, video and eBook items freely available for download (http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk).

Replacing the previous directory, the improved site presents a rich set of pages displaying podcast series and items. At a glance visitors can see the most recent items added to the site and the most popular. The new portal enables material to be found, grouped and reviewed in a new myriad of ways, including searching by media type, speaker, keyword or department. Each item has its own unique linkable URL, making it easy to link to resources from reading lists, in emails or share via social media channels.

The site is enriched with advanced features to improve the discovery of lectures and talks from across all University divisions. Students can now effortlessly create a library of lectures to be played online in the browser or via a media player such as an iPod or iPad.

Recent series highlights include:

  • Alumni Weekend: a series of 80 videos from Oxford experts, this year concentrating on the great environmental and scientific challenges of the 21st century
  • The New Psychology of Depression: Dr Danny Penman and Professor Mark Williams discuss medical approaches to dealing with stress, anxiety and depression
  • The Elements of Drawing: Stephen Farthing R.A. presents eight practical drawing classes using John Ruskin’s teaching collections
  • Pitt Rivers Museum: a series of audio podcasts from the Pitt Rivers Museum, which houses archaeological and ethnographic objects from all parts of the world
  • Centre on Migration, Policy and Society: a series on migration and societal change
  • Approaching Shakespeare: a continuing lecture series with every talk tackling a specific play

Material is constantly added to the site which now contains over 1,500 hours of talks, lectures, and conference presentations and a series of literature-related eBooks. A special area surfaces material that can be reused openly in schools and education under a Creative Commons license http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/open.

The web site compliments the Oxford on iTunes U service for those who do not wish to use iTunes software.

The podcast team value your feedback and would like to hear what you think about the new portal and Oxford podcasts.

Contact them at podcasts@oucs.ox.ac.uk, or through the contact form on the web site.

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Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award 2012

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Adam Marshall

Each year the Sakai Foundation runs a competition to recognise and promote innovation in using Sakai (WebLearn at Oxford) for teaching and learning. The winners have travel expenses and conference registration paid to attend and present their innovations at the Sakai USA Conference in June 2012.

Online entry will be available from 1 January 2012, and the closing date for submissions is 2 March. The WebLearn team encourages you to consider submitting an entry and is happy to provide assistance.

Here is the announcement from the chair of the organising committee:

“The intent of the Teaching With Sakai Innovation Award (TWSIA) is to recognize excellence in teaching and learning. Each year, since the first call for entries in 2008, educators from institutions around the world submit their courses in the annual competition. An innovative course or educational experience is defined as one that, by design, engages and challenges students, resulting in greater student interest, a deeper level of understanding and/or a lasting change in the students’ perception of an issue or topic. Of course, as this is a Sakai award, the innovation must be implemented within a Sakai instance.

Though technology is an important part of the evaluation process, the award is about more than simply using new technologies; rather it is an approach to teaching and learning that results in a much-enhanced, even transformative, educational experience for students.

The major goals of the TWSIA are:

  • To promote excellent pedagogy and innovation in teaching and learning
  • To create a community of educators who want to share teaching and learning practices
  • To encourage greater faculty involvement in the Sakai community

The award has provided for winners to receive travel expenses and registration to the Sakai conference, and a responsibility to present their award winning course to the Sakai community so that other teaching and learning faculty and staff/administrators may learn from their excellent work.”

Please contact the WebLearn team if you would like to express an interest in submitting an entry.

Useful links:

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OUCS Advent Calendar

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Adam Marshall

After a rush of frantic work by the elves in InfoDev and LTG we have put together a beautiful open advent calendar:  http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/openadvent/

Each day until Christmas a door will be unlocked to reveal a piece of open educational content. Open educational resources from Oxford University are published with Creative Commons licences so you can download them, keep them, enjoy them, share them, re-gift them and use them in your own teaching or research.

Melissa Highton

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WebLearn courses MT 2011

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Adam Marshall

The following IT Learning Programme (OUCS) courses focusing on WebLearn are scheduled for the remainder of the term. Please book by following the respective link to the course booking system.

WebLearn: Surveys

Tuesday 22 November, 2-5 pm

WebLearn Surveys (beta) is a free survey tool that can be used to design and manage electronic questionnaires to be delivered online. Surveys can be created for general data gathering purposes, or for course, lecturer or tutor evaluation. They can be delivered to WebLearn site members, ad-hoc groups or the general public.

WebLearn: Tools to support Teaching and Learning

Tuesday 29 November, 2-5 pm

This course focuses on WebLearn tools for tutors and lecturers to use in communicating with students, booking tutorial sessions, creating reading lists, organising and creating learning materials, designing tests, conducting course evaluation surveys, and tracking site usage. The WebLearn Fundamentals course (or experience in using new WebLearn) is a prerequisite.

Plagiarism: WebLearn and Turnitin

30 November, 12:30-13:30

The Turnitin plagiarism detection service identifies pieces of text in students’ work that match with existing electronic texts. It can be used for assessed essays and also for general formative purposes to improve student academic skills. You will have a chance to submit a sample document via the WebLearn integration with Turnitin.

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