WebLearn team report Oct 2010 – Jan 2011

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Adam Marshall

Software

New WebLearn was upgraded on 11th January 2011 to version 2.6-ox6. For more detailed information please looked at the detailed release notes.

Unfortunately due to technical difficulties, it was not possible to upgrade the surveys tool. We apologise for this and will rectify the situation in time for the next upgrade on Feb 1st.

Improvements

  • Addition of a ‘select all users’ button to Site Info
  • Allow sites to be joined / un-joined via site info
  • Display of joinable sites in the list of sub-sites
  • New version of Tutorial Signup tool
    1. add a checkbox “Add these sessions to schedule” – means that all sessions do not have to appear in the site calendar
    2. events no longer mess up the display of the calendar
    3. when creating repeating events add “number of meetings” field as an alternative to supplying a date
  • Addition of usernames to Tests tool results page
  • Newer version of Markbook
  • It is now possible to create a one-off public Poll in a non-public site (for use with m.ox)

Bug Fixes

  • Dates now internationalised in daily and weekly printable view (PDF) of calendar and on list of events
  • Fixed errors with deleting files / folder via WebDav
  • The tables on the ‘Manage subgroups’ page are now wider
  • Polls now supports voting for more than one option per poll via m.ox
  • Non logged in users can now vote and see results in Polls tool via m.ox

Training

The Surveys course was run for the very first time in November. We obtained good feedback and will be aiming to further improve the course in the future.

Mobile polls pilot has been launched. A new feature allows audience members to vote in a WebLearn poll via their mobile phone this done via Mobile oxford (m.ox) – A workshop was held. See: https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/info/eas/polls

More video screen-casts have been produced including Migration for Old WebLearn and Forums. http://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/adamweblearn/2010/09/video-tutorial-guides-for-site-managers/

Projects

Sir Louie is making solid progress, we expect to have an enhanced reading list tool available at Easter. This will happen in tandem with modifications to the UI of SOLO: when searching is invoked from WL there will be a link to “import this item to WebLearn” alongside each item. See: https://weblearn.ox.ac.uk/portal/hierarchy/central/oucs/sirlouie

The WebLearn team have been working in conjunction with the Podcasting team on the JISC-funded Listening For Impact project, see: http://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/listeningforimpact This involves placing in-line audio and video players within WebLearn’s News tool and also developing a wizard for browsing the Oxford Podcasts website: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/.

The Student Enrolment System II project is due to start in February. This project builds upon the very successful initial phase and adds new features and for both students and administrators. In addition a layer of interoperability will be built-in via the use of the Oak Groups store and judicious use of open standards such as IMS LIS and XCRI-CAP.

The WebLearn team are involved in other two internal projects led by other teams within OUCS.

  • Nexus-WebLearn integration which looks towards the integration of Calendars and groups (via the Oak Groups store) and will look at document workflow going from SharePoint to WebLearn (eg, development of course handbooks).
  • Janus project: two factor authentication. This project will pilot an additional method of authentication in addition to the regular Webauth Login protection – this may take the form of a hardware token, phone-based validation or some other scheme.

The Student enrolment System II project is due to start in Feb.

Staffing

Dr Marc Savitsky has joined the WL team as a developer; Dr Robin Hill has joined on sabbatical from University of Wyoming and will be looking at generating site templates to help encourage best practise

Events

LTG hosted a UK Sakai day, despite the snow there were about 40 attendees with talks from Ian Dolphin (Sakai Foundation), Patrick Lynch (Hull U) who spoke about migration from Blackboard, John Norman (U Cambridge) who spoke about Sakai OAE (formerly Sakai 3) and Stuart Less (OUCS) who spoke about the benefits of choosing an open source VLE. The event was sponsored by SunGuard HE and rSmart who also spoke about their commercial offerings of hosting and support.

Upcoming

  • HT 2011 Additional video-based documentation.
  • Mid HT 2011 Improved Surveys tool with functional extension dates and other bug fixes.
  • Mid HT 2011 Integration with Oxford Podcasts.
  • TT 2011 improvements to Student Enrolment System student and administrator UI
  • TT 2011 redesigned guidance site
  • TT 2011 Site deletion (with recycle bin).
  • TT 2011 Reading list improvements (Resources) integration with SOLO and real-time availability within reading lists.
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Can I remove the ‘users present’ display on a site?

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Adam Marshall

The display of the ‘users present’ information can be suppressed by the central WebLearn team.

If you would like take advantage of this facility then please get in touch with us stating the site URL and the name of the site.

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WebLearn courses during Hilary Term 2011

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Adam Marshall

Here are the dates for WebLearn courses and the WebLearn User Group meeting during Hilary Term 2011. Course details are available on the courses database and bookings open 30 days in advance of each course: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/courses/.

There is now a regular course on using the Survey tool in WebLearn. There are two offerings of the Migrating your Content course, to support you in migrating content from old to new WebLearn. Please note that all content needs to be migrated by June 2011, after which the old system will become read only.

WebLearn: Fundamentals

  1. Monday 17 Jan 9.15 am (week 1);
  2. Wednesday 16 February 9.15 am (week 5);
  3. Tuesday 15 March 2 pm (week 9)

WebLearn: Making your site work

  1. Wednesday 23 February 9.15 am (week 6)

WebLearn: Migrating your content

  1. Wednesday 26 January 2 pm (week 2);
  2. Thursday 24 February 2 pm (week 6);

WebLearn: Surveys

  1. Monday 28 February 2 pm (week 7)

WebLearn User Group

  1. Wednesday 9 March 2 pm (week 8)

Plagiarism: WebLearn and Turnitin

  1. Wednesday 2 Feb 12:20-13:30 (week 3)
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Sakai Conference 2011 moved to North America

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Adam Marshall

The Sakai Foundation have announced plans to relocate next year’s Sakai conference from Berlin to an as yet unspecified venue in North America. the dates remain the same though (June 14 – 16, with pre-conference sessions on June 13).

This news was relayed in a message from Ian Dolphin which also outlined changes in staffing by the Sakai Foundation and thoughts about the upcoming Sakai 2 / OAE hybrid VLE.

Link

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Time to Apply – Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Adam Marshall

The entry process is now open for the 2011 Teaching with Sakai Innovation Award (TWSIA). The application and supporting materials are available at http://openedpractices.org/twsia.

The 2011 award seeks to expand the sharing of innovative teaching and collaboration practices to include:

  1. – Higher education face-to-face courses
  2. – Higher education distance education or hybrid courses
  3. – Primary and secondary education courses
  4. – Non-traditional, or non-course uses of Sakai

Select winners will have expenses paid to present their winning entries at the Sakai Conference in Berlin, Germany in June 2011. This is possible through the generous sponsorship of IBM Global Education and the support of rSmart, and Wiley Higher Education. (Thank you.)

Please consider applying, and encourage others in your organization to apply.

If you have questions or require assistance to evaluate participation, the TWSIA committee is extremely helpful and responsive.

Thank you,

Kim Thanos, Communications Lead, kthanos@sakaifoundation.org

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Sneeky Peek of Sakai Open Academic Environment (aka Sakai 3)

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Adam Marshall

From the Sakai newsletter:

NYU Launches Pre-Release Pilot of Sakai OAE/SAKAI 3

New York University is pleased to announce the launch on November 5,2010 of the first pre-release pilot of the Sakai Open Academic Environment (OAE) — a revolutionary platform for academic networking and collaboration. The NYU instance of Sakai OAE will be known as the ATLAS Network (Advanced Teaching, Learning, And Scholarship Network). The pilot will grow to include 5000 students and faculty from six different NYU schools.

See a screencast demonstration of the ATLAS Network here:

The NYU pilot focuses on two important areas of need. It provides a single NYU network for many diverse university communities to use. And it provides a flexible set of options for implementing portfolios. Features include searchable profiles, group spaces and uploaded content, and two portfolio implementations. The pilot is being overseen by a cross-school, academic-led committee charged with oversight of the development and implementation of the Sakai OAE environment at NYU. Initial funding for Sakai at NYU was provided by a 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-Up grant.

For more information about the ATLAS Network, contact Lucy Appert (lucy.appert@nyu.edu) or James Bullen (jb@nyu.edu).

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The benefits of an Open Source VLE

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Adam Marshall

Start Lee and Melissa Highton recently gave a virtual presentation to a conference in Malaysia via Skype. One of the things they spoke about is the benefits to Oxford of choosing an Open Source VLE.

FutureGov Asia picked up on this and reported their statements widely.

Link

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Displaying WebLearn calendars on external websites

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Adam Marshall

Some users are taking advantage of WebLearn’s ability to export calendars in ‘iCal’ format and are syndicating their calendars to departmental intranets or public websites.

Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences also (luckily) known as NDORMS have adopted such an approach as the following screen-shot testifies.

ndorms-calendar

They have a WebLearn site within which resides a calendar of seminars and have generated a public iCal feed of the site’s calendar by clicking on the ‘export’ link within the menu of tool options.

ndorms-export

After deciding upon a URL for the feed it is possible to subscribe other calendars to this URL – click on the ‘Export’ link again to determine the URL.

ndorms-ical-url

Clearly, it is possible for individuals to subscribe to this iCal feed through a mail client, eg, Thunderbird or Outlook, but it is also possible to subscribe using Google Calendar. The advantage of this approach is that Google provide some custom HTML code to display their calendars in a variety of formats on an arbitrary web page (including a WebLearn page if so desired). To do this one must have a Google account and then must create a new Google calendar to act as a wrapper for a WebLearn calendar. It is this ‘wrapper’ calendar that will be syndicated.

To display a WebLearn calendar within a Google calendar click on the ‘Add’ link at the bottom of the left-hand side of the screen (underneath ‘Other Calendars’) and select ‘Add by URL’.

ndorms-google-import-1

Then enter the WebLearn calendar URL and elect to make the calendar public.

ndorms-google-import-2

To get a display of the HTML code that will be used to display your Google calendar, click on ‘Settings’ underneath ‘My Calendars’ (on the main Google calendar display page) and then click on the calendar name. The HTML code is located under the ‘Embed this calendar’ section and can be copied and pasted onto an external site.

ndorms-google-embed

This approach is slightly awkward but does deliver great benefits such as the ability of the viewer to select different views. After the initial set up the only real issues are that there is a slight lag between the events being updated in WebLearn and them propagating onto the external web site.

ndorms-calendar-weekly

Thanks to Wulf Forrester-Barker for suggesting this approach.

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