Comments on Thema Project Executive Summary #1

Posted on January 26, 2010 by Adam Marshall

These comments relate to the JISC-funded Thema Project Executive Summary for the University of Oxford: http://tinyurl.com/themasummary .

Section 3: student’s use of digital technologies.

“Although over 90% of students have laptops, they tend not to take them to classes for a range of reasons …”

One of the deliverables of the JISC-funded Erewhon project is to develop  a ‘Smart-phone’  interface to WebLearn. The relevant work-package in the project is divided into two parts: authentication and a new tools interface.

Authentication

Here we will develop a new method of authentication that allows a registered WebLearn user to remain logged into the system for a very long time but with a reduced permission set.

This approach strikes a balance between ease of use and security:  i.e., not having to negotiate the fiddly process of logging in every time WebLearn is to be accessed whilst at the same time maintaining integrity. This is achieved using ‘three-legged oAuth’ – this technology is also used by Flickr amongst other.

Every user will have an oAuth management tool in their My Workspace which allows them to specify what external applications are allowed to see and do in WebLearn.

The Smartphone interface to WebLearn will always be accessed via the Mobile Oxford portal (m.ox.ac.uk) so permission must be granted to m.ox to view specific classes of data such as calendars and announcements.

In the future it is envisaged that other applications such as Nexus SharePoint could also use oAuth to retrieve information stored within WebLearn.

New Tools Interface

Here we provide a vastly simplified interface to a handful of the most suitable WebLearn tools. These include

  1. Polls – for conducting opinion polls in a classroom setting
  2. Tutorial sign-up – allow students to book a tutorial session (or any other kind of event) without needing to find a ‘big computer’
  3. Announcements – view course-related announcements
  4. Schedule – view a collated course events calendar
  5. Resources – what new documents or links have been added?

In the future, we also hope to allow students to access the survey tool (‘Evaluations’) via m.ox – this will allow course experience feedback to be completed via a mobile phone. It is hoped that this will result in  higher completion rate than if the survey were only available via a desktop computer.

Links

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I clicked ”Switch to access role” on an unpublished site and now I can’t see my site. What to do?

Posted on January 21, 2010 by Adam Marshall

Site participants with the access role cannot see unpublished sites so the above-mentioned behaviour is to be expected (if not entirely useful). Logging out and then logging in again will cure the problem!

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How does the Forums notification work?

Posted on January 21, 2010 by Adam Marshall

The Watch option has 3 settings.

The default option is ‘Notify me by email when a thread that I have contributed to receives a new message’. The other options are ‘no notification’ and ‘Notify me by email whenever a new message is posted’.

A user can change their individual setting by clicking on the Watch link at the top of the Forums page. It is not possible for a site maintainer to stipulate what the ‘watch-level’ is on their site.

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Create on-line surveys for free using new WebLearn!

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Adam Marshall

You may be aware that OUCS are currently piloting new WebLearn’s Evaluations Tool with a view to introducing this tool in the 2010/2011 academic year.

The Evaluations tool allows the creation of on-line surveys which can be delivered to Oxford staff and students or to the general public. Such surveys may be used for course evaluation, obtaining feedback, questionnaires or general data gathering purposes.

The pilot is divided into two phases and most people who were involved in phase I have provided positive feedback about the tool. Now that the project has entered phase II we are choosing a further selection of units to participate.

What’s in it for me?

  • You will become an early adopter and will be able to save money and effort by replacing paper-based evaluations, questionnaires or forms with an on-line equivalent;
  • Your suggestions will be considered for improving the tool before it goes into production;
  • Discuss and share ideas with other members of the pilot;
  • Receive help and training in using the tool and running on-line surveys.

What will it involve?

  • Attending a free workshop at OUCS during wk5 HT2010 (18-Feb-2010 at 2pm);
  • Testing your survey(s);
  • Delivering your survey(s) to users; (the timing is such that we hope that you’ll be able to deliver your survey(s) to your students by the end of TT2010)
  • Viewing and processing your survey results
  • Providing feedback to the WebLearn team by completing a pilot project survey

Please let us know if you would like to participate in this pilot project by sending an email to wl-eval@weblearn.ox.ac.uk at your earliest convenience.

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New Version of WebLearn Released

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Adam Marshall

Both WebLearn systems were upgraded on 19th January 2010, new WebLearn to 2.6-ox2 and old WebLearn to 2.32. New WebLearn incorporates the latest version of Sakai, v2.6.2.

New Facilities – The Highlights

  • Sites can be restricted to ‘All staff’, ‘All students’ and ‘All Oxford users’. Sites can also be restricted based on card status.
  • New version of the Tutorial Sign-up tool.
  • Old WebLearn MCQs can now be exported and imported into the Tasks, Tests and Surveys tool.
  • WebLearn will send an email notification of a new posting to a Forum.
  • Provision of an ‘Audit’ role within Administration Sites. This will allow individuals who are added with this role to visit all sites that are managed by the Administration Site in question.
  • Old WebLearn Structured Documents can now be exported as a single page (with optional index).
  • Sites can specify different permissions for ‘Anyone’ (ie, general public) and ‘All logged-in users’.
  • Updated copyright status: the previous copyright statuses were based on American terminology and were not particularly useful in the UK

Bug Fixes

  • URL of Reading List is now correct within ‘access view’ of resources.
  • All reported bugs in the Tutorial Sign-up tool have been fixed.
  • The RSS feed for public announcements no longer includes the site’s long description.

More Information

There is a separate document containing a more detailed list of changes.

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Thema project: executive summary and other project outputs

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Adam Marshall

LTG conducted an investigation (“Thema”) into the use of digital technologies by students on taught Master’s programmes in Oxford from 2007-8. It was funded by the JISC Learner Experiences of E-learning programme.

We are pleased to announce that the project outputs are now finally available. Executive summary: http://tinyurl.com/themasummary

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WebLearn upgrade on 19th January

Posted on January 15, 2010 by Adam Marshall

WebLearn will be unavailable for a short period between 7am and 9am on Tuesday the 19th of January for an upgrade. Both the old and new systems will be down during this time. The outage will only be brief, but please avoid using WebLearn during this period to avoid any interruptions. Changes in this release include:

  • Ability to grant access to a site for large groups (all staff, all students, etc).
  • Email notifications from Forums tool.
  • Updated signup tool.
  • Import / export of multiple choice questions (MCQs) from old WebLearn into new webLearn’s Tasks, Tests and Survey tool.
  • Improved copyright statuses in resources tool to reflect local UK terminology.
  • Improved tools descriptions in Site Info.
  • Lots of bugfixes (locally fixed and from Sakai community).
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Eurosakai conference announced

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Adam Marshall

Registration for the European Sakai Conference 2010 in Valencia, Spain is now Open.

The conference will consist of a BootCamp/Workshop on the 1st of March followed by 2 days of conference presentations and BOF meetings on 2nd and 3rd of March.

You can find all the information about the conference in the sakai website http://sakaiproject.org/sakai-european-regional-conference-2010

Registration and payment can be done in https://www.upv.es/pls/sosak/sic_eusakai.REGISTRATION?p_vista=poliformat&P_IDIOMA=i

The registration fee is 100 EUR and includes all the meals for the conference.

About PRESENTATION PROPOSALS

Please we need all your collaboration for the conference presentations. If you think you have any good experience to talk about, a new tool to show or any good practice you want to share, please think about doing a presentation in the conference.

Presentation proposals can be sent to the conference e-email address eurosakai2010@upv.es<mailto:eurosakai2010@upv.es>.

About the BOOTCAMP/WORKSHOP

In the schedule it is included a Bootcamp/Workshop focused on configuration and maintenance for the sakai 2.x instance.

As you may know, sakai 3 is coming now strongly and may be you are interested also in a second and parallel BOOTCAMP for sakai 3.

Please send back your feedback if you are interested. If we consider that there’s a strong demand we will schedule it.

About the SPORT ACTIVITY

We are planning a Sport activity for the evening of the 1st of March. It will consist of a Basketball match and a indoor soccer match. If you are interested in this, please select the mark that you will find it in the registration form.

Please if you have any doubt contact eurosakai2010@upv.es<mailto:eurosakai2010@upv.es

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Message from the Sakai Executive Director

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Adam Marshall

Michael Korcuska the Sakai Executive Director delivers an ‘Executive Brief’ every six months which summarises what’s happening in the Sakai world. His latest missive covers developments in Sakai 2 and 3, what the Sakai Foundation staff members are currently doing and outlines the formation of the Sakai maintenance team (to which Oxford supplies manpower). The document is fairly short and is worth looking at if you have an interest in the wider community.

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What does new WebLearn do that Old WebLearn does not?

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Adam Marshall

Here’s a list of things that the new WebLearn does that the old WebLearn does not.

    • •    Calendars for course events

 

    • •    Electronic sign-up for tutorials, seminars or other types of meeting

 

    • •    Electronic assignment submission with automatic plagiarism detection using JISC Turnitin service. (Offering and supporting a University-wide plagiarism detection service could also be mentioned – it is within the domain of the WebLearn team.)

 

    • •    Announcements can be made to student groups based on course membership

 

    • •    On-line (electronic) course experience (feedback) questionnaire will be available to all course tutors by Easter 2010

 

    • •    Reading lists with live-link to University library systems making it easy for students to find the physical location of a specified text

 

    • •    Each course can have its own podcast feed

 

    • •    Collaborative authoring environment (wiki) with LaTeX mathematical notation support

 

    • •    Vastly improved discussion forum and assessment tools (compared to old service)

 

    • •    Real-time chat for every course

 

    • •    Sophisticated tracking of students by tutors with visual summary of activity

 

    • •    Custom Smartphone interface with associated long-term login will be available to every student by academic year 2010-11

 

    •    Opinion poll for all courses (students will be able to vote via a Smartphone by 2010-11)

New WebLearn also has a better UI and is more accessible than the old system.

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