Technology & Instruction for UNEX

I've always found the quiz feature in Moodle to be a little complicated, but if you create your quiz in the right format outside of Moodle using a text editor, it's very easy to import it and get everything set up pretty quickly. The key is to use one of the quiz formats that Moodle can read and to save that file in the UTF-8 file format. Many text editors will allow you to save in UTF-8. Once you've done this, you can import the quiz and everything will be added with no copying and pasting required. I like the Aiken file format. I don't believe that it was developed by Clay Aiken, the singer from American Idol, but who knows. The Moodle help pages explain the Aiken format in enough detail to get going: You just need to make each question in your quiz look like one of these two and everything will go smoothly. What is the correct answer to this question? A. Is it this one? B. Maybe this answer? C. Possibly this one? D. Must be this one! ANSWER: D Which LMS has ...

Chronicle.com has an interesting article about the pros and cons of videotaping lectures. It seems like a lot of work and time for a limited payback, although if you videotaped the lectures ahead of time and then devoted class time to something else, it might have more value.

I'll need to revise my advice to instructors about using copyrighted videos in online courses after reading this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education . In short, The Association for Information and Media Equipment contacted the university in the fall, alleging that UCLA had violated copyright laws by letting instructors use the videos, which were accessible only to students then enrolled in specific courses and included works such as Shakespeare productions, foreign-language films, and documentaries. The university temporarily stopped using online videos beginning this semester and is negotiating with the trade group. This goes counter to my understanding of the Teach Act , as well as fair use, which I thought allowed for the use of copyrighted material in a password protected course under certain circumstances.

This week's edition of the BBC's Digital Planet podcast has some interesting stories related to distance learning and the use of technology in education. I didn't know that degrees were offered via distance learning as early as the 1800's at the University of London. Technology has changed drastically since then, but teaching methods still have a ways to go.

Our face to face class, Teaching Online with Moodle , started on Wednesday. It's free and lasts only 3 weeks, but it's not too late to sign up. Call UCR Extension Student Services at (800) 442-4990 and ask for course # 093MSCC04.

UCR Extension's Moodle site was scheduled to be unavailable for several days in both November and December while some work was done on the network infrastructure here. The November outage has been cancelled, leaving December 19th - 23rd as the only time in the near future that the system will be unavailable.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a short article discussing a recent report on online learning done by Eduventures . Despite all the excitement about new technologies, most classes lag behind in terms of innovation. That should surprise no one, especially not anyone who has used Blackboard, Moodle or any other CMS. But when it came to technology, the Eduventures survey found that the widely used tools are email, text discussions that don't happen in real time, physical textbooks, and word and pdf documents. We've got plenty of courses where these are the only tools being used, and some courses where it's the textbook email, and text discussions only.