Technology & Instruction for UNEX

The Huffington Post started their Best of TED 2011  countdown recently. It's a top 18 list because TED talks have to be 18 minutes or less. There are a wide range of topics included so far, with six more talks currently waiting to be revealed. Of all the online resources I include in our courses for instructors, the TED talks always get the most use and generate the most interest, particularly among those who are not familiar with them. This happens even though most of the TED talks are not directly related to the topics that people are covering in their classes. I think there are three things that make the talks appealing as learning resources. First is the length -- long enough to get into some depth about an issue, but not so long that people will tune out or choose not to watch. Many of the resources on sites which are targeted at higher education include presentations/lectures which are an hour long or more. My experience is that finding the valuable section in a long video ...

When students are working in our installation of Moodle, there are some common ways that their work can be lost. Because Moodle doesn't save what you've written until you click Save (assignments) or Post to Forum in Forums, anything that interrupts your connection to Moodle can lead to lost work and frustration. Interruptions include computer problems or network outages or disconnections. If you are writing anything longer than a paragraph,  it's a good idea to use a text editor to do your writing and then copy and paste into Moodle so no matter what happens, you won't lose any of your work. If you combine your use of a text editor with an online backup plan, you'll have a secure backup of all of your work even after the class ends and you can no longer access it (see below). You could use a word processor like Microsoft Word, but you may need to save your work as plain text first to avoid seeing formatting errors when you copy and paste from Word into Moodle. A...

I first came across the idea of learning styles when I was teaching online courses for CSU Hayward (now East Bay) about 12 years ago. Someone teaching one of the other courses in the program must have emphasized learning styles because many students brought it up in online discussions. I was not familiar with the idea, but I looked into it, found very little other than learning preference surveys and thought that was the end of it for me. However,  since then, learning styles seem to follow anywhere you find discussions of online teaching and learning. This is true despite the absence of academic research supporting any benefits related to designing for learning styles. Guy Wallace's article from the November, 2011 issue of eLearn magazine, Why Is the Research on Learning Styles Still Being Dismissed by Some Learning Leaders and Practitioners? is a nice summary of the learning styles issue along with a discussion of why people sometimes believe things despite evidence to the co...

Moodle 2.x has a cleaner look compared with version 1.9, but it also allows you to move blocks off the course page and into the left side of your browser window -- the dock. This removes even more of the visual clutter. Since the activities and resources in the course usually occupy more of your time than the information in the blocks, it makes sense to minimize their impact on the display. Here is a before and after look at the same course in Moodle 1.9 and then in version 2.1 where the blocks have been moved into the dock. Subtle differences but I prefer the 2.1 appearance, although I don't like the presence of the horizontal scrollbar at the top. I wasn't able to remove it even though the table with the text and graphic is not as wide as the available area for the course materials.

If all goes as planned, we should be upgrading to Moodle 2.x at the end of December. Currently, the most recent version of Moodle is 2.1, but 2.2 should be released in time for our upgrade. Over the next few weeks, I will be highlighting some of the changes as we move from version 1.9 to 2.2. I'm optimistic that the transition will be a smooth one. There are a variety of changes, but I think most instructors and students will find the next version of Moodle a little easier to use. Visually, the appearance is less cluttered and with the new dock option, all of the information currently displayed in blocks can be moved to the dock on the side of the browser window. When we make the move to Moodle 2.2, we will also introduce a single custom theme for our site and all of our Moodle courses. This should simplify things for everyone and although there may be some who prefer to choose the theme for their course, I think sticking with one theme will be best for our students.

Last week, I virtually attended the  Jossey-Bass Online Teaching and Learning conference . Everything happens online through Adobe Connect, so there is no travel involved. That makes it easier and less expensive to attend but also eliminates the possibility of running up big bills in restaurants paid for by your employer. The pre-conference had 4 presentations and then there were 6 on each of the two days of the conference. I learned something from each presentation, and many valuable links and other information was shared by participants in the chat that went on during each presentation. I experienced few technical issues -- some audio dropouts and in the  middle of day 2 I had to switch computers because I could no longer connect using my laptop, but overall it was a very smooth experience. Everything happened on time and the pacing was good throughout. This was the second time I attended this conference and I think it was even better this year. Although you do miss out on...

One of the biggest barriers for people who would like to teach online is the complexity of the hardware and software they need to deal with to do things like upload files, record audio or install software. Software companies should know by know that creating error messages in language that people can understand is more helpful than using cryptic, information technology-speak. Here's the feedback I got after trying to run the Adobe Bridge 6.5 update: What does "Another instance of deployment is already running" mean? That I've already updated the software? I haven't. That the application is running and needs to be quit before I can run the update? Definitely not running. When terms like "deployment" and "payloads" (the files that are supposed to be installed as part of the update) are used, I think of the military, not updating software. I'm sure Adobe can do a better job than this of making their error messages understandable and t...