iSean

more and more often i am noticing that educators are shifting to using moodle as their course management system (CMS) of choice. i think it’s great that a developer is working on moodle specifically for the education community. moodle is free and open source and provides an alternative to Blackboard/Web CT (BB recently bought it’s main competition — Web CT). my university provides BB as our CMS option. and, to let you in a little secret . . . i think i’d prefer BB to moodle as long as i am not paying for using BB. i have played with moodle on my servers. it’s a nice early attempt at a CMS, but BB is much more refined. we recently upgraded to a later BB version and there are things that are impressive. that being said, i think BB is built on an older technology and the negatives outweigh the positives. if you don’t have a choice then sure, it’s a dandy choice. however . . .

drupal recently came out with version 4.7, which makes drupal much more interactive and user friendly (e.g., AJAX supported). wow! what an improvement over each of the tools i’ve listed earlier. and, i know what you’re thinking . . . drupal isn’t built for higher education. of course not, but the underlying code is being supported by a much larger community of developers than moodle and drupal is even much bigger than BB, plus drupal is open source. further, there is an initiative to make drupal more like moodle, in that it has tools added on that make it conducive to learning.

a week or so ago, i learned about Google’s Summer of Code 2006. many of the projects that Google is helping to support are geared towards drupal (EDIT: i should also note that moodle is also a sponsoring company included in this SOC project). in fact, one of the most promising projects is an Assignment/Gradebook (snippet):

Assignment/ Gradebook suite
Drupal 4.7
The Assignment/Gradebook suite will allow instructors to create assignments. Students will be able to respond to assignments, and instructors will subsequently be able to provide both a grade and written feedback on student work. While the course instructor will be able to see all student work, students will only be able to see their own work. Additionally, teachers will have the option of showing students an in-progress grade, or just sharing comments. Teachers will also be able to export grade info in csv format (for use in spreadsheets) and all comments to txt files (for use in narrative grade reports). As a security measure, student grades will be protected behind an additional login.

this module/add-on isn’t going to make drupal a BB killer. however, i think drupal and the developers using drupal are making huge strides towards having drupal in place to make waves in education. in fact, i am now planning on adopting drupal in my classes in the very near future. Stay tuned for updates as i discover new uses for current modules and various workarounds to making the best Content MS available also the best Course MS available for the classroom.

Tags: Blackboard, Web CT, Moodle, Drupal, Google, CMS

my university is beta testing Turnitin. Turnitin is a service that we offer through Blackboard. i create an assignment and students submit their papers in Blackboard. Turnitin then runs the paper through its testing and provides a report showing whether anything has been plagiarized or not.

i had an opportunity to try it out this week on a master’s thesis chapter 1. part of the document was copied straight from an online resource . . . to the tune of 36% of the submitted document. i warned the students that i would be using this service and i still received a paper from a student who was testing the limits. crummy stuff.

i have to say, the service is outstanding from a teaching perspective. the service even subscribes to ProQuest (online database of research articles) and checks submitted papers against the literature in the field. the report that gets generated is color coded so that i can see color-coded text that matches the color coded articles that are listed at the top. here is a snapshot of the top of the report where it shows the documents that appear to have been copied:

 

as i read through the actual document, the text in the document that matches the targeted articles above is shown in the color to match the cite above. for example, the 36% match would appear as red text in the document below. the 4% match would be dark green. it is detailed enough to even catch a few matching words out of a longer sentence. of course, many of the 1% and below examples are likely just coincidence, but having it all right there to scan is quite delightful.

my students know i am using this service and i just sent a reminder, so i hope that i don’t have to deal with plagiarism any more this semester. i wonder how much of what i received before turnitin would have been caught? when i suspected anything in the past, i’d take a sentence or sentence fragment and run it through a google search. but, turnitin is much more comprehensive. i have no clue what we pay to use it, but i have to think it’s worthwhile.

Tags: turnitin, plagiarism, thesis, research

Think:lab blog entry here

the blogger i linked above is making the case that blogs become much more relevant when the originating author takes the time to comment on his or her own blog. i never thought about this consciously, but i’ve always made it a point to interact with my visitors. then again, i don’t get the kind of traffic that makes it very difficult to interact with my visitors. in fact, the only “audience” i have for sure are my students when i require them to visit my site. heh heh.

but, there is a part of the blog entry that i take exception to as follows:

It matters because blogs are inherently interactive. It matters because its ‘new’. It matters because without interaction, there is no need to blog. Just go holler at the walls in your basement.

a good portion of my traffic (according to my logs) comes from folks who use a search engine search to find my blog. they aren’t looking for my blog, specifically; rather, they likely are using a tool that i’ve blogged about and come here to see what i’ve written about said tool. so, they might be considering using phpBB forums or they might be teaching online and looking for tips/tricks, etc. judging by the length of their stay, i think the blog site has value to them whether a conversation takes place or not. now granted, i do enjoy the conversations because i get a higher sense of worth knowing that a discussion and hopefully some learning took place. but, i also know that a reference book can be of great value to the user at the right moment (not to say that my blog is a reference book, mind you). further, i enjoy looking back at my old posts and learning from myself. i just enjoy blogging and i enjoy being able to incorporate my blog into my teaching. that’s enough for me. and sometimes the conversation takes place on my blog; sometimes the conversation takes place on my class discussion forums; and, sometimes there is no conversation, but that doesn’t mean there is no worth.

i have a family blog that i started in 2000, which makes it one of the oldest blogs around; though, i didn’t realize it was called a blog at the time. i have about 10 - 15 comments in the last 6 years. obviously, it’s more about telling a story than creating conversation. and, it gets 20 - 30 unique IP hits a day. i know that my family and my wife’s family are often calling us to talk about what they’ve read on our family blog, so i suppose it does generate conversation . . . just not e-communications. ;~) my point is that it’s too hard to lump all blogs into a neat little box and use that box to define how they are to be used. blogs are as varied as the people who write them.

Tags: blog, blogging, comments, typepad, 9 Rules

i am surprised to learn that my comments on the insiderhighered website received so much attention. i found the site quite by accident. i had no clue that the site was getting such traffic when i started my little debate. well, come to find out, many more people than i expected found my discussion with James Farmer. i even had a librarian here at GVSU comment on my comments just the other day. i guess i need to be more careful about what i say when i think i am somewhere obscure. and, i didn’t say anything bad; i just wasn’t writing with a known audience in mind. as large as the internet is, the little niches can bring together many of the same faces.

anyway, i wanted to post some raw data from last semester. as i’ve mentioned before, i survey my students every week. on the last survey last semester, i asked about Blackboard and blogs and even the phpBB forums that I use. I posted the screenshot images at Flickr, but here’s the gist of the question that got right at the heart of my previous discussion:

i need to add a footnote — i put much more effort into the discussion forum and i wasn’t sure how to best use blogs . . . but, it’s nice to see my students appreciating the phpBB forums. The literature is not clear on best practices with regard to blogs and many professionals who write about blogs have varied ideas on how implementation should occur. That leaves folks like me guessing really.

here’s another question that compares the website I create (using html and CSS, etc.) versus Blackboard:

by and large, my students prefer to use learning tools outside of Blackboard. along these lines, my students overwhelmingly preferred my discussion forums much more than Blackboard.

i will have more entertainment with data in the future, but this was some of the stuff that struck out to me earlier today when i was looking through the data for the first time.

Tags: Blackboard, phpBB, interactive learning, online learning

i have been using phpBB forums for many, many years. these forums have suited my needs quite well over the years; however, i am starting to feel the age of the forums. phpBB forums were built in another era of the web and the code it getting larger and larger and they try and improve old code for the current internet. i have fiddled with MODs as you can read in my previous entry, but that’s not quite done the trick.

i have caught web 2.0 fever, i’ll admit. i love using gmail and hitting a keystroke and seeing changes without having to wait for a new webpage to load. i like the CSS designed sites that use scripting to be more interactive and responsive to what i want. phpBB forums don’t allow for this kind of look and feel. so, i started looking for a replacement about a month ago. i downloaded a new forum software package called Vanilla.

Vanilla is made by Lussumo and they call Vanilla the, "sweetest forum on the web." how can i resist having the sweetest forums on the internet? i couldn’t, obviously. i installed Vanilla a few weeks ago and finally got around to playing with it last night. I ended up staying up far too late trying to see if this forum could suite my needs. i think it can.

i should point out that Vanilla is not perfect. and, it’s only a .9.2.6 release; although, the 1.0 release is imminent from what i can tell. i have created groups and categories. i tried adding an avatar and i’ll have to change some underlying code so that the CSS knows where the avatar folder is located once the avatar gets uploaded. that won’t be hard, but that makes me wonder what other tweaks i’ll need to make when things go wrong. i also don’t like that the default size for avatars (called icons, fwiw) is 32 x 32 pixels. that’s awful small when i am using the avatars to try and learn faces with names. and, i notice that if i change the icon/avatar size that i’ll have to change the CSS because it will then overlap with the username, etc. how much work am i willing to put into something that might not even suite my needs until i really test it out? hmmm.

i created a dummy account that i use for testing what my students will see and i think this thing might be ready for prime time. my problem is that classes start in just a few days (Monday) and i am not sure i will time to make the course changes i’ve planned and run Vanilla through the battery of tests that i’d like to try. i’d love to beta test Vanilla with my 1 spring online class rather than introducing it in the fall semester with all of my classes. decisions, decisions.

Tags: vanilla, lussumo, phpbb, forums, online teaching

the winter semester ended last week. i had my grades done on Friday. this week is an off week, but as anyone who teaches knows, this is a very busy week for individuals who want to make big changes to their course(s). i am making big changes.

the first thing i wanted to do was to take my phpBB forums to the next level. i upgraded my forums to the latest version. that did not go over without a hitch. i lost all of my customized images during this process . . . and the regular images as well. so, i downloaded the full package for phpBB forums and moved the files over from the full package that appeared to be missing in my install/upgrade. Transmit (on my Mac) made this comparison/addition process very easy. whew!

i have been using phpBB forums for the past 5 years. i have never modified the forums other than changing themes and using customized images. i decided to add some modifications (MODs) to my forums that would make it easier for me to manage. the first thing i added was a MOD called easyMOD. this MOD makes installing other MODs easy. great!

i have always been concerned that anyone who finds my forums can merely click on the memberlist and view a list of all of my students. even if they use an alias, which i encourage, most use their GVSU supplied username and this includes their last name. so, i found a MOD that allows me to make the memberlist only accessible to me. that is terrific.

i then found a MOD that makes it easier for me to set permissions across forums. i tend to make 2 key forums that all students access, but aren’t part of my weekly teaching. the first is Lounge. this is a forum where anything goes, except class-related topics. many students enjoy just talking about life and hobbies and pop culture, etc. i also create a forum for Class ?s and Announcements. this is where students ask class-related questions instead of emailing me. this is a wonderful way to ensure that i don’t get the same email over and over. every student can see the question and they can see my response as well. and, if i am slow and a student poses a question, another student might know the answer and respond before me. i also post announcements in this forum, so students are encouraged to visit when new posts appear.

i also make group discussions that only students in a particular group can view. i try and keep group discussions limited to between 5 and 9 students. i can pose topics for discussion in the individual group. i typically post 2 - 3 topics in any given week. and, since my students can only respond in their group discussions, i create an All Group Discussion forum where students can create their own topics for discussion on that week’s material and content. all students have access to this All Group Discussion forum, but i find that most students are too nervous to start a topic for discussion and that most students are content to stick with the discussions i have started in their groups. this is something i’ll work on this spring.

well, the MOD installation was not all swell. i did have some errors and i ended up spending a lot of time on the phpBB discussion forums trying to find answers. it was slow, but this process worked for me. i think the forums are all set for the semester starting next week.

now i am off to figure out which blogging tool i will settle on using this next semester. i am fiddling with WordPressMU (multi-user), but it’s still early in development and i’d be a guinea pig, no doubt. it sure would be neat to use one database while hosting all of my student blog accounts. i doubt i get it ready in time, but i am trying. but, that’s why i am exploring other options . . . just in case. stay tuned!

Tags: wordpressMU, phpBB, class discussions, forums, MODs, Transmit, online