I'm looking into options for my work regarding e-learning. I was wondering if you can feedback to me about what e-learning systems you have at your Universities please? How involving it is? Do you use any e-learning systems or remote learning systems? Also, any ideas you would like to see that your Uni hasn't implemented. All thoughts on the subject would be useful. Thanks.
Hi there, happy to advise if i can as i work in the L&D arena, but really need a bit more to go on, what do you mean by/want from elearning? How much content are you likely to put on it? Do you have a budget in mind? Do you want to host or have hosting externally with the LMS? Do you have security requirements where you work, like iso27001? How will users access the system? Desktop, remote laptop through vpn, internet, mobile, etc. How, any users? Do you have any integration or reporting requirements? Like retaining training records in an hr system, or having training qualifications expiry and require re-evidencing periodically, or need to report on for any regulatory compliance etc. Sorry to hit you with loads of questions but if you have any thoughts on this then I can try to help you with suggestions of what direction you might take. G.
Just playing with some ideas at the moment. It's not so much the systems that I'm researching, but rather the uses they are put to. We currently use Moodle as a VLE (virtual learning environment) but it just ends up being a repository for lesson handouts, powerpoints etc. I was just curious as to what other places are DOING with their e-learning systems.
We use the systems here at UF. It is used for Grades, online submission of projects linked to Turn-it-in.com, mass disbursal of course materials, email (for prof/TA announcements to the class), online quizzes, some basic forum stuff, and a basic wiki
At the University of Glasgow it is much the same, Moodle is there but it is up to the lecturers and tutors to how effectively it is used. Most just use it to store lecture notes and tutorials but it is also used to submit work of every kind from C files to zips with whole java packages... I believe the arts are able to submit essays to it and it does plagiarism checks on it. The moodle forums are useful but I have only seen them used for Computing Science and a little for Electronics, surprised? There was another system used last year which encouraged you to submit questions in a quiz style but it never caught on. I will find the name for you later on. Oh, and we have the wonders of MyCampus... but that is so broken it is not even worth talking about.
Cheers for that. Like I said I'm researching this, so any innovative e-learning practice you come across... post it in here.
You will likely find some useful stuff here on the blog of a friend and colleague of mine: www.learningconversations.co.uk Also, google 'Clive on learning' and read some of his stuff. Websites for the companies kineo and epic are worth looking at, as is the website for float learning who tend towards mlearning. I don't agree with all their approaches and sometimes I just plain disagree, but its all good info to find out what is being done in the commercial arena.G Sent from Bittech Android app
I'm at college currently, and all work is handed out, submitted and feedback given through Moodle. I believe this is only really used in the IT dept because they are the only ones that can be bothered. The system works great because it is web based I can access it from anywhere in the world on virtually any device with a browser. There is also a separate system allowing browser access to your documents on the college systems that is extremely useful if you forget a USB stick or to dropbox it.
We currently use Moodle, and as far as I know, we use it A LOT. However we might be moving to Blackboard because the two large Universities in the state use BB, the university system is going to push for a uniform system. We also do a ton of video lecture capture, more than any university in the state (North Dakota), even though we're the smallest college in the state. We currently use Panapto, but again, the push is moving towards Tegrity. We'll be moved over to Tegrity this summer, BB might be next year. We do a ton of Interactive Video Networking. We have 11 total systems, 9 of them are classrooms. Again, this is more than any other campus in the state, despite our college having the lowest head count. I think it's great we can provide students that come to this campus an opportunity to take classes they normally couldn't take here, however, several of our classes have been moved to the IVN system, and I don't think they belong there. I went to college here, so I know how difficult these classes can be, for instance, all 4 semesters of CCNA training is taught over IVN. Everything is done in LabSim with online curriculum provided through Cisco. I'm not sure if they still have the classes divided into two separate curriculum's like when I took it, (Discovery & Exploration, I took the latter), but you really need hands on with a program like that. Students aren't taking anything from the course if all they do is play in LabSim. If you handed a student a pile of cables and hardware and told them to setup a network, they would struggle more so if they had that experience already. Think of what would happen on the first day of the job working as a network technician. >.< The same goes with our computer hardware curriculum also. That's taught from another campus over IVN. They had maybe a couple labs, but I could tell they didn't really grasp it as well as they should. Two labs is not enough. None of it was troubleshooting! Part of the issue is the instructor though, no communication on his end with our department. (IT) LabSims are a great study tool, but it is not a replacement for an actual LAB. Bugs the crap out of me.
I dunno what the uni system was called but it was a complete waste of time as the lecturers never put up anything and what was there was several years out of date... Also the system was a bug-ridden mess that never worked properly [which goes some way to explain why no-one used it]... FWIW the system they [didn't] use was WebCT
We had WebCT total waste of time. An FTP server would have been as effective, cheaper and more reliable... (Ten years ago mind)
Just another thought to add for you. Don't restrict your thinking to elearning systems. Consumer applications can be better for some purposes... Evernote is a fantastic way to publish seminar or lecture notes... Google drive similarly for files and there is now ISO certification for google docs business. Just need to reverse your thinking from what you need back towards what you need to do and don't create/invent/deploy locally if someone is doing the same thing commercially. They will be better at it. If your learner audience are likely to be using it already, then don't try and send them elsewhere as it will be less effective and irritating. Even Twitter and facebook can be a learning tool if used sensibly for that purpose, though google pluse perhaps better for targetted purposes G Sent from Bittech Android app
At work they use moodle mostly as a file repository for lecture notes. Some lectures are filmed and added but a lot of the people filming the lectures are complete idiots so the quality is like a You've Been Framed clip from the early nineties. They are currently going through a project of adding permanent video capture and web casting facilities to every teaching room. During classes they occasionally use the "personal response system" which enables interactive lectures as the students can provide real time feedback and respond to questions during the lecture. There is also various anti-plagiarism packages built into the course work submission systems too. Students can also access their network storage space and apps via Citrix when off campus. Skype and Wimba is used collaborative video sessions between lecturers and students too. The major stumbling block with all these technologies is it really depends on the abilities and enthusiasm of the teaching staff. The majority of them do not understand the technology, don't want to learn it or simply can't be bothered. The department who research it and choose what to implement live in their own world. When questioned on the uptake of audio recordings of lectures one of them seriously said that all the students on campus wearing headphones were listening to lectures. The sad thing is he genuinely believed it too. Personally I fell that the students these days are so used to sharing photo's and communicating via facebook that the Uni's efforts just look old fashioned and amateurish by comparison which also puts them off.
We had WebCT, this has now been bought by their main competitor, Blackboard. I used blackboard about 6 years ago, and now I've been using it since '11, and it's sucked horribly in both periods. It's awful. The uni also has to pay 6 or 7 figure sums to use it, so understandably just about everyone hates it except for our IT department, who figured it'd be cheaper than Moodle somehow (I suspect nice dinners and buxom sales execs were involved). I will simplify this to the maximum extent: If you get blackboard, no-one will like you, everyone will think you're an idiot, and you will get non-stop complaints about how unintuitive, buggy, and just generally awful the software is. Moodle might be no better (although I think it probably is) but at least it's free so you can put half the money you would have put into buying Blackboard into full time techs. Blackboard may say they offer support, but by that they mean occasional updates, not 24/7 "if something goes wrong we fix it" support. All in all, an FTP server would be preferable. As said, Blackboard can do more - if the lecturing staff are interesting in making it do so, but I've never encountered a single one who is and I've been in uni for years. So ultimately Blackboard (and I suspect Moodle) are almost always just used as a horrible and expensive FTP interface.
