Accessing online content and services has become a vital part of the OU experience. The virtual learning environment has been carefully designed over the last seven years and has some excellent features such as a custom-built forum tool and quiz engine. Meanwhile we have other systems such as StudentHome, Open Learn and Library Services, full […]
Should Open University students be entitled to particular types and amounts of tuition during their studies? Should provision be consistent across tutor groups, regions and nations, and qualifications? What are the most successful pedagogical strategies for online synchronous sessions? How should we engage with Facebook as an institution? What role do face to face sessions […]
Fed up being force-fed a whole lot of stuff of no great interest to you in your university’s virtual learning environment? Want to view only the parts of most relevance to your own learning – and blend them in with your other interests such as news, weather and sports updates? The Open University is now […]
I’ve just had some interesting conversations at an event for new OU module chairs at Cranfield University after presenting on some of the possibilities of elearning for our students. One academic wondered how he could be expected to design courses for smartphones and tablets when the University was not prepared to buy him these devices […]
I’ve recently been working with colleagues across the Open University, in particular Liz Burton-Pye, to define a roadmap for our future learning systems. Moodle lies at the core of our online learning provision and its usage is growing rapidly with 50,000 unique users accessing it every day. Elluminate is used for synchronous communication and Google […]
Much of the criticism levelled at virtual learning environments / learning management systems relates to the control of the environment by the institution rather than the learner. The individual student has minimal ability to upload their own content or to set up collaborative tools unless this has been pre-ordained by the institution. The argument goes […]
A group of us met earlier in the year from my office and from Learning and Teaching Solutions at the Open University to discuss some of our ideas around the future development of our Moodle-based VLE/LMS. Out of this discussion emerge, I think, some principles which could be taken into account when looking at new […]
I’ve just been at a workshop with my colleagues Tony Hirst, Ross Mackenzie, Martin Weller and others looking at how the OU’s virtual learning environment could be enhanced by closer integration with other systems elsewhere. This could work both ways so that: Live data from other systems is integrated within OU course content, and OU […]
Being able to teach and learn maths, science, engineering and even social science over the internet has been hampered by the difficulty of inputting and displaying mathematical notation. Things are set to improve though due to enhancements in our latest release of Moodle at the OU, demonstrated at a meeting today by Tim Lowe who’s […]
Our latest incarnation of Moodle was released this morning. New functionality includes: Audio resources pages – enabling audio files traditionally distributed on CD/DVDs to be made available as mp3 files for download New blog module – we found the existing Moodle blog too restrictive so have had a new system developed – this allows the […]