Personal Blogs

Whenever I visit a new place for the first time I'm always a little anxious about whether I'll be able to find it okay.  My first visit to the OU Cardiff centre was on 1 November.  I shouldn't have worried; the moment I left the train station and turned right I could see the Open University logo.  I even manage to find my destination without having to resort to a googlemap.

My reason to visit Cardiff was to attend what would be my second SD4ST event (staff development for staff tutors).  I blogged about my first SD4ST event a number of months ago which took me all the way to Gateshead where the focus of the two days was research (and how to fit it into the role of a staff tutor).  This event was all about motivation and inspiration.

I was particularly attracted to this event since I remember reading that it would involve some theatre.  A number of years ago (either three or four - I forget!)  I attended an associate lecturer development event that was held by the South East region.  I remember being ushered into a very large room where the chairs were arranged in a circle.  I have memories of being taken out of my comfort zone by being presented with drama workshop exercises which included words like zip and zap.  The overwhelming feeling that I left the East Grinstead workshop was being a little puzzled about how on earth I might be able to use some of the stuff I had just witnessed to add a little more 'zip' into my own tutorials.

The Cardiff SD4ST event was being partly organised by the same tutor who ran the associate lecturer staff development event, and I was looking forward to it.  Just like my last SD4ST post this one is intended to act as a simple record of what happened during the day, but it might be of interest to my fellow Open University staff tutors.

Good tutorials

The first session of the day was very traditional but it set the scene very well for the rest of the two days.  We were asked to split into equal groups and asked to consider the factors about what made up a good tutorial, writing our views on a big piece of paper.

Our group came up with a set of words and phrases which I managed to quickly scribble down, both on the flipchart page and in my notebook.  These were: student centred, friendliness, knowledge of module, good structure, enthusiasm, flexibility, ability to connect things together, personal approach, supportive atmosphere and clarity of expression.

After the groups returned, there was a quick plenary discussion and each sheet was blu-tacked to the wall to act as physical reminders of our discussion.

Forum theatre

After a short break we were led into a room that had a configuration that I remembered my AL development event several years ago: the chairs were arranged in a circle!  We were told that three actors would act out a scene from the start of a telephone tutorial that went badly wrong.  I have to admit, it was very bad... Not the acting, I mean; that was very good!  What we were shown certainly didn't create a very good impression and if I had been a student I would have been suitably bewildered.

When the scene had come to an end it was replayed where we were then asked to stop the scene and take over the scene to offer a correction.  An illustrious education staff tutor from the London region took up this challenge!  Other staff tutors were then encouraged to jump in to the tutoring seat to lead the tutorial to a successful conclusion whilst at the same time reflecting carefully on what was happening.

Towards the end of the first session we were given a further question (or challenge) to think about, which was: how to make a good tutorial better and generate a 'palpable buzz' (a phrase that generated quite a bit of debate towards the end of the two days).

Elluminate

The next session of the day was all about Elluminate.  It very soon became apparent that there was a big difference in how this asynchronous tool is used by different module teams.  For some modules it was compulsory, but on others it was not.  After a bit of discussion we were then treated to recordings of two different Elluminate sessions.

The first recording was from a sports and fitness module, and the second was from a languages module.  My own reflection on this was that there were very big differences in how the different sessions were run, and some of the differences come from the differences in the subject matter.

One of the most powerful elements of Elluminate is its whiteboard.  It enables you to create very visual activities and share concepts that would have taken a thousand words to explain.  The language activity that we were shown was truly multi-modal: learners could listen to other students speak to the words that were on the whiteboard and connect different words and phrases up using lines.

Other Elluminate tools, such as the polling function, can be used to quickly gather opinions and relate to materials that may be presented on a whiteboard slide.  One of the challenges lies with making activities interactive especially when the connection between the Elluminate moderator and the participant is distant and the emotional bandwidth afforded by tools such as Elluminate is lower.  I remember some discussions about barriers to participation and the use of the emoticons to assess 'happiness' (or should I say, whether participants are fully engaged).

One of the biggest 'take home' points of the day lies with how Elluminate might be used in a team teaching scenario.  One of the things I've heard about Elluminate it is it is very hard work to keep track of everything that is going on: there's voice, text chat and (potentially) stuff being drawn on the whiteboard.  If there are two moderators, one can be taking care of the text chat (or some of the other tools), whilst the other can be responding to the audio channel.

I remember from my own Elluminate training in the South East region that Elluminate moderators are more producers than tutors.  Moderators are producers in the sense that they produce a session by choosing an appropriate mix of the different tools that Elluminate offers.  The notion of a producer remains firmly stuck in my mind.  For me, it's an analogy that makes sense.

Creativity in face to face tutorials

On the second day David Heley gave a similar version of the workshop he prepared for regional associate lecturer development events.  I'm not going to describe it in a lot of detail since I won't be able to do it justice.

A couple of thing stood out for me.  The first was how the physical space of the room was used.  Space can be used to identify different opinions and present different characteristics.  The idea of a 'spectrum line' can be used to enable participants to think about where they stand on a particular opinion; two sides of the room being opposing views.  We were then asked to use our imagination by imagining a map of the world on the floor of the room, and then asked to stand at various locations.  It was very thought provoking: kinaesthetic learning is both fun and engaging (in my opinion, but perhaps that might be a reflection on my own learning style).

One thing that stood out for me was the idea of using 'broken powerpoint', i.e. you ask participants what is on a series of imaginary powerpoint slide as opposed to simply giving your own powerpoint.  This seemed to work really well and I've been wondering how I might be able to use it in my own interaction design tutorials.  Another related thought that can to my mind was to have a my tutor group create their own powerpoint which might be helpful for both revision purposes and also for those who may not be able to attend a particular session - I've not tried it out yet, but the 'broken powerpoint' activity has certainly got me thinking!

David made the point that the aim of his workshop isn't to encourage participants to use everything but instead to consider how to use parts of it, or even to use some of the ideas it contains as sources (or vectors) of inspiration.  That was exactly how I used it when I attended a couple of years ago.  As a result of attending David's session I gradually managed to incorporate a small amount of role play.  Doing this wasn't easy and certainly took me outside of my comfort zone, but I think that was a good thing.

Forum theatre

After some lunch and a preparatory discussion we returned to our drama room and were then presented with another semi-improvised vignette which seemed to be about poetry.  There was some discussion about the kind of feedback that might have been offered, after which the episode was then replayed.

Towards the end of the day we were paired off and given a role play challenge which related face to face tutorials. I won't say too much about this other that it was quite good fun: I certainly learnt a lot from that exercise. It was really interesting to see so many different topics of debate emerge from a series of short scenarios.

Summary

A couple of years ago I attended an accessibility and human computer interaction event (please bear with me with this: there is a connection!)  The aim of the event was to introduce a science council project to 'the public'.  I mostly expected to get more of an understanding of different technologies and how they might be applied, but I was surprised to see how drama was used to teach students to understand the perspective of users of interactive devices (such as phones and computers).  It was a really interesting approach. 

During the day, we were given a premier of a short film (just in case you might be interested, the video that is mentioned in this earlier post can be viewed through a YouTube link).  At the end of the film we were able to ask the actors some questions (who remained 'in character') about their experience of using technology.  All these goings on reminded me of some aspects of our SD4ST event.

For me, there were a couple of things I got out of the event.  The first was the principle that there are so many different ways of doing things.   I sometimes get into a habit of using technology to help to do stuff.  Whilst tools such as powerpoint and the digital resources that you can create using them can be useful in terms of sharing information with others (through digital spaces such as the VLE), a face to face tutorial offers a richer way to explore and engage with module material.

The other point was the use of drama emphasised the importance of considering and carefully thinking about different perspectives.  I like the connection that theatre encourages practice reflection, and at the same time can permit the exploration of different topics, themes and subjects.

I mentioned technology, and this is the third 'take away' point: the use and mastery of asynchronous tools such as Elluminate (and how to connect their use to module materials in an effective and engaging way) will undoubtedly continue to be a subject for further discussion and exploration.

Congrats to the organisers, Janet Hanna, Annette Duensing, Martin Rhys, David Heley and the three forum theatre actors. All in all, a fun (and useful) event!

A Higher Education Academy sponsored distance learning workshop for computing and ICT was held at the Open University on Thursday 20 October 2011.  The workshop addressed a number of different themes.  These included internationalisation and the delivery of modules to different countries, professionalization and industry, models of distance learning, the use of technology and its accessibility.

The day was divided up into a number of different sessions, and I'll do my best to summarise them.  I feel that blogging this event is going to be a little bit different from the previous times I have blogged HEA workshops since this time I was less of an observer and more of a participant.  This said, I'll do my best!

Introduction and keynote

The event was introduced by Professor Hugh Robinson, head of the department of Computing at the Open University.  Hugh briefly spoke about the history of the university and mentioned that Open means that students who enrol to courses do not necessarily have to have any qualifications.  This connected to one of the university's themes: to be open in terms of people, places and ideas.  Distance education enables education to be open in all these respects but it is apparent that due to the changes in the higher education sector, all institutions are to face challenges in the future.

Hugh's opening presentation gave way to Mike Richards keynote presentation about a new computing module entitled TU100, My Digital Life.  Mike described some of the main topic areas of this new module which will for a common entry point to a number of degrees.  This module addresses themes that are rather different to those that used to be on the computing curriculum, mostly due to the changes in technology and what is meant by a 'computer'.

Mike mentioned important subjects such as privacy and security, the notion of ubiquitous computing and what is meant by 'free', connecting to subject of open source software systems.  Mike went on to say that the TU100 module contains some hardware that might once have been known as a 'home experiment kit'.

In the case of TU100 this is in the form of a programmable microcontroller board which can be configured in a way to work with different types of measurements and share the results with other people over the internet.  Furthermore, the microcontroller (and connected software) can be developed using a visual programming language called Sense, which is a version of Scratch, a popular introductory programming environment developed by MIT.

Mike's presentation emphasised that distance education need not only begin and end with a virtual learning environment.  A distance education module can contain a rich set of resources such as video materials and physical equipment that can be used to facilitate both understanding and debate.  Mike emphasised the point that many issues that connect to the increasingly broad discipline of computing (broad because of its impact on so many other areas of human activity) is that some debates do not have right or wrong answers.

One thing is certain: technology has changed so many different aspects of our lives and will continue to do so in ways that we may not be able to expect.  It's my understanding that one of the aims of TU100 is to highlight and uncover different debates and help students to navigate them.  What was very clear is that computing education is so much more than just technology and getting it to do cool stuff.  It's essential to understand and to consider how technology affects so many different aspects of our lives.

Morning session

The first presentation in the morning session was by Quan Dang from London Metropolitan University.  Quan's presentation was entitled, 'blending virtual support into traditional module delivery to enhance student learning'.  Quan emphasised how synchronous tools, such as on-line text chat could be used to create virtual 'drop in' sessions outside of core teaching hours to enable students to gain regarding subjects such as computer programming.  Quan's presentation was very though provoking since it made me ask myself the question, 'what different tools and practices might we potentially adopt (at a distance) to help student get to grips with difficult issues such as debugging'.  Debugging is something (in my humble opinion) that you can best learn by seeing how different people consume elements of the programming tools that are available through development environments.  Getting a feeling of the different strategies that can be applied is something that can only be gained through experience, and technology certainly has the potential to facilitate this.

The following presentation, by Amanda Banks from the University of Manchester, was entitled 'advanced professional education in computer science'.  Amanda spoke at some length about how a tool such as MediaWiki could be used to enable students to create useful materials that could be used with others.  This presentation was also thought provoking: Wiki's can certainly be used within on-line modules to enable to student to generate materials for their own study, but Amanda's presentation made me consider the possibility that wiki-hosted material can be used between different module presentations as a way to facilitate debates about different ideas.

The final presentation was by Philip Scown, from Manchester Metropolitan University Business School.  Philip's thought provoking presentation was entitled, 'the unseen university: full-flexible degrees enabled by technology'. Philip argued that technology can potentially allow different models of studying and learning, such as modules which don't have start dates, for instance.  I can't do justice to Philip's talk within this space, so I do encourage you to have a look on the HEA website where I understand that his presentation slides are hosted.

First afternoon session

The afternoon session was started by Mark Ratcliffe, discipline lead for computing at the Higher Education Academy.  Mark outlined the role of the HEA and then went on to describe funding opportunities and the role of a HEA academic associates.  Mark then directed us to the HEA website for more information.

Distance education is one of those terms that can mean different things to different people, and this difference was, in part, highlighted by Mariana Lilley's first presentation of the afternoon that had the title, 'online, tutored e-learning and blended: three modalities for the delivery of distance learning programmes in computer science'.  Mariana's presentation also represented a form of case study of a programme that is presented internationally by the University of Hertfordshire.  It was interesting to hear about the application of different tools, such as Elluminate (now Blackboard Collaborate), QuestionMark Perception and VitalSource Bookshelf.  This suggested to me the point that distance learning is now facilitated by a mix of different tools and made me question whether we have (collectively) identified best (or most effective) mix.  Institutions have to necessarily explore technology in combination with pedagogic practice, and sharing case studies is certainly one way to understand something about what is successful.

Mariana's presentation was nicely complemented by Paul Sant's (in collaboration with his colleague Malcolm Sant) who was from the University of Bedfordshire.  Paul's presentation was entitled, 'distance learning in higher education - an international case study'.  Paul identified a number of challenges which included, 'how can we ensure that distance students remain engaged? How can we offer support in a way that meets their schedule and requirements?', and 'How can we ensure that the work performed by students meets their potential?'  Paul mentioned tools such as the Blackboard VLE and synchronous tools by Horizon Wimba.  Paul's presentation also helped to expose the subject of partnerships with international institutions.

Second afternoon session

The final session of the day was broadly intended to focus upon the needs of the student from two different perspectives.  Steve Green from the Accessibility Research Centre, Teeside University kicked off this session by describing 'studying accessibility and adaptive technologies using blended learning and widgets'.  Accessibility is an important subject since it enables students to make use of learning resources irrespective of how or where they may be studying (both in terms of their physical and technical environment), but also widens the way in which resources may be consumed, taking into account learners with additional requirements.  Steve described how students create accessible widgets and their evaluation.

Steve's talk reminded me of a question that I was asked not so long ago, which is, given that distance legislation is now an international endeavour and the development of accessibility is supported by equality legislation, where do the boundaries lie in terms of offering support to students?  The answer may depend on the issue of how partnerships are developed and function.

The final presentation of the day, entitled 'finding a foundation for flexibility: learner centred design' was by Andrew Pyper from the University of Hertfordshire.  The underlying theme is that institutions need to understand the needs of their learners to best support them.  Tools such as learner centred design, which is known to the interaction design and human-computer interaction communities, have the potential to create rich pictures which then potential guide the development of both learning experiences and technology alike.

Plenary

Towards the end of the day there was a bit of time to hold an open discussion about some of the different themes that the presentations had exposed.  Many thanks to Amanda, Philip and Andrew for taking part.  Some of the themes that came to my mind were the issues of  tools and technology, internationalisation, industry and employability, and student skills.  Points included that we need to be careful about our assumptions of the technology that students might have.  Another important point is that one way to differentiate between different institutions might be in terms of the technologies that they use (and also how they use it).

We were also reminded about something called the Stanford Machine Learning course, which provoked some debate about 'free' (which relates back to Mike Richard's earlier TU100 presentation), and we were all directed towards the QAA Distance Learning precepts (many thanks to Richard Howley for bringing this to our attention).

Summary

All in all, it was a fun day!  There were loads of questions asked following each of the sessions and much opportunity for talk and debate in between.  I have to confess I was very relieved when the tea, coffees and sandwiches arrived on time, so thanks are extended to the Open University catering group.

It's tough, for me, to say what the highlight of the day was due to the number of very interesting thought provoking presentations.  I certainly feel that there is always an opportunity to learn lessons from each other; it is clearly apparent that there are many different ways to approach distance education.  Whilst there are many differences between institutions, similar issues are often grappled with, such as how to best make use of technology and ensure that students are offered the best possible level of support.

Ever since July 2001 I have edited (off and on) the Psychology of Programming Interest Group newsletter.  The group, known as PPIG has been in existence since 1987.  Its purpose is to provide an interdisciplinary academic forum for researchers who are interested in the intersection between computer programming and psychology.

PPIG can be described as a pretty broad church.  On one hand there are those who aim to explore program comprehension and the relationship between notation systems and programming languages, whereas other researchers have been performing ethnographic studies and considering the different types of research methods that could be used.

Some of the questions that the PPIG community have been exploring resonated strongly with my doctoral research which was all about understanding how computer programmers go about maintaining computer software. 

I will probably always remember the moment when I started to be interested in the link between computer programming and psychology, particularly cognitive psychology.  I studied computer science as an undergraduate.  Our lecturers asked us to do a time limited summative programming assignment.  What I mean by this is that myself and my cohort were all corralled into a tired computer lab, given a sheet of program requirements, a Pascal compiler, and were told to get on with it (and, no, we couldn't talk to each other).

When we had finished our programs, we had to print them out using a dot matrix printer (which was, of course, situated within its own sound proof room), and give the fruits of our labour to our instructor who exuded a unique mixture of boredom and mild bewilderment at the stress that he had caused.

What struck me was that some students had finished and had left the laboratory to go to the union bar within twenty minutes, whereas others were pulling out their hair four hours later and still didn't have a working program.  This made me ask the questions, 'why was there such a difference between the different programmers?', and 'what exactly do we do when we write computer software?'

I seem to remember that this was in our first year of our degree.  Our computing lecturers had another challenge in store for those of us who made it to our second year: a software maintenance project.

The software maintenance project comprised of one third role play, and two thirds utter confusion.  Our team of four students were presented with a printout of around forty thousand lines of wickedly obscure FORTRAN code, and given another challenging requirements brief.  We were then introduced to a fabulous little utility called GREP, and again told us to get on with it.

This project made me ask further questions of, 'how on earth do we understand a lot of unfamiliar code quickly?', and 'what is the best way to make effective decisions?'  These and other questions stuck with me, and eventually I discovered PPIG.

So, during my week on study leave I compiled the latest edition of the PPIG Newsletter.  The next annual workshop is to take place at the University of York, and I hope to attend.  If I have the time, I'll try to write a short blog post about it and the themes that emerge.

Work-in-Progress Paper

When I was done with the newsletter I turned my attention to a research idea I have been trying to work on for well over the past year with an esteemed collaborator from Royal Holloway, University of London.

As well as studying a number of different programming languages during my undergraduate years I was also introduced to the all-encompassing subject of software engineering. In engineering there is a simple idea that if you can measure something, that something can be controlled. One of the difficulties of managing software projects is that software is intrinsically intangible: it isn't something you can physically touch or see. It's impossible to ascertain, at a glance, how your developers are getting along or whether they are experiencing difficulties. To get round the problem researchers have proposed software complexity metrics.

Having a complexity metric can be useful (to some extent).  If you apply a complexity metric to a program, the bigger the number, the more trouble a developer might be faced with (and more money spent).  Researchers have proposed a number of different metrics which measure different aspects of a program. One counts the number of linguistic parts of a program, another metric counts the number of unique paths of execution that a program might have.

Another type of metric, called spatial complexity metrics, have sprung from an understanding that programmers use different types of short term memory during program comprehension and development. The idea behind this metric, which was first published in a PPIG workshop back in 1999, was to try to propose a metric which is inspired by the psychology of a programmer.

The work in progress paper describes a number of experiments that aims to explore whether there might be a correlation between different software complexity metrics, and empirical measurements of cognitive load taken from an eye tracking programming comprehension study. The research question is: are program complexity metrics psychologically valid? 

Of course, writing up a research idea is a lot easier than carrying it out!  This said I do hope to share some of the research materials that may be used within the studies through this blog when they are available.

I haven't really blogged about 'internal events' before.  I think this is my first one.  Although I've written this post mainly for an internal audience, it might be useful for a wider audience too, although I'm not yet sure whether I'll click on the 'make available to the world' box in our VLE blogging tool.

About a week or so ago I was lucky enough to attend what is called a Staff Tutor Staff Development event that was all about scholarship.  It was all about how we (as staff tutors) might fit scholarship into our day job.

The SD4ST scholarship event was hosted by the Open University office in Gateshead, a part of the country I had never explicitly visited before (other than passing through either in the car or on the train).  The Gateshead office is fabulous (as is the architecture in Newcastle).  The office presented us with a glorious view of the millennium bridge and the imposing Baltic contemporary art gallery.  I'm digressing before I've even begun, so, without further ado, on to describing the event.

Introducing scholarship

The first day kicked off (in the early afternoon) by asking the question of, 'what exactly counts as scholarship?'  An underlying theme was how to contribute to research that might be used as a part of the university REF submission (which is, of course, used to assess how well universities compare to each other in terms of their research output).

A number of different types of scholarship were defined, drawing on a paper that had recently been circulated (or published) through senate.  The paper also included explicit examples, but I won't go through them here.  Here's my attempt at summarising the different types:

• Institutional scholarship (about and for the institution)
• Scholarship of teaching (the investigation of one's own, or teaching by others)
• Scholarship for teaching, or outputs that contribute to teaching materials in its different forms
• Research that relates to and can inform professional practice (in whatever form this might take)
• Discipline based scholarship, investigative research which can be understood in terms of adding to the knowledge of a particular subject or area.

The output of scholarship may be presented within journal or conference papers, chapters in books or be in reports.  Blogs can also be considered as scholarship too, but this is a rather difficult category, since it has to be a 'rated blog'.  In essence, an output should be something that can be judged as excellent by a peer, capable of use by others and have impact.

I thought about which of these categories I could most readily contribute to.  I came up with a couple of answers.   The first was that I might be able to carry out some discipline based scholarship, perhaps building on some of the accessibility or computing research I have been previously involved with.  Another idea might be to do some research that might inform the different course teams I'm involved on.  An example of this might have been an earlier blog post on mobile technologies that fed into course team discussions.  Also, given my current duties of supporting course presentations I could also see how I might be able to (potentially) contribute to the scholarship of teaching in a number of different ways.

How to find the time

Although I'm relatively new to the role of a staff tutor (or regional academic), I am beginning to feel that we have to be not only good at juggling different things, but also be able to put on a good balancing act too! 

The reason for this is that our time is split down the middle.  On one hand we have regional responsibilities (helping our tutors to do their job as effectively and as efficiently as possible, and doing a lot of other mysterious stuff, like marketing) which accounts for fifty percent of our time.  The other fifty percent of our time is spent on 'faculty' work.  This means that we are able to contribute to course teams, offering useful academic input and ensuring that our associate lecturers are fully taken into consideration during the course design phases.  We can also use this fifty percent slice to carry out scholarship in its different forms.

Given the different pulls from course teams and regional responsibility there is a significant question which needs to be asked, namely: 'how is it possible to do scholarship when we've got all this other stuff to do?'  The second section in the day aimed to answer this exact question through presentations by two staff tutors who seem to be successfully balancing all their different responsibilities.

The first presentation was by Dave McGarvie, Science Staff Tutor in Scotland.  Dave gave a cracking presentation about his research, which was all about volcanoes (I'm sure he will be able to provide you with a better description!)  What struck me about Dave's presentation was that he was also came across as being a bit of a 'dab hand' at media stuff too, being called upon as an 'expert' to talk about Icelandic volcano eruptions.  Dave talked about how he used his study leave (he uses all of it), and said that it is possible to ask for research leave too (which was something that I hadn't heard about).

The second presentation was by Gareth Williams, Maths and Stats Staff Tutor (or MCT), in Manchester.  Gareth told us about how he managed to carve out (and protect) a 'research day' which he used to speak (and work with) with other academics in his subject area.

I noted down a really important part of Gareth's presentation which summarised the reasons for doing research: that it is something that we're passionate about, that it's fun, it can help us to maintain knowledge, it can be exciting, it can help with networking (and recruitment of good ALs), and help to introduce and advertise the work of the university to a wider audience.

One fundamental point was echoed by both presenters, namely, that research can take a lot of time, can (and probably will) eat into our personal time.  Gareth offers some practical advice, urging us to be realistic, develop multiple strategies (or routes to publication), prioritise workload carefully and, importantly, to have fun.

The final talk of the day was by Ian Cook, who spoke about the universities eSTeEM initiative which replaces earlier funding mechanisms.  eSTeEM lets individuals or group of researchers to bid for funding for projects that may able to benefit the university or help to further understand and promote teaching and learning.

Designing a scholarship project

The next part of the day (and a part of the following day) was spent 'in the deep end'.  We were put into groups and asked to work towards creating cross faculty scholarship project which could help us to collectively understand our knowledge of Open University teaching and learning (perhaps through the use of technology).  Following the group discussions, we then had to devise an eight minute presentation to everyone in the room to try to 'win' a pot of imaginary funding.  Here's a rough list of the titles of the various projects that were proposed:

• Group 1: Can on-line forums enhance students learning?
• Group 2: What constitutes useful monitoring for associate lecturers?
• Group 3: Investigate if text messaging can improve TMA (assignment) submission and retention
• Group 4: Why do students attend (or not attend) synchronous on-line tuition?
• Group 5: A system for the sharing of media resources between tutors

I have to confess I was involved in group five.

This activity reminded me that different people can understand research (and, subsequently, scholarship) in different ways.   In my 'home discipline' of computer science, research can be considered in terms of 'building stuff'.  This 'stuff' might be a new software system, tool or environment.  The 'stuff' might even be a demonstration of how different technologies may be connected together in a new or novel ways.   I also must confess that my discipline background emerged through our brainstorming activities.

In the end, there were two winners, and it interesting to learn that one of the winning project ideas (the use of text messaging) was the subject of an existing project.  It just goes to show that old adage that good ideas can emerge independently from different (independent) sources!

I enjoyed this activity.  I remember a lot of discussion about dissemination and how to evaluate whether a project had succeeded.  Referring back to the earlier notions of scholarship and Gareth's multiple routes to publication, dissemination can, of course, have a range of different forms, from internal presentations, workshops, focus groups, through to formal internal reports and REFable publications, such as conference and journal papers.

Final presentations

The event was rounded off by two presentations.  Celia Popovic gave a presentation about SEDA, which is an abbreviation for the 'Staff and Educational Development Association', which is a non-profit organisation which aims to facilitate networking and sharing of resources.  Celia begins by asking the question, 'what do you need [to enable you do to your scholarship and research stuff]?' and talked us through a set of different resources and the benefits of being a SEDA fellow.  The resources included books, a magazine, and a number of scholarly journals.

The final presentation, entitled 'Getting Started, Overcoming Obstacles' was by Karen Littleton.  Karen is currently the director of CREET which is a cross-faculty research grouping which comprises of Education and the Institute of Educational Technology (and some others too, I am sure!) 

A couple of things jumped out at me, namely, her advice to 'be pragmatic'.  I am personally guilty of 'thinking big' in terms of research ideas.  I once had this idea to perform some kind of comparison of different virtual learning environments, but it was something that I have never managed to get around to doing, perhaps because my heart sinks when I see all the obstacles that lay ahead of me.

Karen advises us to consider working on a series of smaller projects which have the potential to contribute towards a main goal.  She also mentions the important issue of time and the need to ring fence and guard it carefully, a point that was echoed throughout the two days of the event.

Summary

I'm only just starting to appreciate the different demands on my work time.  I have been wondering, for quite a while now, how to do 'research' within my role as a staff tutor.  What this event told me was that it is possible, but you need to do it with a high level of determination to succeed.

It strikes me that the best way to do research is to make sure that your research activities are aligned, as closely as possible, to some of the other duties of the role.  Of course, it might be possible to do other research, but if your 'job role dots' are not connected together, seeking permission and making cases to go ahead and do your own scholarship is likely to be so much harder.

A feeling that I have always had is that through research there are likely to be opportunities.  An example of this can be finding stuff out that can inform course production, or, connecting to Gareth's example, making contacts may help with recruitment of associate lecturers.  I've also come to the conclusion that network is important too.  Networking might be in the form of internal contacts within the university, or external contacts within either other higher education institutions or in industry.

A really important point that jumped out at me is that you really do need to be passionate about the stuff that you're finding out about.  The word 'fun' was mentioned a number of times too.

As a result of the event I've been thinking about my own scholarly aspirations.  Before changing roles I had some quite firm ideas about what I wanted to do, but this has changed.  As mentioned before, I think it's a good idea to try to align different pieces of my role together (to align the fifty percent of regional work with the fifty percent of 'other stuff').  I hope I'm making some progress in figuring out how to make the best contribution to both courses and research.  I hope to continue to blog about some of the stuff that I'm getting up to whilst on this journey.

I'm also hoping there is a follow up session next year which might ask the question of, 'how is your scholarship coming along, and what practical things could be done to help you do more of it?'

All in all, a really enjoyable event.  Many thanks to the organisers!  For those who can access internal OU sites (and might be staff tutors), some of the presentations have been uploaded to the VLE STLG workspace.

 I recently attended an event entitled Mobile Technologies - The Challenge of Learner Devices Delivering Computer Science held at Birmingham City University last week, organised by the Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) Higher Education Academy (HEA) subject centre.

This blog post aims to present a summary of proceedings as well as my own reflections on the day. If any of the delegates or presenters read this (and have any comments), then please feel free to post a reply to add to or correct anything that I've written. I hope these notes might be useful to someone.

Keynote

The day was kicked off by John Traxler from the University of Wolverhampton. Just as any good keynote should, John asked a number of searching questions. The ones that jumped out at me were whether information technology (or computers) had accelerated the industrialisation of education, and whether mobile technologies may contribute to this.

John wondered about the changing nature of technology ownership. On one hand universities maintain rooms filled with computers that students can use, but on the other hand students increasingly have their own devices, such as laptops or mobile phones. 

John also pointed us towards an article in the Guardian, published in July 2010 about teenagers and technology which has a rather challenging subtitle. Mobility and connectedness, it is argued, has now become a part of our identity.

One thing John said jumped out at me: 'requiring students to use a VLE is like asking them to wear a school uniform'. This analogy points towards a lot of issues that can be unpacked. Certainly, a VLE has the potential to present institutional branding, and a uniform suggests that things might done in a particular way. But a VLE also has the potential be be an invaluable source of information to ensure that we know what we need to know to navigate around an institution.

For those of us who had to wear school uniforms, very many of us customised them as much as we possibly could without getting told off for breaking the rules. Within their constraints, it would be possible to express individuality whilst conforming (to get an education). The notion of customisation and services also has a connection with the idea of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) (wikipedia), which, in reality, might exist somewhere in between the world of the mobile, a personal laptop and the services that an institution provides.

Session I

The first session was opened by Kathy Maitland from Birmingham City University. Kathy talked about how she used cloud computing to enable students using different hardware to access different different software services. She spoke about the challenge of using different hardware (and operating system) platforms to access services and the technical challenges of ensuring correct configuration.

John Busch from Queen's university, Belfast made a presentation about how to record lectures using a mobile phone. It was great to see a (relatively) low tech approach being used to make educational materials available for students. All John needed to share his lectures with a wider audience was a mid range mobile phone, a tiny tripod, a desk to perch the mobile phone on, and (presumably) a lot of hard won experience.

John gave the audience a lot of tips about how to make the best use of technology, along with a result from a survey where he asked students how they made use of the recordings he made of his computer gaming lectures. 

A part of his talk was necessarily technical, where he spoke about different data encoding standards and which standard was supported by which mobile (or desktop) platform. One of the members of the audience pointed us to Encoding.com, a website that enables transcoding of digital media. The presentation gave way to interesting discussions about privacy. One of the things that I really liked about John's presentation was that is addressed 'mobile' from different perspectives at the same time: using mobile technology to produce content that may, in turn, be consumed by other mobile devices.

Laura Crane, from Lancaster University then gave an interesting presentation about using location, context and preference in VLE information delivery. Laura's main research question appeared to be, 'which is (potentially) more useful - it is information that is presented at a particular location, or information that is presented in a particular time?'

This reminded me of some research that I had heard of a couple of years ago called context modelling. Laura mentioned a subject or area that was new to me, namely, Situation Theory.  Laura's talk was very well received and it inspired a lot of debate. Topics discussed include the nature of mobility research, the importance of personal or learner attributes on learning (such as learning styles). Discussions edged towards the very active area of recommender research (recommender system, Wikipedia), and out to wider questions of combining location, recommender and affective interfaces (interfaces or systems that could give recommendations or make suggestions depending on emotion). A great talk!

Darren Mundy and Keith Dykes gave a presentation about the WILD Project funded by JISC. WILD is an abbreviation for Wireless Interactive Lecture Demonstrator. The idea behind the project is one that is simple and compelling: how to make use of personal technology to enable students to make a contribution to lectures. By contribution, I mean allowing students to add comments and text to a shared PowerPoint presentation.

A lecturer prepares a PowerPoint presentation and providing there is appropriate internet connectivity, there is a link to a WILD webpage, which the students can send messages to. This might be used to facilitate debate about a particular subject, but also enable those learners who are less reluctant to contribute to 'speak up' by 'texting out'. We were also directed towards the project source code.

During the talk, I was introduced to a word that I had never heard of before: prosumerism (but apparently Wikipedia had!). At the end of the talk, during the Q&A session, one delegate pointed us towards the SAP Twitter PowerPoint plug in, which might be able to achieve similar things.

This last presentation of the morning really got me thinking about my own educational practice, and perhaps this is one of the really powerful aspects of using and working learning technology: it can have the potential to encourage reflection about what is and what is not possible, both inside and outside the classroom. I tutor on an undergraduate interaction design course with the Open University, where I facilitate a number of face to face sessions.

Due to various reasons my tutorials are not well as attended as they could be. Students may have difficulty travelling to a tutorial session, they may have family responsibilities, or even have jobs at the weekend. This is a shame, since I sense that some students would really benefit from these face to face sessions. The WILD presentation make me wonder whether those students who attend a face to face tutorial might be able to collectively author a summary PowerPoint that could then be shared with the group of students who were unable to attend. Interactivity, of course, has the potential to foster inclusivity and ownership. Simply put, the more a student does within a lecture (or puts into it) the more they may get out of it.

Session II

After lunch, the second session proved to be slightly more technical. The first half was merely a warm up!

The second session kicked off with demonstration by Doug Belshaw. Doug works for JISCInfoNet. This part of JISC aims to provide information and products known as InfoKits which can be used by senior management to understand and appreciate a range of different education and technology issues. We were directed towards examples, such as effective practice in a digital age, and effective assessment in a digital age. A new kit, entitled JISC mobile and wireless technologies review is currently under presentation.

Doug asked the audience to share information about any case studies. A number of projects were mentioned, along with a set of links. During the discussion part of the demo we were directed towards m.sunderland.ac.uk , and this makes me wonder whether the 'm.' is a convention that I'm not aware of (and perhaps ought to be!) Something called iWebKit was also mentioned. Other projects included MyMobileBristol.com, in collaboration with Bristol University and Bristol City Council. For more information visit the m.bristol.ac.uk site.

There was also a mention of a service provided by Oxford University, m.ox.ac.uk (the project also has an accompanying press release) This service appears to have been developed in association with something called the Molly Project, which seems to be a mobile application development framework. There was a lot to take in!

Gordon Eccleston from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen gave a fabulous presentation about his work teaching programming the iPhone. Having remained steadfastly in the desktop world, and admitting to being a laggard on the mobile technology front, Gordon answered many questions that I have always had about how one might potentially begin to write an iPhone application. Gordon introduce us to the iPhone software development kit, which I understand was free to universities. The software used to create Apps is called Xcode.  Having predominantly worked within a PC software development environment for too many years than I would care to admit, a quick poke around the Apple Tools website looked rather exciting; a whole new world of languages, terms and technologies.

Gordon had a number of views about the future of App development. He thought that XHTML 5, CSS 3 and accompanying technologies would have an increasingly important role to play. On a related note, the cross mobile platform PhoneGap was mentioned during the following presentation which makes use of some of these same technologies. (Digging further into the web, there's a Wikipedia page called Multiple phone web based application framework, which might prove to be interesting.  There was also some debate about which platform mobile might dominate (and whether mobile dominance may depend on whether how many Apple stores there may be within a particular city or country!)

Gordon also briefly talked about some of the student project he has been involved with. A notable example was an iPhone app for medical students to learn ophthalmology terms and concepts. There were some really good ideas here; how to create applications that have direct benefit to learners by the application of mobile technology through learning how they can be developed.

Karsten Lundqvist from the University of Reading offered technology balance to the day by presenting his work teaching the development of Android applications. Karsten began his presentation by considering the different platforms: iPhone, RIM, and Android, but the choice of platform was ultimately decided by the availability of existing hardware, namely, PC's running Windows or Linux. In place of using Xcode, Java with Eclipse was used. I seem to remember that students may have had some experience using C/C++ before attending the classes, but I can't quite remember.

The question and answer session was really interesting. One delegate asked Karsten whether he had heard of something called the Google Android App Inventor, another mobile software development platform. It was also interesting to hear about the different demo apps. Karsten showed us a picture of a phone in a mini-segway cradle, demonstrating the concept of real-time control, there was also a reference to an app that may help people with language difficulties, and Karsten pointed us to his own website where he has been developing a game template by means of a blog tutorial.

Towards the end of Karsten's session, I recall an echo from the earlier HEA employability event which explored computing forensics. One of the ideas coming from this event was that perhaps it might be a good idea for institutions to share forensic data sets. An idea posed within this event was that perhaps institutions might be able to share application ideas or templates, perhaps for different platforms. Some ideas might include fitness utilities, 'finding your way around' apps (very useful: I still remember my days being a confused fresher during my undergrad days!), simple game templates, and flash card apps to help students to learn a number of different concepts.

Plenary

The plenary discussion was quite wide ranging, and is quite difficult to down to a couple of paragraphs. My own attempt at making sense of the day was to understand the key topics in terms of 'paired terms', which might be either subject dimensions or tensions (depending on how you look at it).

VLEs and apps: different software with different purposes, which connect to the idea of information and content. Information might be where to go to find a lecture theatre, or the location of a bank, and content is a representation of the course materials itself.

Ownership and provision: invariably students will have their own technology, but to what extent should an organisation provide technology to facilitate learning? Provision has been historically thought of in terms of rooms filled with computers, and necessarily conservative institutional IT provision (to make sure that everything keeps working). Entwined with these issues is the notion of legacy information and the need for institutions (and learners) to keep up with technology.

Development and usage: where does the information or content come from? To what extent might consumers of mobile information potentially participate in the development of their own content? Might this also create potential dangers for institutions and individuals. This is related to another tension of control, namely, institutional versus individual control, of either information, content or technology.

Guidance and figuring things out: when it comes to learning, there is always a balance to be reached between providing just enough guidance that enables learners to gain enough information so that they find the information that they need. On one hand, there may be certain apps that facilitate learning in their own right, apps that provide information, and apps that may present content held within a VLE. One idea might be that we may need a taxonomy of uses for both an institution and an individual.

Industry and academia: a two way relationship. We must provide education (about mobile) that industry needs, and also make use of innovations coming from industry, but also we have a role to innovate ourselves and potentially feedback into industry. (I seem to recall quite a few delegates mentioning something called mCampus, but I haven't been able to uncover any information about it!)

Other discussion points that were raised included the observation that location-based information provision is new, and the need to interact with people is one of the things that is driving the development of technology. A broader question, posed by John Traxler was, 'does mobile have the potential to transform teaching and learning?' Learners, of course, differ very widely in terms of their experience and attitude to interactive products.

Points such as accessibility, whether it being availability of technology or ability to perceive information through assistive technologies are also substantial issues. The wider organisational and political environment is also a significant factor when it comes to the development of mobile applications, and their subsequent consumption.

Footnote

All in all, a very enjoyable day! As I travelled into Birmingham from London on the train on the morning of the event my eye caught what used to be the site of an old industrial centre. I had no idea what it used to be. I could see the foundations of what might have been a big factory or a depot. I was quite surprised to discover that Millenium Point building also overlooked the same area.

Walking to the train station for my return journey to London, I thought, 'wouldn't it be great if there was an app that could use your location to get articles and pictures about what used to be here before; perhaps there could be a timeline control which users could change to go back in time to see what was there perhaps twenty, thirty or even one hundred years before'. I imagined a personal time machine in the palm of your hand. I then recalled a mash-up between Google Maps and Wikipedia, and had soon uncovered something called Wikimapia.

Like so many of these passing ideas, there's no such thing as an original thought. What really matters is how such technology thoughts are realised, and the ultimate benefit they may have to the different sets of end user.

I've have a fun couple of days.  I recently attended the Open University's 2010 Disabled Student Services conference.  Okay, I admit, I probably gate crashed the event since I'm not a member of the DSS group, but it was certainly a very worthwhile thing to do.  On more than one occasion colleagues said to me, 'it's great to have someone like you here; we certainly need more faculty at these events'.

The overall objectives of the conference were to develop greater awareness of issues affecting the sector, to gain information about developments within the University, gain a greater understanding of the needs of specific disabilities, work towards more standardised delivery of services and, of course, to find out what each other does.

For me, this conference was all about learning about the different roles that people have, and what information needed to be shared to ensure that all our learners get the best possible service.

Tuesday 9th November

A conference is not really a conference without a keynote.  The first day kicked off with a keynote by Will Swann who is responsible for the development, promotion and evaluation of services to support the teaching of students.

The part of Will's presentation that jumped out at me was a concise presentation of the potential ramifications of changes to Higher Education funding.  One thing was clear: things are going to change, but we're not quite sure exactly how they will change.  The changes may affect those students who wish to study for personal development as opposed to choosing to study for purely economic and career development reasons.  Underneath is an interesting philosophical debate about what higher education is good for.  Essentially, Will asked us to consider the challenge of how to maintain effective provision of services in a world where change is a certainty.

First workshop

Following the keynote, we were led toward the first set of workshops.  I attended a workshop that perhaps had the longest title: Exceptional examination arrangements and special circumstances, policies and procedures.  The event was facilitated by Ilse Berry and Peter Taylor.  Peter is the chair of the subcommittee which makes decisions about very many things exam related, such as whether individual students may be able to defer exams (due to changes in personal circumstances), or whether alternative examination arrangements could be organised.

I got a lot out of this first workshop: I gained more of an understanding of the procedures and policies, and the effect that the Disability Discrimination Act (now the Equality Act) has on these policies.  There was some debate about whether everyone knows everything they should know to best advise our students.  There was some discussion about Associate Lecturers, and I feel that I need to ask whether it might be possible to offer some internal staff development training to those who most closely work with students.

I also learnt quite a bit about the range of different examination arrangements that can be put in place.  I never knew that an exam could be taken over an extended period of time, for example.  It was all very thought provoking and showed me how much we try to collectively help.

Student session

I was unable to attend the afternoon event due to a meeting with a colleague in another department, but I was able to return to the conference in time to hear one of the student sessions.  Alex Wise, a student with dyslexia gave a very clear description of some of the challenges that he has faced during his educational career.  He also described some of the strategies and adaptations he both uses and has discovered.

Alex's presentation underlined a number of different points for me.  Firstly, the complexity and uniqueness of conditions such as dyslexia (I briefly studied the very broad subject of language processing when I was a postgrad student, but I was sorely missing a 'personal' perspective).  Secondly, the fact that effective strategies may only be discovered through a combination of hard won experience and trial and error.  A final point is that strategies and tools need not necessarily be high tech.

Wednesday 10th November

The second day (much like the first) was a delight.  In true academic style, I duly forgot which workshop I had signed up for, and was directed towards a session entitled, 'Sensory impairment: science course for screen readers, and D/eaf students and Openings courses - access for all?', presented by Jeff Bashton and Julie Morrison.  I was later to discover that it was two workshops for the price of one.  I had certainly chosen wisely.

Jeff works as a visual impairment advisor for the Open University.  He introduced the science project he is working on (which is a work in progress), and then he had a treat in store for all delegates.  One by one, we all donned blindfolds that Julie had given us, and we began to study two tactile diagrams (using only our touch).

I found both tactile diagrams unfathomable (which is, pretty much, an understatement!)  I could do nothing more than explore the boundaries of each diagram and get a rough understanding about its size and shape (and how the different elements were related spatially).  I couldn't make a jump from lines and bumps through to understanding a picture as a whole.  This, of course, was one of the points.  The tactile diagrams that I was presented with proved to be totally confusing without accompanying auditory descriptions.

Julie 'talked us through' each image (using our fingers!)  When I removed my blindfold, I was surprised by what I saw - it bore hardly any relationship to what I thought I was 'seeing'.

During the second part of the workshop Julie spoke about her with the British Sign Language, where she presented a small number of case studies to highlight the challenges that BSL users might face when trying to study.  To BSL users, English is, of course, a second language.  Julie's overview of the history of deaf education (and the role that Alexander Graham Bell played) was illuminating.  Thanks Julie!

This second workshop ended with a demonstration of how tough it can be to understand digital materials.  Taking a particularly accessible course as an example, Julie showed us a video without sound (it was an interview which had no subtitles of signing).  We then had a look at the transcript of the video.  The transcript contained all the peculiarities of expression that you find whenever you write down spoken language.  It was briefly considered that perhaps different learners may benefit from different versions of the same materials, which is one of the ideas embedded within the EU4ALL project I worked on for a couple of years.

A fabulous afternoon...

I struggled to give a name to the section of the conference where the delightful and charming Francesca Martinez came to talk to us for an hour or so.  It was only after just under a week of wondering did I come up with this final subheading.

I'm not joking; Francesca had us all rolling in the isles of the conference hall with laughter with a delicious mixture of political and observational stories.  There was, however, a serious tone that resonated clearly with the objectives of the conference: everyone is connected by a common thread of humanity regardless of who we are and what personal circumstances we face. 

Francesca is the best kind of comedian; one who makes us think about ourselves and the absurdities that we face.  I, for one, ended the day thinking to myself, 'I need to seize the day more'.  And seizing the day can, of course, mean making time to find out about new things (and having fun too, of course!) Linking this to studying, it is more than possible to find an abundance of fun in learning and maintain optimism about the way in which the fun present may potentially give rise to a fabulous future.

Themes

So, what were the overriding themes that I took away from the conference?  The first one was communication: we all need to talk to each other because internal policies (as well as external legislation) are subject to perpetual change and evolution.  Talk is an eternal necessity (which is what I continue to try to tell my colleagues when I sneak off to the cafe area...)

The second theme is that of information: advisors as well as students need information to make effective decisions about whether or not to take a course of study.  Accessibility, it was stated, wasn't just a matter of making sure that materials are available in different formats.  It also relates to whether or not materials can be study-able too, and this goes back to whether, for example, individual learning activities.

The final theme relates to challenges that are inherent within the changing political and economic climate.  Whilst education is priceless, it always has a financial cost.  Different ways to pay for education has the potential to affect the decision making of those who may wish to study for a wide range of different reasons (and not just to 'get a better job').

Consider, for example, a hypothetical potential student (who is incidentally fabulous) who might just 'try out' a module just to find out if he or she likes it, who then goes on to discover they are more than capable of degree level study.  A stumbling block to access is, of course, always going to be cost.  As mentioned in the conference keynote, there will be the need for creative solutions to ensure that all students are continued to be presented with equal opportunities to study.

The DSS conference has shown, to me, how much work goes behind the scenes (and how much still needs to be done) to ensure equal opportunity to study remains a reality for all.

This post is about the journey that I followed trying to understand Moodle Themes.  Moodle Themes are pieces of programming magic that change the visual appearance of your Moodle installation.

If you download Moodle and play around with it, you might eventually arrive at a decision that it might be useful within your institution.  You might hold a meeting with senior management where you may say, 'I think it's a good idea if we try to use this thing call Moodle to host some of our courses'.  After answering some difficult questions about maintenance and development costs, your managers might say, 'okay, you've convinced us... let's give it a go, I'll give you a budget'

Other than figuring out which operating system and database to use and where (and how) your instance of Moodle is to be hosted, one of the first development activities you will have to do is make sure that your Moodle system is 'on brand', i.e. it's visual appearance should reflect the institution that you work for.

This is pretty much what I have to do.  I have to try and make my 'vanilla' (unmodified) version of Moodle blend in with a set of existing web pages that have been built as a part of a research project I'm working on.  Other development teams within my university have already done something similar with their production version of Moodle, but I need to tackle this problem myself.

I start with a couple of questions: what makes up a theme and how might you go about changing one or maybe even making a new one?

Resources galore

Before I can answer these questions I needed to find something to read, and it didn't take a lot of browsing to find a number of potentially useful resources.

The first page that I discovered was a link to over one hundred different themes thanks to the Database of Moodle Themes.  Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised given the number of Moodle installations that are out there in the world.

I soon discovered the Themes documentation pages and a number of other related links, including a set of themes related FAQs and dedicated discussion forum.

The Themes documentation link (for a Themes novice) seems to be the most useful.  One of the sections says that themes can be delivered in zip files.  You download them, unzip them and place the contents in the /moodle/theme directory, and then click on some admin tools to activate it.  This sounds almost too easy!

Towards Code

Being someone who likes to view code I thought it might be useful to look at some of the magic that makes Moodle themes work.  To do this, I chose a random theme from the themes database and unzipped a folder to my desktop.  To begin to make sense of it properly, I felt that it might be a good idea to compare this random theme against one that already existed.  This made me answer, 'which theme is used by default?'

To answer this question, I logged onto my local instance of Moodle (which was running on my local machine, localhost) as an administrator.  After struggling to remember my username and password, I clicked on the Administration link, followed Appearance, Themes and then on the Theme Selector link (because I couldn't really make sense of the Theme Settings options).

I quite like the Theme Selector page.  It presents all the different themes that have been installed.  The current theme that is selected is highlighted by a black square.  The one that was selected by default (in the case of my installation - I cannot remember whether I changed it) was named standardwhite.

I delve into the Moodle code area, take a copy of standardwhite and placed it alongside the one I have randomly downloaded and started poking around.

Looking at code

I noticed similarities and differences.  The similarities are that some of the filenames are the same.  I see two PHP files, styles and config, followed by two html files, header and footer.  There seems to be a CSS file (Wikipedia) in both themes (but the downloaded theme contains a few more than the default theme).  I also notice a graphics file called gradient in the default theme (which is a jpg), and a png graphics file in the other one.  A big difference lies was that the theme I have downloaded contains a directory which seems to contain a bunch of graphic files.

Before deciding I'm terribly confused, I decide to do one more thing: open up both of the PHP files to see what they contain.

In a config script, I see assignments to a variable called $THEME.  Different attributes appear to do different kinds of magic.  Looking in the styles script, a comment tells me that 'there should be no need to modify this file'.  It seems to do something that relates to the presentation of a CSS file.  That is good enough for me!

I have a quick peek into the header and the footer html files.  It looks like these are templates (of some kind) that are filled out using the contents of some PHP variables.  Obviously the pages that the Moodle code creates have a pretty well defined structure, and presumably this structure is documented somewhere.  This is perhaps something I might need to remember later.

Return to the documentation

At this point, I roughly (think) I know what a Theme comprises: some magic scripts which define some variables (and some other stuff), some header and footer scripts which look at bit like templates, a CSS file of some kind, perhaps a graphic (which could be used by the CSS file?) and maybe a bunch of graphics that replace those that are used in Moodle by default.

If this is my current understanding, can I now find the documentation easier to understand?

I soon uncover two further pages: Make your own Theme and Creating a Custom Theme (the first link seems to be easier to understand).  A couple of clicks takes me to a documentation page called Theme config file which goes some way to explaining the variables that I have touched upon above.

The final comment in the Creating a Custom Theme page was instructive.  Other than saying that you can't change everything, if you want to make your site look like an existing site, it might be a good idea to make use of a tool called Firebug which is a plug in for your Firefox browser.

With Firebug, you can browse to a web page of your choice and uncover what CSS definitions have been used to build its visual appearance.  I've used Firebug before, and mentioning that it is a good tool is certainly a good piece of advice.  The Moodle developers have also been kind enough to prepare a CSS FAQ which is certainly worth a look.

Although I could have tried to create a new theme from scratch, I'm in a lucky position since one of my colleagues has already created a customised theme for a custom instance of Moodle.

Towards testing things out

To test things out, I copy of my customised theme into my local 'themes' directory and hit refresh on my browser.  I then select my newly installed theme and everything starts to go wrong.  The action of selecting a theme seemed to have rendered my local copy of Moodle useless since only a tiny fraction of a HTML page is created (which I see by viewing the code the browser receives).

A problem seems to have been created since the version of Moodle that I am using and the structure of the theme that I have transferred are not completely compatible with each other.  I need to go back to my default theme! But how do I do this? Where are the theme settings held?

My first guess is in the database.  I open up a front end to the MySQL database that is running on my PC, using a tool called SqlYog.  I eyeball the contents of the database to see if there's anything I can use.  I discover a 'config' table, but this doesn't tell me much.  I did, however, discover that there is a theme setting within individual courses as well as individual users.

I turn my attention towards the code by first looking at the code within the themes directory and I soon find myself fruitlessly searching through different libraries.  Finding a simple answer may necessitate spending quite a bit of time.

To get things working again, you sometimes have to cheat.  I renamed my theme to something totally different and refreshed my Moodle page.  Moodle then had no choice but to return to its default setting (which was, again, 'standardwhite').

Incrementally merging

I have two themes: one theme that I want to use but doesn't work (because it has been modified for a customised version of Moodle), and another theme that does work which I don't want to use.  When I'm faced with this situation, I try to get 'code to speak to me' by incrementally taking the one that works and making it look like the one that doesn't work.  I find I can really understand stuff when things stop working!

I begin by looking at the files and then the contents of the files.  The first thing that strikes me is that the header and footer files are quite different.  There seems to be quite a bit more happening in the customised theme when compared to the standard theme.  A step at a time I move files across and test, beginning with the favicon, then the config file, and finally the pix's.  I discover that both themes require the use of a CSS file that is contained within the standard theme directory.

The effect of moving files around seems to produce, more or less, what I was after.  The interactive 'side blocks' (particularly the show/hide buttons) are not presented as they should, but further searching reveals a magic variable, allowuserblockhiding that can be used to control this functionality.

Moodle version 2

A question to complete this post is: what is the situation regarding Moodle version 2.0?  This is a development that I have heard about for some time, but I have not heard recent any announcements regaring its expected release.  After a quick search, I reacquaint myself with something called the Moodle Roadmap.

This appears to state that there will be a beta release of V2 by the end of 2009, followed by some months of testing before a final release.  Judging by the planning document, there appears to be quite a lot more coding to do (nearly four hundred days of development time to go, so we should expect some delays).

I appreciate that giving opinion is certainly a lot easier than giving code, so I hope that Moodlers who read this section will forgive me.  I personally hope that the code for the next version is a lot cleaner.  Since the developers are forced to move to PHP version 5, I hope they will choose to adopt its object-oriented features which can help developers to form clearer (less leaky) abstractions.

In a perfect world, developers should be able to look at a screenful of code and be able to describe, more or less, what that section of code does without having to look at other code (providing, of course, they more or less have an understanding of what the product does).  From what I have seen so far in version 1.9, there is a long way to go to, but I'm certainly looking forward to learning how things have moved on in version 2.0.

Wrap-up

It's great that the developers of Moodle have designed it in such a way that it is 'themeable' (if there is such a word).  In some respects, I was surprised to discover things were not as difficult as I had expected.  Whilst, in some ways, going directly to the code and looking what is there may be a daunting challenge, it is one that I certainly recommend doing.

There's a whole lot more to the issue of Moodle themes.  I haven't touched upon the structure of Moodle pages and how they relate to elements in stylesheets, for example.  I'll leave this challenge for another day!

This blog post represents a review of the second International Education for All conference that I was lucky enough to attend in September 09.  I originally intended to post a review earlier, but mitigating circumstances (which I hope will become clear at the end) prevented this.

Like the first conference, held in '07, this conference was also hosted at the University of Warsaw.  The '07 conference represented a finale of an EU project, a collaboration between universities and other organisations from Germany, Poland, Estonia, Croatia and others (please forgive my poor memory!), but this one was slightly different.

Below I attempt to present a brief summary of some of the sessions that I attended.  There were three parallel sessions, so I had to choose carefully.  This is then followed by what I took away in terms of the themes of the conference.

Opening Keynote

The opening keynote was by Dianne Ryndak from the University of Florida.  Dianne explored the topic of inclusion, particularly the differences between generalised and specialised education.  Dianne explained how personalised support and learning activities could be provided as a part of general learning activities.

She went on to present a powerful description of two students: one who was educated within a segregated school, the other who was educated, with the provision of additional support, through a main stream (or general education) school.  I remember her saying that 'education is a service that goes to the student, not a place where the student goes' and that education should be 'only as special as necessary'.

Although Dianne's presentation primarily related to high school education the themes she highlighted can be directly brought to bear on higher education too.  Technology can be used as a way to help with the inclusion of people with disabilities main stream education.  This said, teachers have a more important role where they need to be viewed as collaborators as well as educators.

Three dimensional solid science models for tactile teaching materials

I sometimes like to visit museums.  One of the things that frustrate me is the sight of signs that say 'please do not touch!'  This strikes me as particularly unfair when I discover sculptures in art galleries.  Given that sculptors use their haptic sense when creating an object, it seems unfair to deny visitors the possibility of using this same modality.

Yoshinori Teshima, from the Digital Manufacturing Research Centre in Japan, gave an inspiring presentation where he showed a number of different models, ranging from abstract objects (such as polyhedra) through to hugely magnified representations of microscopic creatures that can only be seen under a microscope (imagine a microscoping monster the size of your fist!)

Yoshinori briefly spoke about the manufacturing methods, which included stereolithography and 3D printing using either plaster on nylon powder.  His relief emphasised models of the earth and mars were fabulous.

It struck me that his models could be used by all students, regardless of visual abilities.  It also struck me that the ultimate use of such models within the classroom depends ultimately upon the skills and the expertise of the teacher.

Talking Tactile Tablet

I have heard about tactile tablets before.  This presentation demonstrated a product that was also included within the assistive technology exhibition that was also hosted at the conference.

I came away with two points from this presentation.  Firstly, referring to three dimensional objects using two dimensional symbols is a skill that I take for granted.  Secondly, it is now possible for educators to author their own tactile materials.  We were shown how it was possible to create a small family tree.  Audio materials were recorded using Audacity (Wikipedia), which were then associated to positions on a tablet.  Corresponding tactile representations could be produced using embossers.

Opening Linux for the Visually Impaired

This presentation primarily focused upon a screen reader called Sue (Screenreader Usability Extensions) that was developed by the Study Centre for the Visually Impaired Students (SZS) based at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.  This presentation reminded me a little of a presentation of the Orca screen reader, made at the Aegis project dissemination event that I wrote about a couple of months ago.

One of the interesting things about Sue was that it could be connected to both a refreshable braille display (Wikipedia) (visiting this page was interesting, since it mentioned a new type of refreshable display called a rotating-wheel display) and a screen magnifier at the same time.

Although Sue could be considered to be 'yet another screen reader', having multiple versions of similar products is undeniably, in my view, a good thing.  Competition between individual products, whether it is in terms of popularity or functionality can help their development and enhancement.

Distance Education and Training Programme on Accessible Web Design

I was drawn to this presentation due to involvement in the Open University Accessible online Learning and Fundamentals of Interaction Design courses.  I was not to be disappointed.  There were some strong echoes with these current courses, but I should say the curriculum is perhaps complementary.

The course was developed as a part of a European project called Accweb with the intention of creating distance learning materials that could address a need for a professional qualification or a certificate in accessible web design. The materials comprised of eighteen units which could be delivered through the ATutor VLE, amounting to the equivalent of 60 points of study.

Key elements of the curriculum included:

• Fundamentals of web accessibility
• Guidelines and legal requirements
• Assistive technologies
• Accessible content creation (which included issue such as methodology, evaluation, rich internet application and authoring tools)
• Design and usability (themes from human-computer interaction)
• Project development

The materials do not seem to be available through this site at the moment, but I hope they will be available in time.

Helping children to play using robots: IROMEC project experience

This presentation, by Francesca Caprino, outlined the IROMEC project, which is an abbreviation of Interactive Robotic Social Mediators as Companions and a sister project called the adapted robot project.  Francesca began by describing play: what it is, what it can do and considered the effect of play deprivation on the development of children.  Robots, it was argued, can help children with physical disabilities and other impairments participate in play activities.

The robots that were described were essentially toy robots that were modified to allow them to be controlled in different ways.  Future research objectives included uncovering of new play scenarios, considering how to adapt or modify other robots and assessing the educative and therapeutic outcomes of robot assisted  play interventions and developing associated guidelines.

Studying Sciences as a Blind Person: Challenges to AT/IT

Joachim Klaus introduced us to the Centre for the Visually Impaired Students, which seemed to have similarities to the Open University Office for Students with Disabilities (more information is available through the services for disabled students portal).

After presenting an overview of the centre, Joachim presented the ICC: International Camp on Computers and Communication.  The ICC 'tries to make young blind and visually impaired students aware what technology can do for them, which computer skills they have to have, where they should put efforts to enhance their technical skills, the level of mobility as well as their social skills'.  Using and learning to use assistive technologies can be difficult.  This international camp, which is held in different countries, can help people become more skilled at using assistive technologies, thus removing substantial barriers to access.

Improving the accessibility of virtual learning environments using the EU4ALL framework

During the conference, I gave a short talk about the EU4ALL project I am working on.  The presentation focussed on an architecture that the project has been creating and how it can improve the accessibility of services that are delivered to students.  The architecture takes into consideration a number of different stakeholders, each of which has a responsibility in helping to deliver accessibility.  My slides are available on-line through the Open University Knowledge Network (presentation information).

At the same time as my presentation, my colleague Elisabeth Unterfrauner from the Centre for Social Innovation, Technology and Knowledge, Vienna, was presenting her research, the socio-economic situation of students with disabilities, also carried out within the EU4ALL project.

Fostering accessibility through Design4All education in mainstream education

Continuing the theme of EU projects, Andrea Petz gave an interesting presentation about universal design, or Design4All.  Andrea has been involved with EDeAN, and abbreviation for the European Design for All e-Accessibility Network.  EDeAN has studied how D4ALL is covered or treated in different universities across Europe and has helped to guide the development of a masters programme.

Andrea began her presentation by saying that D4ALL is not design for the average, but for the widest possible group of users and went on to talk about the principles of universal design (Wikipedia):

1. Equitable use
2. Flexibility in use
3. Accessible information
4. Tolerance for errors
5. Simple and intuitive
6. Low physical effort
7. Size and space for approach and use

Andrea pointed us towards a conference called the International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (IICHP).

Inclusive science strategies

Greg Stefanich added two more to Andrea's list of principles, namely:

1. Build a community of learners
2. Create a positive instructional climate, i.e. one that is welcoming.

Greg also connected his talk to the theme of inclusive education by saying 'a person in a regular class room setting will have better relationships with the general public, family and be employed' and emphasised the view that inclusion of all students will have no real consequence on other students.  An important point is to spend time to get to know the needs of individuals so they can be effectively supported.

Foreign language courses for students with hearing impairments

Ewa Domagała-Zyśk talked about her experience of teaching English to hearing impaired students.  Her presentation made me reflect on my own experience of using the virtual world SecondLife (although Ewa's presentation was mostly about why teaching foreign languages is a good thing and what some of the challenges might be).

Quite some time ago, I was adventurous enough to visit a couple of 'Polish speaking' virtual bars where I tried to interact, using text, with some of the 'regulars' and found myself totally lost.  This experience showed me that this was an interesting and predominately unthreatening way to help to learn (and understand) written language. It did make me wonder whether virtual worlds (in combination with real-word assistance, of course), might be an interesting way to expose people to new languages.  The issue of whether such environments promote the creation of new dialects is, of course, a whole other issue.

Educational practices towards increasing awareness among academic teachers

Dagmara Nowak-Adamczyk (or one of her colleagues) spoke about the DARE project, a disability awareness project.  The project website states, 'The long-term objective of the project and the DARE Consortium is raising public awareness of disability and the way people with disabilities function in modern (knowledge-based) society'.  The project has produced some training materials which are currently being evaluated.

Access for science students with disabilities in an open distance learning institution in South Africa

I was particularly looking forward to this presentation since its title contained particularly interesting themes.  Eleanore Johannes, from the University of South Africa, spoke about different models of disability, introduced us to the Advocacy and Resource Centre for Students with Disabilities (ARCSWiD) office and spoke of some of the challenges that students face: funding, electricity, inaccessibility web pages and training.  She also described a qualitative research project that is exploring the experiences of science students with disabilities that is taking place over a period of three years.

No contradiction : Design4All and assistive technologies

Michaela Freudenfeld introduced the INCOBS web portal that provides information about assistive technologies that are available in Germany.  The INCOBS portal has the objective of carrying out market surveys of products and services, testing of assistive devices and workplace technologies, evaluating the accessibility of software applications and offer seminars for facilitators and advisors.

Understanding educational needs of students with psychiatric disabilities

Enid Weiner, from the Counselling and Disability Services, York University, Canada, gave an impressive hour long talk on the theme of mental health difficulties.  The subtitle of her presentation was 'making the invisible more visible'.

Enid spoke about a number of interesting related themes, such as different illnesses, the effect of medication and that some illnesses can have an episodic nature, which may cause the place of learning to be slower or take place over an extended period.  Accommodations are to be made on a case by case basis.

Enid emphasised the importance of a 'community of support' and said how important it is for educational providers not to 'get hung up' on an individual diagnosis and instead focus on individual accommodations i.e. what learners need to study.

Environmental influences on participation with disabilities: a Sri Lankan perspective

This was an interesting presentation since it presented a different perspective.  Samanmali Kularatne outlined the situation in Sri Lanka and then described a study that is aiming to explore the experiences of children with disabilities in mainstream schools.

The study adopts a qualitative approach.  Interviews are carried out in class rooms, which are then transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis.  The participants include children, teachers, parents and non-participative observers.  Themes identified included: attitudes, values and beliefs, support and relationships, products and technology, natural and built environment.

The conclusion was that inclusion is not really a reality and that there is a lack of resources.  The actions resulting from the study includes further communication with educational authorities, an awareness programme for parents and launching a project to try to initiate more inclusion.

How AT can help with learning maths for people who are print disabled

The presentation and manipulation of mathematical notation is a perennial problem.  When some mathematical expressions are translated into spoken language ambiguities can easily arise.  One proposed solution is to make use of the LaTeX (Wikipedia) language.

The challenge is not just technical.  Acceptance of technology relates to the willingness of learners to accept technological solutions and effectiveness of teachers to communicate their potential benefits.  It also relies upon educators having both the time and wiliness to understand different tools.

Considering different definitions of disability

Paweł Wdówik from the University of Warsaw Office for Persons with Disabilities spoke about the different definitions of disability and the differences that exist between primary and secondary education.  Paweł highlighted that through the medical model, if you don't have a medical model, then a disability is not likely to exist.  As a result, people who do have disabilities are likely to slip through the system.  Paweł emphasised that the views of the individual should always be fundamental.

Working towards inclusive education in Europe

Andrea Watkings from the European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education spoke about the different agency projects and mentioned the UNESCO Salamanca statement and asked the question, 'how do we change our systems so they are inclusive from the beginning?' and made the point that inclusion needs to take account of all peoples and groups.  Amanda emphasised that inclusion is a process, not a state.

Closing Keynote

The final presentation of the conference was made by Yvonne Bonner, Reggio Emilia, Italy.  Yvonne presented a range of very thought provoking images.  She asked the question, 'why work in this area?'  She answered philosophically (and, of course, I paraphrase) that by working in this area  you are considering (and hopefully challenging others to enhance) the rights of all people.  It was a great way to close the conference.

Conference themes

One of the ways that this conference differed from the previous event was that there were more distinct themes.  Whereas the previous event focused quite a lot on an EU project that had just concluded, this conference I felt was slightly more wide ranging (but this could be cause I was more attuned to what to look out for).

One of the more prominent theme were debates surrounding inclusion or exclusion, or more specifically, how to help ensure that people with additional needs could be effectively brought into mainstream education.  This theme was clearly articulated within the opening and closing keynote speeches.  There are differences between countries (and the models of disability that are applied).  Sharing understanding of definitions was certainly a subject that was considered to be important.

Another theme was the need to listen to the individual.  I recall two projects that are aiming to learn more about the experience of individuals.

Quite a few of the presentations related to on-going projects and programmes.  Ideally I would have liked to go away with a more fuller set of conference proceedings to help me remember what was said and recall the arguments that were presented.  Hopefully, as the conference series proceeds, this may be something that the organisers may consider, but hopefully without detracting from an underlying sense that delegates are happy to discuss, share and learn from each others practice.

Addendum

After the conference ended I had some free time.  It was suggested that a fun thing to do would be to go hiking in the Tatra mountains.  I had been told a lot about a town called Zakopane and how it once exerted a strong draw for artists and Bohemians, and how a special cheese was likely to be sold everywhere in the town.  I was not to be disappointed.  As well as having extraordinary mountains and restaurants, tourists walking down the main street would stumble across cheese purveyors (Wikipedia) very thirty or so metres.

My choice of words is no accident, but instead I was embroiled in one.  Rather than literally stumbling across cheese sellers, I literally stumbled down the side of a mountain and broke my arm (although I should add that the stumble was a relatively modest one of about forty or so centimetres).  Visiting the accident and emergency ward was an experience, where a sharp witted paramedic, upon hearing that I was from the UK asked, 'were you walking on the wrong side of the path?'  There were more jokes, but their charm has long since worn away!

The upshot of the accident was that I found myself temporarily disabled, my dominant arm immobilised in plaster.  It all came as a bit of a shock.  Simple tasks suddenly became trials of patience and took considerable longer, if I could figure out how do them at all.  Shoe laces became a liability and shirt buttons became almost impossible.  I had to go about cancelling events and activities that were scheduled for the time after I was to return to the UK.

Upon return to the UK, my motivation levels nose dived. I quickly recalled the universal design principles when doors became difficult to open and jars and cans a frustrating challenge. I also had entered the UK health system, but I had no real sense of who I should ask about information about things.  Whilst monolithic institutions are there to help, individuals are necessary to provide support and peace of mind.

Despite my frustrations, I still had an overwhelming desire to do stuff.  Although I wasn't able to attend a weekend meeting I was scheduled to attend, one of my colleagues from the University of Leeds helped me to participate.  Using Skype text chat, it was possible to take part in a short group discussion activity which helped to lift my mood.  This showed me what a positive impact technology can by providing effective alternative ways of communication.  It also distinctly underlined on of the conference themes: the importance (and power) of inclusion.

I think I'm on the mend now, but I understand it's going to take some time.  All in all, the trip (both to the conference, and over a part of mountain) was an interesting experience.  I've certainly learnt a few things.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to attend a 'formative e-assessment' event that was hosted by the London Knowledge Lab.  The purpose of the event was to disseminate the results of a JISC project that had the same title.

If you're interested, the final project report, Scoping a Vision for Formative e-Assessment is available for download.  The slides for this event are also available, where you can also find Elluminate recordings of the presentations.

This blog post is a collection of randomly assorted comments and reflections based upon the presentations that were made throughout the day.  They are scattered in no particular order.  I offer them with the hope that they might be useful to someone!

Themes

The keynote presentation had the subtitle, 'case stories, design patterns and future scenarios'.  These words resonated strongly with me.  Being a software developer, the notion of a design pattern (wikipedia) is one that was immediately familiar.  When you open the Gang of Four text book (wikipedia) (the book that defines them), you are immediately introduced to the 'architectural roots' of the idea, which were clearly echoed in the first presention.

The idea of a pattern, especially within software engineering, is one that is powerful since it provides software developers with an immediate vocabulary that allows effective sharing of complex ideas using seemingly simple sounding abstractions.  Since assessment is something that can be described (in some sense) as a process, it was easy to understand the objective of the project and see how the principle of a pattern could be used to share ideas and facilitate communication about practice.

Other terms that jumped out at me were 'case stories' and 'scenarios'.  Without too much imagination it is possible to link these words to the world of human-computer interaction.  In HCI, the path through systems can be described in terms of use cases, and the settings in which products or systems could be used can be explored through the deployment of descriptive scenarios and the sketching of storyboards.

Conversational framework

A highlight of the day, for me, was a description of Laurillard's conversational framework.  I have heard about it before but have, so far, not had much of an opportunity to study it in great detail.  Attending a presentation about it and learning about how it can be applied makes a conceptual framework become alive.  If you have the time, I encourage you to view the presentation that accompanies this event.

I'm not yet familiar enough with the model to summarise it eloquently, but I should state that it allows you to consider the role of teachers and learners, the environment in which the teacher carries out the teaching, and the space where a learner can carry out their own work.  The model also takes into account of the conversations (and learning) that can occur between peers.

During the presentation, I noted (or paraphrased) the words: 'the more iterations through the conversational model you do, the higher the quality of the learning you will obtain'.  Expanding this slightly, you could perhaps restate this by saying, 'the more opportunities to acquire new ideas, reflect on actions and receive feedback, the more familiar a learner will become with the subject that is the focus of study'.

In some respects, I consider the conversational framework to be a 'meta model' in the sense that it can (from my understanding) take account of different pedagogical approaches, as well as different technologies.

Links to accessibility

Another 'take away' note that I made whilst listening to the presentation was, 'learning theories are not going to change, but how these are used (and applied) will change, particularly with regards to technology'.

It was at this point when I began to consider my own areas of research.  I immediately began to wonder, 'how might this model be used to improve, enhance or understand the provision of accessibility?'  One way to do this is to consider each of the boxes the arrows that are used to graphically describe the framework.  Many of the arrows (those that are not labelled as reflections) may correspond to communications (or conversations) with or between actors.  These could be viewed as important junctures where the accessibility of the learning tools or environments that could be applied need to be considered.

Returning to the issue of technology, peers, for instance, may share ideas by posting comments to discussion forums.  These comments could then be consumed by other learners (through peer learning) and potentially permit a reformulation or strengthening of understandings.

Whilst learning technologies can permit the creation of digital learning spaces, such as those available through the application of virtual learning environments, designers of educational technologies need to take account of the accessibility of such systems to ensure that they are usable for all learners.

One of my colleagues is one step ahead of me.  Cooper writes, on a recent blog post,  'Laurillard uses [her framework] to analyse the use of media in learning. However this can be further extended to analyse the accessibility of all the media used to support these different conversations.'  The model, in essence, can be used to understand not only whether a particular part of a course is accessible (the term 'course' is used loosely here), but also be used to highlight whether there are some aspects of a course that may need further consideration to ensure that is as fully inclusive at it could be.

Returning to the theme of 'scenario', one idea might be to use a series of case studies to further consider how the framework might be used to reason about the accessibility status of a course.

Connections

There may be quite a few more connections lurking underneath the terms that were presented to the audience.  One question that I asked to myself was, 'how do these formative assessment patterns relate to the idea of learning designs?' (a subject that is the focus of a number of projects, including Cloudworks, enhancements to the Compendium authoring tool, the LAMS learning activity management system and the IMS learning design specification).

A pattern could be considered as something that could be used within a part of a larger learning design.  Another thought is that perhaps individual learning designs could be mapped onto specific elements of the conversational model.  Talking in computing terms, it could represent a specific instantiation (or instance).  Looking at it from another perspective, there is also the possibility that pedagogical patterns (whether e-assessment or otherwise) may provide inspiration to those who are charged with either constructing new or using existing learning designs.

Summary

During the course of the day, the audience were directed, on a number of occasions to the project Wiki.  One of the outcomes of the project was a literature review, which can be viewed on-line.

I recall quite a bit of debate surrounding the differences between guidelines, rules and patterns.  I also see links to the notion of learning designs too.  My understanding is that, depending on what you are referring to and your personal perspective, it may be difficult to draw clear distinctions between each of these ideas.

Returning to the issue of the conversational model being useful to expose accessibility issues, I'm glad that others before me have seen the same potential connection and I am now wondering whether there are other researchers who may have gone even further in considering the ways that the framework might be applied.

In my eyes, the idea of e-assessment patterns and the notion of learning designs are concepts that can be used to communicate and share distilled best practice.  It will be interesting to continue to observe the debates surrounding these terms to see whether a common vocabulary of useful abstractions will eventually emerge.  If they already exist, please feel free to initiate a conversation.  I'm always happy to learn.

Acknowlegements

Thanks are extended to Diana Laurillard who gave permission to share the presentation slide featured in this post.

I was recently told about a conference called Game Based Learning.  Although I wasn't able to attend in person (and besides, my main research interests are perhaps somewhat tangential to the topic), the subject remains of perpetual interest.   One of my colleagues, Liam Green-Hughes, who was lucky enough to be there a couple of weeks ago has written a comprehensive blog post describing some of the themes and presentations.

The appearance of this conference made me begin to reflect on my own experiences of what 'game based learning' means to me.  It soon struck me that much of my experiences are from an earlier generation of learning technologies (and I'm not just talking about books!)  This post represents a personal history (perhaps a 'retro' history) of using a number of different 'learning' games and devices.  I hope, for some, it evokes some fun memories!

Early mobile learning

My first exposure to mobile learning (or learning games) was through a device called Spelling B made by Texas Instruments (now more famous for their DSP processors).

The device presented a truly multi-modal experience.  Not only did it contain an alphabetic keyboard, it was also adorned with bright colours and came complete with a picture book.  Quite a proportion of the picture book was initially unfathomable since you had to translate the pictures into correctly spelt words.

For quite a long time after using the device, I continued to spell 'colour' incorrectly (or correctly, depending upon your point of view), and believed that all people with peaked hats (who were not witches) were Pilgrims (the historical importance of which was totally lost on a naive British child).

If you spelt some words correctly you got a chirpy bleeping (or buzzing) tune.  If you spelt something incorrectly, you were presented with a darker rasping noise.

After around two months of playing, it was game over.  I was able to spell, by rote, the one hundred and twenty seven words (or close to it), none of which probably had more than eight characters.

One Christmas I was lucky enough to graduate to the more elegantly designed and ultimately more mind blowing Speak and Spell (wikipedia).  It was astonishing to learn that something with batteries could speak to you!  Complete with integral handle, rugged membrane board (which you could spill your orange squash onto), an audio connection to prevent parents from going potty (like mine did), and a battery charge length that would put any modern laptop to shame.  In my view, the Speak and Spell is a design triumph and you might be able to see some similarities with the OLPC XO computer (if you squint hard enough).

To this day, I remember (without looking at simulations) its rhythmic incantations of 'that is correct! And now spell...' which punctuated my own personal successes and failures.

Learning technology envy

This era of retro learning technology didn't end with the Speak and Spell.  One Christmas, Santa gave a group of kids down my street a mobile device called the Little Professor, also from Texas Instruments.  Pre-dating the Nintendo DS by decades, this little hand-held beauty presented a true advance in learning technology.  When you got a calculation right, the little professors' moustache started to jump around in animated delight.  It also incidentally had one of those new fangled Liquid Crystal Display screens rather than the battery hungry LED readouts (but this was inconsequential in comparison to the hilarious moustache).

Learning technology envy was a real phenomenon.  I remember a Texas Instruments Speak and Maths devices was undoubtedly more exciting (and desirable to play with) than a lowly Little Professor.  Game based learning was a reality, and parent pester power was definitely at work.  For those kids who had parents who were well off, the nadir of learning technology envy (when I was growing up) manifested itself in the form of the programmable and mysterious Big Trak.

Big Trak inspired a huge amount of wonderment, especially for those of us who had never been near a logo turtle.  The marketing was good as the advertisements of the time (video) testify.  It presented kids the opportunity to consider the challenge of creating stored programs.

Learning with the Atari

A number of my peers were Atari 2600 gamers.  As well as being enthralled at the prospect of blasting aliens, driving racing cars and battling with dragons represented by pixels the size of a small coins, I gradually became aware of a range of educational games that some retailers were starting to sell.

A number of educational Sesame Street game cartridges were created, presumably with close collaboration wit Atari.  I personally found them rather tedious and somewhat unexciting, but an interesting innovation was the presence of a specially designed 'Kids controller'.  Each game was provided with a colourful overlay which only presented the buttons that should be used.  (As was the case with some Atari games, the box art and instructions leaflets could be arguably more exciting than the game itself).

I have no real idea whether any substantial evaluations were carried out to assess either the user experience of these products, or whether they helped to develop motor control.

Behold!  The personal computer...

My first memory of an educational game that was presented through a personal computer was a business game that ran on the BBC Model B.  The scenario was that you were the owner of a candy floss store (an obvious attraction for kids) and you had to buy raw materials (sugar) and hope that the weather was good.  If it was good, you made money.  If it was bad, you didn't.  I must add I used this game when Thatcherism was at its peak.  This incidental memory connects with wider issues relating to the link between game deployment and wider educational policy, but I digress...

Whilst using the 'candy floss game' I don't have any recollection of having to spend extra money for petrol for the generator or have to pay the council rent (or contend with issues of price rises every year) but I'm sure there was a cost category called 'overheads' that featured somwhere.  I'm also pretty sure you could set you own prices of your products and be introduced to the notion of 'breaking even'.

The BBC Model B figured again in my later education when I discovered a business studies lab that was packed with the things, and an occasional Domesday machine, running on an exotically modified BBC Master 128.  The Domesday project pointed firmly towards the future.  I remember a lunch hour passing in a flash whilst I attempted to navigate through an animated three dimensional exhibition that represented a portal to a range of different encyclopaedic themes.

During business studies classes we didn't use the Beebs (as they were colloquially known) for candy floss stall simulations, but instead we used a program called Edword (educational word processor), a spreadsheet and a simple database program.  When we were not using these applications, we were using the luxury of disk drive to play Elite (wikipedia).  A magical galaxy drawn in glorious 3D wireframe taught us about commodity trading and law enforcement.

Sir Clive

For a while the Sinclair Spectrum (a firm favorite amongst my peers) was sold with a bonus pack of cassettes.  Two memorable ones included an application called Make-A-Chip which allowed you to draw sets of logic gate circuits.  You couldn't do much more than create a binary adder, but messing around with it for a couple of hours  really helped when it came to understanding these operators when it came to working with real programming languages.

I also have recollections of using a simulation program that allowed you to become a fox or a rabbit (or something else) and forage for food.  As the seasons (and years) change, the availability of food fluctuated due to 'natural' changes in population.  I never did get the hang of that game: it was a combination of being too slow and not having sufficiently engaging feedback for it to be attractive.

Assessing their impact

If I was asked whether I learnt anything by using the beeping and speaking mobile devices that were mentioned earlier, I couldn't give you an honest answer.  I suspect I probably did, and the biggest challenge that researchers face isn't necessarily designing a new technology (which is a challenge that many people grossly underestimate), but understanding the effect the introduction that a particular technology has, and ultimately, whether it facilitates learning.

There is, of course, also a social side to playing learning games (and I write this without any sense of authority!).  I remember my peers showing me how to use a Little Professor, and looking at an on-screen 'candy floss sales' graph at feeling thoroughly puzzled at what was being presented to me.  A crowd of us used to play that game.  Some players, I seem to remember, were more agressive traders than others.

Towards the future

History has yielded an interesting turn of events.  I spent many a happy hour messing around on a BBC Model B (albeit mostly playing Elite) and later marveled at its ultimate successor, the Acorn Archimedes (some of the time playing Zarch written by the same author as Elite).

I remember my fascination at discovering it was possible to write programs using the BBC Basic programming language (version 5) without using line numbers.  Acorn computer eventually folded but left a lasting legacy in the form of ARM (Acorn Risc Machine), a company that sells its processor designs which have found their way into a whole range of different devices: phones, MP3 players, PDAs.

I recently heard that the designers of the One Laptop Per Child project were considering using ARM-based processors in the second generation designs.  The reason for this choice is directed by the need to pay careful consideration to power consumption and the fact that the current processor will not be subject to further on-going development by AMD. (One loosely connected cul-de-sac of history lies with the brief emergence of the inspirational and sadly ill fated Apple eMate, which was also ARM-based).

One dimension of learning games that is outside the immediate requirements of developing skills or knowledge in a particular subject, lies with their potential to engender motivation and enthusiasm.

It's surprising how long electricity powered educational video games and devices have been around for.  It's also surprising that it was possible to do so much with so little (in terms of processing power and memory).  Educational gaming, I argue, should not be considered as an idea that is considered to be revolutionary.  I personally look forwards to learning about what new evolutionary developments are waiting for us around the corner and what they may be able to tell us about how we learn.

I recently attended an event that was hosted by the Inclusive Digital Economy Network.  The network, led by the University of Dundee, comprises of a variety of groups who wish to collectively ensure that people are able to take advantage of digital technologies.

The event was led by Prof Alan Newell from Dundee.  Alan gracefully introduced a number of keynote speakers; the vice-chancellor from City University, the dean of Arts and Social Sciences and representatives from the government and the funding body: the EPSRC.

Drama

One really interesting part of the day was the use of 'theatre' to clearly illustrate the difficulties that some people can have when using information technology.  I had heard about the use of drama when I have spoken to people from Dundee before but this was the first time I was able to witness it.  In fact, I soon found out that I was going to witness a film premiere!

After the final credits had appeared, I was surprised to discover that two of the actors who played central roles in the film were in the audience.  The film was not the end of the ‘theatre’ event, it was the beginning.  The actors carried out an improvisation (using questions from the audience) that was based upon the roles we had been introduce to through the film.

The notion of drama and computing initially seemed to me to be a challenging combination, but any scepticism that had very quickly dissipated once the connections between the two areas became plainly apparently.  Drama and theatre relies on characters.  Computer systems and technologies are ultimately used by people.  The frustrations that people encounter when they are using computer systems manifest themselves in personal (and collective) dramas that might be as small as uttering the occasional expletive when your machine doesn't do what it supposed to do, to calling up a call centre to harass an equally confused call centre operative.

The lessons of the 'computing' or 'user' theatre were clear to see: the users should be placed centre stage when we think about the design of information systems.  They may understand things in ways that designers of systems may not have imagined.  A design metaphor that might make complete sense to an architect may seem to be completely nonsensical to an end user who has a totally different outlook and background.  Interaction design tools such as creating end user personas are powerful tools that can expose differences and help to create more usable systems.

Debates

I remember a couple of important (and interesting) themes from the day.  One theme (that was apparent to me) was occasional debate about the necessity to ensure that users are involved with the design of systems from the outset to ensure that any resulting products and systems are inclusive (user led design).  This connected to a call to 'keep the geeks from designing things'.  In my view, users must be involved with the creation of interactive systems, but the 'geeks' must be included too.  The reasons for this being that the geeks may imagine functionality that the users might not be aware exits.  This argument underlines the interdisciplinary nature of interaction design (wikipedia).

Much of the focus of the day was about how technology can support elderly people; how to create technologies and pedagogies that can promote digital inclusion.  Towards the end of the day there was a panel discussion from representatives from Help the Aged, a UK government organisation called the Technology Strategy Board, the BBC, OFCOM and the University of York.

Another them that I remember relates to the cost of both computing and assistive technologies.  There was some discussion about the possibility of integrating internet access within set top boxes (and a couple of comments relating to the Digital Britain report that was recently published by the UK government).  There was also some discussion about the importance of universal design (wikipedia) and tensions with personalised design (which connects to some of the themes underpinning the EU4ALL project).

Another recollection from the event was that some presenters stated that although there is much excellent work happening within the academic community (and within other organisations) some of the lessons learnt from research are often not taken forward into policy or practice.  This said, it may be necessary to take the recommendations from a number of different research projects to obtain a rich and complete understanding of a field before fully understanding how policy might be positively influenced.  The challenge is not only combining and understanding the results from different projects, but communicating the results.

Summary

Projects such as the Inclusive Digital Economy Network, from my outsiders perspective, attempt to bridge the gaps between different stakeholders and facilitate a free exchange of ideas and experiences that may point towards areas of investigation that can allow us learn more how digital technologies can make a difference to us all.

Acknowledgements: many thanks are extended to the organisers of the event – an interesting day!

Following on from the previous post, this post describes my adventures into the Moodle forums source code.

Forums, I understand, can be activities (a Moodle term) that can be presented within individual weeks or topics. I also know that forums can be presented through blocks (which can be presented on the left or right hand side of course areas).

To begin, and remembering the success that I had when trying to understand how blocks work, I start by looking at what the database can tell me and quickly discover quite a substantial number of tables.  These are named: forum (obviously), forum_discussions, forum_posts, forum_queue, forum_ratings (ratings is not something that I have used within the version of Moodle that I am familiar with), forum_read, forum_descriptions, forum_subscriptions and forum_track_prefs.

First steps

Knowing that some of the data tables are called, I put aside my desire to excitedly eyeball source code and sensibly try to find some documentation.

I begin by having a look at the database schema introduction page (Moodledocs), but find nothing that immediately helps.  I then discover an end user doc page that describes the forum module (and the different types of forum that are on offer in Moodle).  I then uncover a whole forum documentation category (Moodledocs) and I'm immediately assaulted by my own lack of understanding of the capabilities system (which I'll hopefully blog about at some point in the future – one page that I'll take note of here is the forum permissions page).

From the forums category page I click on the various 'forum view pages', which hints that there are some strong connections with user settings.

Up to this point, what have I learnt?

I have learnt that Moodle permits only certain users to carry out certain actions to Moodle forums.  I have also learnt that Moodle forums have different types.  These, I am lead to believe (according to this documentation page) are: standard, single discussion, each person posts one discussion, and question and answer.  I'm impressed:  I wasn't expecting so much functionality!

So, can we discover any parallels with the database structures?

The forum table contains fields which are named: course, type, name, description followed by a whole other bunch of fields I don't really understand.  The course field associates a forum with a course (I'm assuming that somewhere in the database there will be some data that connects the forum to a particular part or section of a course) and the type (which is interestingly, an enumerated type) which can hold data values that roughly represents the forum types that were mentioned earlier.

A brief look at the code

I remember that the documentation that I uncovered told me that the 'forums' was a module. In the 'mod' directory I see notice a file called view.php.  Other interesting files are named: post.php, lib.php, search.php and discuss.php.  View.php seems to be one big script which contains a big case statement in the middle.  Post.php looks similar, but has a beguiling sister called post_form which happens to be a class.  Lib, I discover, is a file of mystery that contains functions and fragments of SQL and HTML.  Half of the search file seems to retrieve input parameters, and discuss is commented as, 'displays a post, and all the posts below it'.

Creating test data

To learn more about the data structures I decide to create some test data by creating a forum and making a couple of posts.  I open up an imaginatively titled course called 'test' and add an equally imaginatively titled forum called 'test forum'.  When creating the forum I'm asked to specify a forum type (the options are: single simple discussion, Q and A forum, standard forum for general use).  I choose the standard forum and choose the default values for aggregate type and time period for blocking.  The aggregate type appears to be related to functionality that allows students to grade or rate posts.

When the forum is live, I then make a forum post to my test forum that has the title 'test post'.

Reviewing the database

The action of creating a new forum appears to have created a record in the forum table which is associated to a particular course, using the course id.  The act of adding a post to the test forum has added data to forum_discussions, where the name field corresponds to the title of my thread: 'test post'.  A link is made with the forum table through a foreign key, and a primary key keeps track of all the discussions held by Moodle.

The forum_posts table also contains data.  This table stores the text that is associated with a particular post.  There is a link to the discussion table through a discussion id number.  Other tables that I looked at included forum_queue (not quite sure what this is all about yet), forum_ratings (which probably stores stuff depending on your forum settings), and forum read, which simply stores an association between user id, forum id, discussion id and post id.

One interesting thing about forums is that they can have a recursive structure (you can send a reply to a reply to a reply and so on).  To gain more insight into how this works, I send a reply to myself which has the imaginative content, 'this is a test post 2'.

Unexpectedly, no changes are made to the forum_discussions table, but a new entry is added to the forum_posts table.  To indicate hierarchy a 'parent' field is populated (where the parent relates to an earlier entry within the forum_posts table).  I'm assuming that the sequence of posts is represented by the 'created' field which stores a numerical representation of the time.

Tracing the execution flow

These experiments have given me with three questions to explore:

1. What happens within the world of Moodle code the user creates a new forum?
2. What happens when a user adds a new discussion to a forum?
3. What happens when a user posts a reply?

Creating a new forum

Creating a new forum means adding an activity.  To learn about what code is called when a forum is added, I click on 'add forum' and capture the URL.  I then give my debugger the same parameters that are called (id, section, sesskey and add) and then begin to step through the course/mod.php script.  The id number seems to relate to the id of the course, and the add parameter seems to specify the type of the activity or resource that is to be added.

I quickly discover a redirect to a script called modedit.php, where the parameters add=forum, type= (empty), course=4, section=1, return=0.  To further understand what is going on, I stop my debugger and start modedit.php with these parameters.

There is a call to the database to check the validity of the course parameter, fetching of a course instance, something about the capability, fetching of an object that corresponds to a course section (call to get_course_section in course/lib code).   Data items are added to a $form variable (which my debugger tells me is a global).  There is then the instantiation of a class called mod_forum_mod_form (which is defined within mod/forum/mod_form.php).  The definition class within mod_forum_mod_form defines how the forum add or modification form will be set out.  There is then a connection between the data held within $form and the form class that stores information about what information will be presented to the user.

After the forum editing interface is displayed, the action of clicking the 'save and return to course' (for example) there is a postback to the same script, modedit.php.  Further probing around reveals a call to forum_add_instance within forum/lib.php (different activities will have different versions of this function) and forum_update_instance.  At the end of the button clicking operation there is then a redirect to a script that shows any changes that have been made.

The code to add a forum to course will be similar (in operation) to the code used to add other activities.  What is interesting is that I have uncovered the classes and script files that relate to the user interface forms that are presented to the user.

Adding a new discussion

A new discussion can be added by clicking on the 'Add a new discussion topic' button once you are within a forum.  The action of clicking on this button is connected to the forum/post.php script.  The most parameter associated to this action is the forum number (forum=7, for example).

It's important to note the use of the class mod_frum_post_form contained within post_form.php which represents the structure of the form that the user enters discussion information to.

The code checks the forum id and then finds out which course it relates to.  It then creates the form class (followed by some further magic code that I quickly stepped through).

The action of clicking on the 'post to forum' button appears to send a post back (along with all of the contents of the form) to post.php (the same script used to create the form).  When this occurs, a message is displayed and then a redirect occurs to the forum view summary.  But where in the code is the database updated?  One way to do this is to begin with a search to the redirect.  Whilst browsing through the code I stumble across a comment that says 'adding a new discussion'.  The database appears to be updated through a call to forum_add_discussion.

Posting a reply to a discussion

The post.php script is also used to save replies to discussions (as well as adding new discussions) to the database.  When a user clicks on a discussion (from a list of discussions created by discuss.php), the link to send replies are represented by calls to post.php with a reply parameter (along with a post number, i.e. post.php?reply=4).  The action of clicking on this link presents the previous message, along with the form where the user can enter a response.

To learn more about how this code works, I browse through the forums lib file and uncover a function called forum_add_new_post.  I then search for this in post.php and discover a portion of code that handles the postback from the HTML form.  I don't explore any further having learnt (quite roughly) where various pieces of code magic seems to lie.

Summary

The post.php script does loads of stuff.  It weighs in at around seven hundred lines in length and contains some huge conditional statements.

Not only does post appear to manage the adding of new discussions to a forum but it also appears to manage the adding, editing and deletion of forum messages.  To learn about how this script is structured I haven't been able to look at function definitions (because it doesn't contain any) but instead I have had to read comments.  Comments, it has been said, can lie, whereas code always tells the truth.  More functions would have helped me to more quickly learn the structure of the post.php script.

The creation of the user interfaces is partially delegated to the mod and post form classes.  Database updates are performed through the forum/lib.php file.  I like some of the function abstractions that are beginning to emerge but any programming file that contains both HTML and SQL indicates there is more work to be done.  The reason for this aesthetic (and person) opinion is simple: keeping these two types of code separate has the potential to help developers to become quickly familiar where certain types of software actions are performed.  This, in turn, has the potential to save developer time.

One of the central areas of functionality that forum developers need to understand is how Moodle works and uses forms.  This remains an area of mystery to me, and one that I hope to continue to learn about.  Another area that I might explore is how PHP has been used to implement different forum systems so I can begin to get a sense of how PHP is written by different groups of developers.

Acknowledgements: Photograph licenced under creative commons by ciaron, liberated from Flickr.

This is a second blog entry about how Moodle manages its blocks (which can be found either at a site level or at a course level).  In my previous post I wrote about the path of execution I discovered within the main Moodle index.php file.  I discovered that the version of Moodle that I was using presented blocks using tables, and that blocks made use of some interesting object-oriented features of PHP to create the HTML code that is eventually presented to the end user.

This post has two objectives.  The first is to present something about the database structures that are used to store information about which blocks are stored where, and secondly to explore what happens when an administrator clicks on the various block editing functions.  The intention behind this post is to understand Moodle in greater detail to uncover a little more of how it has been designed.

Blocks revisited

Blocks, as mentioned earlier, are pieces of functionality that can sit on the left hand or right hand borders of courses (or the main Moodle site page).  Blocks can present a whole range of functions ranging from news items through to RSS feeds.

Blocks can be moved around within a course page with relative ease by using the Moodle edit button.  Once you click on ‘edit’ (providing it is there and you have the appropriate level of permissions), you can begin to add, remove and move blocks around using a couple of icons that are presented.  Clicking on the left icon moves the block to the left hand margin, clicking the down arrow icon changes its vertical position and so on.

One of my objectives with this post is to understand what happens when these various buttons are clicked on.  What I am hoping to see are clearly defined functions which will be called something like moveBlockUp, moveBlockDown or deleteBlock.

Perhaps with future versions it might be possible to have a direct manipulation interface (wikipedia) where rather than having buttons to press, users will be able to drag blocks around to rapidly customise course displays.  Proposing ideas and problems to be solved is a whole lot more easier than going ahead and solving them.  Also, to happily prove there’s no such thing as an original thought, I have recently uncovered a Moodle documentation page.  It seems that this idea has been floating around since 2006.

Before I delve into trying to uncover how each of the Moodle block editing buttons work, it is worthwhile spending some time to look at how Moodle remembers what block is placed where.  This requires looking at the database.

Remembering block location

I open up my database manipulation tool (SqlYog) and begin to browse through the database tables that are used with Moodle.  I quickly spot a bunch of tables that contain the name block.  One that seems to be particularly relevant is a table called block_instance.

The action of creating a course (and adding blocks to it) seems to create a whole bunch of records in the block_instance.  Block_instance appears to be the table that Moodle uses to remember what block should be displayed and when.

The below graphic is an excerpt from the block_instance data table:

The field weight seems to relate to the vertical order of blocks on the screen (I initially wondered whether it related to, in some way, some kind of graphical shading, thinking of the way that HTML uses the term weight).  Removing a block from a course seems to change the data within this table.

The blockid seems to link each entry within block_instance to data items held within the  Block table:

The names held within the name field (such as course_summary) are connected to the programming code that relates to a particular block.  The cron (and the lastcron) relate to regular processes that Moodle must execute.  With the default installation of Moodle everything is visible, and at the time of writing I have no idea what multiple means.

Returning to block_instance, does the pageid field relate to the id used in the course?  Looking at the course table seems to add weight to his hypothesis.

I continue my search for truth by rummaging around in the Moodle documentation, discovering a link to the database schema and uncover some Block documentation that I haven’t seen before (familiarity with material is a function of time!)  This provides a description of the block development system as described by the original developer.

Knowing that these two tables are now used to store block location my question from this point onwards is: how does this table get updated?

Database updates

To answer this question I applied something that I have called ‘the law of random code searching’: if you don’t know what to look for and you don’t know how things work, carry out a random code search to see what the codebase tells you.  Using my development environment I search to find out where the block_instance datatable is updated.

Calls to the database to be spread out over a number of files: blocks, lib, accesslib, blocklib, moodlelib, and chat/lib (amongst others).  This seems to indicate that there is quite a lot of coupling between the different sections of code (which is probably a bad thing when it comes to understanding the code and carrying out maintenance).

Software comprehension is sometimes an inductive process.  Occasionally you just need to read through a code file to see if it can yield any clues about its design, its structure and what it does.  I decided to try this approach for each of the files my search results window pointed to:

Accesslib
Appears to access control (or permission management) to parts of Moodle.  The comments at the top of the file mention the notion of a ‘context’ (which is a badly overloaded word).  The comments provide me no clue as to the context in which context is used.  The only real definition that I can uncover is the database description documentation which states, ‘a context is a scope in Moodle, for example the whole system, a course, a particular activity’.  In AccessLib, there are some hardcoded definitions for different contexts, i.e. CONTEXT_SYSTEM, CONTEXT_USER, CONTEXT_COURSECAT and so on.

The link to the blocks_instance database lies within a huge function called create_context which updates a database table of the same name.  I’ve uncovered a forum explanation that sheds a little more light onto the matter, but to be honest, the purpose of these functions is going to take some time to uncover.  There is a clue that the records held within the context table might be cached for performance reasons.  Moving on…

Moodlelib
Block_instance is mentioned in a function named remove_course_contents which apparently ‘clears out a course completely, deleting all content but don’t delete the course itself’.  When this function is called, modules and blocks are removed from the course.  Moodlelib is described as ‘main library file of miscellaneous general-purpose Moodle functions’ (??), but there is a reference towards another library called weblib which is described as ‘functions that provide web output’.

Blocks
A comment at the top of the blocks.php file states that it ‘allows the admin to configure blocks (hide/show, delete and configure)’.  There is some code that retrieves instances of a block and then deletes the whole block (but in what ‘context’ this is done, at the moment it’s not clear).

Blocklib
The file contains the lion’s share of references to the block_instance database.  It is said to include ‘all the necessary stuff to use blocks in course pages’ (whatever that means!)  At the top there are some constants for actions corresponding to moving a block around a course page.  Database calls can be found within blocks_delete_instance, blocks_have_content, blocks_print_group and so on.  The blocks_move_block seems to adjust the contents of the database to take account of moment.  There also appears to be some OO type magic going on that I’m not quite sure about.  Perhaps the term ‘instance’ is being used in too many different ways.  I would agree with the coder: blocklib does all kinds of ‘stuff’.

Lib files
Reference to block_instance can be found in lib files for three different blocks: chat, lesson and quiz.  The functions that contain the call to the database relate to the removing of an ‘instance’ of these blocks.  As a result, records from the block_instance table are removed when the functions are called.

So, what have I learnt by reading all this stuff?  I’ve seen how the database stores stuff, that there is a slippery notion of a course context (and mysterious paths), and know the names of some files that do the block editing work, but I’m not quite sure how.  There is quite a lot of complexity that has not yet been uncovered and understood.

Digressions

I have a cursory glance through the lib folder to see what else I can discover and find an interestingly named script file entitled womenslib.php.  Curious, I open it and see a redirect to a wikipedia page.  The Moodle developers obviously have a sense of humour but unfortunately mine had failed!  This minor diversion was unwelcome (humour failure exception), costing me both time and ‘head’ space!

Bizarrely I also uncover seemingly random list of words (wordlist.txt) that begins: ‘ape, baby, camel, car, cat, class, dog, eat …’ etc.  Wondering whether one of the developers had attended the famous Dali school of software engineering, I searched for a file reference to this mysterious ‘wordlist’.

It appeared that our mysterious list of words was referenced in the lib\setup.php file, where a path to our  worldlist was stored in what I assumed to be a Moodle configuration variable.  How might this file be used?  It appears it is used within a function called generate_password.

Thankfully the developers have been kind enough to say where they derived some of their inspiration from.   The presence of the wordlist is explained by the need to construct a function to create pronounceable automatically generated passwords (but perhaps only in English?)

This was all one huge digression.  I pulled myself together just enough to begin to uncover what happens when a user clicks on either the block move up, down, or delete buttons when a course is running in edit mode.

Button click action

Returning to the task in hand, I add two blocks (both in the right hand column, and one situated on top of the other) to my local Moodle site with a view to understanding that function code that contributes to the moveBlockUp and deleteBlock functionality.

I take a look at the links that correspond to the move up and the delete icons.  I notice that the action of clicking sends a bunch of parameters to the main Moodle index.php.  The parameters are sent via get (which means they are sent as a part of the hypertext link).  They are: instanceid (which comes straight out of the block_instance table), sesskey (which reminds me, I really must try to understand how Moodle handles sessions (wikipedia) at some point), and a blockaction parameter (which is either moveup or delete in the case of this scenario).

The question here is: what happens within index.php?  Luckily, I have a debugger that will be able to tell me (or, at least, help me!)

I log in as an administrator through my debugger.  When I have established a session, I then add some breakpoints on my index.php code and launch the index.php code using the parameters for ‘move activity upwards’.

Index.php begins to execute, and a call to page_create_object is made. It looks like a new object is created.  An initialisation function within the page_base class is called (contained within pagelib).  A blocks_setup function is called and block positions from the block_instance database is retrieved.  After some further tracking I end up at a function called blocks_execute_url_action.  The instanceid is retrieved and a call is made to blocks_execute_action where the block action (moveup or delete) is passed in as a parameter with the block instance record that has just been retrieved from the database.

In blocks_execute_action a 'mother of all switch statements' makes a decision about what should be done next.  After some checks, two update commands to the database are issued through the update_record function updated weight values (to change the order of the respective blocks).  With all the database changes complete, a page redirect occurs to index.php.  Now that the database has the correct representation of where each block should be situated index.php can now go ahead and display them.

Is the same mechanism used for course pages?

A very cursory understanding tells me that the course/view.php script has quite a lot to do with the presentation of courses, and at this point gathering an understanding of it is proving to be elusive.  Let’s see what I can find.



Initially it does seem that the index.php script controls the display of a Moodle site and course/view.php script does control the course display.  Moving the mouse over the ‘move block up’ icons reveals a hyperlink to the view.php script with get parameters of: id (which corresponds to the course number held within the course data table), instance id (which corresponds to a record within the block_instance table) and sesskey and blockaction parameters (as with index.php).

To get a rough understanding of how things work, I do something similar as before: open up a session through my debugger and launch the view.php with this bunch parameters.  The view.php course is striking.  It doesn’t seem to be very long and nor does it produce any HTML so it looks like there’s something subtle going on.

In view.php, there are some parameter safety checks, followed by some context_instance magic, checking of the session key followed by calls to the familiar page_create_object (mentioned in the earlier section).  Blocks_setup is then called, followed by blocks_get_by_page_pinned and blocks_get_by_page which asks the database which blocks are associated to this particular page (which is a course page).

Like earlier, there is a call to blocks_execute_url_action when updates the database to carry out the action that the administrator clicked on.  At the end of the database update there is a redirect.  Instead of going to index, the redirect is to view.php along with a single parameter which corresponds to the course id.

This raises the question: what happens after the view.php redirect?

Redirect to view.php

When view.php makes a call to the database to get the data that corresponds to the course id number it has been given.  There is then a check to make sure that the user who is requesting the page is logged into Moodle and eventually our old friends page_create_object and blocks_setup are called, but this time since no buttons have been clicked on, we don’t redirect to another page after we have updated the database.

Towards the end of view.php we can begin to see some magic that begins to produce the HTML that will be presented to the user.  There is a call to print_header.  There is then a script include (using the PHP keyword ‘required’) which then creates the bulk of the page that is presented to the user, building the HTML to present the individual blocks.  When running within my debugger, the script course/format/weeks/format.php was included.  The script that is chosen depends on the format of the course that has been chosen.  When complete, view.php adds the footer and the script ends.

Summary

So, what have I learnt from all this messing about?

It seems that (broadly speaking) the code used to move blocks around on the main Moodle site is also used to move blocks around on a course page, but perhaps this isn’t too surprising (but it is reassuring).  I still have no idea what ‘pinned blocks’ means or what the corresponding data table is for but I’m sure I’ll figure it out in time!

Another thing that I have learnt is that the view course and the main index.php pages are built in different ways.  As a result, if I ever need to change the underlying design or format of a course, I now know where to look (not that I ever think this is something that I’ll need to do!)

I have seen a couple of references to AJAX (MoodleDocs) but I have to confess that I am not much wiser about what AJAX style functionality is currently implemented within the version of Moodle I have been playing with.  Perhaps this is one of those other issues that will become clearer with time (and experience).

One thing, however, does strike me: the database and the user interface components are very closely tied together (or closely coupled) which may make, in some cases, change difficult.  One of the things that I have on my perpetual ‘todo’ list is to have a long hard look at the Fluid Project, but other activities must currently take precedence.

This pretty much concludes my adventure into the world of Moodle blocks. There’s a whole load of Moodle related stuff that I hope to look at (and hopefully describe) at some point in the future: groups, roles, contexts, and forums.  Wish me luck!

Acknowlegements: Image from lifeontheedge, licenced under Creative Commons.