Personal Blogs

One of the great things about Moodle (other than the number of databases it can use!) is the way that courses can be easily created and edited.  One of its best features is the edit button that can be found at the top of many pages.  Administrators and course managers can push this button and quickly add and remove functionality to redesign a course or a site within seconds.

This blog post is the first in a series of two (but might even extend to three) that aims to answer the question of: how does the Moodle block editing magic work?  To answer this question I found that it was useful to split this big question into a number of smaller questions.  These are: how are blocks presented to the user?, how are block layouts stored in the Moodle database?, and what happens when the user clicks on the edit button and makes changes to the layout of a site or a course?

There are two reasons for wanting to answer to these questions.  The first is that knowing something about this key part of Moodle might help me to understand more about its architecture which might help me in the future if I have to make any changes as a part of the EU4ALL project.  The second is pure curiosity, particularly regarding the database tables and structures - I would like to know how they work.

There are two broad approaches that I could take to answer these questions: look at things from the top down, or from the bottom up.  I could either look at how the user interfaces are created, or I could have a look at the database to see if I can find data tables that might be used to store data that is used when the Moodle user interface is created.  In the end I used a combination of top down and bottom up approaches to understand a bit of what is going on.

This post will present what I have learnt about how Moodle presents blocks.  The second post will be about what I have found out about the database and how it works (in relation to Moodle blocks) and what happens when you click on the various block editing icons.

There will be load of detail which will remain unsaid and I’ll be skipping over loads of code subtleties that I haven’t yet fully understood!  I’ll also be opinionated, so advance apologies to and Moodle developers who I might inadvertently offend.  I hope my opinions are received with positive spirit, which is the way that they are intended.

Introducing blocks

Blocks are bits of functionality which sit on either side of a Moodle site or course.  They can do loads of stuff: provide information to students about their assignment dates, and provide access to discussion forums.  When first looking at Moodleworld, I had to pause a moment to distinguish between blocks, resources and activities.  Blocks, it might be argued, are pieces of functionality that can support your learning, whilst activities and resources may be a central part of your learning (but don’t quote me on that!)



Not long after starting looking at the blocks code, I discovered a developer page on the subject.  This was useful.  I soon found out that apparently there are plans to improve the block system for the next version of Moodle.  The developers have created an interestingly phrased bug to help guide the development of the next release.  This said, all the investigations reported here relate to version 1.9+, so things may very well have moved on.

Looking at Index

Blocks can be used in at least two different ways: on the main Moodle site area (which is seen when you enter a URL which corresponds to a Moodle installation) and within individual courses.  I immediately suspect that there is some code that is common between both of them.  To make things easy for myself, I’ve decided (after a number of experiments) to look at how blocks are created for a Moodle site.

To start to figure out how things work the first place that I look at is the index.php file.  (I must confess that I actually started to try to figure out what happened when you click on the editing button, but this proved to be too tough, so I backtracked…)

So, what does the index.php file do?  I soon discover a variable called $PAGE and asked the innocuous question of ‘why are some Moodle variables in UPPERCASE and others in lowercase?’ I discover an answer in the Moodle coding guidelines.  Anything that is in uppercase appears to be global variables.  I try to find a page that describes the purpose of the different global variables, but I fail, instead uncovering a reference to session variables, leaving me wondering what the $PAGE class is all about.

Pressing on I see that there are some functions that seem to calculate the width of the left and the right hand areas where the blocks are displayed.  There is also some code that seems to generate some standard HTML for a header (showing the Moodle instance title and login info).

The index page then changes from PHP to HTML and I’m presented with a table.  This surprises me a little.  Tables shouldn’t really be used for formatting and instead should only be used to present data.  It seems that the table is used to format the different portions of the screen, dividing it unto the left hand bunch of columns, a centre part where stuff is displayed, and a right hand column. 

It appears that the code that co-ordinates the printing of the left and right blocks is very similar, with the only difference being different parameters to indicate whether things appear on the left, and things appear on the right.

The index file itself doesn’t seem to display very much, so obviously the code that creates the HTML for the different blocks is to be found in other parts of the Moodle programming.

Seeding program behaviour

To begin to explore how different blocks are created I decide to create some test data.  I add a single block to the front page of Moodle and position it at the top on the right hand side:



Knowing that I have one block that will be displayed, I can the trace through the code when the ‘create right hand side’ code is executed using my NuSphere debugger to see what is called and when.

One thing that I’m rather surprised about is how much I use the different views that my debugger offers.  It really helps me to begin learn about the structure of the codebase and the interdependencies between the different files and functions.

Trying to understand the classes

It soon becomes apparent that the developers are making use of some object-oriented programming features.  In my opinion I think this is exactly the right thing to do.  I hold the view that if you define the problem in the right way then its solution (in terms of writing the code that connects the different definitions together) can be easy, providing that you write things well (this said, I do come from a culture of Java and C# and brought up, initially, on a diet of Pascal).

After some probing around there seem to be two libraries that seem to be immediately important to know about: weblib and blocklib.  The comments at the top of weblib describes it as ‘library of all general-purpose Moodle PHP functions and constants that produce HTML output’.  Blocklib is described as, ‘all the necessary stuff to use blocks in course pages’.

In index, there is a call to a function called blocks_setup (blocks, I discover, can be pinned true, pinned both, or pinned false – block pinning is associated to lessons, something that I haven’t studied).  This function appears to call another function named   blocks_get_by_page (passing it the $PAGE global).  This function returns a data structure that contains two arrays.  One array is called l and the other is called r.  I’m assuming here that array data has been pulled from the database.

The next function that follows is called blocks_have_content. This function does quite a bit.  It takes the earlier data structure, and translates the block number (which corresponds to which block is to be displayed on the page) and converts it into a block name through a database call.  The code then uses this name to instantiate an object whose class is similar to the block name (it does this by prepending ‘block_’ to the start).

There is something to be cautious about here: there is a dependency between the contents of the database (which are added to when the Moodle database is installed) and the name of the class.  If either one of these were to change the blocks would not display properly.

The class that corresponds to the news block is named ‘block_news_items’.  This class is derived from (or inherits) another class called block_base that is defined within the file moodleblock.class.php.  A similar pattern is followed with other blocks.

Is_empty()

Following the program flow, there is a call to a function called is_empty() within blocklib.php.   This code strikes me as confusing since is_empty should only be doing one thing.  Is_empty appears to have a ‘side effect’ of storing the HTML for a block that comes from a call to get_content to a variable called ‘content’.  Functions should only do what they say they do.  Anything else risks increasing the burden of program comprehension and maintenance.

The Moodle codebase contains several versions of get_content, one for each of the different blocks that can be displayed.  The version that is called depends on which object Moodle is currently working through.  Since there is only one block, the get_content function within block_news_items is called.  It then returns some HTML that describes how the block will be presented. 

This HTML will be stored to the structure which originally described which block goes where.  If you look through the pageblocks variable, the HTML can be found by going to either the left or right array, looking in the ‘obj’ field, then going to ‘content’.  In ‘content’ you will find a further field called ‘text’ that contains the HTML that is to be displayed.

When all the HTML has been safely stored away in memory it is almost ready to be printed (or presented to a web client). 

Calls to print_container_start() and print_container_end() delineate a call to blocks_print_group.  In this function there will then be a database call to check to see if the block is visible and then a call to _print_block() is made.  This is a member function of a class, as indicated by the proceeding underscore.  The _print_block() can be found within the moodleblock.class file.  This function (if you are still following either me or the code!) makes a call to print_side_block function (which is one of those general purpose PHP functions) contained within weblib.php.

Summary and towards part 2

I guess my main summary is that to create something that is simple and easy to use can require quite a lot of complicated code.

My original objective was to try to understand the mechanisms underpinning the editing and customising of course (particularly blocks) but I have not really looked at the differences between how blocks presented within the course areas and how blocks are presented on the main site.  Learning about how things work has been an interesting exercise.  One point that I should add is that from an accessibility perspective, the use of tables for layout purposes should ideally be avoided.

What is great is that there is some object-oriented code beginning to appear within the Moodle codebase.  What is confusing (to me, at least) is the way that some data structures can be so readily changed (or added to) by PHP.  I hold the opinion that stronger data types can really help developers to understand the code that they are faced with since they constrain the actions that can be carried out to those types.  I also hold the view that data stronger typing can really help your development since you give your development tools more of an opportunity to help you (through presenting you with autocomplete or intellisense options), but these opinions probably reflect my earlier programming background and experience.

On the subject of data types, the next post in this series will be about how the Moodle database stores information about the blocks that are seen on the screen.  Hopefully this might fill the gaps of this post where the word ‘database’ is mentioned.

Acknowlegement: Picture by zoologist, from Flickr.  Licenced under creative commons.

 Last year has been a fun year.  At one point I found I had a number of hours to kill before I caught an onward travel connection.  Since I was travelling through a city, I decided to kill some time by visiting some museums.

I have to confess I really like museums.  My favourite type is science and engineering museums. I really like looking at machines, mechanisms and drawings, learning about the people and situations that shaped them.  I also like visiting art museums too, but I will be the first to confess that I do find some of the exhibits that they can contain a little difficult to understand.

Starting my exploration

I stepped into the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum (wikipedia) with mild trepadation, not really knowing what I was letting myself in for.  After the entrance area I discovered a desk that was renting audio guides.  Since I felt that I might be able to gain something from the use of an audio guide (and since I was travelling alone, it could offer me some company), I decided to rent one for a couple of hours.

With my guide in hand I started to wander around the gallery.  The paintings appeared to be set out in a very particular and deliberate way.  The gallery designer was obviously trying to tell me something about the history of art (of which I know next to nothing about).  The paintings gradually changed from impressionism, to modernism, through to paintings that I could only describe as thoroughly abstract (some of which I thoroughly liked!)

Extending my guide

I remember stopping at a couple of paintings at the impressionist section.  The disembodied voice of my guide was telling me to pay attention to the foreground, and the background: particular details were considered to be important.  I was given some background information, about where the painter was working and who he was working with.

On a couple of occasions I felt that I had been told a huge amount of detail, but I felt that none of it was sticking.  I didn't have a mental framework around which to store these new facts that I was being presented with.  Art history students, on the other hand, might have less trouble.

What I did discover is that some subjects interested me significantly more than others.  I wanted to know which artists were influenced by others.  I wanted to hear a timeline of how they were connected.

I didn't just want my guide to tell me about what I was looking at, I wanted my audio guide to be a guide, to be more like a person who would perhaps direct me to things that I might be interested in looking at or learning about.  I wanted my audio guide to branch off on an interesting anecdote about the connections between two different artists, about the trials and tribulation of their daily lives.  I felt that I needed this functionality not only to uncover more about what I was seeing, but also to help me to find a way to structure the information that I was hearing.

Alternative information

Perhaps my mobile device could present a list of topics of themes that related to a particular painting.  It might display the name of the artist, some information about the scene that was being depicted, perhaps some keywords that correspond to the type under which it could be broadly categorised.

Choosing these entries might direct you to related audio files or perhaps other paintings.  A visitor might be presented with words like, 'you might want to look at this painting by this artist', followed by some instructions about where to find the painting in the gallery (and its unique name or number).

If this alternative sounded interesting (but it wasn't your main interest) you might be able to store this potentially interesting diversion into a 'trail store', a form of bookmark for audio guides.

Personalised guides

Of course, it would be much better if you had your own personal human guide, but there is always the fear of sounding like an idiot if you ask questions like, 'so, erm, what is impressionism exactly?', especially if you are amongst a large group of people!

There are other things you could do too.  Different visitors will take different routes through a gallery or museum.  You might be able to follow the routes (or footsteps) that other visitors have taken.

Strangers could be able to name and store their own routes and 'interest maps'.  You could break off a route half way through a preexisting 'discovery path' and form your own.  This could become, in essence, a form of social software for gallery spaces.  A static guide might be able to present user generated pathways through gallery generated content.

Personal devices

One of the things I had to do when I explored my gallery was exchange my driving licence for a piece of clumsy, uncomfortable mobile technology.  It was only later that it struck me that I had a relatively high tech piece of mobile technology in my pocket: a mobile phone. 

To be fair, I do hold a bit of fondness for my simple retro Nokia device, but I could imagine a situation where audio guides are not delivered by custom pieces of hardware, but instead streamed directly to your own hand held personal device.  Payment for a 'guide' service could be made directly through the phone.  Different galleries or museums may begin to host their own systems, where physical 'guide access posters' give users instructions about how visitors could access a parallel world of exploration and learning.

Rather than using something that is unfamiliar, you might be able to use your own headphones, and perhaps use your device to take away souvenirs (or information artefacts) that relate to particular exhibits.  Museums are, after all, so packed with information, it is difficult to 'take everything in'.  Your own device may be used to augment your experience, and remind you of what you found to be particularly interesting.

Pervasive guides

If each user has their own device, it is possible that this device could store a representation of their own interests or learning preferences.  Before stepping over the threshold of a museum, you might have already told your device that you are interested in looking at a particular period of painting.  A museum website might be able to offer you some advice about what kinds of preferences you might choose before your visit.

With the guide that I used, I moved between the individual exhibits entering exhibit numbers into a keypad.  Might there be a better less visible way to tell the guide device what exhibits are of interest?

In museums like Victoria and Albert and the Natural History Museum, it takes many visits to explore the galleries and exhibits.  Ideally a human guide would remember what you might have seen before and what interests you have.  Perhaps a digital personalized guide may able to store information about your previous visits, helping you to remember what you previously studied.  A digital system might also have the power to describe what has changed in terms of exhibits if some time has elapsed between your different visits.  A gallery may be able to advertise its own exhibits.

Challenges

These thoughts spring from an idealised vision of what a perfect audio (or mobile) guide through a museum or gallery might look like.  Ideally it should run on your own device, and ideally it should enable to learn and allow you to take snippets or fragments of your experience away with you.   In some senses, it might be possible to construct a museum exhibit e-portfolio (wikipedia), to store digital mementoes of your real-world experiences.

There are many unsaid challenges to realise a pervasive personalized mobile audio guide.  We need to understand how to best create material that works for different groups of learners.  In turn, we need to understand how to best create user models (wikipedia) of visitors.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges may lie with the creation of a standards-based interoperable infrastructure that might enable public exhibition spaces to allow materials and services to be made available to personal hand held devices.

Acknowlegement: image from Flickr by jonmcalister, licenced under creative commons.

In 2004 a report was published by the Disability Rights Commission (now known as the Equality and Human Rights Commission) that explored the state of website accessibility.  The DRC report, which is also summarised bythe on-law website analysed one thousand different web sites and evaluated their accessibility against the WCAG 1.0 guidelines.  It was concluded that 81% of the sites that were surveyed failed to reach the lowest level of accessibility (level A).

This statistic is surprising because it is such an alarmingly high figure.  This causes me to ask a closely related question: what does not being able to access websites mean?  One answer is that it can mean some people being unable to access goods, services and information.  It may also mean not being able to use tools that can be used to communicate with others.

Another question (and perhaps this is not a 'million dollar' question, but a 'multi-million dollar' question) is: what could we do to reduce this figure?  The DRC report presents a set of very sensible recommendations for different stakeholders: support service providers, assistive technology providers, operating system developers, website developers and owners, and developers of checking tools.

An alternative vision?

I think there is another approach that we could use.  The world-wide-web would not be what it is today without open source software (OSS).  You could even consider OSS to be the web’s backbone.  OSS powers the programming languages used to create open source operating systems (Linux).  These operating systems can play host to open source web servers (Apache), which in turn can offer functionality by through open-source software development frameworks build using open-source programming languages.

Some open source developments are more popular than others.  There may be a whole range of reasons that might contribute to success or popularity.  Usually it amounts to a vigorous development community and the fact that a product happens to solve a precise problem very well.

The 81% figure mentioned earlier relates only to web sites.  Many open source software developments are created especially to make it easier for other developers to build and manage different types of end-user facing web-based applications.

If we take the argument that there are open source software packages that are used to power web sites, and acknowledge the fact that some open source applications are likely to be more popular than others, we could argue that by improving the accessibility of certain web frameworks we might be able to reduce that 81% figure.

Of course, there is the difference between making changes to a software framework to make it more accessible to users, and making the materials that are presented using a framework more accessible.  Rather than tacking these two issues together, let's just thing about choosing software frameworks.

Choosing frameworks to explore

I use the web for loads of things.  I use it to both write and consume blogs.  I also use the web to buy stuff (especially around Christmas time!)  Very occasionally I might poke my head into on-line discussion forums, especially those that discuss programming or software development related topics.  I also browse to news portals (such as the BBC), and find myself on various information exchanges. 

In essence, I use the web for a whole range of different stuff.  If I take each of my personal 'web use cases', I can probably find an open source application that supports each of these tasks.  Let’s begin with the most obvious.  Let’s begin with blogs.

Blogging tools

Here, I have two questions: how accessible are blogging tools (to both read and write entries), and what blogging tools are out there?

I don’t know the answer to the first question, but I suspect that their accessibility could be improved.  On some sites you are presented with a whole range of different adverts and links.  Headings and tagging may be mysterious.  The blog editing tools may present users with a range of confusing icons and popups.  This is a topic ripe for investigation.

But what tools are out there?  A quick exploration of Wikipedia takes you to an article called Weblog software.  Immediately we are overwhelmed with a list of free and open source software.  But which are the most popular?  A quick poke around reveals two popular contenders for accessibility evaluation: Moveable Type and WordPress. 

A related question is: how many blogs do these systems collectively represent?  WordPress, for example, claims to be used with 'hundreds of thousands of sites' (and seen by tens of millions of people everyday), and reported 3.8 million downloads in 2007.  These are impressive figures.

Content management systems

Blogs are often referred to in the same sentence as a broader category of web software known as content management systems (or CMS for short).  As always, a quick probe around in Wikipedia reveals an interesting page entitled List of Content Management Systems. It appears there are loads of them!

CMS systems are used for different things.  You might use a CMS to create a way to more easily manage a static website that represents the 'store front' of a company or organisation (or brochureware sites, as I believe they might be know).  If used in this way a CMS can make the task of making updates a lot easier: you might not need a web designer to modify HTML code or add new files. Some CMS systems contain integrated blog tools.  As well as representing a store front, there might be a 'product' or 'service blog' to provide information to customers about new developments.

You might also use a CMS as an information portal.  A charity might use a CMS to provide fact sheets or articles on a particular subject.  A CMS may also provide additional functionality such as discussion forums, allowing users to share points of view on particular subjects.

A simple question is: which are the most popular open source content management systems?  This simple question is not easy to answer. It strikes me that you have to be closely involved with the world of content management systems to begin to answer this question effectively.  This said, a couple of systems jump out at me, all of which seem to have funny names.  Three systems that I have directly heard of are: Joomla!, Mambo and Drupal.  Other interesting systems include TangoCMS and PHPNuke. 

Unfortunately it is difficult to get a clear and unambiguous picture of how many web sites are created by these systems.  You cannot always tell by looking at the code of a website which content management system is has been created by.  This said, some research has been performed to explore other measures of popularity, such as downloads and search engine ranking values.  (Waterandstone Open Source CMS market share report - 5mb PDF)

What is certain, exploring the status of accessibility of one content management system may have a positive impact on wider set of websites.

Shopping

E-commerce isn’t the preserve of on-line megastores like Amazon.  Small specialist shops selling anything from diet pet food through to hi-fi speaker cables have the potential to become global 'clicks-and-mortar' retailers.

Some content management systems can be extended by installing additional 'blocks' to  add e-commerce functionality.  There is also a category of software that could be loosely described as shopping cart software (there is also a Wikipedia shopping software comparison page for the curious).  Further probing uncovers a category entitled Free electronic commerce software.

Following the links to osCommerce website, some interesting claims can be revealed.  It is stated that over fourteen thousand shops using this one platform have been voluntary added to a directory of on-line businesses. 

I also clicked on another shopping site provider: CubeCart. Although not an open source platform, CubeCart claims that it is used by a 'million store owners around the world'.  It is interesting to note that accessibility is not one of its selling points.

Community sites or forums

Content management systems have begun to step on the toes of what might be considered to be an older category of web software: community or on-line discussion forums.  As ever, Wikipedia is useful, offering a comparison page. Whatever your interest, there will be a forum on the web in which you can share opinions and experience with others.  Forums should be accessible too.

Summary

Creating a web site, or a web based application is hard work (in my opinion).  There is so much to think about: information architecture, graphical design, HTML coding, databases, CSS files.  To help you, there are loads of software development frameworks that can help out.  Many of these frameworks are open source, which means you can modify software so it can match your precise needs.

Another great thing about open source software is that if you find a framework that does not generate HTML code that is accessible as it could be, any improvements that you make has the potential to affect a wider user community of both developers and end users.

What is not clear, however, is the precise extent of the accessibility of some of the software frameworks that have been presented here.  Whilst it is true that accessibility is more a matter of changing or correcting programming code, exploring some of these projects in depth may be one way to increase the accessibility and on-line experience for the benefit of all web users.

Acknowlegements

Posting image, licenced under creative commons from chough, from Flickr.

One of the things that we need to do in the EU4ALL project is to create a prototype. To show the operation of a prototype, we need to show how content can be personalised. To show content personalisation happening we need some content. Luckily, the OpenLearn project is at hand to provide some Open Educational Resources (wikipedia) that we may be able to use.

The OpenLearn project provides learning materials in a number of formats. These formats range from native OU XML files, raw HTML files, IMS content packages through to RSS feeds and Moodle backup formats. This post is all about finding the most effective way to transfer OpenLearn to Moodle (and uncovering the best approach to use for on-going development work).

Using a Moodle Course Backup

The sample content that I'm going to use is a learning package about the Forth Road bridge (openlearn). This learning package (for want of a better term) is interesting since it contains a couple of different resources, including a video, a transcript in the form of a PDF file and some HTML pages.

In terms of loading the package to Moodle, I thought the easiest route would be to import the backup file type. The course backup facility allows Moodle users to make copies of entire courses (and their setup) for safe keeping. If inadvertent changes are made, a user then has the possibility of restoring (Moodle documentation) a course to your Moodle installation.

Others at the OU have blogged about similar issues, providing a more comprehensive description about how to setup an EEE netbook to allow users to view the OpenLearn material whilst on the move. This post takes (more or less) a similar approach, but focuses more on the different OpenLearn filetypes.

After downloading an OpenLearn Moodle backup course, I logged into Moodle as an administrator then clicked around on the 'course' menu options to see what I could find. It wasn't immediately clear what to do, so I went to the documentation for help. I found quite a few things.

I discovered that you needed to use the Course administration block. But this could be only accessed from within a course. It was apparent that to import a course, I needed to also create one.

After creating an empty course (using all the default settings), the course administration block duly appeared. From faint memories of this process, having played with this part of Moodle a couple of years ago I remember that restore was a two step process: first you had to upload the backup file, then you had to click on a restore link to start the backup process.

After trying to upload my backup package I was presented with a message that read 'a required parameter (id) was missing' ('what on earth does this mean?' I wondered). I then noticed that the size of my OpenLearn zip file was bigger (because it contained a video) than maximum supported upload file size in Moodle. Obviously I need to change a setting somewhere.

The first place that I looked was the Moodle system configuration file called config.php, but this didn't tell me much. I then delved into the area of my computer that contained the PHP installation and found a file called php.ini.

After a quick search, I discovered two places which might explain the maximum file size that Moodle has told me about. I subsequently make a change to the upload_max_filesize variable, setting it to 32MB, restarted my web server and then refreshed my browser. As if by magic, the maximum file size that Moodle allows has changed.

When trying the upload again, everything seemed to work okay (but I should say that the error message that I was presented with does need some attention).

When the upload from local file store to a Moodle folder was completed, I could see an adjacent 'Restore' button which I clicked. I was then presented with a question: 'Later in this process you will have a choice of adding this backup to an existing course or creating a completely new course – do you want to continue?' In my situation I initially want to do the latter operation, but I'm forced to do the former. I click yes to continue.

I was then presented with a list of actions that have been carried out: creating temporary structure, deleting old data etc, with no button or option to click on afterwards when it appears that everything has finished. Obviously things were not working as they should be. I carried out a further web search for answers.

I discovered the following from the Moodle backup and restore FAQ: 'Attempting to restore a course to an older version of Moodle than the one the course was backed up on can result in the restore process failing to complete'.

So, what versions am I using, and what version is the OpenLearn backup software provided in? To find the version of your Moodle installation, you have to go to the site administration menu (when logged in as an administrator), and click on Environment. I soon discover that I was using version 1.9+. I extract the contents of the OpenLearn Moodle Backup file and discover that it might be version 1.9, according to the first set of lines in an XML file that I discover. It seems I might be in a spot of trouble.

Getting Moodle Restore working

All was not lost, however. After some random searches I found a forum discussion. Fred has a suggestion: change a more recent programming file to an older version (which can be downloaded from the Moodle code repository). I changed the name of my 'restorelib.php' to 'backup restorelib.php' and download the version he suggests.

After replacing the file and restarting the restore process, magic begins to happen and messages are displayed on the screen. I'm then presented with a course restore screen, where a drop down box has the options: restore to new course (what I wanted to do initially), existing course deleting it first, existing course adding data to it. I chose 'existing course deleting it first', carelessly ignore everything else (which has been automatically ticked), and faithfully click on continue. I'm then presented with a list of courses to overwrite (I was surprised by this option since I thought I was automatically going to overwrite the course from where I clicked the 'restore' option through). Ignoring the warning, 'this process can take a long time', I clicked on 'restore this course now!'



It didn't take a long time, and a minute or so later, I could happily browse through (and edit) my newly imported OpenLearn courses. Fred saved the day!

But what of the other OpenLearn file options? I'll steer clear of the 'Unit Content XML', the 'OU XML Package' and IMS Common Cartridge for now and instead focus on some of the others.

IMS Content Package

IMS publishes specifications that aim to make learning technology systems interoperate with each other. One of the specifications that they have publishes is the content package (CP). A CP is essentially a bunch of files which are contained with a zip file. In the zip file there is something called a manifest file. This manifest file is, more or less, like a table of contents, when is read by a VLE/LMS like Moodle.

In Moodle, a CP can be a resource (interactive components are called activities). I create a new course, set a course to have a topic format, and choose to upload my CP to the first topic. When this is done, I browse to the newly added resource and Moodle tells me that it is about to deploy the CP (meaning, uncompress its contents and read the table of contents file). When complete, I can now navigate through the different pages of my material.



One of the differences between this format and the Moodle format is that the content is a lot more difficult to change. You have to use special tools, such as Reload to edit the manifest file, and HTML editors (and other similar tools) to change the contents of individual pages. Also, there is no direct way to include VLE supported interactive tools such as Wikis, blogs or on-line discussion forums in the middle of the material other than using the navigation mechanisms that the VLE provides (this will hopefully become a bit clearer later on).

SCORM

SCORM is an industry standard for the sharing of e-learning materials. SCORM makes use of IMS content packaging and defines an interface between the learning material and the VLE that is used to present the material.

This interface allows the VLE to record information such as whether the user has viewed all the pages of a SCORM resource, store interaction state to the VLE (such as answers for formative questions) and retrieve information from the VLE, such as the name of the current user (to allow partial customisation of a learning experience).

IMS content packages created by OpenLearn can also be viewed using the Moodle SCORM player (but I don't know if there are any problems doing this!).



SCORM originated from a US government initiative called Advanced Distributed Learning (wikipedia). As a result, it reflects its training origins. Like IMS CP, it does not directly support the inclusion of interactive activities that are provided by a VLE (other than the activities that are contained within the boundaries of a content package).

In Moodle, there are two ways to present SCORM resources. The first, as presented above, is to add it as an 'activity'. The other way is to create a course that has a SCORM format. Rather than having individual weeks or topics, a single SCORM occupies centre stage. Surrounding the centre, it is possible to create Moodle supported activities, such as forums. Here I have create a Moodle wiki, allowing consumers of the OpenLearn course to share links about bridge engineering (!), for example.



The way that Moodle presents IMS packages and SCORM objects (or SCOs – sharable content objects) are similar, but subtly different, making me wonder about the underlying source code. When I have time I'll explore the code development history to see whether they are related in any way.

Plain Zip

One of the simplest formats that OpenLearn supports is called plain zip.

Unzipping a 'plain zip' file reveals all the resources for a course (images, video and transcripts), along with two types of HTML file: an index file (which is similar to the Moodle course summary screen that was presented earlier), and set of content pages. The content pages themselves have their own navigation links, i.e. page 1 is connected to page 2 and so on. SCORM, on the other hand, provides its own mechanism to navigate between resource pages, generated by the information contained within a manifest file.

Two other things are provided in the plan zip package: a creative commons deed (describing licencing terms), and a formatting stylesheet. If you want, you can change the font and the colours of the content pages by changing the stylesheet. The action of double-clicking on any of the HTML files within this package displays the material directly in a browser.

So, how can a plain zip OpenLearn package be used in Moodle? Is it possible?

The answer is that it is possible, and it's quite easy, but the end result is obviously not as 'integrated' as the other approaches. First of all, I create a new course. I give my course an obvious name and set it to use the 'topics' format. Then I transfer my OpenLearn zip package to Moodle. To do this, I click on the Files menu (from administration block whilst logged in as an administrator), and upload the zip file to the course (each course has its own file area). When the file has been uploaded, I unzip the zip file. After pressing the course edit button, I can now add a link.

From the resource menu I click on 'link to a file or website'. Here I select 4ROAD_1_section0.html. This is the first content file in a sequence of four. It is the file that presents the learning objectives to a learner.



I turn editing off to see the effect of what I have done. Clicking on the new link takes you to the first page in the OpenLearn content, providing further navigation links that allows you to access all the other resources.

One thing that should be noted is that you have not directly uploaded the resource into a directory on the web server that anyone can access to. Only people who have legitimate access rights can gain access to these files.

These approaches rely on content being downloaded from the OpenLearn site to Moodle. Are there any other ways to tell your students about the OpenLearn content through Moodle?

RSS

The final way that I will describe is through RSS (wikipedia). RSS is most commonly associated with blog syndication. RSS can be described as an XML data structure that contains links to interesting material. OpenLean also provide RSS Feeds to individual courses. If you take a copy of a RSS feed link, you can use it within other tools. One of those tools is Moodle.

Moodle can make use of activities, resources and blocks. Blocks are the pieces of functionality that can surround courses. Blocks can be added, deleted and moved around. One of the blocks that Moodle provides is an RSS block.

Using course I created earlier, I add a new block and paste in the RSS feed link that I gathered from the OpenLearn course, then ticked a tickbox and confirmed something. As if by magic, my new block was populated by the contents of the OpenLearn course I had just told it about.



Clicking on one of these links takes you directly to the OpenLearn site, where you can access the material directly. The advantages of this approach is that you don't have to do very much, plus the material is always up to date.

There is an outstanding question that this section of the blog raises: could it be possible to create a Moodle activity (or resource?) called an 'RSS feed' that could be placed within the main body of a course? This way, educators could be able to quickly and efficiently group together different OpenLearn (or other forms of OER) resources. Furthermore, this would make it possible to group different 'blog reading or reviewing' activities together which may culminate in a forum discussion or even an on-line audio conference at a pre-arranged time. But here, I'm starting to digress...

Further information

After having completed (more or less) the first section in this post, I discovered an OpenLearn course entitled Re-using, Remixing and Creating Content. This provides further information about the different file types and how they can be manipulated.

Conclusions

There are a number of different ways to use OpenLearn content in Moodle. Each of them differ in terms of how much you have to do and how the end result appears. Taking a personal perspective, which one might be the best approach to use within my project?

What I want is flexibility: the ability to change a course and add an additional category of resource to the middle of it, should this be required. Since I'm going to be using Moodle as my main research tool, it makes sense to make use of the Moodle course format. I can then make use of the Moodle tools (should this be necessary) and move resources and sections around with relative ease.

Would I be considered to be weird if I said that I quite like exams? I admit, I do quite like the challenge, but more specifically, I also like the feeling of opening a paper and knowing (roughly) how to answer the questions I find, and making a choice about which questions I'm going to answer, and which ones I'm going to ignore (if I have a choice, of course). I also like receiving the result and relaxing when a course finishes!

A big question to ask in relation to taking exams is, 'how do you successfully transfer all the knowledge and understanding from your course into your head in such a form that you can answer potentially challenging (and interesting!) questions?' We all have our own unique set of strategies. I'll share some of mine.

Repurposing material

When I'm taking a course, one of the things that I do is make voluminous notes. I am a sucker for writing things down. I buy a couple of dividers and split a A4 (or a lever arch) file into sections corresponding to the blocks. I usually have a couple of extra dividers free for 'other stuff'.

I admit that I sometimes go a bit far, especially when I insist on choosing a single brand of pen for the whole set of notes that I make during a course. I make headings in a consistent style and sometimes experiment with underlining colours!

Although this might seem to be a bit unusual (in terms of my studying rituals), the activity of taking notes is central to my studying strategy. Once I have my notes and the exam date is looming, I sometimes re-write my notes. I take my sides of A4 and 'summarise them down' to a single side of A4, trusting that the stuff that is not on the page is faithfully held within my head.

In the e-learning world, the term 'repurposing' crops up from time to time. It means to take existing materials that have been designed for one purpose and to change them in some way so they can be used for something else. One of the difficulties of e-learning content repositories is that it is difficult to repurpose or reuse existing learning materials, perhaps because of the granularity of the material, or perhaps because that some material is too closely connected to a particular learning situation (or context). But I digress…

When working towards an exam, I actively 'repurpose' the contents of the course that I am studying. I take the course and transfer themes and ideas from the text books or the course materials and transfer them into my A4 file.

Learning pathways

The A4 file represents my own unique adventure or path through a set of learning resources, replete with questions to self, underlining, quotations and green underlining. My repurposing activity, as an active learner, is a construction activity. In essence, I have designed my own learning resources, or have designed my own learning.

When I was a student on The Challenge of the Social Sciences, I have to confess I was not looking forward to the exam. What helped me, was not only the excellent resources that the course team provided, but also the mind maps, sets of notes and other forms of crib sheets that my fellow students had posted selflessly to our on-line discussion forum. They were a great help, not only in seeing that others were revising as hard as I was, but they were also pointing out and bringing different parts of the course together in ways that I had previously missed. Guys, I owe you one!

Dead time

I often travel on a train. When studying, I try to read when I am travelling, which I find difficult. One of the reasons, other than that I cannot easily take notes because the train is bumping around (!), is that I'm often sitting next to someone who is insisting on talking loudly on their mobile phone the moment I wish to try to settle down to learn something about the history of empiricism. Not to mention the lack of 'elbow room' needed to work through ones course notes.

I much prefer listening to podcasts. Listening is another one of my learning preferences. If only I could easily convert my notes into audio form, I might be able to make better use of the 'dead time' I spend on a train.

One thing I could try to do (but I shall never dare!) is to make a podcast of my own notes. This does sound a bit extreme since I am lead to believe that making a podcast takes up lots of time, not to mention equipment.

You need to learn how to use your sound recording software, you might even start with a script, then there is a period of editing (podediting?) to edit out the false starts, door bell ringing, the dog or telephone…

This makes me wonder: is there a way to repurpose textual notes, interesting quotations, chapter headings and thematic points in such a way that you can create an interactive audio file that contains pathways that you could navigate through whilst your travel?

iLearningNotes

Not so long ago I learnt about the Daisy talking book project and was struck by the quality of the speech synthesisers that could be used (some of the same synthesisers are also used by the current generation of screen readers).

Imagine a tool, not unlike Compendium, where you could build audio mind maps. Underneath headings you could add notes and quotations. You could establish conceptual links between different titles, chapters and ideas. The graphical structures that you create could then be converted into speech using a high quality speech synthesiser.

Another possibility could be that you might be able to use excerpts from other podcastsVideo player: Media:Titanium.ogg

Back to learning design

There are some resonances between these ideas and the area of learning design tools and systems.

I first came across the concept of learning design when looking through the IMS specifications. I soon learnt that IMS LD was an XML language that could be used to construct descriptions of learning activities that could be executed using a player. I later came across a system called LAMS, and most recently was told about something called the e-lesson mark-up language, ELML.

Learning design, as an idea, can take many forms. The different systems vary in terms of dynamic adaptability, ease of authoring and who the language or system is intended for. Another is presented by CloudWorks, from what I understand.

My designs

When I study, I design my own learning with help from the materials that I am provided. This may occur when I travel on a train, carry out internet searches on the internet, or read some notes whilst drinking a cup of tea at home.

My own personal pathway through a set of resources may be very different to the pathway that other learners may choose. Learning about the differences, potentially through mobile devices, may help me (and fellow learners) to see new sets of connections that were not immediately understandable.

In doing so, we have the potential to create devices and tools that make better use of our 'dead time'.

Image modified from wikipedia

To really understand why things are the way they are today necessitates understanding what has happened in the past. This blog post is an attempt to build up an understanding of the current state of Moodle accessibility by looking into what has happened during parts of its development. My methodology is simple: begin with internet (and Moodle forum) searches, ask a few people to see what they know, and see where it takes me!

Initial results

A quick search using Cuil took me to some Moodle developer pages and the Moodle Accessibility Specification which has the headline, 'the document specifies improvements to the accessibility of the Moodle course management system for version 1.7’' This is useful. Both the page itself and the release number can point me towards some dates. Version 1.7 of Moodle dates from November 2006 onwards (until March 2007, when version 1.8 is released).

Digging a little further in the Moodle documentation, I discover the release notes for version 1.7. This provides a huge amount of information. Release notes are very often overwhealming for the casual reader. So, to help my search, I search this page for the term 'accessibility'.

Under Moodle 1.8 release notes, the words 'the Moodle interface is now compliant with XHTML Strict 1.0 and major accessibility standards' catch my eye. This is interesting, but what does this mean? Thankfully, there is a link. I’ll try to uncover what the significance of XHTML Strict later. Let's continue with the search for discussions relating to 'major accessibility standards'.

Moodle Accessibility Page

The link found on the 1.8 release notes takes me to the Moodle Accessibility page. The page provides several groups of other links: starting points, standards, legislation, tools and resources. A couple of things jump out at me: a link to the development tracker that relates to Accessibility Compliance in Moodle 1.8, a link to Italian Accessibility Legislation Compliance, and a link to an accessibility forum (guest login required).

It looks like I might be finding some very useful stuff! So much stuff, I need to focus down on what is often very important to me: source code. Code cannot lie, but on its own, it cannot always tell you its history... Thankfully, there are other ways to understand how (and why) things have changed.

Looking at the detail

To enhance the accessibility of Moodle, the developers have created tasks within a combined bug tracker and change management system. This is something that is common to loads of other software developments. Change management systems help developers to keep track of what has changed, when and by whom. If bugs are accidentally introduced as a result of changes, keeping records can help us to understand why. A side effect of a good tracker is that it can also tell you what changes are incorporated into individual releases.

Let’s have a look at a tracker entry to see what one of them says: Indicate type of resource in the name of the resource. This is an interesting one. For screen reader users, having advance warning about the file type is useful, particularly if a link is to a resource that is handled by an application outside of the browser, such as a PDF file, for example.

It’s also interesting to see that the tracker can also contain information about debates about the development of the software and, sometimes, its requirements. Clicking on the 'change history' may sometimes present you with a file that summarises the modifications that a Moodle developer has made to several files to make the accessibility enhancement.

Higher level advice

As well as the Accessibility Specification, one of the developers has created a useful page entitled Accessibility Notes (found within the developer area). This includes an executive summary of some of the guidelines, a roadmap for further accessibility developments, pointers towards future areas of development and a link to some accessibility 'patterns' which have been derived from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Relationship to WCAG?

You often hear WCAG mentioned in relation to different levels of conformance, specifically A, AA and AAA. Whilst searching the terms Moodle and WCAG, I found myself back at the forum that I mentioned earlier which had the title, a forum to discuss 'planned conformance to standards/laws such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (SENDA), Section 508 (USA)'

It should be said that there is no formal way to 'conform' to the WCAG guidelines. Whilst some of guidelines can be assessed by machine (by the use of a computer program), some sections of the guidelines require real people to determine whether or not a web page is accessible (according to the guidelines). It should be noted that even if something is accessible under one measurement, to some users, this might not be the case.

The issue of compliance is also complicated by the fact that Moodle (along with many other learning management systems) can make use of different blocks, modules or components in a range of different ways. The way that an application is use and configured can significantly influence its accessibility.

Although there is no definitive statement how Moodle adheres to the different WCAG 1.0 levels, but I have discovered a forum posting that relates to a question about the American Section 508 procurement legislation. But will there ever be a statement about WCAG? I decided to dig further by speaking to one of the contributors to the Moodle Accessibility Specification.

Whilst WCAG is great for content, it doesn’t work so well with interactive systems. The Moodle accessibility specification has been created by distilling accessibility principles and ideas from a number of different sources, WCAG as well as an organisation called IMS (see also the IMS Guidelines for Developing Accessible Learning Applications).

Future work?

It was recently announced that the latest version of the WCAG guidelines (version 2.0) will be soon released. One interesting piece of work would be to carry out an assessment of a 'vanilla' (or out of the virtual box) installation of Moodle against these new guidelines.

Strict!

Earlier on I mentioned that I might explore what is meant by the mysterious words XHTML Strict. Whilst browsing the Moodle accessibility pages, I discovered the Moodle tracker task that asked the developers to move to web pages that are 'marked up' in this way.

One part of this tracker jumps out at me, specifically: 'avoid using, within the markup language in which the page is coded, elements and attributes to define the page's presentation characteristics'. In essence, use semantic tagging on web pages as opposed to tagging that relates to the change of the visual characteristics of a display. Rather than using bold tags to indicate a heading, a developer should instead use heading tags. This way, the tags that 'add meaning' to a document can help users who have assistive technology navigate through a page more easily.

A further comment on the subject of semantic tagging is that if a developer needs to add visual formatting to a page, cascading style sheets should be used (CSS). CSS can be used to separate the structure of the content from how it appears on the users screen. A great illustration of what CSS is and what it is capable of can be found within the CSSZengarden.

There is another line within the tracker problem that was interesting: 'for all new sites, use at least version 4.01 of HTML, or preferably version 1.0 of XHTML'. What does this mean, and is there a difference between the two, and why is a difference preferred? Let’s have a look what they are in Wikipedia which contains a paragraph that explains how XHTML relates to HTML.

It seems there are little differences between the two, except that the HTML pages become well-formed XML documents. Not only can then the resulting pages be manipulated by programs that can manipulate XML (and more easily check for different types of conformance – page checking is mentioned in the tracker comments page), but by insisting that they are 'well formed' may prevent the possibility of 'ill-formed' pages confusing assistive technologies, such as screen readers.

The tracker provides more information about how XHTML relates to accessibility. WCAG states that content authors (and you could argue that a page generated by Moodle is content) should 'create documents that validate to published grammars' (checkpoint 3.2). Other useful WCAG checkpoints include guidance not to use deprecated (now obsolete or old) features, and select W3C technologies when they are available, and use the latest versions. In essence, take advantage of new technologies when they are available for use.

Summary

It seems that accessibility, as a subject, has been discussed on the Moodle forums since November 2005. Since this date, a lot of work has been carried out to improve the accessibility of Moodle, some by the Open University. Evidence of this work can be found documented within the Moodle project without too much difficulty. I hope this post has helped to show where (and how) to find information about Moodle accessibility.

Although it can be argued that no platform is totally accessible, strides have been made to make Moodle more suitable for users of assistive technology. Anyone who uses Moodle has to be aware that the accessibility of such a system does not only depend upon the programming code alone, but also how it is used, and what materials it presents to learners.

Acknowledgements are extended to those who I spoke to during preparation of this post. You know who you are!

As a part of the EU4ALL project, I have been trying to figure out how to add a new resource type. The idea is to add a resource known as an 'adaptable resource', whereby different media types are presented to the user depending on their accessibility preferences. The issue of how and where to assign or change these preferences is currently a question that has to be resolved. This post is intended as a bunch of 'notes to self' about what I have found during the last couple of days exploring and poking around the Moodle code base.

To explore the code, I've been using a couple of tools: SQLYog, which was recommended to me by an illustrious IET developer (to allow me to explore an instance of a Moodle MySQL database I have running on my home machine), and NuSphere, a PHP IDE. I did try the Zend IDE a year or so back, but abandoned it since I became rather confused!

So, how is it possible to add a new resource to Moodle? Initially, I decided to look at an existing resource, beginning with the simplest one that I could find: a simple text resource. By browsing the code base I seemed to find the rough area where the 'resource code' lives. I also browsed around the developer documentation page an unearthed a resource class template. Great!

In development, one question instantiates a tree of others. The most fundamental question is: how does this code work? I need to answer this big one to make a change. This is too big, so I split it into two other questions: (1) how can you modity a form that allows you to enter the parameters that describe an adaptable resource (currently it is to be a simple numerical value, from what I understand), and (2) how can I take the values held within a form and update them to the MySQL database? This requires an understanding of further magic code. As a note to myself, let's have a look at each of these in turn.

Entering stuff

Looking at the text resource code, there seemed to be a bit of object-oriented polymorphism going on. The name of the directory where the resource code is important too! There is a magic function called display which appears to make some further magic calls to create some data entry fields - but these calls are quite a long way away from the pure HTML that is presented in the browser window.

This is another question: how does the magic functions in display() get turned into HTML? The answer apparently lies with the application of a forms library called PERL. If I figure out how to add functions in a way that would work for this library, I can ask the user for whatever I want.

The form uses some object-oriented principles. Individual controls are added to 'the form', and then a function is executed that 'prints out' or renders each of the controls, without you having to go near to producing your own HTML.

Another interesting observation, is that the display function I have uncovered only relates to a small part of a bigger form. This is due to subclassing and polymorphism that is being used, but this is a distraction... now I have a little understanding of what is happening (thanks to the NuSphere debugger!), I'll park this question for the time being. There are other mysterious areas to explore!

Storing stuff

When a Moodle user edits a course resource, there are a couple of buttons that appear at the bottom of the screen. These are 'save and return', 'save and display' and 'cancel'. Looking at these buttons from a HCI perspective I think, 'buttons doing two different things?? surely this is a bad idea!'. But I digress.

My question is, 'what happens when the tutor (or administrator) clicks on either of the save buttons - where does the data go? Or more precisely, how does the data get saved?

Moodle seems to have a thin database layer: a set of functions that allows you to send SQL statements and receive data in response. Since the contents of the resource form is held in what can only be described as a 'big variable' (PHP has a funny approach to object-oriented programming if you've used other languages), the Moodle developers have figured out a way to transfer the contents of a form to the database, by matching on-screen fields to database fields.

This seems to work well: but on the downside is the database update code that Moodle code generates appear to be rather big, and an implicit dependency is created between the form and the database structure. Other systems that I've looked at make use of stored procedures, which has the potential to boost performance and security on one hand, but on the other restrict the database platforms that an application can be used with.

Moving forwards

Now I know (roughly) how to add extra bits to a new resource type, the next thing I have to do is figure out how to write the functions that I need. After I've done that I'll have to hook up my edits to the database, and figure out how to best display the data that I've produced. I already have some idea about how to do this since I have created a paper prototype.

But before going down that road, I think I'll continue my survey of the Moodle codebase by exploring what sections can potentially relate to adding and manipulation of user parameters and settings. I think I'll start by looking at the user profile developer pages.

Looking towards the longer term, I will also have to connect Moodle to a number of different web services. Wish me luck!