shared portable moodle...moodle to local portable version. theres no sync magic here. –this is...

Shared Portable Moodle

Taking online learning offline to support disadvantaged students

Stephen Grono, School of Education University of New England, Armidale

sgrono2@une.edu.au @calvinbal

Shared Portable Moodle

Taking online learning offline to support disadvantaged students

Stephen Grono, School of Education University of New England, Armidale

sgrono2@une.edu.au @calvinbal

Online Learning

• More access to information than ever before.

• Constant opportunities to learn on demand.

• Unique, often free, self-paced, interest-driven.

• Formal/informal distance education methods.

• MOOCs, VLEs, social media, learning comms.

Distance Education

• University of New England. Armidale, NSW.

• 22,000+ domestic & international students.

• 200 programs, across 23 discipline areas.

• >80% of these students studying by distance.

Rich, Accessible Learning

• Online learning environments like Moodle provide a rich space for learners to share, regardless of their geographical location.

• Learning materials can readily be provided in increasingly interactive, adaptive, collaborative and multimodal formats.

• Which anyone can access, at any time.

And that’s the assumption we make.

Finding a solution?

• Mailing print materials no longer fits the multimodal, interactive approach

• Sending PDFs, similarly, loses the contextual learning design within the unit

• So a localised copy of Moodle with content!

• Except without any of the setup process

• … because students.

A (very) brief literature review

• A quick Google shows several projects around similar ideas. Many as far back as around 2007. Trouble is, hard to find mention of them beyond these early discussions circa 2007… – Open University UK’s Moodle Client project

– Colin Chambers’ Offline Moodle project

– Jolongo, utilising MS Air

– MAF-LT’s Poodle, using Moodle 1.9

– Nearly Virtual’s 2014 updated Poodle 2.7, by manually upgrading from the above project’s ‘2.1 beta’

A (very) brief literature review II

• Or a few more still in testing, or designed around a particular project. These ones often were looking into syncing & client programs.

• (And the Moodle Mobile App, which is neat)

• The takeaway was we’ve got a solid base to draw from, and a positive future in supporting these students, but not a lot that was current.

• It was also that it needed to be easy to customise, adapt & update.

Shared Portable Moodle (spoodle)

• Runs directly off a flash drive that can be sent out to a student who may not have internet access, or partial/restricted internet.

• Local instance of Moodle launched from the student’s own computer, so can contain theme, settings & plugins from UNE Moodle.

• Shared Portable Moodle, or ‘spoodle’ for short

• Yes, I am about to launch into a bad dog joke…

Some quick math with dogs

2 =

Some quick math with dogs

= +

So its sort of a spoodle

• Not bigger, its just sort of a hybrid version

What it is

• Contains all the activities and learning materials normally found within Moodle

• In the same carefully scaffolded structure and design the modules were intended to be engaged with, and in their intended context

• Locally accessible copies of readings / videos

• Easy, personalised differentiation by plugins

• By copying individual units into customised, blank copy of Moodle, to be send via USB

What it isn’t

• Point-in-time backup and restore from live Moodle to local portable version. There’s no sync magic here.

– This is good for security / data integrity

– But not so good if the lecturer is still designing course materials throughout the trimester

• To prevent students uploading files / posting to the local copy where they’ll never be seen, intentionally disabled submission for students

– Still arrange proper submission case by case

The semi-technical - what we changed

• In many ways base is similar to the official moodle.org packages – XAMPP bundle, forced into Portable mode, with a customised ‘click to start’ exe file for easy launch. Launcher will auto-load homepage in default browser.

• This time though, Moodle is preinstalled, and will adapt to the drive letter (or can be copied into the base C:/ drive for faster running).

The semi-technical - what we changed II

• Can be accessed across network, adapts to IP changes without needing to update mysql

• Removed all email requirements and checks

• Removed weekly wait to clean up temp files

• Disabled messaging. Removed guest access

• Disabled assign submission / forum posting

• Enabled conditional access / activity tracking … and a few other small changes

S for Shared

http://steve.moodlecloud.com

• Versions for Moodle 2.7 – 3.1

• Just add your own branding / plugins and go

• Instructions of which files & Moodle settings have been changed, so you can adapt to suit (and update to latest versions if I go missing)