Moodle LMS: Hot Potatoes is Now Free!

I blogged recently about the development of the Nanogong and the Riffly audio-visual plugins for Moodle 2.0. Today, I'm pleased to announce that an old - that is, well-established -Moodle plugin is now freely available.

Now read on…

I first encountered the Hot Potatoes question-test (Q-T) and exercise generation suite back in 2006 as an MSc student in Dublin. As a commercially-available utility, it offered well-rounded enhancements to the fairly basic Q-T capabilities of the Moodle platform. As of version 6.2, Hot Potatoes is now free to use.

According to the developers Half-Baked Software Inc.

The purpose of the Hot Potatoes is to enable you to create interactive Web-based teaching exercises which can be delivered to any Internet-connected computer equipped with a browser. The exercises use HTML and JavaScript to implement their interactivity, but you do NOT need to know anything about these languages in order to use the programs. All you need to do is enter the data for your exercises (questions, answers, responses etc.), and press a button. The program will create the Web pages for you, and you can then upload them to your server.

There are five basic programs in the Hot Potatoes suite:

1. JQuiz creates question-based quizzes.
   Questions can be of four different types, including multiple-choice and short-answer. Specific feedback can be provided both for right answers and predicted wrong answers or distractors. In short-answer questions, the learner's guess is intelligently parsed and helpful feedback to show what part of a guess is right and what part is wrong. The learner can ask for a hint in the form of a "free letter" from the answer.
2. JCloze creates gap-fill exercises.
   Unlimited correct answers can be specified for each gap, and the learner can ask for a hint and see a letter of the correct answer. A specific clue can also be included for each gap. Automatic scoring is also included. The program allows gapping of selected words, or the automatic gapping of every nth word in a text.
3. JCross creates word jumble / crossword puzzles which can be completed online.
   You can use a grid of virtually any size. As in JQuiz and JCloze, a hint button allows the learner to request a free letter if help is needed.
4. JMix creates jumbled-sentence exercises.
   You can specify as many different correct answers as you want, based on the words and punctuation in the base sentence, and a hint button prompts the learner with the next correct word or segment of the sentence if needed.
5. JMatch creates matching or ordering exercises.
   A list of fixed items appears on the left (these can be pictures or text), with jumbled items on the right. This can be used for matching vocabulary to pictures or translations, or for ordering sentences to form a sequence or a conversation.

These tools are complemented by a program called the Masher, which facilitates the creation of complete units of material (such as multiple-question quizzes) in one simple operation. The utility supports a range of question types including:

• True/False
• Short Answer
• Multiple Choice
• Cloze Test
• Word Jumble / Crossword
• Drag and Drop
• Mix and Match

Hot Potatoes allows you to add:

• Text
• Images
• Audio
• Video
• Question Timer
• Web plug-in objects like Flash Player

to your web server or LCMS-deployed question tests. The tool also adds interoperability in the shape of SCORM 1.2.

Hot Potatoes is available for Windows (except 95), for Linux running Wine version 6.3 and for Mac OS X.

Click here to find out more about Hot Potatoes (external link to developer's site). .

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Some interesting Moodle audio visual plugins just released

I've been discussing podcasting in some depth recently: today I've decided to take a break from the topic, and tell you about a related subject.

Now read on...

Let's pretend for a moment that you've followed all my advice, tips, and suggestions about creating, authoring, recording and producing podcasts with alacrity. Your content needs to be stored somewhere to be distributed to your audience. In the e-learning world we use learning management systems (or LMS) to manage this task.

An LMS (or the related Learning Content Management System) is software for delivering, tracking and managing training and education resources. LMSs range from systems for managing learner records to software for distributing coursesvia the Internet, typically including features for online collaboration. LMSs can also automate record-keeping, as well as for:

• Registration of learners for classroom and online courses
• Student self-service (e.g., self-registration on instructor-led training), training workflow (e.g., user notification, manager approval, wait-list management)
• The provision of on-line learning (e.g., Web-Based Training, podcasts)
• On-line assessment
• Management of continuous professional education (CPE)
• Collaborative learning (e.g., application sharing, discussion threads)
• Training resource management (e.g., instructors, facilities, equipment)

One of the most popular, effective, and easy-to-use LMSs is Moodle. Moodle has been taking part in the Google Summer of Code, and it looks like some interesting new plugins have emerged from the project. Among them are the Nanogong and the Riffly plugins for Moodle 2.0.

The Nanogong plugin allows audio-only recording inside Moodle repositories. Captured in WAV format, files are stored in Moodle using the ImaACPCM or Speex codecs. Recorded files and the recording applet are available in all places where the repository is used to select files.

The Riffly plugin allows audio-only or audio-video recording inside Moodle repositories. Encoding in Flash FLV forma,t files can be stored on riffly.com servers or downloaded to Moodle. Recorded files and the recording Flash object is available in all places where the repository is used to select files.

Note that Moodle 2.0 is under development, and is UNSTABLE. It should NOT be used for production sites. For developers, testers and any other people who helping create the next generation of Moodle. The latest stable release of Moodle is 1.9.5. I recommend that your download, install and have a play with the platform if you haven't done so already.

Next time: Back to podcasting

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Moodle Flies High

When I was an undergraduate, I worked for a summer in the Phillips assembly plant in Eindhoven in The Netherlands. Life as a "gluer and screwer" or line assembly worker is quite repetitive, and repetitive, and repetitive, and repetitive, so my college friends and I tried to get to visit the cultural amenities of nearby Amsterdam as often as possible: yes, there are many galleries and museums to broaden a young man's mind in one of the jewels in Europe's crown - I recommend it.

After one particularly "cultural" weekend, my friends and I found ourselves in Centraal Station waiting for our train back to Eindhoven, and across the platform I saw an odd thing: a group of skiers! My initial thought was that I had hit the culture a little too hard, what would skiers be doing in the Low Countries (which after all, is famed for its plains, lack of topographical relief, and general flatness), and in the Summer, no less?

Holland: notably bereft of the conditions for skiing

Eventually the answer seeped into my culture-addled brain: of course! They were going to the Alps! As a young lad from a small island nation on the western margin of Europe (the island without the Eurotunnel) it had simply never occurred to me that you could hop on a train in one country, and a few hours later be on the piste in Switzerland, Austria or Italy.

Living in Ireland, the only way I can travel off the island is by sea and by air. As a result of this situation, most Irish people have quite the soft spot for Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline. Until the emergence of Ryanair and other low-cost carriers, flying Aer Lingus was the only way to travel to foreign lands quickly and comfortably: it's how I travelled to go on the piste (as it were) in Holland after all.

So I'm pleased to see that Aer Lingus have decided to use Moodle (another organization I have a much admiration for) for their Online Pilot Training courses. The aviation industry has been involved with e-learning for over twenty years - indeed, the first generally-used e-learning specification AICC was an aviation industry initiative, developing guidelines for the development, delivery, and evaluation of computer-based, and Web-based Training (and related training technologies).

AICC specifications are usually designed to be general purpose (and not necessarily aviation specific) so that learning technology vendors can spread their costs across multiple markets and thus provide products at a lower cost. This strategy has resulted in AICC specifications having broad acceptance and relevance to non-aviation and aviation users alike. Even today, AICC PENS (Package Exchange Notification Services) is a broadly-used standard implemented in many e-learning authoring packages, such as Adobe Captivate.

Aer Ling chose Enovation, an Irish Moodle Partner, to undertake on the consultancy in the project. Using Moodle, Enovation provided the following services in line with Aer Lingus’s technical requirements:

• Hosting – Provided secure solution hosting for Aer Lingus courseware.
• Training – Provided hands-on training to all administration staff at Aer Lingus.
• Reporting – To comply with industry regulations, Aer Lingus has to produce a report to show that users view and complete all tasks within Moodle. As part of this, Enovation integrated the third-party reporting solution, Jaspersoft, with Moodle to allow administrators to report on user activity.
• Branding – Enovation customized Moodle to match the Aer Lingus branding.
• Support – Enovation implemented a Web-based issue reporting and tracking system for Aer Lingus.
• Courseware – Enovation worked with Aer Lingus to transform their original course content into the Moodle environment.

According to Conor Rock, Training Captain at Aer Lingus,

Moodle has been universally well received by the pilots and we have reduced our training costs, what can I say - the project has been a huge success.

Captain Rock continued that Moodle could be used in other domains within Aer Lingus:

Moodle has obvious potential in other areas. I see Aer Lingus expanding Moodle to the wider employee base for cabin crew and technical training.

Next time: back to ISD

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Moodle 1.9 – Potential Vulnerability

I recently wrote a small article for CMS Report about Moodle 1.9. One of the site’s contributors has let me know that there is a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability that hackers have used on older builds of Moodle. According to The Register:

Twenty schools' sites have fallen victim to the spoofed or defaced web page porn assault, the Times Educational Supplement reports. Many of the sites use Moodle, an open source content management system that is used to create online learning sites, sparking the theory that flaws in older versions of the package have been used to mount the attacks.

The Register article continues:

If vulnerabilities in Moodle are indeed the cause of the attack then … a Moodle script insertion and cross-site request forgery flaw (here) as the likely candidate. Another Moodle bug (here) is another possibility.

Moodle.org are taking this very seriously. According to their Security page, this is a Sev Critical issue, and they recommend that all Moodle users install the latest Moodle package from http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=448.

Be warned…

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A reliable and straightforward guide to using Moodle 1.9

I opened my copy of Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development by William Rice with a high expectation that it would be an informative and practical reference text. Why? I was about to upgrade to Moodle 1.9. Did it meet my expectations?

Now read on...

Using open source software can be a daunting experience, regardless of your technical or business experience, and this text's purpose is to shorten users' path to competency in the application. Broadly speaking, the text covers four Moodle-related activities:

• Installing and configuring Moodle 1.9
• E-Learning course development and delivery
• E-Learning course management
• Moodle administration and maintenance

The author assumes zero previous knowledge of the application, and begins by describing Moodle’s Social-Constructionist approach to learning, before bringing the reader on a whistle-stop tour of Moodle 1.9’s features and functionality– a very good idea indeed, as this goes some way to providing an understanding of why Moodle 1.9 looks and works the way it does for newcomers, acts as a pertinent reminder for experienced Moodlers, and sets the context for the course creation sections later in the book.

The book is structured in a logical and linear fashion: the author aims to guide you through the full application implementation and course development process. The text seems to be aimed primarily at teachers and trainers and the author spends the majority of the manual discussing – in detail and very effectively - the processes, “how-to’s” and “gotchas” of using Moodle from a teaching and training perspective. I must point out that something strange must have happened during the editing process of the book, as there’s some glaring typos (and even a whole word omitted from the back cover of the text) which are a distraction, but do not deter from the usability of the manual.

Moodle at Michael Hanley Consulting

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, this book was my companion through a recent upgrade from Moodle 1.6 to 1.9, and it did not let me down. As an experienced Moodle user, I used the book very much as a “just enough, just in time” resource rather than as an end-to-end guide through the application. My experience was that the text works very well when used in this fashion. Some other positive aspects of my “user experience” of the text included the author’s accessible and direct writing style and use of web-based resources like a downloadable Moodle Project Plan. In my view this text is a straightforward and reliable companion for those who seek to find out more about – and use – Moodle 1.9.

As a taster for the text, click here to download a chapter from the book (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).

_____________

References:

Rice, W. (2008) Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development Packt Publishing Ltd. Birmingham, UK.

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End-of-year Moodle-ings: a chance to review (a book)

As you’ll know if you’re a regular reader of the E-Learning Curve Blog, I strongly advocate the Constructivist approach to learning, and the use of open-source technologies to develop and distribute e-learning materials. You’ll also know that my Learning Management System of choice is Martin Dougiamas’ Modular Object-Orientated Learning Environment (Moodle), as this particular platform tick both those boxes.

As we come to the end of 2008, I have finally gotten around to do begin undertaking some essential housekeeping tasks on my website, michaelhanley.ie.

Among those activities is a long-overdue upgrade to Moodle 1.9 - I’ve been itching to get an opportunity to investigate and use these new features and enhancements:

• Social networking functionality (i.e. tagging)
• The user blogs facility
• The improved wiki

And most especially:

• Learning Outcomes

The enhanced backup and restore features and new DB module will also assist management of my implementation, as I’m the kind of person who feels like they’re performing open heart surgery – without anesthetic - on a patient, on those occasions when I have to perform some sort of customization on a production system.

By coincidence Packt Publishing recently contacted me and asked me to review Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development, by William Rice IV. The publishers describe the text as:

A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle, focused on course development and delivery and using the best educational practices. …Moodle E-Learning Course Development shows you how to use Moodle as a tool to enhance teaching.

In my view there are certain publishers – Packt, Friends of Ed, O’Reilly and so on, who can generally be trusted to provide hands-on expertise for IT professionals, so I already own a couple of Packt’s texts. But before I hear you shout “Canyonero!” I will undertake to review this text on it’s own merits, in an equitable manner. There’s no point in me saying that this book meets the needs of its potential audience if it doesn’t.

Since my reviewer’s copy of the text just arrived in the post today, I’ll be taking the opportunity to review the book in the very near future, so watch this space.

In the meantime if you’d like to take a look at the book yourself, Packt Publishing have given me Chapter 6, “Adding Interactive Course Material” as a 3.4MB PDF for you download.

• Click here to download the PDF from my website michaelhanley.ie

or

• click here to get the chapter from Packt Publishing.com

____________________

References:

Rice, W.H. (2008) Moodle 1.9 E-Learning Course Development Available online: http://www.packtpub.com/

Wikipedia contributors, The Last Temptation of Krust. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, [Internet] Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canyonero [Accessed December 12, 2008]

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New Moodle releases: updates available for v1.9.2, 1.8.6, 1.7.5 and 1.6.7

Latest releases from Moodle - according to Martin Dougiamas they have packaged a new release for the current 1.9 version of Moodle, as well as new releases for older 1.8, 1.7 and 1.6 versions.

Each of the new releases contains long lists of minor bug fixes (see the release notes for details).

Several security vulnerabilities were also fixed in all versions, so it's important that you upgrade existing Moodle sites.

The Moodle team recommend that even if you can't make major upgrades in the near future, you should at least upgrade to the latest stable package for your version. (For example if you have 1.8 already, then it's very safe and easy to upgrade it to the new 1.8.6 because there are no new features, just bug fixes)
All releases are available, as usual, from the Moodle download site.

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Martin Dougiamas says: Moodle 1.9 now released! Hurrah!!

Like the man in the title said, Moodle 1.9 has been released.
Headline features include:

• Gradebook - Completely rewritten from scratch for speed and flexibility. The new gradebook consists of plugins for reports, imports and exports. There are a number of standard reports which are useful for graders, students etc. The grader report allows you to treat the gradebook much more like a spreadsheet with manual editing, calculations, aggregations, weighting, locking, hiding, textual notes and so on.
  
  
• Outcomes - You can also now develop a list of expected outcomes (competencies) and connect these to courses and activities. You can even grade against multiple outcomes at once (i.e. Rubrics).
  
  
• Events API - The new Events API provides a way for any code to "hook" into events in a clean, loosely coupled way. A lot of events in Moodle (such as adding a user or a course) now trigger events that developers can hook into.
  
  
• Scalability and performance improvements - A complete overhaul of the Roles implementation for correctness and scalability. Large sites with thousands of courses and users now load quickly and behave well under heavy traffic, thanks to reworked code for Roles. Additional boost for sites using PHP pre-compilers and significant improvements in the database access code for all databases. Many other parts of Moodle have been optimised to cope better with large numbers of courses and students. Overall performance is very noticeably increased.
  
  
• Moodle Network - Moodle 1.9 and Mahara E-portfolio v0.9 now do transparent Single Sign On - one to one, one to many, many to many. Students can maintain their personal E-portfolios in Mahara.
  
  
• Tags - Allows users to describe their own interests in terms of tags, which creates interest pages around those tags, bringing information together from a variety of sources (Blogs, Flickr, Youtube etc)
  
  
• Improved question bank - Allows questions to be shared by the whole site, a course category, a single course, or be kept private to a single module. More control over who can do what to each question. Improved file management for files linked to by questions.
  
  
• Notes - Detailed notes can be kept about individual users (for example teachers might want to keep and share notes about students in their class).
  
  
• Bulk user actions - Administrators can perform bulk user actions, such as the mass deletion of user accounts. Extended features in the bulk user upload script to allow generation of user fields based on templates.
  
  
• Custom corners theme - Beautiful and curvy (in all browsers).

Find out more here [links to Moodle.org]

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