The event was largely to reveal updates on two major projects – the transition to the new Online Learning Environment, QMplus and the expansion of Q-Review Lecture Capture.

Q-REVIEW LECTURE CAPTURE

As of September 2012, Q-Review will be expanding to over forty rooms across all campuses.

To hear more about Q-Review and upcoming upgrades, you can listen to Eoin McDonnell’s presentation from the E-Learning Townhall event here:

http://ess.q-review.qmul.ac.uk:8080/ess/echo/presentation/92894fd7-4134-4e30-9fd9-9c39a447d3f9

QMPLUS, ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

The University is also currently transitioning to a new Online Learning Environment called QMplus which is a combination of the open source software Moodle and Mahara and will be replacing the previous Blackboard VLE.

To hear more about QMplus and upcoming events, you can listen to Stella Ekebuisi’s presentation from the E-Learning Townhall event here:

http://ess.q-review.qmul.ac.uk:8080/ess/echo/presentation/8d0d495b-8581-4438-9a5d-e4e3ef5adccf

Again, apologies for any inconvenience this service interuption may have caused.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may be causing.

After this time the following dialog may appear after logging in to www.elearning .qmul.ac.uk.

Please select the ‘Run’ option to use the new security certificate when using Blackboard. If you select the ‘Always trust content from this publisher’ box, you will not be presented with the dialog again.

Update: Due to unexpected delays we have had to move the date of the essential security upgrades. The Virtual Learning Environment will now be offline on Friday 13/04/2012 from 17:30 to 19:30 in order for us to apply these essential upgrades. We apologise for any inconvenience.

If this impacts on a critical period for your teaching and learning activity at QMUL please open a ticket under the Blackboard Request Type at https://helpdesk.its.qmul.ac.uk/

Regards,

The Learning Institute

Apologies for this short notice.

We have been informed by IT Services that they will be carrying out maintenance work on the College’s authentication systems this Thursday (29/03) between 6pm and 11pm.

This should not cause difficulty with logging into College systems but Blackboard should be considered ‘at risk’ during that period. You may have issues logging in successfully.

All services should be fully functional by 11pm. However, if you should find this is not the case, please restart your machine or device and try again.

If you are still unable to login, please email the IT Services Help Desk at its-helpdesk@qmul.ac.uk.

Regards,

E-Learning Unit

Overview timeline - click for large version

Progress

The project has made considerable progress over the last month, and we now have an initial version of Moodle and Mahara installed and some users have had their first training through “engage in depth” meetings with ELU staff.

Name

The OLE needs a name, because it’s more than just a plain Moodle install (and we don’t want to call it MoodleMaharaTurnItInTalisQ-Review).  Staff are now used to ‘OLE’ but it isn’t descriptive for students.

In December we asked students and staff to suggest suitable names, and got over 400 responses.  Over 500 people then voted on a shortlist until voting closed at the end of February.  This resulted in the name… QMPlus. Read more about it here.

Moodle and Mahara

The initial install went live at the end of January, and was followed by training in Moodle for ELU staff.  Following from this, ULCC have installed a number of plug-ins to provide a significant proportion of the functionality described in the requirements document.  This includes the assessment tool which offers second and blind marking, and the TurnItIn plug-in (though this still needs to be configured).

Migration

Twenty one of the forty five “engage in depth” initial interviews have taken place, with the remainder due this month.  While it was intended that many of these should be undertaken by the e-learning advisers appointed to the project, delays in their appointment mean that the interviews are all being undertaken by existing ELU staff.   Two e-learning advisers have been appointed on a contract basis for six months each, and will start on 10 April.  The recruitment of two further advisers is proceeding (there were no internal candidates) with the intention of appointing them for one year.

Configuration

The first phase of the project involves designing the platform to QM’s needs.  That’s both in terms of what functionality we choose to use and how it is presented.

We are working closely with the University of London Computing Centre (who are providing the software) to configure it to our exact specification, in order to meet the requirements which were gathered from staff and students across QM.

Example:  There was a requirement for anonymous and 2^nd/3^rd marking.  This isn’t native to Moodle but is being developed for us in a custom assessments module by ULCC, which means that we’ll be one of the first universities to have it.  So in the last week they have installed the custom module and we are now testing it.

There are some 350 requirements to configure and test and we’re well underway.

Design

By default, Moodle is not very attractive.

So we are also working with QM’s Creative Services and an external design agency (who are world leaders in Moodle design) to create attractive, usable QM-specific designs for the interface.

They are also designing templates for different faculties and schools, based on the meetings we are having with academic representatives in the various disciplines.

Themes are being designed for desktop computers, mobile phones and tablets.

There is a screenshot at the foot of this post showing a flavour of the second round of designs, and each stage is informed by feedback from students and staff.

Integrations

The platform needs to integrate with other technologies at QM:

• Colleagues will be able to use their QM identities to log in by the end of March.
• SITS integration will mean that the platform knows which students are enrolled on which modules, and will be ready in the summer in good time for students to access their modules for next year as soon as they are enrolled.
• TurnItIn integration (for plagiarism detection) will similarly be ready well in advance of the new academic year.
• It will be integrated with email so that you can receive a richer array of notifications to your QM email (or the email of your choice)
• The integration with Q-Review (for digital recordings of lectures) is being built at the moment.  When we move to a recent version of the Q-Review software, you will see a really rich integration with Moodle, allowing you to show all your lecture videos embedded in the platform by sequence (no more calendar links, unless you want them).  We will demonstrate this integration in April and it will be ready in the early summer.
• The TALIS reading list software will integrate by early summer, well in time for teaching.
• Over the next year, and as other technologies are introduced at QM, these will integrate with Moodle too, to include calendars, cloud-based services, timetables, document and content management systems.  You will only need to sign in once.

Transition Planning: Faculty Strategies, School Plans

We are working with the faculties in planning for their use of the online learning environment over the next few years, in order to plan for how to use it to really enhance teaching and learning for QM students.  A policy has been developed with Humanities and Social Sciences, we’re developing strategies with the School of Medicine and Dentistry, and are in the middle of a series of planning meetings with Science and Engineering.

We are also working now with School teams so that, within those faculty frameworks, they can move ahead now with planning for how they will use the platform.

There are also individual programmes which have special requirements (e.g. for Distance Learning) and we are engaging with them.

HSS – plan in place, moving as one for 2012-13.  Our ‘Engage In Depth’ sessions have started with early adopters.

S&E – planning at the moment.  Schools will move at different paces, with many using 2012-13 for pilots, exploration.

SMD – Planning at the moment.  MBBS exploring whether to move now for 2012 or use it as a pilot year.  Dentistry developing plans as part of their curriculum review.  PG and DL courses planning for transition at the moment.

Professional Services - If you would like a presence in QMPlus, for example for learning support or to communicate online with students to whom you provide a service, please get in touch with Sam Brenton on s.brenton@qmul.ac.uk.

The Devil is in the detail…

It can be the little things that make educational software useful.  Here are a few things that we’ve been testing and can confirm will work for the new platform:

• Add content feeds from external sources right into your module
• Display your module by topics, with a collapsible, modern design
• Drag’n’drop content items around the page
• Embed YouTube and other media directly into a page
• Write LaTeX mathematical notation in any areas where you can put content (both via an interface and a raw notation)
• Anonymous and 2^nd/3^rd marking as an option
• Assessment rubrics and rich feedback options
• Students can sign up to groups (rather than you having to allocate them one by one).
• Choose to display your course by topic, week or by communications

… these are small details you’ve asked for, some of which Moodle provides natively and others which have been configured for us.  Together, and alongside the usual VLE tools, they should provide an environment which fits with the way you want to teach and your students want to learn.

Transition, Training and Development

Faculty Planning

We are working with Task & Finish groups in the academic faculties to produce e-learning plans which cover the transition to QMPlus and then how they want to use it over the next three years.

The HSS group is complete and has produced a faculty policy which describes how they are moving wholesale for 2012-13, so that every module has a presence on the new platform

The S&E Group has met once, and we are meeting with School-based groups to plan at both a faculty and school level.  It;s likely that programmes in this faculty will use 2012-13 as a year to explore educationally effective uses of QMPlus, in order to inform broader use in future.

An SMD group has also met and is producing a policy now.  The MBBS Programme has ambitious plans around eneterprise content management, so may wait a year before moving to the new platform, while doing detailed work in the background to build something really terrific for their students in time for 2013-14.  E-Learning in Dentistry is proceeding in step with their curriculum review.  We are working with postgraduate courses (including distance learning) who make use of Blackboard now or who want to engage afresh with the new system.

Engage In Depth Sessions

We’ve been meeting with groups within Schools to plan their approaches.  In many cases, this has resulted in a further series of 1-to-1 or small group sessions for early adopters who want to engage in depth with the new platform, and use it as an opportunity to embed e-learnign in the fabric of their module or programme.  We’re supporting them with close advice and providing student e-learning assistants to help them develop their areas.

School-Based Transition Workshops

We are also arranging workshop sessions with Schools so that, once they have their plan in place, we can train them in how to use the platform.  These run between April and June 2012.

Admin and Support Workshops

We are scheduling sessions with administrative and support staff in small School groups, so that they can be trained in how to use the platform in line with their School’s plan.

Open Orientation Sessions

We will run a series of 45 minute sessions to introduce the platform to colleagues who haven’t been directly involved in the planning stage but who will need to transition from Blackboard or will be using an online learning environment for the first time.  These will run from April 25th through the summer (with online webinars likely during the Olympics) and over next year.

Open Training Workshops

A series of detailed training sessions from the start of May 2012 onwards through the summer and over the next year.

Online Resources

We are also building a Moodle area which will give colleagues the chance to learn more about using the platform effectively.  This will be up during May 2012.

A screenshot from the latest design draft

Text by T. Franklin and S. Brenton

The winner is… QMPlus.

The person who suggested QMPlus wrote that it is a “short, simple and effective way to suggest an extended Queen Mary”.  We will get in touch with them shortly to give them the prize – congratulations!

It was an experiment to name a service by democracy but we feel it’s worked out very well.  An amazing 506 people voted, and there were a number of popular suggestions, so thanks to all the students and staff who made suggestions and who voted for their choice.

QM’s talented designers are busy coming up with a logo.  In the mean time, here’s a sneak preview of an early draft of the design for the platform.  It fits nicely with the new overall QM web design, and those of you who know Moodle will see it’s a far cry from the ‘vanilla’ yellow Moodle interface.  (Note that the logo and bits of text are draft placeholders rather than final choices).

Front page when you log in

Courses page once you log in

Q-Review, the College lecture capture service, is now back online.

Recordings are available for viewing.

The service is designed to continue recording in the event of a server failure and we are now running checks to confirm that all recordings made are now processed and available to you.

Staff – please note that any recordings made since last Thursday (08/03/2012) using Personal Capture have not been restored to the system. The only copies of these recordings remain on your computers and will need to be republished. If you need any help republishing that content to your students, please let us know.

If you have any query at all or are still waiting on missing content – please open a ticket on the Helpdesk under the Request Type “Q-Review” at this address: https://helpdesk.its.qmul.ac.uk

Many thanks to colleagues in IT Services for tackling this situation.

Regards

We apologise again for this failure of a core College service. This falls below any expected standards and colleagues in IT Services are working to restore the service as quickly as possible.

We (the E-Learning Unit) will relay any information we receive via these service announcements on the Virtual Learning Environment and our website.

At present we expect the service to be available by 7:00pm on the Wednesday 14th March.

If you have a query please open a ticket on the Helpdesk under the Request Type “Q-Review” at this address: https://helpdesk.its.qmul.ac.uk

Regards