Update Report for the Cascade Project Steering Committee meeting 2nd February 2010

Summary

Since the last steering committee meeting, the project has seen some encouraging developments:

 The assignment handling system has moved from initial development into a test phase. It is looking very promising for the pilot implementations later this term.

 The initial pilot studies for 'Moodle for All' have enabled us to start formulating the structure of the template Moodles required for its wider implementation and a strategy for creation of Moodles for future courses from these templates.

 A good range of generic content for the Moodles has been sourced and we are now focussing on developing material that can be readily customised for individual course use.

 A new strategy for overcoming the issues surrounding course handbooks has been proposed and we are ready to face the challenges posed by a suggested change from one system of production to another.

 The online payment and enrolment system is developing well, handling over £200K worth of business in the last quarter. Development of student login and the 'shopping basket' facility are progressing well.

 We have appointed a new external evaluator, Henriette Lundgren, who is helping us consolidate and extend our evaluation and baselining activities.

These activities have been underpinned by extensive consolation with our stakeholders within our pilots asking for, and responding to, their views and concerns. We recognise this communication is crucial to the project's success and are focussing on maintaining and expanding this work as we move towards implementing, and sustaining, all the changes resulting from the project.

The five focus areas of the project

1) VLE support for courses Since the last steering committee meeting, activity has been spread across several areas:  Launching and monitoring new pilot courses to see how well different features are received  engaging with weekly class programme to survey and support tutors through Moodle  developing guidance documentation and materials to support staff and students  developing a strategy to implement setting up Moodles from templates to cater for the wide range of courses the Department offers

Expanding the pilots into Award bearing courses in Archaeology and in Psychodynamic Counselling / Practice hasgiven useful insight into how the Moodles are being used and how well they are being received by both students and staff in this area. This complements our earlier pilots with CPD. The course teams are generally positive, despite them having to spend time learning how to upload and edit content. They find the Moodle environment very useful for communicating with their students on both administrative and academic matters, and are keen to implement the system in other courses within their subject areas and to expand into incorporating elements of online teaching too. As anticipated, student response is more varied; however an encouraging number are very proactive, requesting that group chat rooms and wikis be set up for their group projects and it is clear that even for those engaging to a very limited extent, these innovations are offering value. The recent extreme weather in particular highlighted the value of these tools. Transforming Curriculum Delivery through Technology Programme

The pilot study for the weekly class tutor Moodle was started in December, at which time we surveyed the tutors to get a baseline on their current use of technology and their opinions of how it may be applicable to their teaching. With 60% of tutors over 55 there was a suspicion they may not be technically engaged so a paper based survey was undertaken to ensure that a representative sample responded. Although opinions were split between very enthusiastic and very negative towards incorporating technology into their teaching, attitudes were more positive that might be anticipated with the vast majority of the tutors having sufficient experience with their own personal use of internet technology for us to have a good base to build on – which was far from clear at the start. This may pave the way to them accepting Moodle as a learning environment when they may require it in the future for online assignment submission. The survey highlighted that our major tasks within this group of stakeholders are:  making them more aware of the possibilities offered by technology  developing training materials and providing support to facilitate their uptake. Which echoes our experience with the full time staff of the Department.

The access logs to the various pilot studies should provide information on the most popular (but not necessarily the most useful) sections of each Moodle to know which features to include in the templates to be developed as the basis for future course Moodles. This is an area that needs more work on the analysis front, although data collection is ongoing. In the light of this work and that of the generic content focus area (see below), we are currently determining the content for the templates. Now that we have an idea how this breaks down and is distributed across the range of courses the Department offers, we are in a better position to determine a strategy for widespread creation of Moodle support for future courses from these templates. The technical details are currently being specified.

Within this area of the project, over the next few months the focus will be on:  consolidating the content and format of the template Moodles  piloting templates and supporting materials with key stakeholders  completing the specification and developing the technical solution for creation of Moodles from these templates

2) Generic content Since the previous steering committee meeting, a wealth of material, internal to the Department or Oxford generally, has been identified as a source for generic content. This can be broadly grouped as administrative (e.g. directions to libraries) or academic (e.g. study skills).

We are now focussing on developing a small subset of new materials for groups to use, adapt and customise as appropriate for their particular course. These include:  a generic induction for new Masters level programmes  screen capture library guides in key areas  study skills for the historical disciplines.

We are now considering the best mechanisms of making these and existing content available to our user groups for uptake and customisation. This work is closely allied to the VLE support for courses and course design focus areas.

Course Handbooks As part of the content for the Moodle templates, we intended to make each course handbook readily available for incorporation into the relevant Moodle. Although the majority of the staff responsible for production of the handbooks agree that the current system is fraught with problems, attempts in the past to tackle the issue have failed, largely due to the numbers and variety of stakeholders involved. If, as part of the Cascade project, we could resolve the issue, it would be of major benefit to the whole Department.

Although the current system focuses on having a central system producing a single definitive handbook for each course, we are now starting to investigate an alternative approach that may be Transforming Curriculum Delivery through Technology Programme more suitable for when more courses have VLE support. By defining the boundaries for each type of content (Departmental, programme or course specific) it should be possible to produce template documents which would give rise to three separate handbooks for each course:  Departmental handbook  Programme handbook  Course handbook These would have a hierarchical structure in that, in any course, information in the Departmental handbook is to be adhered to unless it is specifically overridden by the Programme handbook which, in turn, stands unless specifically overridden by the Course handbook. By disseminating out the production of each handbook to Registry, Programme teams and Course teams many of the problems associated with their coordination disappear and it may be easier to produce a system for each level. Once approved, the definitive version could be incorporated into the Moodle, or linked to if it was considered preferable to have all handbooks in one central location. Any updates through the year could then be disseminated via the Moodle and kept as separate addenda to be incorporated into the next full version.

As this approach is at a very early stage, we have yet to establish whether it acceptable to all involved. We envisage a challenge ahead, trying to persuade people to move away from the traditional, but flawed, approach and accept a change.

3) Online assignment handling The first version of the new assignment handling system has now been released for beta testing. The testing is progressing well, highlighting a few functions that need more work, but demonstrating that the majority is ready for the pilot studies later this term. This is slightly later than originally planned as we needed extra time to clarify the assignment workflow, subject to the restrictions imposed by University regulations, and consolidate the definition of the roles of the personnel involved (students, tutors, markers, Registry, Course Director and other course administrative staff).

In order to support the new system and to demonstrate it to future users, a user guide is being produced and a demonstration 'dummy site' has been developed which will be made available for general reference.

Within the Department, there has been a lot of discussion around the subject of online assignment handling. In an attempt to collate this, an online survey was conducted amongst tutors and support staff to enable them to express their views. This identified a surprisingly positive response, but response rates were not large enough to be representative. One issue is that many people seem unable to separate the processes of online submission and on-screen marking and their support for the former is marred by their negative reactions to the latter. In order to clarify the distinction, a presentation to the ATC (Assessment and Teaching Committee) is planned, consisting of a demonstration of online submission and a PowerPoint presentation around the issues (and their resolution) of on-screen marking. Although the Cascade project is unlikely extend to developing on- screen marking tools, it seems sensible to address the negative views of the subject as a way of getting more stakeholder support for the widespread implementation of online submission.

Over the coming months our main focus will be to ensure that by the end of the project we have a robust online assignment handling system ready to be rolled out across the Department as required.

4) Online payment As more of our courses take up the possibility of online payment and enrolment, this area is becoming increasingly important to the Department. Our online enrolments have essentially doubled in value during the project, with the average transaction increasing by nearly 50% as more course types can be booked this way. Since the previous steering committee meeting, development on the additional functionality of allowing students to login online and update their personal details on our database has progressed and is due to come on-stream shortly.

Ongoing developments include payment of invoices by instalments, which is due to launch during the spring of 2010, and turning the concept of the shopping basket functionality into a technical specification. Transforming Curriculum Delivery through Technology Programme

5) Course design Our work in this area is dictated by the timing of new course proposals. There are now several new courses in the early stages of consideration, putting us in a strong position to progress with this work. Of particular interest is the new PG Certificate in Ecological Survey Techniques. This is a particularly valuable case study for the project as the course will be delivered principally online, builds on existing materials and with virtually all course elements offered as individual modules.

Our engagement with stakeholders has given us valuable insight into those areas where academics and administrators are happy to incorporate technology into their teaching programmes and where they need more support to make effective choices. We are currently in the process of designing our approach to the guidance required and investigating the most suitable platforms for its delivery, including the Departmental website and intranet, Phoebe, within Moodle, print documentation and face to face support.

Outputs and Deliverables

Since the previous steering committee meeting, the project has generated the following outputs:

 An initial version of the MASS assignment handling system (currently only available internally - in the long term, we aim to contribute the code for this to the main Moodle open source software development site)  A user guide to MASS  A demonstration 'dummy site' to support training in the use of MASS  Surveys around online assignment submission and marking  Weekly class tutor survey  A collection of generic content, stored as a repository in Moodle  Supporting documentation for VLE use

However it is the next phases of the project that will see the creation of the majority of project outputs, so this will be our focus over the coming months.

Challenges and Opportunities

Over the duration of the project, there seems to have been a general improvement in attitudes within the Department towards the potential of technology, probably assisted by the Department's record- breaking recruitment to online courses over the last two terms. Recent positive engagement with the project from some members of staff has proved very gratifying. However, we still face the challenge of bridging the gap between the willingness of staff to engage with technology and them finding time to do so in practice.

Our other major challenges over the coming months include:  getting tutors to differentiate between online assignment submission and on-screen marking  finding an acceptable system for the production of course handbooks  identifying the full resource implication of innovations and presenting clear-cut business reasons to ensure allocation of resources required for sustaining the effects of Cascade beyond the end of the project.

Progress against project aims

While it is premature to evaluate the project as a whole, we have been consistently tracking individual focus areas and pilot activities to ensure they address our core aims: Transforming Curriculum Delivery through Technology Programme

 Undertake its activities more efficiently so that resources are focused on value-adding activities, such as delivering improvements to the student experience and the creation of tools that support best practice;  Develop new, or repurpose existing activities to support the delivery of its new vision and provide additional revenue streams;  Support its ability to deliver academically superb courses to students of the highest calibre through the use of new tools and functionality to augment the services currently offered to students.

While the detailed analysis of this will be a key focus of our evaluation activities over the next few months there is already much data to suggest that the activities above are achieving these aims.

 VLE implementation is allowing administrators to do their core work more efficiently while offering more services to students  Generic content pilot study has identified new and existing sources of content which can be reused and repurposed for new audiences  Work in online assignment handling, online registration and VLE implementation is providing the infrastructure to support efficiencies across many activities  Online enrolment facilities and the support of new course developments are attracting new students.