[Server-devel] XS Moodle design issues

[Martin Langhoff]

Dan,

you've replied both in moodle.org and here, with different notes...
not sure where I should answer now :-)

Everyone else - there's a complementary discussion at

  http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=111437#p505921

(use "login as guest" to avoid nag/registration)

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Dan McGuire <sabier at visi.com> wrote:
> As I said in my previous email, I think you might be trying to do too
> much engineering upfront. Here's a couple of thoughts for you to consider.

(from my earlier reply in moodle.org): the concerns I am addressing
come from teachers and pedagogists that are working in the field -- in
Uruguay, Peru, Rwanda, Mongolia, etc. Specially in Uruguay and Peru,
where the whole country is being saturated with laptops (>100K already
handed out in Uruguay, Peru currently handing out 240K) -- and
teachers are trying to integrate them into their daily routine.

Some change their teaching strategies immediately, but most teachers
will first try to integrate the laptop into their pre-laptop
strategies, and then ease into doing things in new ways. Whether we
agree or not, people absorb changes at their own pace.

I am trying to fix obvious things up front - yes - because they are
obvious, and there is no point in rolling out Moodle to 5K schools in
Peru when I know that in the initial pilots there were fairly obvious
problems. Rather go ahead with the most glaring flaws addressed smile

> 1.  Topics-style course format, geared for a year-long:
>
> As a classroom teacher I would rather you not arrange the format for

- You are used to Moodle already - teachers in Peru are not.

- You prepare your lessons ahead of time _in the computer_. The
teachers we are working with do _not_. It's a completely different
world -- many of the teachers we are trying to help are in rural
schools with mixed age groups and no clear programme from a ministry
-- at least not in the sense that you are used to. The request to
change the topic format is to support a teaching style that is more
"day-to-day".

- The normal topics courseformat won't be removed -- so if you find
yourself working in an OLPC deployment, you can switch to 'topics' and
teach everyone around

> 2. Change of year admin tools.
>
> I don't see the need to put that much energy into moving whole classes
> at a time. Again, the enrollment options out of the box will work just
> fine.

The sure need it. We have schools in Rwanda with 5K students, and all
their enrolment stuff is on _paper_. Who is going to be clicking
around to unenrol/enrol 5K kids... and get it right. They do have
assistants and admin staff, but... they may not have a computer, and
if they do, they are unlikely to be very fast with it.

And whatever the procedure, as it happens once a year, they've forgotten it.

> 3. "We want a course creation process that is streamlined -- skip the
...
> That's probably a good idea to start

Right, my intention is to hide things behind an "very advanced and
scary options" button. But it is a balancing act -- maybe it should
only be enabled once they've had moodle for a while. When you go from
0 computers to lots of computers, across 5K schools, with a quarter of
a million users that had never had a computer... even if you lock down
all the options, you are going to have an end-user-support tidal wave.

Once they are more experienced, and the initial wave is past, yeah,
perhaps unhide the "advanced options" button.

> Browsing the Moodle forums is one of
> the most exciting things that I've ever encountered as a teacher.

I take it you are conscious that there is almost _no_ material about
moodle in moodle.org written in the languages of the regions we are
working on. Right? Even if there is a small community 'course' in
moodle.org, there is often next to no content. And bilingual users
from those regions are far and in-between, and they'll rarely be
teaching in a rural school. And that ~50% of the schools where we
deploy do _not_ have internet access. We sure push to improve internet
access, and often succeed, meaning that it goes from 0% to 30%!

Of course, content and expertise in local languages and connectivity
will improve over time. But when you are looking at rolling out next
month with 240K users... that's no help.

Deployment region are very different from what you're assuming :-)

> 4.  What You Paint Is What You Get editor
>
> This is one I'd really like.

Glad to hear that! I'll be really hard to get it right ;-)

> FYI, I've just recently started using the workshop module

Yes! I'd love a simplified workshop module. And with good code too --
while we're asking for magic... ;-)

cheers,


m
-- 
 martin.langhoff at gmail.com
 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
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