Moving to Moodle in 2011 brings with it a number of challenges for how we manage assessment. It also introduces a stack of exciting opportunities.

Today marks the start of a focused attempt to draw together a series of initiatives, ideas, discussion papers and findings from the previous LMSes at UNE, all focused around creating awesome assessment experiences.

Our goals are simple:

1. Assemble and support tools that allow for the widest range of meaningful assessment approaches
2. Use our systems to save time and effort for everyone – staff and students
3. Provide the clearest, simplest assessment approach imaginable

Why now?

Leaving Blackboard and Sakai also means leaving our internally-developed and supported integration and assignment management tools (TLCAdmin and ESubmission).

What’s already set?

• Moodle is our new assignment submission tool

What’s in scope for investigation?

Everything else!

• Online assignment marking
• Bulk printing
• Bulk (marked) assignment scanning and return
• Individual student assignment extensions (Moodle only supports a common date for all students)
• Turnitin integration
• File format auto-conversion
• Tracking of assignments (marked and unmarked)
• Assignment of markers, rubrics
• BIM plugin (blog post assignments)
• Lightwork Marking (assessment management tool by a team at Massey University
• Grade moderation
• Grade export (preparation for Callista import of final Grades)

We have and will continue to consult far and wide (academics, administrative support staff, the TLC, other Universities)

This week, Brian Landrigan and Robyn Smyth are representing UNE at the 2010 ePortfolios Australia conference in Melbourne.

Today and tomorrow (2-3/11) you can follow the link at http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/content/eac2010-program to join an Elluminate session and check it out.

It was great today to chat with another group of staff about some of the work we’re doing around bulk assignment printing and online marking.

I’d love to see us move completely to online marking, and with the work of many around the world (including at UNE!) we will hopefully be there soon. In the meantime, we’re seeking to really simplify the processes for teaching staff and dramatically improve feedback and response times for our students.

My former colleague, kiwi Dan Marsden blogged yesterday about the changes he’s been making to bring Turnitin integration in Moodle 2 – and to “backport” the changes to Moodle 1.9. One of the exciting features we’re looking to see is the ability to use Turnitin’s “Grademark” application. It allows online marking directly in the web browser, with no extra software to install or configure. Sounds good, doesn’t it!

Moodle founder, lead developer and legend Martin Dougiamas was at EDUCAUSE last week and gave this interview. It’s worth a look!

Macquarie Uni announced last week that they’ll be joining UNE and others in shifting from Blackboard CE (formerly WebCT) to head to Moodle 2. It’s great to see other unversities “seeing the light” and shifting toward open source, flexible learning platforms. I’m looking forward to the further growth in innovative teaching and learning that the developing trend seems to already be producing!

Moodle’s bug, issue and feature “tracker” (http://tracker.moodle.org) helps the project track new feature requests, issues and bugs. All bugs are rated on a scale: blocker, critical, major and minor. Each day over the past few months I’ve been checking in with two different filters:

• Blockers for Moodle 2 and
• Blockers, Critical and Major bugs for Moodle 2

The exciting news this morning is that the Blocker issues – those stopping Moodle 2 from being feature-complete are down to one (1)… and the Release Candidate 1 is out!

It’s great seeing the project rapidly coming together. Other places to check out include:

• The Moodle QA Forum and
• The Moodle “Docs” page chronicling the QA testing process for Moodle 2

Many of you playing in our Moodle 2 sandpit site have discovered the challenges of the new file manager. NetSpot’s Mark Drechsler provides a fresh take on the issues at his blog and on slideshare. It’s definitely worth a look!

One of the clearest ideas we have for Porfolios is their use in accreditation-based degrees (in Education, Nursing, Rural Medicine, Engineering, etc). Mahara’s open structure is great for reflective learning, but sometimes it’s great to be able to guide students in the collection of evidence in their portfolios.

Mahara 1.3 is now going to include two great new features: collections and plans. The release from Mahara.org has all the details

I missed it 2 days ago in my Twitter stream… but was glad to hear this from @maharaproject:

“looking into having RC next week & then a stable release of #mahara 1.3 shortly after. testers are very appreciated for RC.” (http://twitter.com/maharaproject/status/20267549582)

What’s in Mahara 1.3? From http://wiki.mahara.org/Roadmap:

• Simplified navigation
• Gravatar support
• RSS feeds for public blogs
• Pluggable anti-spam system
• View themes
• Email bounce handling
• Moodle 2.0 Porfolio API support
• View/artefact feedback enhancements
• Statistics in the Admin area
• New blocktypes: notifications, recently modified views, recent forum posts
• Configurable forum post indentation
• Personal dashboard

Looks awesome, doesn’t it!

A couple of interesting things emerged today with ePortfolios: an upcoming talk and some great Mahara conference resources.

1. An announcement from DEHub about a talk this Thursday

Implementation of e-portfolios in an online Masters’  program and Developing a fully online doctoral program

DEHub has an unexpected opportunity to host Dr Debra Hoven, Associate Professor in Distance Education, Centre for Distance Education, Athabasca University. This short seminar will be held on:

THURSDAY 5th August ROOM 224 Education Building
TIME: 10.30-12.00
TOPIC: Implementation of e-portfolios in an online Masters’  program and Developing a fully online doctoral program

Athabasca University is Canada’s Open University and all courses are taught fully online. In 2007-8, the Centre for Distance Education (CDE) undertook a research project to pilot the implementation of e-portfolios as an alternative to the comprehensive exams previously offered as the exit assessment task from the Masters in Education (Distance). Following the success of this pilot, e-portfolios were introduced program-wide to students from the commencement of their programs of study. In the CDE, e-portfolios are seen as comprising digital objects in a range of formats with accompanying critical reflection, incorporation of feedback and refinements. They are used for formative assessment, as a showcase of competencies acquired during students’ program of study and as a vehicle to develop critical reflection and lifelong learning. This presentation will present the results of the pilot study and the survey results of the full implementation of e-portfolios program-wide. Additional discussion will involve issues surrounding selection of e-portfolio software, the conflict in purpose and intent of e-portfolios between assessment and learning, the development of critical reflection among learners, and implementation difficulties for teaching staff.

2. Great Mahara resources

University of London Computing Centre (ULCC) recently hosted the “MaharaUK 2010″ conference, and has posted the conference materials and reports – including video – online at http://www.maharauk.org

One highlight for me is the talk by (Mahara tech leaders) Catalyst IT‘s Don Christie talking a bit about development for Mahara (including 1.3) and some exciting things on the horizon. Download the video (.mov I’m afraid) or the blog platform might magically wrap it in a player: http://podcast.ulcc.ac.uk/accounts/ulcc-marketing/MaharaUK10/10104_DonChristie_Final.mov

UPDATE: Actually, check out this video about the “Foyer project”: http://podcast.ulcc.ac.uk/accounts/ulcc-marketing/MaharaUK10/10104_FoyerProject_Final.mov