Hi,
I have recently secured a one year secondment to the post of e-learning facilitator within my institution and have dug out some old elearning content i developed in my own CMS a number of years ago. I have converted these to work in Drupal and would like feedback on them, maybe with a view to releasing the modules into the community if they prove useful.
I will have to work with Blackboard over the next year but am pushing to move to my favourite open source CMS ;) - as a first instance to have BB as the 'front end' handling the boring stuff, and serve up material developed in Drupal on a different server... these materials are the first stage in this push and any feedback is welcome and helpful.
Basically, the idea is to have 'lessons' as staged content delivery. A lesson is split into a number of discreet parts and each part requires user interaction to reveal the next part - anything from polls to discussions, all embedded in the same page. One of the nice things is that there is an option that users cannot see discussion comments until they have posted something themselves - and this opens up a more diverse response set from students. In terms of classroom model, it is similar in form to 'seminars' (at least on BA courses)
I had other things in my own CMS too, but these were the 'central' content-types. One thing that I had before but is lacking at the moment is 'branching' to other content based on responses - you can imagine entire lesson 'trees' that go off in different directions based on the needs of the learner.
Anyway, this post got long. The best way to find out what I am saying is to try it out and leave feedback. I've put it at http://edutools.againstthezeitgeist.com. To test it, you can sign up/register as a 'teacher' to create content, or just as an ordinary authenticated user to take the 'lessons'. The lesson that is there is pretty rubbish, but you can hopefully see what I was trying to achieve.
UPDATE I have enabled log-in from your drupal.org account to test taking the lessons, but you will still have to register on the site if you want to experiment with creating your own lessons..
Let me know what you think.
Comments
I look forward to checking this out
wrt "with a view to releasing the modules into the community if they prove useful" --
I'd recommend applying for a cvs account and releasing the code -- that way, people can test the code in a variety of contexts, and, potentially, other interested devs can help support it.
Thanks for opening the site up for feedback. I look forward to checking this out --
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
I am willing to do this, but
I am willing to do this, but was hesitant - I didn't want to waste anyone's time installing it to find out it was pointless/useless. At the moment, the install itself is not as straightforward as it could be - the code would need a bit of 'finishing' before I could put it anywhere - as a test I used some hard-coded content types and some built using the CCK - I need to figure out exporting CCK types (or rewrite them). At the moment I don't have time, but will get time at the beginning of September.
In the mean-time, please test and feedback :)
CCK, exporting node types, etc
We're getting a few projects out the door, but I'll definitely test this at the first opportunity.
RE exporting cck node types: this is actually core functionality for cck -- it's pretty straightforward, and works from the admin section of the content module --
Feel free to ping me off-group, or post back here with specific questions.
You also might want to look at the pageroute module to see of there is any code/ideas that could be applicable to what you're doing.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
Very promising
I tried it out on your website and it looks very promising. It would be particularly nice to combine it with the Quiz module and to get more question types. Looking forward to seeing this as a module. You can expect bug reports and feature requests from me when it's a project:)
Dominik Lukes
http://www.bohemica.com
http://tuit.glottalstart.com
Dominik Lukes
http://dominiklukes.net
@techczech
Thanks. See the comment
Thanks. See the comment above. I will make this a module as soon as I get the chance.....
In theory, this should be fairly simple to hook up the the quiz module (although I haven't looked at the quiz module!) - the module latches on to content types and wraps them to gain control, providing some extra hooks. It should be a case of writing the wrapper for the content type and providing some 'check if completed' code.
I am also interested in what people think of its use as a teaching tool too though. Students who used it previously unanimously praised it (although I'm sure that was just for my benefit). But I need some kind of evaluation as to its use (or potential) so I can gauge how much time I could invest, and how much support I could see if I could get from my institution (which, tbh would probably be minimal anyway..).
Moodle?
This is interesting, but I almost wonder if you wouldn't be better off moving to an open-source LMS such as Moodle. I've used both Drupal and Moodle, and - while Drupal is a great CMS - Moodle seems better suited for developing e-learning content - especially if you're porting from Blackboard. I seem to remember that there were some contributed Moodle modules for doing such a thing. Plus, there's a great groundswell of precedent for using Moodle to develop a sound e-learning pedagogy, whereas with Drupal, not so much. And lessons with branching (as you describe) are well supported.
Of course, I'm open to hearing opposing viewpoints :-)
(And yes, I'm fully aware of the irony of recommending against using Drupal on a Drupal site. But sometimes when all you have is a hammer...)