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Posts Tagged ‘moodle’

How a student submits prior content from “My content” into a Moodle Kaltura video assignment

2013/11/18 Leave a comment
  1. Go to your video assignment in Moodle: image.
  2. Click “Add media submission”: image
  3. Jump through the hoops:image
    1. switch to “my content”
    2. you have to click the “search” button to show content, leave search filed empty to show all
    3. note that there may be more
    4. you have to select a video
    5. before that, you cannot click next
  4. confirm on the next screen
  5. image
  6. You are done when you see this:  image, but hey, better press “continue” to be safe:
  7. On the next screen, you can review: image
  9. image
  10. Not so clear how you get out of there…
  11. Troubleshooting: If you run into problems, the first thing to try usually is a different web browser.
Categories: audience-is-students, e-languages, lms Tags: , ,

Faculty Workshop Fall 2013: Creating Mahara language learner portfolio pieces in the digital audio lab

2013/11/18 Leave a comment
    1. Thanks to all who came out to this workshop.
      1. You have already been emailed your portfolio pieces, like your students will be, by the LangLabEmailer.
      2. Converting your recordings to a file for Question/Response exams will take a little longer, let me know if/when you would like to use it.
    2. In addition, here are the workshop files:
      1. my slide handout as PDF with clickable links (includes “Can do”- Statements aligned with the Common European Reference Framework for language proficiency levels, which can help operationalizing your ePortfolio strategy)
      2. my slide deck embedded:
      3. my slide deck as a downloadable PowerPoint show: you can click through the animations at your own speed, view the animated GIFs, and listen (or jump over!) to my full presentation narration (both as of yet not supported in PowerPoint Web App)
      4. a screencast of the back stage view (Sanako tutor mostly), full HD resolution (big, but streaming), with complete uninterrupted (and unedited! please fast forward manually through the hands-on parts) audio . To facilitate your navigation, here is a table of contents :
        1. 0:00: Table of contents
        2. 2:30: Portfolio Pedagogy
        3. 13:47: Technical infrastructure: Moodle Mahara portfolio, Sanako, LangLabEmailer
          1. 17:47: Q&A
        4. 19:45: Option 1: presentation as screencast, examples from 1st-year Russian
        5. 34:50: Option 2: Free-form conversation audio, Examples from 2nd-year English  and 2nd-year Japanese
          1. 52:00: Q&A: Why a LangLabEmailer?
        6. 53:00: Option 3: question-response audio, examples from 4th-year Spanish.
Categories: announcements, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, eportfolio, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, learning-usage-samples, multimedia-recording, Slideshows, Speaking, workshops Tags: , ,

Exam integrity considerations during mock and proctored written exams in the LRC

2013/11/17 Leave a comment

The easiest way to hold a mock or proctor a written exam in the LRC is provide the students a printout of the exam. For larger classes preparing, and under some circumstances (writing impediment due to injury), providing the MS-Word file on a computer to the student would seem a more convenient solution.

However, the LRC prides itself in the large collection of MS-Office proofing tools it has installed and preconfigured – accessing which from within MS-Word could be construed as cheating during a writing exam. As a matter of fact, since MS-Word auto-detects language, under-waving of misspelled words and incorrect Grammar provides unsolicited and unavoidable extra help.

MS-Office proofing tools could be turned off by using a special MS-word template as the basis for the exam. Easier and quicker is using the SANAKO which can not only block internet access of the examined students, but also block use of entire applications like MS-Word.

Instead of in MS-Word, your students could write their responses in an application that is not part of the proofing tools infrastructure, like Notepad. Western language diacritics can easily be written  in any application on LRC PCs thanks to US-International keyboard layout, and non-Western characters even easier than on paper.

For full security, the best environment for exams we can offer remains Respondus lockdown browser, integrated with Moodle, but this requires converting the exam to into a Moodle quiz (which Respondus has tools to facilitate).  In certain cases, it might be easiest to create a “dummy” quiz with one long text input field, which your students could type everything in, without having access to any other resources (internet, proofing tools, chat, what not…). However, this quiz still would have to be  in your Moodle course so that your students can access access, and their results get put into your gradebook.

Outside of Moodle – if you do not want to go down the Respondus-path – , you can rely on the SANAKO homework collection feature and my langlabemailer to receive the results.

Categories: audience-is-teachers, English, French, lms, office-software, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

How to create screencasts of student presentations for the language learner ePortfolio in the digital audio lab

2013/11/08 Leave a comment

image

  1. Students can now easily video-record their own screens during class presentations – not only when using PowerPoint; instead students could demo a website, like their Facebook page.
  2. Last year, we were limited to PowerPoint’s record slideshow with timing and narration feature, and either send the PPSX (small, but requires the PowerPoint viewer) or the “Save as” video (new in PowerPoint 2010; computing intensive and large file size).
  3. Now with MS-Community Clips, screencasts are
    1. minimal effort to create (keyboard shortcut WIN+ALT+R or T; save on desktop; drag/drop into Sanako homework folder)
    2. and little effort to distribute:
      1. Students could have uploaded to a Moodle’ file upload assignment (default file size limit: 64MB) or Kaltura file upload assignment (not sure whether there is a size limit). This seems more suitable for assignments with screencasts recordings.
      2. In this instance
        1. Sanako collected the Homework files to the Sanako share,
        2. my langlabemailer emailed them as attachment (so far tested to allow for 25MB attachment size, the equivalent of 7-8 minute screencast, a hefty space to fill in L2!  We also established: 45MB is too much… Smile)  to the originating student and teacher, for review, grading –
      3. and – provided it passes muster as an attractive and significant piece – possibly for re-use in the student’s language learner ePortfolio.
  4. In addition,
    1. Before the presentations, the teacher easily collaborated on proof-reading the slide decks of individual students, by using the Sanako Remote control screen sharing feature.
    2. During the presentation, students followed more closely – which seemed to increase their attention and comprehension -, thanks to audio and screen being shared to them from the presenter, using the Sanako’s  “Model student” feature.
Categories: Arabic, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, English, eportfolio, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Italian, Japanese, learning-usage-samples, Mandarin, multimedia-recording, office-software, Portuguese, presentations, Presenter-Computer, Russian, Spanish, Speaking, Student-Computers Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Proposing for a free Moodle audio recorder: Technical options and faculty needs survey results

2013/10/27 Leave a comment
  1. Current popular options for a free Moodle audio recorder: 
    1. Nanogong is a popular, feature-rich and simple recorder that go entangled in the recent java politics and security scares. Since the company has a non-free offering, chances are higher it will get updated to address these security warnings. It seems the long-term outlook for java in the enterprise is excellent, but i  cannot judge the long term outlook for java as a client/in-browse solution.
    2. Poodle which played the 2nd fiddle to Nanogong for most of the time, seems to have caught up to Nanogong based on the above. that it is "server based" – but on theirs, not ours – Poodle has a freemium business model (could be an issue). Does this include the audio compression load? Does this have FERPA implications (and can they be resolved like with Kaltura)?
    3. Paul Nicholls has a number of flash-based popular audio recorder plugins , where record assignment submission seems to have superseded record assignment type for newer versions of Moodle, and assignment type offers student recording, while  Record Audio repository complements this with teacher recording (and the same interface; i am not sure i understand which end user setup is required for repository).
  2. In the results of faculty survey on learning needs (sum of 0-centered Likert-scale), I find notable
    1. that teacher recording is considered almost as vital as student recording, and
    2. that most faculty even would be willing to deal with some complexity for the additional learning features that some of these recorders offer (Nanogong especially).

Question_text

Rank

It is important that my students can record their speech in my Moodle course (without need for separate software and file upload).

14

It is important that the setup work that the teacher has to do before being able to assign  audio recorder is minimal.

13

It is that the teacher can record her voice in Moodle (without need for separate software and file upload), providing oral instead of written cues or feedback.

11

Simplicity is more important to me than feature richness (controlling volume, limiting the amount of time a student can record, maximum number of recordings, Recordings can be slowed down  or sped up ,  Peer review of recordings).

7

I expect my students to have a microphone connected to or built-in to their home computer.

5

It is important that other media than audio can be "recorded"  (video (outside of Kaltura), webcam snapshots, whiteboard drawings).

5

 

Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, Listening, lms, multimedia-recording, Speaking Tags: , , ,

How to workaround Moodle quiz audio not playing to the end in Respondus Lockdown Browser

2013/10/26 Leave a comment
  1. Problem:
    1. The Moodle 2 audio player image tends to get stuck (= does not play to end; not pictured) after you moved fast forward or backward on the timeline with your mouse.
    2. Respondus Lockdown browser has is a page refresh button, image but you cannot refresh the page since this might erase data you already inputted. .
  2. Workaround:
    1. At the bottom of the page, click image, or use the Quiz navigation imageto browse to another page.
    2. On the Submit page, click “Return to attempt”, or on another quiz page, use once more the “quiz navigation” to browse back. 219
    3. This seems to refresh the page, including the audio players, without erasing answers you already inputted.
Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-students Tags: , , ,

How to work around “You do not have the permission to view discussions in this forum” in Moodle 2

2013/10/22 Leave a comment
  1. Problem: My student staff (not sure which subset, but more than 1) gets this error in a development course that I use as a groupware when they access a news forum (that they are even force-subscribed to).
    1. image_thumb[12]
    2. CAM03124_thumb[4]
    3. The answers  for “you do not have the permission to view discussions in this forum moodle” can be found here: I actually had to deal with this issue within the last few months.  I found that to allow users to see the “News” section on the front page, you must override the role to allow: mod/forum:viewdiscussion
    4. Do not seem to apply here: In https://moodle2.uncc.edu/admin/roles/permissions.php?contextid=466096, Permitted students are already allowed to  “View discussionsmod/forum:viewdiscussion”
    5. Permitted students should probably have permissions also to “Reply to newsmod/forum:replynews”
    6. image_thumb[10]
    8. Also for one of the student in question (I have spotchecked only 2), I can see no suspicious activity missing: image_thumb[7]
  2. Root cause: 
  3. Students have no role in a Moodle2 Development type course .
  4. Workarounds:
    1. Assign students a role manually (tedious, and you can only assign “course manager”.
    2. Change the course type to Project (but then you cannot quiz students).
  5. Solution: a more flexible design of Project and Development courses in a future version of Moodle?
Categories: audience-is-IT-staff, lms Tags: , ,

How to upload a folder with many files in Moodle 2–the ultimate training

2013/10/22 Leave a comment
  1. …using animated .gifs. Different speed? 0.25sec,0.5sec, 0.75sec, 1sec, , 2sec, 3sec, 4sec, 5sec, 6sec, 7sec, 8sec, 9sec, 10sec. 1.5sec
  2. And the answer is: You now can simply drag-and-drop a zip file  (provided you are using a recent web browser). Start with “Turn editing on”, “Add resource”, “Folder”, and then proceed like so:
  3. Easy enough, but you can still save time: If your folder is reusable not only between terms, but also teachers (sections etc.), I suggest doing this in our Moodle metacourses (once).
  4. If you want to use an existing instead of adding a new folder, a slightly different way to manage your multiple files upload in Moodle 2 is described here.
Categories: animated-GIFs, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, lms, training Tags: , ,