Ford-Knight Research Proposal

The Course Management System (or Virtual Learning Environment) paradigm has the potential radically to change the way many faculty approach teaching their courses at Earlham. Even at this early stage of implementation the enthusiasm of faculty for the capabilities that the Moodle Course Management System (CMS) has to offer has taken us by surprise ¹. The use of Open Source software such as Moodle, besides being inexpensive (the software is a free download), allows us to delve into the source code in order to integrate the system with our current registration/portal system, Webdb. Moreover, while Moodle is currently rich in features that are useful for Earlham faculty there are some areas where there is room for improvement, such as, grade book, assignment resubmission and return, and learning assessment. Earlham has a rich tradition of student leadership in producing sophisticated yet user-friendly software of great practical import to the college; webdb is a prime example of this. I would like to participate in this tradition by working with a small group of students in a Ford-Knight context on a project to add a new assessment module to the Moodle CMS.

Although Moodle contains an unparalleled set of online pedagogical tools (such as peer assessment of assignments - the 'workshop' module) some functionality is currently lacking. As a regular user of an online assessment / survey tool (the Free Assessment Summary Tool ²) I have found it invaluable for disseminating surveys and obtaining feedback from students about the course I teach. However it would be pedagogically much more valuable for the assessment tool to be situated within the Moodle system since Moodle currently lacks this. Thus the creation of a Moodle Assessment module would benefit both Earlham faculty and the Moodle community around the world. With this as our focus I would anticipate four students with both programming experience (CS128) and web design experience (MGMT110) to collaborate on this project. They would first have to quickly pickup the php language in which Moodle is written and then learn how modules are constructed in Moodle (although it's quite probable that they will already have this background). The project has several functional areas; the students would need to deconstruct the whole project into self-contained functional components (such as user interface, database access, computational engine, graphical output, etc) and then decide who would be responsible for which parts. Faculty input would be leading the design phase for user input & program output, helping students solve coding problems, helping circumvent roadblocks to progress, and coordinating the combination of all the parts into a unified whole application. By setting mutally agreed goals and keeping track of progress online through weblogs and wiki we should be able to maintain a consistent tempo and produce some useful working code by the end of the project period. Collaboration would be on a number of different levels; the students would obviously have to work well together to produce a well-designed product, but they would also need to work closely with Earlham faculty to test and refine the user interface and generated output and finally, since the Moodle programme is a global effort and the product of wide ranging international collaboration, students will be likely to collaborate with programmers from overseas (including Earlham alums such as Paul Shew now in Japan) to test the code in the different Moodle environments.

Four students would be the optimal number for this kind of project and I'd anticipate it taking place in the spring semester of 2006. In terms of evaluation, students will set themselves achievable short term and longer term goals and these will be monitored closely. I will expect regular blog entries detailing progress made. Working code will be made available to the Moodle worldwide community and I would expect there to be a good deal of feedback. Since there is a lot of interest in this kind of Open Source venture among small colleges I would expect that we would make a presentation at a MITC meeting. This would be in addition to workshops for Earlham faculty to find out how to use this tool.

References

1. Survey of faculty use of Moodle : Fall 04
2. Free Assessment Summary Tool (FAST) — http://www.getfast.ca/

Budget

Since Instructional Technology And Media is part of the Information Systems group my release time will be handled in the same way that release time for Reference Librarians, such as Nancy Taylor, has been handled in the past. That is, my departmental responsibilities such as Lab support can be transferred to others within the department or student workers.

Mark Pearson
30th Nov 2004

Dear Mark,

We had a record number (19) of proposals, a budget-busting level of requests ($145K), and a delayed decision day--but, the Ford/Knight Committee has done its work. Your final proposal was approved. Congratulations on a successful proposal!

We do need to tweak the budget a bit. To be specific: conference travel is usually covered only when students are presenting , and we will need to have more specific information about the Moodle Developer's conference or the MITC conference before approving a final budget amount for this line item. But we can hold this item in abeyance until you have more information. Also, we encourage you to check with Tom Kirk or others in your department as soon as possible about the hiring of additional student workers (or other support staff) so that your released time for FK work does not present undue hardships for your colleagues.

The formal FK notification letters have not yet gone out, and probably won't until my secretary gets caught up from the beginning-of-semester rush, so you may not receive official notification of approval for another week or so.

I hope your Ford/Knight experience goes well. Let me know if I can be of help at any point.

cheers,
alice