Comments on: The Ecstasy and Agony of Primitive Learning Analytics http://einiverse.eingang.org/2012/10/13/the-ecstasy-and-agony-of-primitive-learning-analytics/ WoW, Learning, and Teaching by Michelle A. Hoyle Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:38:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: Eingang http://einiverse.eingang.org/2012/10/13/the-ecstasy-and-agony-of-primitive-learning-analytics/comment-page-1/#comment-917 Eingang Wed, 24 Oct 2012 13:18:36 +0000 http://einiverse.eingang.org/?p=821#comment-917 Hi Trandafir. The Open University's Moodle user base is huge. They're supporting tens of thousands of students and staff and they've invested substantial effort into linking everything up with their other backend systems. Some courses, like the one I was talking about, were deployed on an earlier version of the Open University's Moodle system. That's based on Moodle 1.x. Some newer courses, which I'm also involved in, are based on the newer Moodle 2.x. My role is in presenting courses and/or working with students enrolled in courses that are hosted via Moodle, not in deciding IT strategy or in installing and supporting the IT. I don't really know much about the innards of Moodle 1.x versus Moodle 2.x and why it would be better to migrate or work with Moodle 2.x. I'm also not familiar with RED5 or PoodLL or what they can or can't offer me as an end user. The Open University has been making efforts to make their content more mobile-device accessible. I think that's mostly done, however, through the design of the site and not through additional plug-ins. That is, AJAX, HTML, and CSS are being used to make a "responsive design" rather than needing to either dynamically stream the content in an appropriate format by running it through a converter or caching different versions. Going back to the idea of data analysis, one of my frustrations is that, because the OU is such a large organization and there's a tendency to lock things down, getting at the kinds of data for performing useful analytics of the behaviour of students on course forums or on course pages can be quite difficult. I do have access to logs on Moodle 1.x-hosted courses I work on at our organization but not on the newer Moodle 2.x one. Even when you have access to the logs, sometimes the detail you want isn't there. For example, I can tell someone downloaded a file, but the Moodle 1.x logs I get don't tell me which file the student downloaded. I know a student added a reply in a forum but I can't tell to which thread from the log entries. That's not to say the log files I have are useless. I certainly can (and have been) determining all kinds of things. I'm hoping to write more about these topics in later entries! Thanks for stopping by. Hi Trandafir.

The Open University’s Moodle user base is huge. They’re supporting tens of thousands of students and staff and they’ve invested substantial effort into linking everything up with their other backend systems. Some courses, like the one I was talking about, were deployed on an earlier version of the Open University’s Moodle system. That’s based on Moodle 1.x. Some newer courses, which I’m also involved in, are based on the newer Moodle 2.x.

My role is in presenting courses and/or working with students enrolled in courses that are hosted via Moodle, not in deciding IT strategy or in installing and supporting the IT. I don’t really know much about the innards of Moodle 1.x versus Moodle 2.x and why it would be better to migrate or work with Moodle 2.x. I’m also not familiar with RED5 or PoodLL or what they can or can’t offer me as an end user.

The Open University has been making efforts to make their content more mobile-device accessible. I think that’s mostly done, however, through the design of the site and not through additional plug-ins. That is, AJAX, HTML, and CSS are being used to make a “responsive design” rather than needing to either dynamically stream the content in an appropriate format by running it through a converter or caching different versions.

Going back to the idea of data analysis, one of my frustrations is that, because the OU is such a large organization and there’s a tendency to lock things down, getting at the kinds of data for performing useful analytics of the behaviour of students on course forums or on course pages can be quite difficult. I do have access to logs on Moodle 1.x-hosted courses I work on at our organization but not on the newer Moodle 2.x one. Even when you have access to the logs, sometimes the detail you want isn’t there. For example, I can tell someone downloaded a file, but the Moodle 1.x logs I get don’t tell me which file the student downloaded. I know a student added a reply in a forum but I can’t tell to which thread from the log entries. That’s not to say the log files I have are useless. I certainly can (and have been) determining all kinds of things. I’m hoping to write more about these topics in later entries!

Thanks for stopping by.

]]> By: Eingang http://einiverse.eingang.org/2012/10/13/the-ecstasy-and-agony-of-primitive-learning-analytics/comment-page-1/#comment-916 Eingang Wed, 24 Oct 2012 09:00:34 +0000 http://einiverse.eingang.org/?p=821#comment-916 Thanks for stopping by, Simon. The same weekend I wrote this piece, I did automate my process somewhat to scrape things. I intended to write a follow-up but it's on my to-do list. I got distracted by… delving into automating parsing of OU Moodle logs, importing them into a SQLite database, and then seeing what kinds of useful queries I could run on that. That has a planned blog post as well. If I have time today, I'll try to squeeze in at least one of those before tomorrow's #SolarSLA learning analytics symposium (http://stadium.open.ac.uk/2065) Thanks for stopping by, Simon. The same weekend I wrote this piece, I did automate my process somewhat to scrape things. I intended to write a follow-up but it’s on my to-do list. I got distracted by… delving into automating parsing of OU Moodle logs, importing them into a SQLite database, and then seeing what kinds of useful queries I could run on that. That has a planned blog post as well. If I have time today, I’ll try to squeeze in at least one of those before tomorrow’s #SolarSLA learning analytics symposium (http://stadium.open.ac.uk/2065)

]]> By: Trandafir http://einiverse.eingang.org/2012/10/13/the-ecstasy-and-agony-of-primitive-learning-analytics/comment-page-1/#comment-908 Trandafir Mon, 22 Oct 2012 09:01:06 +0000 http://einiverse.eingang.org/?p=821#comment-908 I think the better qsuteion to ask is, What do the developers feel they can support as they move to Moodle 2.0? It seems to me that your asking the qsuteion means you want to move in a new direction because of some technical issues you are encountering. I am new to poodLL application and I am very interested in getting this setup on my 2.1 box. Setting up RED5 is not that bad, but I think if you could do without it you might pick up some additional users. I would say stop and think about what would be best long term. What is going to allow for poodLL to grow as needs or requirements change? If not going with Red5 gets you access to use this on an iPad, I would say DROP Red5. My district is buying iPads left and right for classrooms instead of netbooks I think the better qsuteion to ask is, What do the developers feel they can support as they move to Moodle 2.0? It seems to me that your asking the qsuteion means you want to move in a new direction because of some technical issues you are encountering. I am new to poodLL application and I am very interested in getting this setup on my 2.1 box. Setting up RED5 is not that bad, but I think if you could do without it you might pick up some additional users. I would say stop and think about what would be best long term. What is going to allow for poodLL to grow as needs or requirements change? If not going with Red5 gets you access to use this on an iPad, I would say DROP Red5. My district is buying iPads left and right for classrooms instead of netbooks

]]> By: Simon Buckingham Shum http://einiverse.eingang.org/2012/10/13/the-ecstasy-and-agony-of-primitive-learning-analytics/comment-page-1/#comment-885 Simon Buckingham Shum Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:42:02 +0000 http://einiverse.eingang.org/?p=821#comment-885 Hi Michelle Thanks for writing this, since as analytics begin to roll out we really need feedback from end-users such as yourself on what's working and what's not. I can't comment on what's coming next on the frontline from the OpenU, but you can see from some of these links what various folks around the university are working on for the future... http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/improving-retention-identifying-and-supporting-risk-students http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/sbs/ascilitewebinaroct2012/49 Simon Hi Michelle

Thanks for writing this, since as analytics begin to roll out we really need feedback from end-users such as yourself on what’s working and what’s not.

I can’t comment on what’s coming next on the frontline from the OpenU, but you can see from some of these links what various folks around the university are working on for the future…

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/improving-retention-identifying-and-supporting-risk-students
http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/sbs/ascilitewebinaroct2012/49

Simon

]]>