SF-UK Moodle site

From Schoolforge-UK

Andy's Original post to the SF-UK mailing list:

It appears that Moodle is gaining momentum in the UK and I was trying to think 
of how Schoolforge can be at the front of this.

The idea I have is that Schoolforge could provide a demonstration Moodle site 
for people to have a look at the capabilities of using a VLE.

Why not use Moodle to provide a repository for the Schoolforge "Open 
Curriculum"

As the repository grows in size the emphasis of the Moodle site can change 
from demonstrator to full blown web resource for education.

Cutter are prepared to supply the hardware and bandwidth for this service.

Hows and whats will need to be looked at closely to ensure that the correct 
effect is gained from providing this resource and that it is not abused.

Comments please

It appears that there is some interest in this idea.

To that end Cutter Project Limited has set up the Server to provide this service.

However before the url is released I feel we need to work out the details of what it is used for, by whom and who is reponsible for the operation.

It's important that whatever SF-UK do doesn't detract or replace the work of individual UK moodlers, the embryonic UK moodle community or moodle.org itself, where UK Moodlers have a natural home. SF-UK certainly has a key role to play in promoting Moodle alongside other FLOSS projects in its liason with with DfES, BECTA etc, but the Cutter hosted site can be used to provide far more.

Miles suggests that we use Andy's moodle site to provide free hosting of Moodle courses for any UK based education group that won't itself charge for access to the course. Such courses could easily include space for collaborative course creation activity, our own mailing lists could be moved over to moodle forums, and there could certainly be space to provide a moodle training course, sets of case studies etc, and facilitate SF-UK's role at the officialdom interface. Such courses can be open or closed access, and Moodle 1.5 allows for course (and user) level themes.

This doesn't take anything away from moodle.org, as provision there is limited to discussion forums etc, a demonstration course and a sandbox type course. Nor does it directly impinge on the good work of commercial Moodle.com partners, as we'd only be hosting courses, not sites. What it does do is allow people to try setting up courses for themselves, without having to worry about hosting or servers, and if it takes off might provide some incredible synergy as once registered for one course, a user could easily subscribe to others. Furthermore it's entirely in tune with the bottom-up, open source, community-based approach that I'd like to see Moodle maintain. Even BECTA and the DfES might be impressed.

Put simply, I'd like us to leverage moodle to provide a UK sourceforge type site, but for educational projects and courses, rather than software. This has, in fact, been tried already in Australia, by the Oz govt - have a look at EdNA Groups to see what sort of thing is possible. With a bit of luck, they might even let us borrow their rather good documentation, terms & conditions, and custom registration code.

Things to start thinking about

Note to SF-UK: Please edit and improve on these; this is work in progress

• Aims and objectives

We need a clear mission statement, long term objectives etc

• • To provide an online facility for UK based groups to collaborate and communicate on not for profit educational projects.
  • To showcase the power and flexibility of open source software, including Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP and Moodle.
  • To allow UK based educators to easily set up their own online communities, without the need for their own server or hosting company.

• Policies

Some to think about:

• • Open or restricted courses? EdNA have come in for criticism for allowing organizers to close access to their courses, but requiring all content to be open will put many potential organizers off - policy should be to encourage open content rather than require it.
  • Creative commons style licences? Again, requiring this will put many off, but I'd hope that organizers would be encouraged to make at least course structure, resources and activities available as Moodle backups under CC licences.
  • Big question - open to students or not? The Oz site isn't, but if it's a demo/trial of Moodle, then it makes sense that it be so. I'd say yes, but we may live to regret this. There may also be duty of care / child protection issues. It's simpler not to open it up to students - set it up for teachers to work together on constructing a course but once they want to run it with pupils then they need to have their own site - courses can be copied between different moodles. Of course, there's nothing we can do to stop students having anonymous guest access if the course creator sets things up that way - but at least we're not storing contact details for under 18s.

Acceptable usage etc

• Terms and Conditions

The EdNA site have thought much of this through already. If they will allow us to use their materials, then only a limited amount of tweaking will be necessary.

• • Courses to be free.
  • Course creators to be responsible for policing the content on their courses.
  • Hosted projects are to be viable, of educational benefit, and have a life time of at least a month - this is not to be simply a sandbox try Moodle out site, moodle.org has this facility already.

• Responsibilities

• • Andy Trevor of The Cutter Project to look after server infrastructure, connectivity, techie stuff
  • Miles Berry has offered to take on a leadership and management role, subject to demands of his day job.
  • Some members of the Moodle community might be approached to assist.
  • More volunteers from SF-UK please!

• Advertising

If it is to be a success people need to know about it

Initially, 'advertise' by word of mouth via a few online discussion groups, also perhaps approach some sympathetic organizations and offer to host a course for them; once we've got a critical mass, then a bit more publicity wouldn't go a miss. It would be great to make it available at BETT as part of Project HUGToB.