Forum Teaching with LAMS - experiences: Recent Sakai post on Branching in LAMS V2.1 & V2.2

By: James Dalziel

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Following some recent discussion on the Sakai mailing lists, I posted a comment on current and future branching and conditionality features for LAMS - I'm reposting it here for LAMS Community members who are interested in the current status on Branching for LAMS V2.1 (and 2.2).

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From: james@melcoe.mq.edu.au
Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 18:06:10 +1000
To: pedagogy@collab.sakaiproject.org
Subject: RE: guided instruction [sakai]

Dear colleagues,

Conditional release/branching is a major area of current development for the upcoming LAMS V2.1 release. For those who are interested in current and evolving LAMS functionality in this area, see below.

Before describing individual features, it is worth noting that LAMS has a strong focus on collaborative activity sequencing - much of our work addresses conditional release/branching for groups, not just individuals. We do have functions based on individual tasks (like quiz scores), but also group-oriented release/branching.

LAMS V2.0.x (current release is 2.0.4) has conditional release embedded within some tools (eg, an instructor can set a pass mark for quizzes, and a student can't proceed until you achieve the past mark; for collaborative Q&A, a student has to answer a question before he/she gets to see the answers of all other students; for document reviewing, a student can't proceed past a set of documents to the next task until they have read a certain number of them, etc). This kind of conditional release within activity tools is separate from the "flow" of the overall sequence (the links between activity tools).

For the overall sequence, an instructor can add Gates (or "Stop Points") between activities, and these can be released by hand by the instructor at run-time ("Permission"); after a set period of time ("Schedule"); or only once all students reach the gate ("Synchronise").

For sequences that are not so linear, an instructor can have boxes of "optional activities" - 2 or more activities where students can choose which activities they do. Optional boxes can have a setting where the instructor specifies that students can't progress past the optional box until they have completed a certain number of activities.

Other than clever use of optional boxes, there is no true branching (different students go down different branches of activities) in LAMS V2.0.x

Separate from the above, a new feature introduced in LAMS V2.0.3 is "Live Edit" - this allows an instructor to change a live running sequence "on the fly". It's not quite conditional release/branching, but it allows you to change or add to a design as you go with students.

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LAMS V2.1 (due in the next few months - early code already available) adds a number of new features at the "sequence" level. Most importantly, you can now have true branching. Branching sends students down different activity tool pathways (where each branch can be made up of zero, one or more than one different tools, and which may or may not come back together afterwards). Branching decisions are automated based on three options: subgroups (if subgroups already exist within the sequence, these can be used as a basis for branching); instructor choice (done by hand at run-time); or based on data from previous activity tools (see below).

For branching based on data from previous tools, the simplest example would be quiz score - eg, if you got 8-10/10, go down branching 1; if 5-7/10, go down branch 2; if 0-4/10 go down branch 3.

This goes beyond current approaches, as the branching decision can be made at any point in a sequence, rather than only immediately after the quiz tool. At a technical level, this requires a radically different software implementation, as the branching/conditional release is not a property of the activity tool, but of the workflow engine "in between" tools. As far as I know, no LMS has this concept.

Also, you can have branches with branches, as well as branches where one pathway has no activities (ie, just go straight to the next activity after the branch).

We'll be keeping things quite simple at first (in V2.1), but in later releases (V2.2+) you'll be able to do combined branching decisions (if you got quiz score X and posted Y forum postings, then go here; otherwise...).

This new functionality at sequence level is complemented by a change at activity tool level - instructors will be able to define "data out" from an activity tool that a branching decision may later wish to consume. So this will allow branching decisions to be made on quite complex data if desired - eg, students who said the word "foo" in the forum and got X/10 on the quiz, go here; otherwise...).

If you'd like to learn more, I gave a first overview of these features at the recent European LAMS Conference, and showed a first live demo of branching functionality - see slide 19-26 at http://lams2007.lamsfoundation.org/pdfs/EuropeanLAMSconference.DalzielKeynote.ppt
(audio is also available - http://lams2007.lamsfoundation.org/mp3s/20070706%20005041-Next%20Steps%20for%20LAMS%20and%20Learning%20Design.mp3
For technical information, see the LAMS wiki http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/Branching

Also, the "Optional Box" feature will be expanded in LAMS V2.1 to allow for sets of sequences of activities to be added to optional boxes - so this allows student choice of different sequences of activities within the optional box (which some people would see as a type of branching).

In LAMS V2.2, we also hope to allow Gates ("Stop Points") to consume activity tool outputs - so you can control the flow of students (either individually or as a group) through a sequence based on past activity data. This can be based on data from *any* prior activity (not just the immediately prior activity), as well as decisions based on combining data from two or more past activity tools. Again, this goes beyond any current LMS approach I know of.

LAMS V2.1 will support a new grouping option based on students choosing which group they want to join (with groups then able to be used later for branching decisions).

LAMS V2.1 will also support "floating" activities - activities that sit outside the sequence, but are available to students if/when they want.

Finally, LAMS V2.0+ has the ability to treat sequences of activities as if they were a single activity tool. No one has implemented this yet, but the infrastructure is there - this means that if a developer (based on advice from an educator) put together a set of activities that make a meaningful sort of "sub-sequence", then the sub-sequence can be a drag and drop tool in its own right. In the context of branching, this means a developer could pre-package a complex branching structure as a sort of pre-built tool to make it easy for instructors to use this without having to worry about creating the whole branching structure themselves by hand.


The point of all the above is that LAMS V2.1 will have much greater flexibility to support more advanced pedagogical structures (complex role plays, Problem Based Learning, etc), particularly those that rely on individuals (or groups) doing different activities at different stages.

Best wishes,

James

Posted by James Dalziel