After translating quite a pile of LAMS labels to french, I decided to use LAMS for myself. In previous years I just forced my students to design some simple sequences as an exercise. So, I am a total newbie, but I think I came up with a few maybe useful questions and suggestions while designing what I consider to be a very simple sequence.
Example I used to come up with some ideas:
The sequence is part of a little crash course on social science methodology. It tries to teach learners how to formulate a simple "X -> Y" research question/hypothesis and then how to design a questionnaire to measure X and Y. Attached a *.jpg made with CompendiumLD (won't comment on problems I had with that tool). It shows the Forum I want to get rid off (mostly) and two activity loops, within both of which learners either work on the wiki or with external survey manager tool.
Also attached a picture of the LAMS sequence (in french, sorry).
- I use the data collection tool three times to let students send me a "done message" (fin de l'étape)
- Forum used for feedback is a Moodle one.
- Plan de recherche is a wiki they have to go back to
- The external survey manager is referenced three times as resource task.
* Teacher notification by email
- There should be a authoring option in each tool, preferably a bit customizable (.e.g. send a message at the end of X activities or at the end of the day). Right now, only some tools send mail.
- Alternative solution: Create a "done" tool with a button and a short text field. Student can click on it and add a short comment when he arrives at this stage. Yet another solution. Add a "poke the teacher" button next to the finish button that the user can press.
... This is one of the major problems I got with LAMS. In a semi-distance teaching situation where students have two weeks to complete a task, I don't want to use the monitoring tool, but get some mail when they are done with a few activities that belong to the same "stage" in my scenario design.
* Mail
should include links to the student's product. This is of course a major challenge to implement. But for starters you could at least include the URL of the LAMS server or the LMS from which LAMS is used.
* Create a variant of "optional activity" that is called "activity group".
- Rational work on some task (e.g. have the student define a research plan) may engage them in using several tools (content, resource, todolist, wiki, ...)
- Functions: Tell the student that he can work with each of the tools as much as he likes, Each time he exits a tools, the whole list of them should be listed plus the "Next activity" button.
* Output conditions
- Would be nice if some other tools had it. E.g. the forum + discussion.
* Wiki:
- Be able to enforce page creation (not just page modification) ?
- Teacher annotations, e.g. some kind of discussion page/or inline comments ?
* MCQ
- Let the learners add questions (i.e. be able to use the MCQ as a learner creation tool).
* Collect data
- Output condition (each learner contributed at least X resources)
* Tool reuse in later stages
- Créate pointer to the same instance of a tool (not a clone), so that in a sequence learners could revise contents without backtracking (particularly useful for wiki, data collection, resources, etc.). I.e. in technical terms I'd like to insert an icon by reference.
... I really would like this, since typically I have students revise a text three times, but got other activities in between. This could be implemented with a support activity, but I'd prefer to have things in the flow, after all it's LAMS we are using here and not a CMS.
* Feedback tool
- need to be able to provide (a) feedback for any activity and (b) create dynamically create output conditions that let only students who completed correctly some prior task(s) to move on.
- feedback should be sort of visible from within the tool and maybe even at a finer level of granularity (e.g. per resources added, wiki page edited, etc., but may also through a collection that shows all feedback for all activities to a student (and optionally to other students). One possible solution would be to add a tab "feedback" in each tool. Monitors would see it through the monitoring interface and learners through the player (but maybe also via a special "show feedbacks" button there.
Anyhow, is there a "best" place to read about the plans for the LAMS 2.4 evaluation/feedback tool ? I never made the effort to search for it ....
* Data collection
- Add URL datatype (I know this is redundant with resources, but may be useful anyhow).
* Gate/Stop tool
- Add real dates as alternative to days and hours. Teacher over 30 can't add/subtract days when they plan 2-month activities ...
* Moodle integration.
- A LAMS lesson (as defined in the LAMS monitoring tool) did by default include students that do not exist in the Moodle course. No students in the Moodle meta course. No idea how I got something like 27 users instead of 7. These users are then (of course) also members of the group that is associated with the Moodle course. Does LAMS just by default add any Moodle user that ever tried to use LAMS to a LAMS group associated with a Moodle course ?
* User management:
- In the list displayed for a group, there are three actions: Attribute roles, Modify and Delete user. Why not add a "remove from course" ? (I know there is a button on top that leads to a tool, but if you list 40 users it isn't visible anymore).
* Admin tool parameters:
- Add a parameter that allows to change default length of lists, e.g. 50 instead of the usual 10.
* Summary of most wanted:
- Be able to implement activity loops that are sort of loose, i.e. students working on something
- Feedback tools linked to activities in some ways and better notification by mail.
- In other words: Focus some more on constructionist sequencing that support project-oriented or inquiry learning as opposed to CSCL and behaviorist sequencing (that are now fairly well implemented with the flow tools). Yeah CSCL and instructionalism are more closely related that some would like to think ;)
Posted by Daniel Schneider
