Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Re: Reflections on Moodle/LAMS Integration

By: Ernie Ghiglione

[ Reply | Forward ]

Hi Anders,

Thank you very much for taking the time to work with the integration, read the teacher's guide and give use feedback. We really appreciate it.

> Moodle/LAMS is very structured and sequenced

Well, LAMS, at its core, is a sequencing engine . Therefore it's all about sequencing of learning activities. You might say that LAMS is very linear. But you can use Optional Activities to give the students control of the activities they want to do next.

Currently we are developing LAMS 1.1, a complete re-write of the current version of LAMS (the one you have used), which does provide features like conditioning, loops, etc (see this presentation for further details.

> I am using a powerful computer and a relatively fast
> connection. However, Moodle/LAMS is not slow but not as
> fast as I expected.

Well, there are a few reasons for that:

• the elche.melcoe.mq.edu.au server we've been using is running Moodle on Linux. This box is a Pentium III 800 Mhz with about 512MB of RAM. A fairly small machine
• LAMS runs on a separate server, Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz, 1GB RAM running Linux as well. This LAMS server also takes care of other Moodle demo servers we use for testing as well.
• These machine are on slow datacenter in our University, I think the network in that room runs about 10Mbits per second.

In addition, we are in Australia and you are in Sweden, so that might add to the latency as well.

These are all development machines we are using for the beta-testing. Once we add some of the suggestions, we will go public with larger servers and better networks. But for now, it's more convinient to us to work on machines that we have easy access to, therefore the slowness you experienced.

> Re-editing
> OK, you can create what this tool is intended for. To me
> it is not obvious though, when having completed your LAMS,
> saved and closed it, how to re-edit it?

You will be able to re-edit a selected sequence by pressing on the "Edit the selected sequence" button, which at the moment, it is not working at the moment (see this posting for further details).

Now, if the sequence that you want to re-edit is being used (running), then you can't edit it. Why?, well, because it is running . In true fact, you can edit it by creating a "Copy" of that sequence.

At any rate, the re-editing of sequences is a design limitation that we have in the current version of LAMS. In LAMS 1.1, we copy the entire sequence before we run it with a course, so you can always go back and edit your sequence.

> ..full of versions, none of which I can delete.

Yep, another design limitation in the current version (addressed and solved for version 1.1).

> And what about learners? Can they run the sequence only once?

No. Students can go back to see the sequence they have run and see the activities they participated and if those activities are set to "not locked when finished" (see forum or chat), they can come back and keep adding to those.

> What if they want to make a pause
> or re-do the whole sequence?

You can always take a break and leave. Once you click on the sequence again, you will start from the LAMS activity you started. Again, you can see the previous activities you have completed already as well

> Private and Public
> I am also confused that the LAMSs that I have saved in the
> private folder seem to appear in the Moodle section.
> Are they visible to all? If so, that's not what I intended.
> I want to be able to publish them only when I am ready.

All sequences that you save in your private folder, no one but *you* can see them or have access to them.

Now, when you add that sequence to the Moodle course, then that sequence because available for anyone on that Moodle course to *run*. Does that make sense?

So you develop your sequence and once you want to make it available in your Moodle course, you add it as a Moodle-LAMS activity. However, other teachers in your Moodle course or other courses (for that matter) won't be able to view (in authoring) or add that sequence to their classes because they don't have access to it. It's in *your* private folder.

> Formatting
> Confusing is also the fact that some activities let you
> use HTML-formatting (Noticeboard) and others not (Journal).

Noticeboard is use as a page or announcement that you might want to have for your learners. You can use fancy HTML if you use the HTML Noticeboard or a Rich-Text editor if you use the normal Noticeboard tool.

However, Journal is mostly used for telling students to reflect on something (and output of a previous task/activity). In this case fancy letters or pictures aren't commonly used. However, I agree with you that this is inconsistant

> Labelling
> 'Journal' is depreciated in Moodle. Now it re-appears here.
> I wonder if one shouldn't consider using activity names

Ok, one important thing to keep in mind is that LAMS ain't Moodle. Nor it tries to imitate it or replace it. It could be a good complement, and therefore we are doing this integration. I understand that Journal is depricated in Moodle, but in certain activities in LAMS it makes a very strong pedagogical case.

For instance, take the "Chat&Scribe + Journal" tool. A teacher can use this tool to get the learners to discuss about a particular topic, while a scribe (one of the students, compiles and sumarises the output of the chat updating a report to all the participants in the chat who can then vote to whether they agree with the summary being compiled by the scribe. Once everyones agrees (or disagrees), the student get presented the final reported which they might have agreed or disagreed and the teacher can ask them to reflect on the conclusion they reached as a group (that last bit is thru a Journal).

You can have a look at sequences from the repository where you'll see how those Journals do make sense.

Nevertheless, your comments about a proper alignment of the terminology between the two would make a lot of sense.

> Editing and deleting forum posts
> Josep M has already pointed this out. I think that it is
> important that people are careful about how they communicate
> in forums. If I am right then you'll need time to reflect, organise
> your thoughts and detect and correct your mistakes.

I couldn't agree more with you about this. We are in the process of rebumping our Forum tool completely.

> OK. I guess I appear to be mostly confused. I probably am

I hope this helps to clear a bit of your confusing. Please, *do* ask or comment on this as much as you can as it will help us to make it better from LAMS and Moodle perspective.

Thanks,

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione