So for example, say the post date was a week from now and you decided to move it back to today since you’d finished marking. The system will allow you to edit the post date to do this, but the grades will vanish. Students will see feedback but no grades. You will see no grades either. If you put the date back to some time in the future the grades will appear, but then of course the students can’t see them anyway.

This only seems to be an issue with anonymous submissions. The solution is to log a support ticket with Turnitin, explain what’s happened and ask them to sort it out. They’ll need a paper id from the offending assignment but they can then fix it for you. I’m told they are aware of the issue and I hope a fix is forthcoming, or at least a mention of it in somewhere in the documentation.

I’m not sure if it affects Turnitin direct. I see it also seems to affect WebCT. If you are curious – don’t try it on a live assignment!

Never a dull moment….

There was much talk of the challenges of upgrading, but I thought it might be interesting to look at some of the thorny issues that turn up after the upgrade. The things that get overlooked or just slip through testing – and of course the things you would never expect in a million years. The sort of things you’d wished you’d known in advance. And I volunteered to write a blog post. So here it is.

I’m a huge fan of Moodle and there are some great things in the new version, but unfortunately a few of the bugs are verging on showstoppers. At the very least you need to be aware of them.

So here is a list of the top five issues we’ve noticed that I hope will get addressed in Moodle 2.3 or sooner. Some may not affect you, but those that do I would encourage you all to sign up to the Moodle tracker and vote for them. Incidentally I’ve just tried them all out briefly on my Macbook here in the office running the 2.2 beta so they’re still in there.

Assignment problems (two)

It’s possible for a student to apparently upload a file for an assignment and receive confirmation – yet not have actually done it. This is bound to catch out the last minute deadline student who hasn’t had time to read any guidance provided. Me basically.
Tracker entry: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-26969

In the advanced uploading of files assignment type, students can delete submitted files even when allow deleting is set to no.
Tracker entry: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-28357

Keyholder role not implemented

This was overlooked when the code was ported to 2.
Tracker entry: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-26017

Wiki doesn’t work reliably with visible groups

If you set up a wiki using visible groups (ie: they can see each other’s stuff but not edit it) the dropdown navigation that moves you from group to group doesn’t work. I devised a workaround for this but it’s not elegant.
Workaround: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=190581#p832518
Tracker entry: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-30478

No means to remove external blog entries

If a user registers an external blog, the entries get imported from the feed and can be displayed across Moodle. However, there is no means to remove them. The original user can unregister the blog, but the posts remain. There is no means for an admin to remove them. This could potentially be – well – embarrassing.
Tracker entry: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-27427

In the meantime, if anyone knows workarounds or that actually these have been fixed and it’s user error on my part – do say! And despite all this – Moodle retains a high awesomeness quotient.

An alternative to this kind of social network does exist in the form of Diaspora*, a decentralised social network with anti-Facebook origins. Diaspora* has had a rocky time recently but what happened last week reminded me about it. Ilya Zhitomirskiy, co-founder of Diaspora* died a couple of weekends ago in a San Francisco hotel room after an incandescent life of 22 years. Here’s what inspires me about Ilya Zhitomirskiy. His rejection of the profit motive. His commitment to the liberation technology movement. His technical flair. His work ethic. The contrast between his youth and achievements. His understanding that if your project and graduate education aren’t compatible, you go with the project. His reputedly epic parties. His commitment to privacy – even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg invested in Diaspora*. But all the same, it was hard being Ilya.

So, in tribute, this is him.

And this is what he was working on:

I’m sure he’d have been happy if there were a bit more about Diaspora* in this post and although I try not to make a habit of plugging any particular bit of software, I’ll venture a comparison below between Facebook, Diaspora*, and their main contender, Google+.

Below are some questions it’s good to ask when you’re choosing a social network platform, and an attempt at answering them (which was very time consuming and not so straightforward – things change so quickly in this field).

What’s the cost?

Diaspora*: free, open source, doesn’t claim rights to your personal data. However, all services have running costs (keeping the software up-to-date, maintaining and upgrading the server hardware and networking infrastructure, security procedures, electricity, etc so expect somebody to have to pay something).

Facebook: it doesn’t cost you anything up-front but Facebook’s model depends on harvesting your personal data and using it to match you with the adverts you’re most likely to click. So for example an advertiser might cough up 3p each to know your interests, and interests might be treated as better indicators of buying intentions than, say, your marital status, which might cost 1p. That’s not to argue that a business model where you pay with your personal data rather than money is wrong in principle, but it needs to be transparent and you need to be able to withhold data and know where it’s going, so you can make a decision about whether or not to pay for a service with it.

Google+: similar to Facebook.

Who owns your data?

Diaspora*: you own it, you can export it. Diaspora* allows you to be pseudonymous if you prefer, since it is trying to reconcile sharing and privacy.

Facebook: you own it, and by using Facebook you lend it to Facebook. In 2009, Facebook got into trouble for rewording its Terms of Service in such a way as it in theory gave them rights to use your stuff as they wished for ever. A more generous take on this is that when you shared, say, a photo on Facebook it becomes part of your friends’ experience – they comment on it, tag it, and so on. So is that still your private photo? In the physical world it would be, but in the online world it’s not so cut and dried.

GooglePlus: you own it, and by using Google you lend it to Google. Google is widely recognised as pioneering privacy and transparency. Google is not a search engine or video repository, though – like Facebook it is a vast data harvesting business which makes money by matching buyers with goods and services by personalising searches and displaying personalised adverts.

Can I trust the privacy settings?

Diaspora*: yes – no complaints so far. Its business model has no stake in compromising privacy.

Facebook: has on occasion revealed private data when it changed Facebook’s privacy functionality. The trouble with Facebook is that it has lost goodwill over the years and caused its users to clam up, falsify data, and stop responding to the ads. All of these things make the ads less effective, so the value of the personal data Facebook is selling diminishes, and one avenue Facebook has hitherto used is to mine even more of its users data. A vicious circle was looking unbreakable – however, as of November 10th, new privacy controls are opt-in, so from now on your privacy settings won’t change on you overnight.

Google+ – Google prides itself on transparency with privacy, and where it leads the rest of the industry tends to follow. You may have noticed its media campaign on privacy recently, in partnership with the Citizens Advice Bureau. However, there are some areas of privacy on Google it’s hard to understand.

More comparison of Google and Facebook from Wired magazine (29 June 2011).

Where is it hosted?

Diaspora*: Diaspora is decentralised, so you (and your friends) find and join one of the UK pods i.e. communities. You’re by no means restricted to UK pods – just that the nearer they are the faster they’re likely to work for you. The big difference between Diaspora* and the big centralised networks like GooglePlus and Facebook becomes clear – Diaspora* currently is not a big world meeting place they have designs to be. If you want to meet and organise on Diaspora*, you’ll need to get your community to sign up because chances are they won’t be there.

Facebook: similar to Google+, below.

Google+: hosted on Google’s own servers in the US, with the potential to host in whichever state where the laws are most favourable to Google’s business model.

What’s the exit strategy?

If you want to leave the network, what happens to your stuff?

Diaspora*: you can export all your data and photos in a couple of clicks.

Facebook: there have been arguments about who can and can’t export your friends contact list, including their private email addresses.  You can now export an archive of your stuff, and recently it seems that Facebook is somewhat softening its attitude to making that data importable elsewhere. If and when you close your account, subject to your privacy settings the stuff you have made public and that has therefore become part of your friends’ interactions, remains ‘out there’, but no longer identified with your account. (I hope that’s up to date – Facebook changed its privacy policy since – even changed the name of its privacy policy – and it’s gone a bit vague on that…

Google+: there’s Google Takeout, which allows you to export all your data for easy import into other environments.

Does it integrate with my other online spaces?

Diaspora*: you can easily post to Facebook and Twitter from Diaspora – currently it’s push only, you can’t pull things in e.g. posting on Twitter and having the post appear in Diaspora*. It has a bookmarklet that you can click on to post something to your Diaspora* wall.

Facebook: Facebook makes it very easy to post to Facebook from other places.

Google+: makes it very easy to post to Google from elsewhere. Google is requiring that any service that accesses its Contacts API (allows third party software to automate the export/import process) offers reciprocity. Facebook won’t offer reciprocity, so you can’t import your Google contacts into Facebook (or Diaspora*, for that matter).

So that’s it. Not much about functionality, I realise – but there’s more to life than that.

Finally, related bonus link - Eli Pariser’s 10 things you can do to pop your filter bubble.

*No, not an asterisk – it represents an airborne dandelion seed, a little bit of a literal diaspora.

From the LSE impact blog,

How can Twitter, which limits users to 140 characters per tweet, have any relevance to universities and academia, where journal articles are 3,000 to 8,000 words long, and where books contain 80,000 words? Can anything of academic value ever be said in just 140 characters?

They’ve produced a short guide in PDF form demystifying Twitter and explaining social conventions for new users, as well as suggesting ways to use Twitter for more experienced academic teachers and researchers.

See also the lists of favourite academic Twitter users submitted to and curated by LSE Impact.

Twitter is a backchannel which allows smartphone-owning audience members to discuss an event while it is ongoing. At conferences, the main question is how should organisers and presenters respond to the Twitter stream.

Bethany Nowviskie regards Twitter at invitation-only academic events, Brian Croxall posts on the absent presence, and here are some short opinions on Twitter at conferences (all from Hacking The Academy). Here’s a substantial free online book of ideas for using the Twitter backchannel during your conference presentation.

James Clay remembers one presentation where the displayed Twitter backchannel and the presenter (who was speaking with her back to it) fell out. This is avoidable and James’ own experience was much smoother, but the question remains as to whether Twitter updates prominently displayed during a conference presentation is distracting. There’s some empirical evidence that heavy media multi-tasking compromises attention. James wonders if Twittering about a presentation during that presentation is multi-tasking,

“I see twittering during a keynote presentation as a single activity and not multi-tasking. It is in my opinion akin to note taking during a lecture or checking on something said by the presenter in a text book (or online). I will agree it is going to have some kind of impact, but would like to see if the positive outweighs the negative.”

A couple of tools – Twitterfall lets you freely and easily aggregate and display tweets with a certain hashtag (designated keyword for a conversation). Tweetdoc lets you capture tweets on a given event in order in document form for future reference.

Twitter has many enthusiastic staff and students users at Goldsmiths including – but definitely not only – this growing list.

This is a top idea – you provide all the essentials (carefully thought out) and the user is free to add/remove items. Except it doesn’t quite seem to work like that. As soon as a user clicks ‘customise’ on  their home page, it resets to some minimalist default setting and all those lovingly crafted touches vanish. This leads to disorientation and confusion. And a little disappointment.

Custom Goldsmiths block

So, while we wait for this to be fixed in 2.2 (?) we’ve come up with a quick workaround in the form of a custom Moodle block. It’s basically a HTML block except that only a site admin can change the content, but anyone can add it to a course area or home page via the ‘add a block menu’. We currently have a ‘search’ box in there and two sections of useful links for staff and students alike.

Coding it turned out to be remarkably easy, but if anyone would like to try it, get in touch with me ( see www.gold.ac.uk/gleu/) and I can email you the code. There’s almost nothing to it.

Sometimes the simplest ideas work rather well. I could get a taste for Moodle development……

“In analysing the current process by which research is generated and disseminated, Fitzpatrick offers a clear account of the institutional and ideological obstacles to innovation. Universities have been slow in embracing the opportunities of the digital age. Worryingly, as the web serves as an ever more important channel of information and debate, in academia there lingers a palpable sense of distrust for anything published in digital form.

Arguably, such technophobia has much to do with the ingrained belief at many leading academic institutions that scholars can conduct research in isolation from each other and the outside world, only needing to communicate their findings to their peer group via the traditional avenues of high-priced journals and monographs with restricted circulation. As Fitzpatrick demonstrates, this state of affairs has wide (and devastating) implications that go beyond the debate on suitable publication avenues for the humanities. If scholarly thought does not engage with mainstream digital culture, its voice will eventually disappear under the tide of information freely available online.”

In keeping with this, as well as hard copy which can be purchased in the usual way, Fitzpatrick published a 2009 draft in commentable, freely available form using WordPress‘ CommentPress theme. This allows a threaded discussion to happen either on each page or paragraph by paragraph. Consequently, there are conversations around many paragraphs (and having published this way myself and expended all my energies on writing the thing rather than building a community of interest round it, I know that kind of engagement isn’t to be taken for granted).

Closer to home at Goldsmiths, Coventry and Kent, academics are curating and repackaging existing open access works of STEM science and philosophy into 21 Living Books About Life:

“Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and published by Open Humanities Press (OHP), Living Books About Life is a series of curated, open access books about life – with life understood both philosophically and biologically – which provide a bridge between the humanities and the sciences. Produced by a globally-distributed network of writers and editors, the books in the series repackage existing open access science research by clustering it around selected topics whose unifying theme is life: e.g., air, agriculture, bioethics, cosmetic surgery, electronic waste, energy, neurology and pharmacology.

By creating twenty one ‘living books about life’ in just seven months, the series represents an exciting new model for publishing, in a sustainable, low-cost manner, many more such books in the future. These books can be freely shared with other academic and non-academic institutions and individuals. Taken together, they constitute an engaging interdisciplinary resource for researching and teaching relevant science issues across the humanities, a resource that is capable of enhancing the intellectual and pedagogic experience of working with open access materials.

All the books in the series are themselves ‘living’, in the sense that they are open to ongoing collaborative processes of writing, editing, updating, remixing and commenting by readers. As well as repackaging open access science research – along with interactive maps, visualisations, podcasts and audio-visual material – into a series of books, Living Books About Life is thus engaged in rethinking ‘the book’ itself as a living, collaborative endeavour in the age of open science, open education, open data and e-book readers such as Kindle and the iPad.”

Living Books About Life will be launching this week, after which they are open for contributions in the form of discussion, including negotiation with each editor about the future direction of the book. For e-readers, there is the latest ‘frozen’ version in PDF format.

Apple's home page

I recall the first time I encountered an Apple II computer while studying Biological sciences. It kicked off an interest that eventually diverted me away from Biology into computing. I recall working in an office with an IBM AT PC and a Mac. There was just no comparison. Macs have always been a bit different. Individual. Occasionally a bit mad – like the Cube. And eventually four years ago I gave up on PCs and got an eye wateringly expensive Macbook Pro. I still have it, in fact I just put an SSD into it and hope it will last another three years at least.

Perhaps more relevant to this blog is how Apple have affected the way I learn. I recently completed an Open University course, delivered by their version of the Moodle VLE. Obviously it was fine on the Macbook, particularly things like video conferencing with the built-in camera. However I was able to access the VLE from my iPhone and participate in forum posts and listen to podcasts on it too. In fact the iPhone has become indispensable for day to day life and all manner of informal learning too. Part of my Personal Learning Environment you might say. And as for the Macbook – well I run a Moodle server on it for testing, occasionally practise my unix, write music, edit photos and videos. And it’s been nothing but a pleasure to use.

And what of the iPad? Well – I saw Bill Gates bravely try to push tablet PCs for years. I didn’t get the point of the iPad at first – it just seemed like a big iPod touch – but I got one for my parents and they love it. There is something strangely non-threatening about Apple stuff and the iPad takes it even further. People just seem to take to it. It doesn’t get in the way. Which, when you’re studying something – is just the ticket.

Thank you Mr Jobs.

We hope this will address the recent performance issues we have been experiencing. There will be another short outage in the next couple of days to allow a memory upgrade of the server, however this will be announced well in advance.

Our apologies for the short notice and thank you for your patience. The end result will be a better experience all around.

Curiously, the files were often still present in the legacy course files folder but It seems Moodle had lost track of the resource. Fortunately you can use the file picker to fix it. Edit the resource as usual and click the ‘add’ button to bring up the file picker. You can then browse the server files / legacy course area to look for the missing item.

This is much easier than the alternative, which is to upload another copy.

What will students notice about the new system?

The My Home page – a personalised, customisable landing page with a calendar and an overview of each course, geared towards helping students become orientated and get around learn.gold. The new Navigation menu on each page will also help here. Students now have the capability to export their work into a portfolio, which they can keep after the course ends and take away after graduation. We think students will also appreciate the improvements in learn.gold’s appearance.

What are the improvements of the system from a staff perspective?

There are new ways to design pathways through a course – an interaction of Groups and Conditional Access. Staff can also set up ways to help students keep track of what they have completed in learn.gold. Learn.gold is now plugged into some well-known web repositories for video and images, so it’s possible to access materials in different media in different ways. We hope that the voice and video web meeting environment Big Blue Button will help to break down barriers of time and distance. The Turnitin integration is smoother – only one page of settings now. One major headache of the past was the need for staff to maintain the files in each course – Moodle 2 no longer requires that – you can also reuse files between areas. There are numerous other new capabilities dotted round learn.gold which will make a positive difference to working in course areas.

Are we the first people to use Moodle 2?

Greenwich switched from WebCT (a different virtual learning environment system) to Moodle this summer, but our counterparts at LSE think that Goldsmiths may have been the first institution to upgrade from an existing version of Moodle. UCL for example are looking at summer 2012. We haven’t heard of anybody else.

What were the challenges in moving across?

Since very few people have done this we were feeling our way. At first we were advised we’d have to migrate one course area at a time – which would have been an enormous job – but IT Services sought a second opinion from Lancaster University Network Services, and LUNS Moodle developer Dan Poltawski prepared learn.gold’s database for an upgrade and carried it out.

Moodle help documentation is collaboratively authored by its community of users, but since Moodle 2 has relatively few users there are still many gaps. So we’re working hard to fill those while at the same time dealing with many requests and all the issues which inevitably arise with an upgrade. Learn.gold is far from the only thing we do in GLEU so we certainly feel exercised at the moment.

We were nervous about institutional readiness, too – could Goldsmiths prepare in the time we had? Things seem to be going well, though – we appreciate the levels of engagement.

Who do you want to thank for their work on the upgrade project?

When you try to name all the people who deserve credit for this upgrade you realise what a major job it was.

First of all, members of the Learn.Gold User Group who surfaced needs, arrived at decisions, and spread the word. They and Departmental Administrators were key to organising colleagues to make preparations. Huge credit to IT Services colleagues, including Spiros Andreou who set up learn.gold’s new Big Blue Button web conferencing environment, Rachael Johnson and Mike Jones who pulled out the stops, Basem El Haddedeh who enlisted Dan Poltawski at LUNS, and particularly James Smith in the Web Team who worked on the appearance of learn.gold (not to mention his Web Team colleagues who managed without him at a very busy time). All of the academics who started early with their course areas and helped us find the rough edges. Internal Communications staff who helped us to give advanced notice about upgrade. The students who participated in interviews to help us identify needs and issues. GLEU colleagues – particularly Fotis Begklis who is running many inductions and solving many problems. Pete Roberts, GLEU’s newest member, deserves a special mention. He’d only started a week before the upgrade but was able to solve some of our biggest post-upgrade conundrums and is the epitome of grace under pressure.

Any other points you want to make?

With guidance from the User Group, we’ll concentrate on particular learn.gold projects for this year. The biggest is assessment and feedback – the potential of learn.gold here is enormous. On the operational side we need to make things easier at roll-over time, and we also need to promote learn.gold course area pages which are as learning-friendly and low-maintenance as possible. And carry on disseminating how the activities that pioneering colleagues design in learn.gold – conversations, collaborations, self- and peer-assessment, web conferencing – contribute to learning.  We’ll be having a big push to collect case studies and vignettes this year.