A recent US Department of Education report concluded that “on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction”. In the New York Times analysis of the report, Steve Lohr said:

Until fairly recently, online education amounted to little more than electronic versions of the old-line correspondence courses. That has changed with arrival of Web-based video, instant messaging and collaboration tools.

The study combined data from 99 studies with quantitative comparisons of online and classroom learning. The difference in grades was modest but meaningful enough to draw the conclusion, so many drew the conclusion that online > classroom learning.

I’d caution against this. As I said in a previous post, computer-based learning isn’t intrinsically more motivating, more engaging, or better than any other kind of learning, but that’s not to say that teachers shouldn’t be doing all they can to make online content accessible, engaging & useful.

Last month, I was asked by the Naace to review some online Moodle courses described as ICT Continual Professional Development resources. I realised once I started looking into them that they were essentially compendiums of links to other websites answering questions to general questions like “What is assessment?”

The entire page was set out like this, with 10 sections laid out with a header, a handful of separate pages giving nuggets of information about the topic, then some links to other websites. The overall effect was completely over facing. Yes, these courses were designed for adults, but the principles of good web design revolve around the central mantra of “keep it simple”, regardless of audience.

The standard setup in Moodle is a course broken down by weeks or topics. All resources need structure, but most students using a textbook wouldn’t start flicking through from page one in order to find the subject they’re looking for – they would flip to the index. If you’ve put together a webpage that’s double the height of a standard monitor (~2048 pixels), start your course with an overview, including learning objectives & outcomes – just as you would at the start of a lesson.

Wherever possible, embed information on the page, don’t link to it. Whether this is a paragraph of text, an image or a Youtube video, students might miss it if you hide it away in a link.

This leads me on to my favourite discovery of last year; Adobe Presenter. Every Moodle course I set up now starts with a simple presentation that introduces the subject. Because it’s more attractive than standard text, and comes with an element of interactivity in the forward & back buttons, students are more likely to take the information in.

Embed these presentations by publishing them online and inserting an iframe to a label on your course.

“A modern paradox is that it’s simpler to create complex interfaces because it’s so complex to simplify them.”

Pär Almqvist

Softening the edges of a Moodle course takes time. Softening the edges of an entire Moodle installation takes even longer, but the benefits are potentially far greater. My school is in the process of switching from the almost impenetrable course list to departmental landing pages as the main way for students to access information.

5 rules for designing a good elearning course

1. Make it active & thought-provoking

Don’t just use your VLE to present information to students. Put activities on it to encourage them to engage with the content. Hot Potatoes quizzes, Flash-based activities, crosswords, etc.

2. Encourage collaboration

Include activities that require students to collaborate with others. “In 60 seconds, write down all the words you know related to e-safety. When you have done, swap your list with a neighbour and see if there are any words you don’t know. Together write a short definition of each word from both of your lists, using formatting & images to help.”

3. Guide your students with structure

Break Moodle courses into suitable chunks – lessons, topics – using headings, subheadings & indentation to show flow of information.

4. Embed, don’t link

Wherever possible, embed information in the body of your course rather than linking to it. If you have the equivalent of a page of text, link to it, but include anything shorter to improve readability. Having to have a dozen tabs open to read all of the information on a course is not usability in action.

5. Edit your copy

Textbooks rarely contain spelling mistakes. Not so for websites. With the increasing push to electronic media replacing textbooks, it is essential to retain quality & reliability. Read through the text on your courses, check the links, and if possible have someone else do it too.

Further reading

The field of user experience is fascinating, and well-documented. Try these links if you would like to read more:

• Jakob Nielsen: Twitter postings: iterative design – “text is a UI”
• Kyle Sollenberger: 10 User Interface Design fundamentals
• Leona Tomlinson: Understanding Disabilities when Designing a Website
• Michael Agger: Lazy Eyes – How we read online
• Sigma Infotech: Website design for your customers – it’s not what you want
• Adobe: Engaging with the new eLearning

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Last week, in all the excitement of being a brand new blog owner, I started having a look through my old waste books; a stunning variety of notebooks, few with anything interesting inside, even fewer anywhere near full… nothing at all like Lichtenberg’s, despite having stolen the name from his wonderful pocket idea machine.

After scouring them for what started life as old journal article ideas, I ended up with an array of posts sitting happily in Wordpress’s admin control panel, including this one.

I started out by saying that thanks to handy tools like Etherpad & Google Docs for brainstorming & collaborating on curriculum developments, Moodle for giving feedback to students, Twitter for talking to other teachers both in and out of my school, as well as more conventional techy applications like email and word processing, I’d almost eliminated paper from my classroom. Back in for the first day of the summer term today, I honestly don’t know what I was smoking. I, like everyone else, had charged out of my classroom on the last Friday of last term at full speed, leaving a stack of papers on my desk – some useful, most decidedly not.

I was in school for three days over Easter for year 11 coursework catchup, of course, but with two of my students bringing in their toddling cousins for the day it just meant the papers ended up covered in chunks of plastecine and felt tip pen marks. I never got the chance to tidy up, so the first free period of my new term was spent cleaning up last term’s crap. During this time, I realised that none of the scraps I was picking up were mine. In my school, we have hugely irritating sheets sent around on an all too regular basis entitled “How’s he/she doing?”, which for me at least is a much easier question to answer via email, rather than having to send a student with it down to the pastoral office. Same for the SEN version.

I’ve never been a technophile, really… I spent longer deciding on a nice fountain pen than I did on my last computer, and as I’ve already mentioned I have a bewildering array of notebooks that I either like the look or feel of. I never thought I’d see the day when I became a digital convert, but it slowly seems to have happened as the technology got to the point where it could replace the more traditional ways of working. Combining Delicious bookmarks or even the newest addition to my “that’s bloody brilliant” list, OneNote, to write down snippets of goodness means I no longer need the notebooks, or the dozen lever arch files of articles I collected together when I found a way around the print monitor at university. I actually felt a pang of guilt about that when I heard that my alma mater was in financial trouble.

I still have my old notes, and I can’t see me ever getting rid of them, but even my trusty yellow legal pads are going unused now. I can’t imagine trading my excessive book collection for a Kindle, no matter how crisp the screen… I’m in love with my iPod Touch, but wouldn’t want to read a book on it. Some things won’t – shouldn’t – change, but in terms of day to day working I’m pretty much paperless – now I just need to spread the word.

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Yet for all this apparent tech savvy, it’s taken me a good two years to realise that web 2.0 is more than candy-striped buttons and bizarrely-named websites. I feel like the kid proudly waving his eight-track tape player in the face of fully iPodded youths. I’m 24, for God’s sake… I don’t know why it took me so long to catch on.

It’s not like I don’t keep up with the Joneses… I own an iPod Touch, have a six-digit ICQ number from back in the day, and managed to bag “j.greenwood” early on in Gmail’s beta, before at least half a dozen other people who seem unable to cope with the loss and have their email sent there anyway. The next time a plane ticket arrives I’m using the bloody thing, whether it says Jacqueline Greenwood or not.

I suppose I’m so used to having messages of “omg! try this it sooooo roxxorz” or “hello friend, try new Floosh, the lavatory cleaner that also freshens breath” that I filter out anything that isn’t a recommendation from a friend as… well, spam. Seeing the little buttons at the bottom of websites, hearing teachers talk about it at school – even seeing it on the news – it didn’t quite register.

Twitter was just another of those words I smirked at the first dozen times I heard it spoken aloud. Much like e-assessment site Yacapaca, Mahara, or hell, even Google.

I’m still not sure whether I’d want to change the way I use Twitter now by extending it into my classroom; having students follow my personal account doesn’t exactly appeal, though I can see the benefits on a short-term basis (project work, etc), and have already set up a separate account I’ll use for teaching.

I’m also wary that there’s still a lot of hype that surrounds web 2.0 – this has died down over the last year or so, but there are still people who believe that web 2.0 offers “solutions” to “the education problem”. In reply to my mini-profile “ICT teacher up North, hopping on the Web 2.0 train a little too late. Blaming leaves on the track.” @jonesc_nc said:

As a new Twit and blogger, I’m sure there are many people who think I’m buying into the web 2.0 hysteria I’ve made a point of avoiding, but I think it’s shortsighted to avoid using tools that have a positive impact on your job because they might seem gimmicky.

So to close, I’d love to hear from anyone who has successfully used Twitter in their classroom, or anyone with a Who eight-track… the Pistols are getting old.

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