A decision about where to place the content

On the 5th of July we resolved the question of whether to place our online content in an instance of Moodle or sheffcol.

The meeting had this question as a one agenda item. Paul Warren explained things to us. Present at the meeting with me were, Dru, Julie, Wendy, Kieran and Lucy.

Paul explained that sheffcol would allow a far better presentation. He said that Moodle had ‘25%’ the ability to allow good presentation and look profesional. It was not an issue that tutors could easily place content into Moodle as Paul could create an instance of sheffcol to allow for this. Most organisations are becoming platform independent and as Moodle is a platform it would not be an appropriate choice. An example of what we want is the LeTTOL website. From there students can go to work components and sytems.

We then moved onto consider using blogs and wikis. Paul pointed out that access control levels are the only difference between wikis, blogs and forums. It is important to keep a copy of a blog somewhere if it is being used for assessment. Word could be used. We could here teach an important skill as the web is unstable. Using eBlogger would create problems as students would have to type in the names and addresses of all the people they wanted to access their blog. An alternative would be to give access to all, not a good thing for a reflective blog. Paul suggested setting up and using Google groups and from there using blogs, forums, wikis (hopefully). We could register for this a t no cost as an educational institution and be given more space to put in resources. In this way tutors only need place in one list of names and addresses and the individual blogs would all be linked from one place.

The meeting agreed to explore using an instance of sheffcol and Google groups. An instance of sheffcol would be used for the central infrastructure – it would be platform independent – and to build in links to Google groups. Content could be placed in sheffcol. Initially templates would have to be produced first. It would also be possible to design a template and allow students to place their eportfolios in sheffcol. They would need to keep their own record for the future, which would exist anyway in their blog.