Bodington

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Bodington

• Dr Paul Davis
• Oxford University

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History

• Born and nurtured at Leeds from 1996
• Development of facilities piecemeal for specific
  purposes
• Not designed as a VLE (probably term not even
  invented)
• Growing interest in VLEs commercialisation
  considered
• Decided to release as Open Source
• Selected by Oxford WG as institutional VLE
  incredibly adaptable thus meeting collegiate
  requirements.
• Running also at UHI, Manchester, Southampton,
  York, Penn State, Eton, Farnborough College.
  Not nec institutional

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Clientele
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Why Bodington?

• Open source
• Not locked in
• Deep access - requirement for course structures
  at Oxford
• No specific roles set up
• Default was open - did not require an SIS
• But worries about
• real costs (see Finally a free lunch...
  www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/vle/index.xml.IDnews )
• reliability of system (Up since 1/4/05 without
  fault)
• long-term future (planned)
• limited functionality (developed)

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Bodington Strengths

• Allows URL for each item
• Simple to use and navigate
• Consistent GUI input
• Can move resources after creation
• Can use basic functionality or add HTML
• Can link in or link out
• Set rights to restrict access
• Open Standards - IMS Enterprise services
  interface to integrate with SRS, IMS LIP, QTI..

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Consistent GUI input

• 5 basic questions
• Cascade access rights?
• Name max 12 lowercase/numbers
• Title what appears as the link
• Description what the link will show
• Introduction whatever you want to say, can be
  lots of text (or use Textblocks)

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WebLearn resources

• Suites of rooms
• Plain rooms
• Group communication room
• Link to external web document
• Structured document
• Web document
• Multiple-Choice Question paper
• Events and Access

• Questionnaire
• Short Answer paper
• Pigeon hole  
• Log Book
• Easy Builder
• Text Block, Heading
• Image Block
• Quick Links
• RSS Feeds
• Bookmarks

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Access control

• Generally cascade access rights
• If something is more specific set up access at
  relevant level
• Different rights dependant upon resource
• e.g. post for logbook/discussion room, mark for
  pigeon holes
• See rights allow to see resource exists. Good
  for publicity.
• View rights allow access to resource
• Owners group is all powerful!

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Getting started for dummies academics

• Create a room / suite of rooms
• Paste information from a word/HTML document
• Upload files
• Create a link to web page
• Use text/image blocks to control sections
• Use editor to make bold, underline, links
• Sort resources
• Timed release allows early preparation

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Devolution

• Oxford Campus, Divisional/Group Buildings,
  Department/College floors
• Floor managers control and cascade rights
• Rights are not confined to courses
• Anybody can have any rights
• Anybody can be delegated in control below
• Low skill barrier academics do it for
  themselves!
• Possible to integrate disparate systems

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Log Books a misnomer?
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Peer review reflection
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Pigeon Holes
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Newsfeeds
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Announcements
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Bookmarks
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Aspire (PDP)
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Skills Profiling
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Questionnaires - Features

• Classic style one per user, revisit until
  closed
• One-time fill it in and no more
• Tear off completely new each time
• Attributes
• Anonymous
• Attributed
• Partial know who has filled in but not what
  they said.

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Questionnaire Options
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Questionnaire
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Adding Access

• Quick and dirty
• Large groups
• All Users
• All Staff
• All Students
• Public
• Look at resource (See)
• Change resource (See, View, Edit)

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MVN Forum
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ACL Rapid access control
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My WebLearn
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MDC
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Creating Easybuilder
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Easybuilder defaults
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New resource menu
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Oxford rollout

• Easy comprehension of buildings etc
• Recommended use of Test Building
• WYSIWYG common forms approach
• No pre-defined restrictions
• Establishment of user community
• Local images and colouring
• Enhancements to templates
• Bulk upload of data from University Card
• Automatic group creation
• Integration with SSO
• Is it VLE, VE, VRE? So many uses!

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Future

• Linkage to external services through open
  standards
• Making full use of JISC eFramework
• Allowing best of breed
• Dynamic content blogs, RSS etc
• Collaboration through GuanXi / Shiboleth
• WAFFLE
• Tetra

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New Look