Lessons Tool: Draft Capability Review Process Work

What is this page about?

This page is being used to document the Sakai Teaching and Learning Group's initial Capability Review of the Lessons or Lesson Builder tool that Rutgers University is leading the development on.  This is our first attempt at what we are calling a Teaching and Learning Capability Review Report and thus the information here should be considered draft materials that will change over time.

Screen Movies of Lesson Builder Use

In this section put in ways that you've seen Lessons used effectively. Feel free to make new pages to link to screen shots or screencasts.

• Lesson Builder Training screencast (1 hour, 15 minutes), 8/15/2013.  This is a "get started" lesson on using LB, designed for LB newbies.
• Lesson Builder Showcase Videos (not yet scheduled) - see the Lesson Builder Showcase Webinar Planning page for more details.

Preliminary Capability Enhancement Ideas

NOTE:  The list below is our very early and initial PRELIMINARY list of ideas.  It represents "raw information" that has not necessarily been discussed or reviewed by the Teaching and Learning Group and is intended simply as a starting point to engage with others within the community (Sakai TCC, PMC, Lead Developer(s), Users, etc.).  It is important to also note that as the list is refined, capabilities will be edited so as to express "user needs" and "use cases" rather than lists of requirements (see the Resources Folder bullet as an example).

Link to google spreadsheet where the items below now reside: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsDvrV3rD2IWdFF0NTFScEt1MWUxSlNHRGdaR1l1eFE&usp=sharing

In this section put suggestions for future development and any issues you can identify that could make Lessons better.

• Add Table of Contents as a hideable overlay viewable from any content item, rather than requiring students to navigate to a separate page to access.
• Ability to add captions to uploaded video added through Add Multimedia.  Integrating with Amara widget may be easiest way to go. 
• Ability to duplicate a course and have links to entities not break.
• Create a Lesson Builder "parent" folder in Resources to better organize the content that gets added to Resources as you build LB pages.
• Navigation suggestions: (Please give feedback on these).
  
  1. Change "Add Multimedia" to "Embed".  This is always fouling people up. They think video but it could mean web page, pdf, image.
  2. Change  "Add Resource" to "Add Link".   This would be clearer. They could link to file, website, etc.
  3. Add one pull down named "Add Activity". Below it have Assignment, Quiz, Forum topic, Question,Comments, Student Content"
  4. Add one pull down called "Manage Pages". Underneath have Add top level page, add subpage, reorder, remove page.
  5. Under "more tools" use "add website", Import CC, Export CC, Add External Tool.
  6. Keep settings but perhaps underneath you can have Permissions.
  To me, these navigation changes would save me a lot of angst in teaching new users the system. 
• Add new add image choices
  
  • In modern tools it is becoming increasingly common to be able to upload a photo, paying no attention to original size and the program takes it and resizes it. You can post it at a certain size and then the user can enlarge it by clicking a little magnifying glass.
  • Also, it is common to be able to add a gallery or at least multiple images at once.
• Resources folders
  
  • USER NEED #1: Avoid accidental changes/deletions to Lessons files stored in Resources.
    • USER RELATED STORY > Dr. Smith has just started to use Lessons for the first time this semester.  She notices after setting up her first Lesson module that a new folder appeared in Resources titled with the same name and assumes that the two are related.  The following week she is in a rush and rather than updating an article she wanted her students to read directly in Lessons she decides to just delete the file that is in the Lesson's folder in Resources and upload the new article, not realizing that the file name is different.  She is then surprised when her students email her complaining that the article is not appearing for them.  After a few phone calls with her help desk she has been able to correct the issue but is frustrated by the time that was "wasted".
  • USER NEED #2: Avoid information overload that can result from multiple Lesson-related folders appearing in Resources.
  • USER NEED #3: Avoid XXXX when resuing content from previous courses.
  • Prior Comment > I'm wondering if it is possible to create a single folder in Resources called "Lessons files - do not touch" and make this file  hidden from students. This folder could then hold all the Lessons content but just one level deeper.  If someone makes a lot of top level lesson builder pages and names them things like 1, 2 ,3 you can very easily get an unwieldy batch of folders in Resources.  Users are apt to start adding and deleting because the titles of the folders match their content.  And it gets even more hairy when reusing content from a previous course.
• We need to import zip files exported from Melete into Lessons with the option to have each module become a main page with a sub page for each section in the module.
• Rubric:
  • Instructors would benefit from being able to to evaluate student work using the peer evaluation rubric capability
  • Assessment using rubrics will be more effective if 1. Instructors can add performance statements to each cell in the rubric that describe the performance required to meet each performance rating or each criteria (see example here). 2. Students can see the rubrics before they submit their work
• It is easy to forget where/whether conditional release has been set. A global view that shows where and what dependencies have been set would be helpful, including the ability to establish requirements and conditional releases in that same view. Perhaps this could be incorporated into the table of contents .
• Comments tool on student pages:  The comments tool is great but can't be added for Student content pages.
• Easier way to move content around.  Now you can go to Reorder and then click "Add items from another page"  this allows you to first pick the page, then it shows you all the items on the page. You can pick and choose which you want to copy to the page.  It isn't that clear because you are actually deleting things you don't want to move and that is counter intuitive. If you do nothing it will copy everything including links to subpages.   It also leaves a copy on the originating page so then you have to  go back and delete every item. It would be nice if moving content around was something more like a copy/paste or move where you are on the element you want to copy or move and then indicate the destination.
• Easier way to promote and demote pages and subpages. It would be nice if you could have a view of the heirarchy of all lessons pages and promote or demote pages.
• If a more sophisticated method of "painting" pages or dragging and dropping content in order to author pages is adopted, consider doing this at a higher level in Sakai so that more tools (like the OSP tools) could take advantage of such authoring capabilities.
• Allow more flexible web page creation, while maintaining Lesson Builder's underlying infrastructure. For example, instead of the Lesson Builder's current block-by-block (div-by-div?) approach, allow a top-level page to be a subway map, with students clicking different "stations" to reach parts of an individual lesson. Another example of such flexible use include using an image map for navigating lessons in an Art class.
• Better assistance to instructor/site designer. For example, add Search and Replace capability spanning entire Lesson Builder structure, including replacing URLs, etc. Add test feature to check if all links on a page or in a Builder site are accessible to students enrolled in the course. Etc.
• Add the ability to generate summary and detailed reports on student progress in terms of item completion and meeting requirements.  The summary report would provide counts and percentage of students who have completed  (or in the case of items with requirements, met the requirements for) each item in the module.  The detailed report would provide similar information on a per student basis, including grades for graded activities.  These reports would allow instructors to see at a glance how the entire class is progressing and easily identify students who aren't keeping up or meeting the requirements for advancing.

Marilyn notes that after using Add Multimedia to add video you can click Edit and then anything you put in the description box will show up as a caption.  However, there may be issues with this approach (see comments, below, for details)