Document title: Project Document Cover Sheet
DOULS
Distributed Open University Learning Systems
1 July 2010
The Open University
31 December 2011
Niall Sclater, The Open University Strategic Unit n.l.sclater@open.ac.uk
Judith Pickering
LTS, Perry Building
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA j.a.pickering@open.ac.uk
NA
Sarah Davies s.davies@jisc.ac.uk
Judith Pickering, Project Manager
Jason Platts, Lead Technical Developer
17 January 2011
DOULS_1 st _Project_Report
 Project and JISC internal  General dissemination
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0.2
17/01/11
28/01/11
Initial draft – Judith Pickering
Final version – Judith Pickering
Page 1 of 14

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
Section One: Summary ......................................................................................................... 3
Aims ............................................................................................................................... 3
Objectives ...................................................................................................................... 3
Section Two: Activities and Progress .................................................................................... 4
Project team consolidation ............................................................................................. 4
Visioning ........................................................................................................................ 4
Staff Workshops............................................................................................................. 5
Technical investigations ................................................................................................. 5
Section Three: Outputs and Deliverables .............................................................................. 6
Integrations with Google Apps for Education ..................................................................... 7
1.
Google calendar integration ................................................................................... 7
2.
Google VLE activity module ................................................................................... 7
3.
Gadget - Moodle Plugin and associated code ........................................................ 7
Gadget shortlist ................................................................................................................. 8
1.
Study Planner ........................................................................................................ 8
2.
Module news ......................................................................................................... 8
3.
Forum update ........................................................................................................ 8
4.
Study Buddy .......................................................................................................... 8
5.
TMA buddy ............................................................................................................ 8
6.
Module suggestion ................................................................................................ 8
Section Four: Evaluation ....................................................................................................... 9
Usability and accessibility testing ................................................................................... 9
Technical investigation ................................................................................................... 9
Preparatory development ............................................................................................... 9
Gadget evaluation and prototyping .............................................................................. 10
Project risk, issues and dependencies re-evaluation .................................................... 10
Evaluation activities planned for the period Jan- July 2011 .......................................... 11
Section Five: Outcomes and Lessons Learned ................................................................... 11
Section Six: Communication and Dissemination Activities .................................................. 12
Making links with SocialLearn ...................................................................................... 12
JISC Programme Meeting ............................................................................................ 12
Staff Workshops........................................................................................................... 12
Project blog .................................................................................................................. 12
Stakeholder engagement ............................................................................................. 12
Section Seven: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities ........................................................ 13
Section Eight: Collaboration and Support ............................................................................ 13
Section Nine: Financial Statement ...................................................................................... 14

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
The Distributed Open University Learning Systems (DOULS) project is currently running to plan.
The aims and objectives of this project at the outset were:
1.
Enhance the OU learning systems, with applicability to other institutions
2.
Understand implications of the provision of cloud services alongside institutional VLEs
3.
Enhance several key areas of learning systems functionality
4.
Develop interfaces between the VLE (Moodle) and externally-hosted systems such as
Google Apps for Education and Facebook.
1.
Explore integration between learning systems and Google Apps for Education
2.
Identify features and functionality in OU learning systems that could utilise a distributed approach
3.
Develop services to provide data to external systems
4.
Develop applications for third-party platforms that interface with OU learning systems
5.
Evaluate end-users experience of the solution.
A visioning exercise has explored the first and second objectives, i.e., to explore integration between learning systems and Google Apps for Education and to identify features and functionality in OU learning systems that could utilise a distributed approach.
The resulting report summary was referenced when setting out the development and technical plans for the project. The development of online student personas and scenarios as part of this visioning activity have also informed gadget brainstorming sessions which have now yielded an
approved shortlist of gadgets for further specification and development. A couple of more concrete
gadget ideas have been put through usability testing with end-users as paper prototypes. This testing followed guidance outlined within the Usability and Accessibility Testing Plan and Guidance documentation which itself is an output of this project. The production of this documentation was an achievement because it is sufficiently flexible to serve as a template for how testing will happen not only for the DOULS project but for other developments which are now expected to adopt this methodology.
Parallel technical investigations have produced a Technical Model which outlines the options, issues and technicalities of developing the functionality to connect the gadgets we produce to our Moodle
VLE; providing information and features from the system to students within iGoogle and other
OpenSocial platforms.

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
These investigations resulted in the production of a Development plan ; which outlines the development work to be undertaken during the project along with the associated processes, risks, issues and dependencies.
In summary the DOULS project is currently in a good position to move forward with the next stages of development.
The focus for this reporting period has been to consolidate the project team and establish regular meetings of the steering group. This has been achieved. The project team has been completed with the employment of a project manager, Judith Pickering. The steering group meet every three months and then works virtually, i.e., via email as and when needed; agendas and minutes have been posted on the internal project website.
Visioning was the second workpackage for this period, the objectives of which were:
 to explore opportunities for integration between OU learning systems and Google Apps for
Education with a view to creating an ePortfolio solution
 to identify key areas of existing functionality in OU learning systems that could utilise a distributed approach and assess the impact of this approach on end-users
 to identify features in the learning systems roadmap that could utilise a distributed approach and assess the impact of this approach on end-users
 to evaluate students, staff and other end-users experience of the solution, assessing usability and impact.
Significant progress has been made in this area. Firstly desk based research has yielded a report,
‘ Google Apps - Moodle integration possibilities ’ which has investigated the potential uses of distributed learning systems, other institutions use of distributed learning and internal developments in this area. One of the ways by which Google Apps for Education and Moodle could be further integrated is by presenting a Google app within Moodle. This has been tested by the
development of a ‘VLE Google Activity’ prototype which enables the scaffolding of reflective or
portfolio type learning activities from the VLE.

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
Staff workshops have been held with various stakeholders throughout the university to inform staff about the project, its aims and to discuss ideas for VLE gadgets with the intention of producing a candidate list of gadgets ready for research and development. These meetings included staff from a number of areas of the university including IET, student services, communications, LTS,
LIO, MCT faculty and KMi SocialLearn. From these meetings we had an initial candidate list of gadgets which underwent the following:
 Investigation into the feasibility of all options
 Usability testing of some of the concepts
 Identification of any issues and dependencies for the options
The final list was then taken to the steering group to shortlist the gadgets for further development.
Throughout this brainstorming and selection process gadget ideas were verified against our online personas and user scenarios which were also updated following the visioning activity and which will be revisited following every round of end user, usability and accessibility testing (the usability and accessibility testing plan and guidance was developed as part of this phase of the project).
A technical model has been produced which outlines the options, issues and technicalities of developing the functionality to connect the gadgets we produce to our Moodle VLE in addition to providing information and features from the system to students within iGoogle and other
OpenSocial platforms. Introducing this connection between an external platform and the VLE presents a number of issues around the security, administration and development of this integration. In the project we have attempted to address these issues through the development of an OpenSocial Moodle 2 plugin; a set of code libraries, tools and services to facilitate the delivery, administration and connectivity of OpenSocial gadgets within Moodle. This plugin is currently in development and will be released to the Moodle community along with accompanying gadgets towards the end of the project.

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
The DOULS project aims to deliver the following outputs:
1.
Personas and user scenarios
2.
Technical model
3.
Report on key functions, roles, activities and ICT at the OU
4.
Report on vision for future learning systems – based on desk research, technical investigations and evaluations, user research and consultation events
5.
A range of open source widgets for distributed learning systems, along with code and developer guidelines to allow integration between Moodle, Google Apps for Education and
Facebook
6.
Associated documentation to be made available to the JISC community
7.
Regularly updated project blog, reporting on project progress and lessons learnt
8.
Internal staff workshop and dissemination event to JISC community
Resulting technical outputs/systems integrations (as detailed in the Development Plan ) are expected to be:
 Moodle plugin to allow OpenSocial Gadgets to access Moodle web-services
 JavaScript library to assist with gadget connection to Moodle plugin
 Moodle plugin to allow users to export module event information into Google calendar
 Code library to interface with Google Apps for Education/Docs API
 Moodle module that initiates collaboration on Google documents
 Google gadgets
 Web-services etc in Moodle to support gadget requirements
 Migration of gadget to alternate platform.
Within this first reporting period items 1, 2, 4, and 7 have been delivered, in addition to an internal staff workshop (part of item 8) and associated documentation (item 6, which can be access from the project blog). The remaining output, i.e, item 5, a range of open source widgets is progressing to plan. As described above, we now have a gadget shortlist (see below) which will be produced during the following two phases of planned development work along with the code to connect our
VLE with external platforms.

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
1.
Module events (tutorials, assessments etc) can be exported from the VLE into the user’s
(personal/OU) Google calendar using a link from the module website.
We are also planning to use existing Moodle calendar iCal export support in this feature so other calendar clients (Outlook) are supported.
2.
Will enable the scaffolding of reflective or portfolio type learning activities from the VLE via the creation of ‘template’ documents in a Google docs account. This tool will ‘push’ either specific folder structures, documents or forms into students Google Docs in an attempt to scaffold their learning. In such an instance, the student would be presented with a button within the Moodle interface which when selected triggers the upload of the template/document/form/folders to their
Google Docs (once the student has agreed access). Sharing permissions will set up as specified
(options are either none or tutor). The student will be the ‘owner’ of the documents. A proof of concept version of this activity module has been produced and was demonstrated in consultation workshops to staff.
We will also be capitalising on existing Moodle 2.0 functionality which includes a ‘save to portfolio’ function, to enable students to save Moodle forum, blog posts etc into their Google docs accounts.
3.
A Moodle plugin to facilitate the connection of OpenSocial/Google Gadgets to a Moodle VLE with the intention of transferring secure user data. The features of this plugin and associated gadget code libraries are detailed within the project Technical Model.
Development work has been undertaken on the plugin as part of the preparatory development task
and the code is now at beta stage.

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
1.
Gadget to show current week of calendar view (study planner / calendar). Gadget needs to know userid, password, makes a request to Moodle. Moodle needs to expose data first in a way that the gadget can consume e.g. RSS feed, web service or going to a web page that returns data back.Gadget displays planner. Maybe facility to add Module calendar events to your Google calendar?
2.
News feeds – module specific but also specific to a particular topic area, e.g., psychology
(therefore broader than module). These news feeds could be internal or external to OU. Faculties and /or library would need to build/define these sources, e.g., delicious tags etc.
3.
Gadget to display the latest forum post(s).
4.
Would be able to capture and display data identifying students who are at a similar stage in their study of a module, e.g., all students who are studying chapter x or attempting to do activity y.
This information could be made available to students (who opt into service), giving them the option of studying together / set up their own forum etc.
5.
Enables student to select a visual way to represent how far they have progressed through a module. The visualisation should have a playful tone (because it sits in iGoogle), e.g., an egg timer, a cake, a clock etc. Students can select a visual representation from a range of options.
Students could also sign up for prompting in the lead up to TMAs. The prompting should be able to be modified by the student, i.e., the student can amend if there are periods when they can predict they won’t be studying, e.g., it takes account of holidays etc. Students can choose whether they would like the prompting to be particularly frequent, e.g., ‘yes, please hassle me’.
Again the hassling should be more playful / informal outside of the OU VLE. The gadget could be further developed so it links with the OU story (mood) gadget enabling students to respond e.g., with ‘I’m on it’, ‘I’m struggling’, ‘help’. Perhaps a conditional response to the student reply could be the triggering of tutor support. After submission of the TMA the student could then feedback how happy they were with their submission which may link with their final scores.
6.
A ‘future module’ gadget that gathers student’s personal interests and suggests modules based upon those interests.

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
Progress in this area is to plan and has focused primarily on the development of a comprehensive usability and accessibility testing plan and guidance document. The plans holistic approach has ensure that it is sufficiently flexible to serve as a template for how testing will happen not only for the DOULS project but for other developments; outputs from the VLE Roadmap Accelerated
Programme being one of the first to adopt this methodology.
Technical investigation has been undertaken to further understand the options, issues and technicalities of developing some of the functionality outlined in the project plan. This research was informed by:
 some of the initial ‘visioning’ work
 the need to understand some of the technologies involved and their potential use
 co-ordination with relevant areas of the OU VLE development programme (in particular
Personalisation)
 ideas discussed at the JISC DVLE programme meeting in Bolton on the 14 th September
A summary of the investigation is available in the DOULS Technical Model report which concluded that the development work required to meet the ‘vision’ of a distributed learning system falls under two broad categories; developing integrations with external systems (Google Apps for
Education), developing services and gadgets.
Preparatory development (also described within the DOULS Technical Model report) which followed the technical investigation concentrated on the mechanisms to create and deploy gadgets that connect to the VLE; creating a framework that can be used later in the project to prototype and develop gadget ideas, i.e., to enable gadget developers to connect their gadgets to our VLE. The
Social Network Application Plugin (SNAPP), which is a multipurpose Moodle 2 local plugin has been adopted to meet this need and is currently in a beta stage until such time that we have developed some gadgets - which will allow us to put it through more comprehensive testing (currently only a test gadget is available).

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
Following staff workshops and meetings to brainstorm gadget ideas, a list of potential gadgets was drawn up and evaluated according to the following:
 Feasibility of development
 Potential effort
 Potential issues
 Dependencies
 Expected use frequency
 Expected data change frequency
Paper-prototypes of some of the gadget ideas that were formed during the staff workshops were subjected to usability testing with end-users. (The paper-prototype is available to download from the documents page of the DOULS project blog in pdf format.)
Some of the key points raised were:
 Getting information on events such as assignment deadlines into Google calendar was seen as useful
 There needs to be help and support around using the gadgets
 Alerting users when assignments were due was seen as useful, but there wasn’t necessarily an understanding of the features of the TMA gadget
 It should be made clear what information is being shared with Google when using gadgets.
Apart from being a good test of the usability and accessibility testing plan and guidance, the resulting points raised will inform how we approach gadget development going forward; in particular how the gadgets are marketed and designed.
Finally, the project risks, issues and dependencies have been re-evaluated and included within the
Development Plan. The risk analysis will be revisited on a regular basis throughout the project.

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
1.
It is planned that only 2-3 gadgets will be developed in this coming period (while the focus for development is split between gadget development and the creation of a framework to deploy the gadgets). Consequently specifications for this first tranche of gadgets from the shortlist will be further developed taking into account requirements analysis based on the following: a.
Discussions with VLE/online experts b.
Student/end-user surveys c.
Mapping ideas against the online personas d.
Outcomes from end-user usabilty testing of concepts and prototypes
This work will need to complete and full gadget specifications drawn up by the end of April 2011.
2.
Evaluation of user satisfaction will take place between now and the end of the project. This will be achieved through usability testing with end users and expert evaluation, usage statistics, surveys and focus group meetings which will aim to address the following questions: a.
Does the solution satisfy user needs? b.
What improvements or enhancements would increase/improve their experience so far? c.
Would users find benefit in having the solution available within their other platforms?
Our success criteria will be that 75% of users would continue to use the solution and that users feel engaged and provide suggestions for improvement.
3.
Technical robustness, interoperability with existing OU systems and third-party platforms will be assessed between now and the end of the project with the aim of delivering full interoperability of the solution with existing OU systems and a technology that fits with the requirements of users. This will be evaluated via the use of technical testing and analysis of user requests for technical support (incl. outcomes) which will address the following: a.
What lessons can be learnt from the implementation of the solution? b.
Is the solution transferable to other systems and learning environments?
Outcomes learned from the visioning exercise have been summarised in the following report written by Niall Sclater; ‘ Google Apps - Moodle integration possibilities ’.

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
SocialLearn is an R&D group within the Open University investigating ways to enable individuals to use social networks to supplement their learning, via the sharing of information. The group is therefore interested in creating social gadgets which will enable users to connect with others and to take information they have collected to other areas of the web. Making connections with the
SocialLearn project was therefore identified as important and both projects will be liaising on a regular basis (quarterly).
A number of discussions with members from other project teams contributed to some of the areas investigated within the visioning stage of the project; specifically around Gadgets vs. Widgets, security issues and the integration of Moodle and Google Apps for Education.
As part of the DOULS project we want to develop some gadgets that will distribute features of our
VLE into students personal web spaces. Before undertaking development we met with university staff from a number of units to gather requirements and generate ideas for gadgets. A brief description of gadgets ‘What are gadgets?’ was used at those meetings and has proved useful so far.
The project blog has been updated regularly by Jason Platts. We have had over 60 unique visitors to the blog from 15 countries; the most popular post is about connecting Moodle to Google
Gadgets. Unfortunately there have been no comments posted in response to any updates which leads us to the conclusion that we need to raise its profile. We will aim to do this by highlighting it alongside the better know OU VLE Roadmap Acceleration Project. Now we have shortlisted a set of gadgets we will be in a better position to publicise the project and be more specific about the aims and deliverables.
It has been useful to have key stakeholders as members of the steering group and as such makes it easier to get their buy-in to the direction of the project. This in turn should facilitate engagement with the roll-out and adoption phase of the project.
The close alignment of the DOULS project with the Open University’s VLE Roadmap Accelerated
Programme (RAP) has meant that it has been critical that RAP project managers have been briefed on the project aims enabling the quick identification of any dependencies between the two projects. This process has been made easier because Judith Pickering is a project manager for

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011 both the DOULS project and projects within RAP. DOULS has therefore already benefited from RAP funding for some accessibility and usability testing.
The original risk analysis within the DOULS Project Plan has now been updated in light of progress made within the project. The latest risk analysis within the Development Plan, includes an analysis of the gadgets shortlisted for development.
Risks that have now become live issues for the project are:
1.
IT are unable to get staff and tutors into Google (other than manual set-up).
This affects both the Moodle VLE activity module and Google Collaborative Activity which will need to be rolled out on a pilot only basis until staff can be added to the system automatically.
The project manager for DOULS and senior managers are in discussions with Google to stress the need for a solution to this. Google are currently looking at the status of a related feature request.
2.
Due to an OU policy of single sign-on, members of the module team or tutors are unable to access the functional account preventing them from setting up Google collaborative activities.
This could affect use of the Google collaborative activity development. The current intention is to mitigate against this by creating a single VLE Google account through which any administration can be filtered.
3.
Google’s continual update of the systems and features means that changes occur with little warning and no version control, leading to outdated guidance and support documentation and incompatibility with OU systems and processes.
This risk will be tackled by careful management of the relationship with Google to provide as much notice as possible of changes. Advise module teams not to embed guidance within module materials.
The programme-level support has met our needs.
To date we haven’t had any interactions with other JISC funded projects.
We currently do not have any specific needs, requests or suggestions for support.

Distributed VLE Programme interim report, January 2011
Budget
Headings
Staff
£97599 £21,527
£25,619
£266 £266
£4,092 for period Aug 09
- July 10
Travel &
Subsistence
Equipment
Dissemination activities
Evaluation activities
Other (please specify)
£3,000
0
£500
0
£65,128
0
0
£1,531
0
0
£1,531
£166,227 £23,324 £27,416
Consultancy (Caroline
Jarratt) for development of usability and accessibility testing plan and further development of the online personas.