All 2 entries tagged Pais

Moodle Redesign Feedback Survey for PAIS: The Results

To follow up the work we did last year on improving the layout of our Moodle pages (based on student focus groups), we recently distributed a feedback survey to gauge the views of students now that they have had two full terms to work with the new layout. In this post we'll look at the results of that survey (full results of all responses are available as a download at the bottom of this article).

The survey was distributed to second-year undergraduate PAIS students in March 2019. Second year students were selected because (a) first-years would not have experienced the previous design as a point of comparison, and (b) there was a concern about 'over-surveying' finalists due to the NSS running at the same time. An entry into a prize draw for £50 Eating@Warwick credit was offered to anyone who took part. In total we had 36 responses out of approximately 200 students (~18% response rate).

How much do you agree with the following statements?

We started off by asking respondents to rate their level of agreement with the following statements (on a scale of strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree):

• 'My PAIS modules are now presented more consistently'
• 'Structuring by weekly topics makes it easier to find what I'm looking for'
• 'Reading lists embedded week-by-week makes it easier to find material'
• 'It is now easier to find the contact details of teaching staff'
• 'It is now easier to view my PAIS Moodle modules on a mobile phone'
• 'The new Moodle layout is helpful for supporting my learning'

The results were as follows (click the graph to enlarge):

Somewhat reassuringly, the vast majority of the responses were very positive, in particular around consistency, ease of finding content, and the decision to embed reading from Talis Aspire by week.

There is some slight area for improvement on the question about accessing Moodle on a mobile (this now works much better than previous years, but we acknowledge there are still some outstanding issues), and in particular there were a several respondents who only answered 'neutral' or 'disagree' when it came to the ease of finding staff contact details. We are going to look at improving this for the next academic year (2019-20).

For the next three questions we enabled text-entry answers to get some qualitative comments.

What is your favourite thing about the new layout?

The word cloud below shows the most common responses to this question. For the purposes of producing a meaningful word cloud, the totals of certain words were combined when they had near-identical meaning, e.g. 'consistent' and 'consistency'. (Click the image to enlarge):

We can see from this word cloud that one of the main changes we made (organising the modules by weekly topics, with weekly reading lists embedded in each week) was a very popular decision, as the words week, topics, reading, and lists featured prominently as respondent's favourite feature.

We can also see that references to consistent and standardised are very prominent, which was one of the main goals of our redesign.

There are many positive adjectives that show just how much students like the new layout. These include easier, quickly, accessible, convenient, concise, useful, logical, simple, and intuitive. Seeing these words coming back from our users is hugely encouraging as these are clear indications that we have got our design right in terms of usability.

What could still be improved?

Similarly, I have produced a word cloud based on what students said should be improved. (Click the image to enlarge):

The picture here was perhaps less clear, with no single theme around what wasn't working well (potentially this could be interpreted as a good thing, because there is no obvious area in which we are failing students). There were lots of different ideas to sort through, including encouraging use of forums, providing clearer contact details, improving weekly descriptions, and better use of the announcements section. Indeed, the need for clearer contact details was flagged up by quite a few respondents, and while we have made big improvements in consistency in this area since last year, it's helpful to know that we could still do better here.

Two major themes did appear to be visible, however.

Firstly, as we have now set an expectation of consistency across modules (particularly around Talis Aspire week-by-week reading lists) students are critical of modules that don't uphold this consistency. This is why we see words such as Talis, reading, list and week appearing prominently, because there were certain modules that didn't conform to the use of Talis or the weekly reading setup that students now expect to see.

Secondly, the way we handle assessment could be improved, both in terms of the consistency in assessment information that we provide in Moodle, and in terms of integration with Tabula which we use for submissions. This explains the prominence of the words assessment, essays, Tabula, and rubric.

Any other comments?

We ended the survey with an opportunity for students to leave any further comments in a free text field. Of those that left comments, most were positive about the redesign, with some additional recommendations for improving consistency, wider use of Talis Aspire, and improving the information about assessment.

The full list of 'any other comments' is shown below:

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"Showing this to other students from the Faculty, universal positive feedback was received. This has been something the PolSoc SSLC has supported from the beginning of the year, pitching this idea to other departments in the Faculty (not necessarily saying they should use the PAIS design) would ensure that joint degree students have at least relatively similar degrees of consistency if not just one single moodle experience."

"Both sets of Moodle pages have been easy to use and useful overall."

"The collection of Resources and General Info is really useful for just having one common space of misc stuff!"

"Thank you for putting effort into developing these platforms."

"I think having a Tails Aspire page (one that is regularly updated, of course) should be a requirement for all modules."

"Clearer information on Exams/Essays would be better than the huge blocks of text under the 'assessment' section on the new Moodles."

"There could be some more consistency between modules in the way they use moodle - in terms of the notes and seminar information they put up. Also, a general standard level for the amount of notes, and if not what is available on the lecture slides that is available. If someone misses a lecture due to illness, and it is not lecture captured, there needs to be notes on the lecture if there is very little on the slides (this is the case in my International Relations module)."

"A real improvement from last year!"

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Conclusions and full results

Collecting this data was an extremely useful exercise, and we would like to thank all of the students who have now responded. We will be using the results to fine-tune some of the improvements to the modules, particularly around staff contact details, consistent use of reading lists, assessment information, and mobile responsiveness.

There were also many other helpful comments and suggestions that were submitted by individual students (unfortunately too many to respond to in this article) that we will be taking into account for the next academic year.

The winner of the prize draw has now been selected and has been informed directly.

You can download the full raw data from the survey here: pais-moodle-redesign-feedback-survey-march-2019-full-results.pdf.

Any queries about the survey or the PAIS Moodle redesign can be directed to James Roscoe, Academic Technologist for PAIS.

James Roscoe : 28 Mar 2019 15:07 |  Tags: Feedback Moodle Pais Survey |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

New Moodle layout for PAIS in 2018–19

Over Summer 2018 we decided to hold some Moodle focus groups with PAIS students to find out more about how they are currently using Moodle to support their learning. As part of this, we discussed a potential new course layout which would involve structuring the module page by weekly topics.

This suggested layout was warmly received by the focus group participants, and is intended to provide three main benefits:

• More consistency across PAIS modules.
• A simpler, cleaner layout that works better on mobile devices.
• An easier interface for not only finding content, but also editing and maintaining it.

The restructure proposal also received strong support from the PAIS Senior Management Team (SMT) and has been commended by the central Academic Technology team.

In particular, consistency in layout and presentation was highlighted by students as a major area for improvement. When asked to consider the statement 'My modules are presented in a consistent way', 0% of the participants agreed with the assertion, with 91% actively disagreeing. However, it was also recognised that tutors ought to have the creative freedom to deliver content how they see fit, within a given framework. Our aim is therefore to provide a consistent page template, within which colleagues can still create any resources they wish.

This article outlines the main changes that have been made, which can be summarised as follows:

• Course pages are now structured by weekly topics
• Teaching staff contact details are now presented in a standardised format
• All courses now have a standard header template
• A PAIS resources block has been added

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Course pages are now structured by weekly topics

It made pedagodical sense for our Moodle pages to reflect the structure of the course itself, i.e. a 10- or 20- weekly schedule of topics. This has been achieved via the 'Collapsed topics' course format, i.e. a dropdown of sections, which provides easy access to the content without required much vertical scrolling. There is also a 'General Information & Resources' dropdown at the top for easy access to resources that might not fit into specific weeks, such as the module overview and assessment information, or any other resources that could be useful to refer to throughout the year.

Previously, course pages were organised by relatively arbitrary categories that were arranged in the grid format on the homepage, e.g. 'reading' / 'resources' / 'additional resources', with each module using slightly different variations. This made it more difficult for students to find what they were looking for, and sometimes the grid sections were simply being used to house a single link, requiring unnecessary extra clicks. The grid format also had a number of bugs associated with it, including issues around visibility settings and permissions, and was also difficult to use on mobile devices.

HTML tables have been removed, which were previously being used to present the course structure. These were exceptionally difficult to navigate on mobile phones, often requiring awkward horizontal scrolling. The new collapsed topics layout is much easier to view on mobile, which is important as our research found that students are accessing Moodle on a multitude of different devices.

The dropdown structure now effectively takes the place of the old weekly schedule tables, except that now we have the ability to add Moodle activities/resources directly into weekly topics (rather than just having to edit the section summaries), which will have great improvement our ability to quickly add content, move and edit existing material, and also access learning analytics data for individual resources.

Students also expressed a strong preference for using Talis Aspire to present reading list material rather than static lists within Moodle. For those using Talis Aspire, the link is still available via the block in the right-hand column, though in the future we also hope to make use of an incoming Talis Aspire plugin that will enable us to embed weekly reading from Aspire into the correspondingly weekly dropdown on Moodle, which will make it quicker and easier to access the current week's reading.

Teaching staff contact details are now presented in a standardised format

The ability to easily access the course director's contact details and feedback hours was a feature that all students wanted. Students also commented that it would be helpful to see the contact details for seminar tutors.

The vast majority of modules were already displaying basic contact information for the director, such as name and email address, though we noticed that several of the email links were not working due to errors that had been introduced when adding the 'mailto' links.

Given that all modules ought to have this information as standard, we decided to implement a more consistent way of displaying this, and have now placed contact information for the module director and additional teaching staff in the right-hand blocks. This now includes additional details as standard, such as a photo, link to staff profile, and an office number that ties in with the interactive campus map. Placing this information in the side column now frees up space in the main section for course-related content.

To view the contact details, users simply click on the lecturer's name to open the dropdown. (Note: On some older browsers, e.g. Internet Explorer, the show/hide dropdown functionaility may not be supported, in which case all the contact details are displayed by default).

All courses now have a standard header template

All module pages were using an image in the top-left, but the size/dimensions of the image (and therefore the way in which content flowed around it) was inconsistent. Again, there were problems associated with viewing on mobile devices.

We have decided to standardise the presentation of the header by including a PAIS-themed header image which incorporates the module image via a circular cut-out. The header uses red shades from the official PAIS colour palette and displays the module title and code. It has also been set to always span 100% of the available width of the page, meaning we no longer have isues with text wrapping, and it displays well across all screen sizes.

This new header provides a more consistent look and feel, which is both asthetically pleasing and provides a clear visual indiciation to students of which module they are currently accessing. Anyone who wishes to change the photo shown in the circular cut-out can do so by contacting James Roscoe.

A PAIS resources block has been added

Lots of the existing module pages had links to standard departmental references, such as the PAIS website, marking critieria, the UG/PG handbooks, and Intranet sites. For instance, last year a link to the new marking criteria had to be manually added to all PAIS module pages, which was took a reasonable amount of time.

We've now decided to offer a standard set of 'department-level' resources on all PAIS Moodle pages, which has been rolled out automatically via a department-wide side-block. This is now much easier to update (e.g. should we ever need to add/remove/edit any of the links) as it can be changed in one place rather than needing to edit every single module manually.

If there are additional PAIS web links that you wish to add into the main body of your module page, then this is of course still possible.

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We hope that you will find the new Moodle layout an intuitive and flexible way to deliver your module's online content. While it is always a little daunting to adjust to a new system, we are confident that after a little getting used to it we will all find the new format easier to edit and maintain, and that these changes will give students a much better experience using Moodle to support their learning.

If you have any comments, questions, or simply want a refresher on using Moodle, don't hestitate to get in touch our Academic Technologist, James Roscoe.

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Our thanks goes out to Kostadina Yanakieva and Alex Paszta-Keene, our temporary members of staff who helped with much of the legwork for reformatting the 80+ modules across the PAIS department.

James Roscoe : 23 Aug 2018 13:50 |  Tags: Layout Moodle Pais |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem