DLT Project Poster

DLT Project - Relational Database Course

Project Reflection
 

At the outset, I was sure the relational database resources I had at hand along with the Moodle LMS that I currently use, were suitable for this project.  However, the sequencing of these resources wasn’t fully established.  My curiosity about new learning technologies explored since this paper commenced, along with feedback from my lecturer, encouraged me to reconsider the plan.  Some of the resources were rearranged and modified for improved student understanding, accessibility, and formative assessment. 

Minor adjustments in Moodle included following an established pattern for the first four weeks, in more detail.  Each week would commence with a reading resource like a PowerPoint, Wiki, Video, or Moodle/Web page, followed by activities with examples (individual or collaborative), an upload tool for completed activities, a quiz and a glossary to summarise the weeks learning. 

Designing instructional content for a variety of applications and platforms has its technical issues.  This process made me think a lot about the abilities of the target group/students with access, navigation and usability online.  They are not familiar with Moodle and although most are comfortable on the internet, I felt that there needed to be design considerations around different objects they would encounter; like pop-ups, dialogue boxes, webpages opening in new tabs, logins, new Gmail and Cacoo accounts, IMS, Moodle messaging, grades/overrides, feedback and the navigation between EIT drives, desktop applications and resources online.  It was important to ensure that hyperlinks were sufficient and intuitive, clear guidelines and software plug-ins available for students to concentrate and progress through the course material.  This meant a lot of testing and adjustments to Moodle tools and course resources to minimise any misunderstanding. 

Online Tools and Applications
In preparation for accessing Google and online applications, students are required to create a Gmail account and if they haven't got one then follow the How-to video embedded in a labeled Moodle page within the course.  A wall in Padlet was linked into a Moodle page for brainstorming activities.  Students were also asked to create an account in Cacoo for their ER-Diagrams and conceptual designs for the menu, form and report layouts. 

The collaborative tools such as GoogleDocs and Padlet seemed to inspire more trust from the students who have utilized them, whereby they aren’t alone in a brainstorming activity for example but working as individuals and yet as a group, in a collective environment.  I even sensed their relief when they realized that saving and storing was automatic and that their file was accessible to everyone, anytime for revision.  The students ER-diagrams were put together quite quickly in Cacoo, after my brief introduction to the navigational elements, layout of the web tools and download options. 

Ethical and Accessibility Issues
The Relational Database course requires an enrolment key on entry through Moodle. GoogleDocs can be shared through a Gmail address by the document creator. They can assign editing or viewing privileges, however someone who has been given editing privileges can also assign editing to others, which could put the students contributions at risk.  The document owner has the ability to remove anyone in the sharing group and is the only person who can delete the document.

Technical Issues 
Jing was used to create a video taken of a custom animation sequence I created in PowerPoint.  There was no option to edit the size of the video which appeared to be an awkward fit when tested on a wide screen and a tablet.  Unfortunately, my operating system didn't meet the specifications to download Camtasia for editing or to make cool effects, and although EIT workstations do have Jing, Camtasia was not available either.  There was an option to save by uploading it to Screencast.com or to a physical drive whereby it created a swf file, but unfortunately the quality of this was very grainy.  The video How to Draw your way to the Candidate Key has been linked into the Introduction to Database presentation.

References
PowerPoint presentations have references included at the end of the presentation.
VirtualMV Wiki is a hyperlink from the main page, so I though it best to place a reference document in the course information folder.

Adherence to Plan
There has been changes to the plan which is about timing and sequence in the delivery of resources to meet the objectives.  The course has been running almost parallel to this project so a blended delivery has enabled me to demonstrate and have class discussions about 18742 learning objectives and performance criteria that I haven't developed material for yet e.g naming conventions and a sample brief.  The assessment part 1 is due to be handed out next week but is still in the development stage, so I haven't included it in Moodle or made that week available yet in students view.

Future Improvements
I envisage constant improvements with streamlining resources for use in this course.
- How-to video on using Cacoo diagram tools
- Further development of MS Access how-to's in documents, video or webpages until a new
  version of MS Office is released
- A Wiki could be developed to align with these course improvements 

Feedback
There are four students on this course however, since their enrolment back in July 2012 there are now only three.  Fortunately, I was able to get some feedback from one  student through a form created in GoogleDocs, which also generated a results spreadsheet as a reference for the course and the DLT project.