Perth, Western Australia – Day two of MoodleMoot Australia 2016 started off with a Welcome to Country by Noongar Elder, Barry McGuire. It was a special event, with some attendants commenting on Twitter that it was one of the best Welcome to Country’s they’ve experienced in a while. Snippets of Barry’s welcome can be accessed here.
Keynote presentations
Moodle Founder and CEO, Martin Dougiamas, then took to the stage, to talk about the “New Moodle,” driving home why Moodle is still relevant today by reiterating its mission: Moodle is not driven by money, it has a mission to support learners to make a go of education and make it accessible to as many as possible.
Dr Dougiamas also outlined a number of features to be included in Moodle’s 3.2 release, updates on the Moodle.org community, Moodle Users Association and MoodleCloud whilst also announcing exciting news – The Official Moodle Mobile Branded App and the establishment of the UX team (meet the team in this video).
Snippets of Dr Dougiamas’ presentation can be viewed here.
In the afternoon, James Hamilton, from Navitas, also delivered a keynote presentation, titled “Moodle in Wonderland: 7 impossible things.” That certainly got people hooked to find out what the presentation was going to be on!
James’ presentation certainly piqued the interest of the crowd, his first question was “is LMS dead?” Shakes of many heads in the MoodleMoot room were also reflected on Twitter when we posed the question. James likened the building of an LMS as an Alice in Wonderland experience – so many possibilities and ideas that all lead to a compelling experience.
Snippets of James’ presentation can be found on our Twitter feed.
Presentations
Concurring presentations followed after and in between the two keynote addresses. The presentations were classified on topics of support, design, institutional, feedback, experience, technical, workplace and assessment.
Presentations on day two included:
- David Grant from the University of Southern Queensland (USQ): Tips on creating a very successful quiz in Moodle.
- Damyon Wiese, Moodle HQ Development Manager: CBE feature and grading assignments in Moodle 3.1.
- Christine Nicholas from GOTAFE: Using a Moodle template to meet ASQA compliance and reduce duplications.
- Fiona Myatt from USQ: Gave us an insight on new Moodle Assignment tweaks linked to a new flexi format.
- Morgan Harris and John-Paul Posada from University of New South Wales (UNSW): Highlighted how to use team evaluation in Moodle.
- Marina Glancy, Moodle HQ Development Manager: Talked about the life cycle of a Moodle bug.
- Helen Farley and colleagues from USQ: Presented on making the connection between Moodle offline and mobile.
- Brendan Haywood from Catalyst IT Australia: Answered the question of “do you manage multiple learning environments and sometimes think ‘this is oodles and oodles of Moodles?'” in his presentation while his colleague, Mark Porritt, talked about Moodle performance testing and benchmarking.
- James Hamilton and co from Navitas: Talked about building commonalities across 60 Moodle Navitas sites in their presentation titled “One Moodle? One Day!”
- Surangi Alexander from Millenium IT: Took the stage to talk about the offline-capable version of the Moodle E-learning system.
- Darrell Krall from Upskilled: Talked about using the Moodle Gradebook to provide feedback.
- Nonzanriyah Adun and Matthew Salas from Monash University: Talked about using Moodle to provide alternative arrangements for Assessment information.
- Mark Bailye from Blackboard: Continued the conversation on Assessment with Moodle through the old school system of coloured cards.
- Sherol Fernandes from GAC Corporate Academy: Came all the way from Dubai to show how Moodle can be used in the corporate environment, especially for delivery of oil and gas courses.
- Lauren McKerley and Daniela Soccio from Innovation and Business Skills Australia (IBSA): Demonstrated how you can work with Moodle Partner, eCreators, to customise your Moodle site.
- Julian Davis from ACTE Pty Ltd: Asked how we can understand student behaviour in Moodle.
- Andrew Nicols, Senior Developer and Integrator at Moodle HQ: Introduced a new feature for Moodle 3.2 – onboarding users into Moodle using interface tour, followed by colleague Mark Nelson, Senior Analyst Developer at Moodle HQ, who also introduced Moodle’s new messaging and notifications features in Moodle 3.2. Finally, Moodle HQ Pau Ferrer presented on Moodle Mobile Offline Features.
- Michael Sankey from USQ: Presented on “Implementing a new Flexi Format, the hows and why fors.”
- Sheldon Chow from UNSW: Showed how you can use advanced commenting capabilities using the Moodle Media Collection activity.
- One of the last presentations in the afternoon, David Jones, from USQ: Talked about how and why people use the Moodle book module.
A number of short explanation videos by the presenters are now available on Twitter and you can access them by using the hashtag #MootAU16.
Sponsors presentations
Thank you to our sponsors who help make MoodleMoot Australia 2016 a success.
On day two, our sponsors presented short sessions, which are outlined below:
- Dean Saunders from eCreators: Showcased their Learnbook with simple, user-friendly functions such as a simple report builder, admin dash and ‘selfie profiler’
- Pablo Guerrero from WIRIS: Gave an overview on a math piece for Moodle. He also shared information on other WIRIS tools such as handwriting recognition, math editor and an interface for chemistry teachers.
- Richard Ings from ReadSpeaker: Showcased their tool with text to speech capability, allowing struggling students and auditory learners to bypass disadvantage and achieve their learning outcomes.
- Chad Outten from My Learning Space: On learning and development in the workplace.
- Jocasta Williams from Echo 360: On enhancing opportunities for active learning with Moodle and using their interactive video software in the classroom environment.
- from Moodlerooms: On implementing an effective learning ecosystem for the VET sector.
- Fred Dixon, Product Manager for BigBlueButton at Blindside Networks: Conducted their presentation via conferencing and shared the roadmap for the plugin.
- Amazon Web Services
We finished day two with a conference dinner, comedy and drinks – a great end to a long and fruitful day.
Follow us on Twitter and use #MootAU16 to keep up to date with MoodleMoot Australia 2016 event.
