The Open Science

Laboratory – Cosmetic

Surgery for Moodle

sam marshall / Moodle Moot UK 2014

Contents

• What is The Open Science Laboratory?

• Demo

• How did we make Moodle look like that?

• Why use Moodle rather than custom development?

The Open Science Laboratory

• Platform / portal that contains and links to science

experiments (simulations, activities, real experiments).

• Open to the general public: https://learn5.open.ac.uk/

– Also used for some OU modules

• Implemented in Moodle

– Same code as main OU VLE

– Code not publicly released

• Looks a bit different!

Demo

• This is a Moodle course page

– Spot the standard Moodle behaviour!

• Main page

• Categorisation, filtering

• Experiment page

• Hosted experiment

• Analytics

• External experiments (link, iframe)

Moodle course structure

Course

Section Block

Activity or resource

(course-module)

Moodle customisation plugins

• Theme

– CSS styling, header and footer, and hacks

• Course format

– Control display of course page

• Block

– Box appears on another page

• All three can have their own PHP pages too!

Course format

Moodle course

page

Experiment

summary

Lorem ipsum whatever thingy

Sic dolor something whatever

Lorem blah why this again

Another thingy lorem blah

Additional section data

• Pictures

• Metadata

API functions

• List sections, etc.

Settings

Blocks

• Custom blocks for the metadata filtering

• Most of the hard work done in format code

• No blocks on experiment summary page

– Pseudoblocks (from course format)

Theme

• Header and footer

• Styling

• Custom hacks

– E.g. navigation changed/removed

Modules

• Two new custom modules (not public, sorry!)

• HTML Activity module

– Similar to SCORM module

– Displays client-side activities, with some server-side

features available through API

• Booking system

– Telescope control system – one at a time

– Need to book slots

Why use Moodle?

• We wrote quite a lot of new code

• Why use Moodle at all if it’s so different?

Benefits for TOSL

• Reused components from our main Moodle-based VLE

– News block (public)

– Textbook-style content display (OU Content)

– HTML activity system

– Forum, wikis, workshop, etc. if required

• Benefit from updates to these features

– Even if no TOSL development currently funded

Process benefits

• Developer familiarity

• Administrator familiarity (e.g. troubleshooting)

• Same VLE codebase

– Updates, security patches, etc. all done for us

Benefits for main OU VLE

• HTML Activity standalone display module

– Previously could only put them in textbook content

• Analytics from HTML activities

– Not yet turned on for main system (performance

concerns) but might be if needed

• Booking system

– May be useful for voice conferencing

Disadvantages

• Constant platform changes

– OU moves to new Moodle version every 6 months

– Need to check and update all custom plugins

Credits

• I’m only the lead developer of the platform part

• TDs: Ray Guo, Bryan Waddington

• Graphic design: Matt Rigby-Burr

• Science faculty, project managers, etc.

• Other developers did the actual content!

Conclusion

• Dramatically change Moodle interface and appearance

by developing a custom course format and theme

– I often hear: ‘we don’t like using Moodle for our site

because it’s not pretty’

• Get a grip

• OK then, we can make it pretty

• If your main system is Moodle, there are benefits in

using Moodle for related systems where possible

Questions?

IT Development

The Open University

Walton Hall

Milton Keynes

MK7 6AA

www.open.ac.uk