[p2pu-dev] [p2pu-community] Embed Test Course

Fri Mar 11 23:49:49 UTC 2011

Hi,

Most of the comments at
http://p2pu.org/webcraft/node/14275/forums/27277 are not directly
related to the technology used to support the course. However, in the
case of the comments about being difficult to follow all the course's
blogs, I would recommend the use of a planet
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_%28software%29) or any other web
feed aggregator.

Even if we are moving to a new platform, a considerable number of
courses will be running of the drupal site for the next round. That's
why improvements to p2pu-drupal (https://github.com/p2pu/p2pu-drupal)
are very welcome, but in order to accomplish this we need people that
can make the necessary changes to the drupal site, and develop these
changes to a state that can be used in production. Note that even a 5
minute change has the potential to require follow-up modifications (as
it happened with allowing iframes).

Unfortunately, I don't know all the history of P2PU to be able to
answer Dan's concern (which he also expressed during this week
community call) about the decision of developing a new platform for
P2PU vs. making further customizations to the drupal site. The only
point I can make is that we can/will develop the new platform based on
past experiences accumulated by the community (which I'm eager to
hear) and any new feedback you provide from now on
(http://p2pu.lighthouseapp.com/projects/71002-lernanta).

-- 
Thanks,
    Zuzel

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Alison Jean Cole
<alisonjean.cole at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Dan,
>
> The quotes from http://p2pu.org/webcraft/node/14275/forums/27277 are a
> direct reflection on how the organizer chose to design and execute the
> course. A system of distributed blogs is not the only prescription from
> course design advice. Organizers are free to experiment with design however
> they like.
>
> Also, agree that the drupal platform is lacking the qualities of an LMS, but
> we tried very hard not to design the drupal platform like common LMS' for
> widely discussed reasons. Perhaps you can organize a group of volunteers
> with a deep comprehension of drupal and we can work together to increase the
> usability of the platform for April.
>
> ALISON
> p2pu.org/users/alison
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 10:46 PM, Dan Diebolt <dandiebolt at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I created a new course entitled "Embed Test Course" to demonstrate some
>> embedding techniques that are now available.
>> This is a sample of the things you can now do with the <iframe> allowed in
>> page content:
>> http://p2pu.org/webcraft/embed-test-course
>> The page may appear a little slow to  load because of the number of
>> components I put on it and the formatting and sizing not quite right  but it
>> should give you an idea of what now can be done.
>> This has been a very painful process for me getting to this point but I
>> think it should greatly help add some bling and sizzle to the course pages
>> and help aggregate content to the P2PU platform even though that content
>> resides outside P2PU.
>> I also have to be honest with you. I find some of the decisions P2PU has
>> made to date be utterly bizarre. There is a lot of pain points in
>> administering courses which appear to just be ignored on the belief that the
>> new platform will just magically solve them. Personally I think the new
>> platform is just as likely to create its own set of new problems when
>> deployed if there is not better testing and requirements analysis.
>> If you read the forum post Parag Shah has created:
>> http://p2pu.org/webcraft/node/14275/forums/27277
>> it is abundantly clear that users complain about the same things I have
>> been trying to raise, namely (1) that there is extremely poor support in the
>> P2PU platform to run a course; (2) the use of external resources makes it
>> very difficult to find content and course communications in a central point
>> (3) there has to be a mechanism for reporting and aggregation of course
>> member work product (assignments, blogs postings, videos, code samples,
>> narratives):
>>
>> badge process needs to be somehow integrated within the course.
>> too many blogs to try to keep track of (one for each student, one for
>> Javascript 101, one for p2pu, etc.)
>> I found it very hard to figure out what postings were in which blog.
>> I know that in online college classes there is exactly one place to post
>> things, and I've had far less trouble communicating in online college
>> classes than I've had during this course.
>> I would consider having the entire syllabus posted at the beginning of the
>> course so that if folks get done with one week early they can start on the
>> next week's assignments without having to wait.
>> It's very confusing to me to even figure out where someone is posting
>> something, let alone go searching for people's posts in order to look at
>> them
>> Posting a question and having it go unanswered leaves me stuck and
>> demotivates me.
>> My point is, if we're all busy writing our own blogs, we're not spending
>> much/any time reading/discussing eachother's answers.
>> I'd do away with the two track system
>> I would have to agree with some of the other comments that it was a bit
>> confusing with the large number of blogs (as dysert says "one for each
>> student, one for Javascript 101, one for p2pu, etc.").
>> I gradually became discouraged because once you didn't get a concept, it
>> seemed impossible to move on.
>> I would have a central resource that explains all the terminology and
>> programming lingo
>> Too many blogs/forums/discussion areas.
>> I would've preferred receiving some kind of dashboard that, at a glance,
>> helped orient me as to where I was in the discussion. e.g. # of messages by
>> day, most active threads/topics, most active posters (excepting the mods)
>> more centralized place for posting comments and exercise solutions.
>>
>> Despite this consistent sentiment the surviving users still remain upbeat
>> as learning something is better than nothing and a fraction of course roster
>> will endure the pain points. But the result is that we loose a lot of
>> participants during a course as they  have a lower pain threshold.
>> I don't accept the idea that work on the Drupal platform should be limited
>> to bug fixes as I five minute change now now allows for external content can
>> be aggregated into a course page. However, because of the same origin policy
>> embedded content still can't be associated with a specific user as there is
>> no way to read a P2PU cookie or pass a user identity to the embedded
>> content.
>>
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>
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