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The OU Virtual Learning Environment Efficient use of Forums and Email by Students and Tutors

1. Introduction

This is our first response to the changes to the OU Email and Conferencing systems for Tutors and Students, in particular on the impact on 'Mobile Users' and users of Open Source Software including Linux. The Open University has used FirstClass, which is an excellent integrated Email and Conferencing system for ar least 12 years - we first wrote our first web page about upgrading it to Version 5.1 in 1998 and the OU had been using version 3.5 for many years. It was a Server Client system where the client had to be installed on your system. It could be used in an Offline mode called Personal if you installed a simple server on your machine which you could Replicate (synchronise) when you were online). Few pieces of Software have stood the test of time so well and it is still well supported but for various reasons the OU has chosen to use a different conferencing system based on the OpenSource Moodle online Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). In parallel the OU has withdraw Email support for students and provided Microsoft Exchange mailboxes for Tutors. The only supported access to The Microsoft Exchange Server is via a web interface provided by Microsoft called OWA (Outlook Web Access) and the Virtual Learning Environment supplies a web based forum system as part of a wider system. This obviously offers some cost savings as there is no longer any need to licence the FirstClass Clients or provide students with email. Optimum use of the VLE involves not only the online access via a browser but also monitoring of the forums by techniques involving emails and RSS feeds and they will all be covered.

Why seek Efficiency?

I think we all try not to waste time but this web page is, in particular, looking at how to work when one does not have a fast always present internet link or is paying for time or data. It gives considerably more incentive to be very efficient when one is paying to work over a satellite link at £0.50 a minute or from a roaming mobile connection at £4 a Mbyte. First lets set some groundrules with a consideration of the different types of users and connections as they will affect the most efficient way to operate- where we sit is in italics. Your situation may be very different.

Types of Use and Users

• Single Machine (Desktop) in a single Location with Broadband Access
• Multiple Machines (Desktops) in Multiple Fixed Locations with Broadband Access - this is the ideal situation for a web based system.
• Single Machine (Laptop) in Multiple Locations including mobile working - offline access to emails now essential.
• Desktops, Laptops and Netbooks in Multiple Locations including considerable mobile working with mobile access - offline access to emails desirable to minimise data costs of Mobile Broadband of Satellite - this is our situation .

Types of Connection

• Permanent High Speed Connection - ADSL Broadband at home or work with fixed costs typically offering actual speeds of 400 - 1200 Kbytes/sec and with high or no limits on total data per month. Ethernet or Wifi connections to machine(s) from ADSL modem - 5-6 months per year
• Semi-Permanent Low speed connection - Dial-up connection in areas of the country/world where broadband is not available with monthly payment and no time limits. Typically 3 - 5 Kbytes/sec from standard dial-up modem. - N/A
• Charged by Minute Connections:
  • Internet Cafe Machines - their machines or Broadband Wifi/Ethernet connection to your machine typically offering actual speeds of 100 - 800 Kbytes/sec without data limits. Free to £5/hr charged by 15 minute - 1 hour 'slots' - opportunistic when free - used mainly for big updates and web site uploads
  • Satellite links on Cruise ships, aircraft etc. Medium speed connections of typically offering 5 - max of 64 kbytes/sec and very dependent on number of users. Charged by minute typically at 40-60p/minute ad hoc, reducing to £15-£20 if pre-paid for 4-8 hours. Cunard $US0.50/min or $160 for 8 hours - up to 2 months per year
• Charged by Data Volume Connections (usually sum of Data In and Out)
  • Mobile Broadband UK or local SIM when abroad. Typically £15 for 3 Gbytes monthly or ad hoc £0.50 day for up to 25 Mbytes (Vodafone prepay in UK) and $1.0 for 10 Mbytes per day ad hoc or $30 for 1 Gbytes valid 1 month in New Zealand - up to 6 months per year combined UK and NZ
  • Mobile Broadband Roaming. Typically £1/Mbyte in Europe rising to £4/Mbyte worldwide (Vodafone prepay) - max two weeks per year
• 'Free' Wifi Hotspots. An increasing number of 'Free' Wifi hotspots are becoming available in stores, pubs, cafes, town centres, railway stations and airports. In addition almost every BT Wifi router provides an addition BTWifiwithFON hotspot. Other broadband providers also support their own hotspots so it is now possible to find a nearby Wifi Hotspot almost anywhere in the country or world. Yoy normally have to login to such hotspots but many providers have mobile apps which connect automatically without need to login after the first access. Security is questionable with public hotspots but speeds normally high - largely replaced our use of Internet Cafe for updates and web site uploads and used extensively with our mobile phones in the UK.

The Open University Virtual Learning Environment

The Open University has changed from using First Class as its Primary Email and Conferencing system for its courses to a Virtual Learning Environment. A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) provides a framework and set of tools by which course content and elearning activities can be delivered online. As part of the OU's VLE, a number of tools have been developed which are now available for ALs to use to support student learning. There is another reasonable definition in the Wikipedia Article on Virtual Learning_Environments . The OU VLE is based on Moodle and is currently has the largest number of users outside of Moodle.org itself at 651,727 and has 5,332 courses using Moodle (as of 8 November 2010). Moodle has proved scalable, robust and feature rich and the fact that other establishments are already running with over 25,000 courses confirm the system has plenty of scope for expansion for the Open University.

At this point we are only interested in a few components of the OU VLE, in particular the VLE-Forums and, for tutors, Email provision through the Microsoft Exchange Server. We will cover Email access first - it is a Chicken and Egg situation but it is easier if one understands the email before considering Forums.

The Need for Good Email Access

Student Options for Email

Webmail class solutions

POP and IMAP based Email - Thunderbird

Tutor Options for Email

If you are a Tutor with you can Expand to find out about OGA

VLE Forums - an Introduction

Open University Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Forums look superficially like any other forum set up you are used to but they have more and better moderation and monitoring facilities than usual. They are, as usual, web based and, unlike FirstClass, there is no way to work offline when creating new postings and replying to old posts followed by a quick replication (synchronisation). This means that you need a fast, permanent connection to get the best from them. The two ways to get offline information are:

• Subscriptions. If you wish to read posts when offline the only way is to 'Subscribe' to the thread or whole forum. Each new post is the emailed to you with the post that it was responding to. There is usually sufficient information in the Title and Body of the post to create rules to sort the resulting chaos in your inbox from lots of different subscriptions. The posts that are forwarded do not have any attachments, attachments can only be picked up online.
• RSS feeds. You can subscribe to an RSS feed for any Forum or thread within it. If you subscribe to a whole forum you get every post in the most recently active threads so it is not very useful. The normal way to subscribe is to click on the RRS feed symbol and your browser will lead you through what to do - Thunderbird normally creates a LiveBookmark on the quick links toolbar. You can also subscribe using a special Thunderbird Account

We will cover these two in turn

Subscribing to a VLE forum

The first and most useful mechanism to aid your efficiency, especially when working without reliable internet access, is to subscribe to the forum or to a single thread within it. There are links at the bottom of the forum or thread to do this. Once you have subscribed, an email is sent to you at your registered OU email address which contains every new posting and, for ones already in a thread, the post it is responding to. This good for a small number of forums which do not have large numbers of participants. If you have a large number of active participants you will receive a large number of emails and if you have several forums they will all be mixed up making monitoring difficult. You obviously do not want to subscribe to every Forum you ever visit but you may still end up end up with half a dozen if you are a tutor on a single course and another two or three for every course. Students will want to monitor their Course's Tutor Group and Discussion Forums and probably a couple more. We are monitoring four whilst teaching a single course. These produced a total of 93 over a sample week which is too really too many to handle efficiently.

Taming your subscriptions by Rule Based Filtering

There are two mechanisms we use to be able to efficiently handle a large number of emails from subscriptions along with other email:

• Sort the Subscriptions into folders matching the Forums - It is very desirable to be able to filter and sort the incoming emails into folders corresponding to the various forums. These are set up as sub-folders of the main inbox to make it clear they are incoming and therefore potentially unread and unactioned.

• Tag the incoming emails with information related to their importance. This makes it easy to scan all the postings for the important ones because I set up the tags to always display the title in another colour and the tags also enable me to restrict the display to individual tags or all the tags.
  
  For example if I look at the Course Discussion Forum which is open to all students - I am most interested in posts which are either by:
  
  • My own students,
  • The course team and Other Tutors and
  • Posts I have made myself.
    
    The list is coloured to match my tags

The main thing is to decide on your strategy for Tagging and Sorting into Folders (and any other tricks you can think of) before you create the rules to implement it.

• The tagging can be done before sorting because it is common to all the folders.
• Sorting into folders needs more thought if you are a tutor using OGA or anyone using IMAP access as you have choices over where the 'sorted' folders live Initially we decided that the sorting would be done online in Exchange and set up through the OWA and any offline access would be through IMAP mailboxes in Thunderbird. The tags are local to OGA and visible in any machine accessing via OGA but need to be duplicated any machine accessing the Exchange server via IMAP.
  
  

Thunderbird - Rule Based Message Filtering

Thunderbird has a very advanced Message Filtering which can be used to implement the scheme above. It is easier to show some screen dumps than explain as it is all very simple and self evident when you come to do it. It is accessed by Tools -> Message Filters which brings up a Window like the one below.

Each new Filter is set up by New and can match Subject, From, Body, Date, Priority, Status, To, Cc, To or Cc, From To Cc and Bcc, Age, Tags and Size match Contains, Dosnt Contain, Starts with, Ends with, Is, Isnt, using AND and OR logic. The actions are equally flexible Move Message to, Copy Message to, Reply with Template, Mark as Read, Add Star, Set Priority, Tag, Set Junk, Delete, Delete from Server Fetch from Server and Stop Filter Execution. They can be set to run Automatically or On Request on any folder in the Account

Manual running on selected folders gives opportunities in the future for automatically deleting low priority emails after a certain time locally or on the server and even filing Stared Messages for

We will now look at some examples of the very simple Filters we actually use.

Sorting Messages into Folders in Thunderbird

We use the information in the title of the email message and information in the body of the message and then move the message to a different folder. This works on POP and IMAP folders and you can move the message to an online folder on the IMAP server if you have an Exchange or other IMAP mailbox or an offline folder if you have either a POP or IMAP mailbox. If you access the same IMAP folder on several machines you need to ensure none of the rules which move messages conflict and are preferably identical.

Craeting Tags for Messages in Thunderbird

You are well on the way when you have all the postings from each Forum in their own folder and they are tagged depending on who made them. The tags have to be set up before you create the rules. You can change the names and it will automatically adapt. The tagged are given different colours so the messages also show up in different colours. I tag you can tag myself, the members of my tutor group and the course team. This is a huge help when one, as a tutor, is looking at a course wide forum so one can keep an eye on ones own students and similarly for students to see what the rest of their group is doing. It also means you can pick out the Moderators and other Course team
postings. This shows a small part of the filter for students (with false names):

Tagging has to be set up on each machine as the tags are not stored with the message.

Displaying and using Tags efficiently in Thunderbird

Once you have tagged you messages you can also use the various search and sorting tools in Thunderbird to easily pick out the tagged entries - the quick search feature is perfect for this. The screen grab below shows this in action on some tests in an otherwise huge inbox.

Filtering and Tagging in OWA

OWA is only available to Tutors so [ Click here to expand if you want to know more ]

Other ways of improving ones efficiency

There are three other main ways to improve efficiency, in particular when one is limited in ones Internet access. Making ones routine activities as quickly accessible as possible. Many of the VLE activities involve being online so it is essential to be able to quickly access all the online areas without going through a series of links and pages. It is also desirable to do as much as possible in preparation before going online - writing a complex posting against a clock where every tick costs money is stressful and inefficient! The following are some tips which save time and make life quicker and easier.

1. Configure Toolbars in Firefox and Thunderbird:

This is a very obvious and simple way to save time but very few people seem to bother. If you right click anywhere on a Firefox or Thunderbird Toolbar you will get a short menu including Configure. This takes you to a floating window with all the unused tools which you can drag to the toolbar of your choice. You can also drag Fixed Spacers and Flexible Spacers which mean you can get an efficient layout to suit you especially as you can also move any of the existing tools. In Firefox we add the tools for the Favourites and Bookmarks sidebars, Print and Open New Tab and Open new Window. Extensions often also offer Tools to open the like FireFTP or toggle their toolbars on and off like Googlebar Lite. Our layout for Thunderbird is even more comprehensive with Tabs, Marking, Print, Address Book, Next Unread etc added or repositioned.

2. Make good use of Bookmarks in Firefox.

Many people are aware of the use of Bookmarks (Favourites) in a browser and the Bookmarks Toolbar but few seem to realise how versatile and easy Firefox makes it to very quickly save and access Bookmarks and even open a number of tabs simultaneously.

• Tip: You can instantly create a bookmark by dragging the small icon at the left of the link/title box into the Bookmarks Toolbar or into the Bookmarks sidebar and it will be exactly where you drop it. This is much better than using the 'Star' at the right which does create a bookmark but it is at the bottom of your list.
  
• Tip: You can drag any existing Bookmark to where you want it in the Bookmarks Toolbar or Sidebar.
  
• Big Value Tip: You can create a folder on the Bookmarks Toolbar as well as the Sidebar - Right click over the Bookmarks Toolbar and select New Folder. Give it a Short Name to avoid wasting valuable space. You can now drop other Bookmarks onto it (including icons from the title box) and create a dropdown menu of links. We use this to quickly access any or all of the VLE Forums which we use. The bottom of the list has an option to open them all in a series of tabs which can save a lot of time. Note - make sure you are logged in before opening a series of tabs.
  
  The following screen grab is of a very reduced size Firefox Window to show the extra Tools added to the Toolbar and the use of Folder on the Bookmarks Toolbar - note the Open All in Tabs option. It also shows there are two RSS feeds in use.
  

  

3. Preparing replies and new postings offline

They can then be copy and pasted quickly into the Forums whilst you are online. However there are some limitations which have been built in by the OU to what can be Posted. Regardless of what you copy into the online VLE Posting Editor or add by editing the HTML a lot of formatting will be stripped and the code tidied up at the posting stage. Much is justified by the OU Accessibility policy so everything is restored to a common font and all colours of text and backgrounds are removed. In summary - If you try to use any feature you add using the editing their toolbar it is unlikely to remain in your Posting. The exception is that very basic tables seem to transfer and background colours remain within a table cell.

I have tried a number of 'Editors' to prepare compatible offline content and in my order of preference:

• The best by far is that built into Thunderbird which is, of course, perfect for preparing responses to Postings which you have received by email due to a subscription. Create a forward to yourself, add the text for your posting and save it offline - then open it Copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl C) and paste into the Posting (Ctrl V) whilst online and then send it (to yourself as a record)
• The next best in compatibility is OpenOffice Writer in Text Document mode (Not web/HTML Document mode).
• You also get a good copy/paste from a web page displayed in Firefox so you can use your favourite HTML editor, display a local copy of all your replies in Firefox and cut and paste them in.

NOTE WELL: There are some problems of copy/paste into a forum if you are using the Firefox browser which means you need you to modify a Firefox system file or add a Firefox Extension. This is not a bug but a deliberate security policy built in which has to relaxed on a site by site basis. See Appendix 1 for details.

Using RSS feeds.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed format used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized format. Most RSS 'channels' includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Readers can subscribe to timely updates from favoured websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed's URI or by clicking an RSS icon in a web browser (such as Firefox) that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader automatically checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly (often every half hour or when the package is opened) for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds. This avoids one needing to manually check the website as all new content is effectively pushed onto their browsers when it becomes available. This is the mechanism which provides the BBC news feed built into the Firefox browser (the drop down at near the left of the links toolbar).

The OU offers RSS feeds for most VLE Forums with the title displayed. This means you can very easily know when an interesting posting has turned up and is ideal for a tutor group. You can also see the content of the postings which are in the feed Without having to Log In by clicking at the bottom of the list on the link Open Forum-Name. You can then go to the actual postings to respond from the links but you have to log in at this point. The access to the aggregated page is via an unencrypted link (http rather than the encrypted https) so you should therefore be cautious about using RSS in Wifi cafes or on shared machines where the address might be left in the browser history.

Subscribing to a Forum is very easy you will find the feed at the bottom of each VLE forum:

Using an Atom RSS subscription in Firefox is very easy, just click on the Atom RSS link in Firefox and you will be taken to a page for the subscription which looks like :

and click subscribe now and it will add it to the end of your bookmarks toolbar - you can then drag it where you want and use Right Click -> Properties to shorten the name so they all fit on.

Appendices

Solutions for Copying from the clipboard into a Forum Posting in Firefox

There is a major problem with a copy and paste approach in Firefox because of security concerns. If you try to paste from the clipboard nothing will happen or sometimes you will get a message saying it is not allowed and a link to a Mozilla article. By default, JavaScript and other scripting is not allowed to read or set your clipboard data in Firefox. This is because malicious websites scripts could erase or replace what you have in your clipboard or read your clipboard which is a security issue. There are, however, instances when you might want to bypass this restriction and grant access to selected sites. It is, for example, very desirable to be able to paste formatted information into the Rich Text Editor used by the Open University in all it's Moodle based Forums - without this one can do little preparation of material outside of Moodle or add input from other sources. You can read more about the problem in the Mozillazine Article Granting_JavaScript_access_to_the_clipboard

You need to modify the Firefox configuration to change the policies for clipboard access. They can be edited directly in the Firefox Profile Folder or one use a simple Firefox extension to help you. If you are happy to edit system files and are only worried about this with the OU site the former is probably best. I have also tried the Extension which is endorsed on the Mozilla site - it is simple and seems to work very well. It also gives a warning of restrictions of potential problems before you use an embedded Rich Text Editor and can set up policies for several simultaneously - the advantages seem to outweigh the ever present but slight risk of interactions between Extensions if you already have several in use.

Method 1 to grant privileges to the clipboard to allow cut, copy and paste operations.

1. Close all Firefox/Mozilla browser windows.
2. Navigate to your Firefox profiles directory.
3. Open prefs.js in a text editor like notepad or gedit (see below for ways to locate it)
4. Copy/Paste the following into the prefs.js file - it does not matter where as long as it is in with all the other preferences.

• user_pref("capability.policy.policynames", "allowclipboard");
  user_pref("capability.policy.allowclipboard.sites", "http://learn.open.ac.uk");
  user_pref("capability.policy.allowclipboard.Clipboard.cutcopy", "allAccess");
  user_pref("capability.policy.allowclipboard.Clipboard.paste", "allAccess");

Additional URLs can be added with a space as separator

Finding a Firefox Profile: Firefox 3.6 and higher allows you to find and open your profile folder by Help -> Troubleshooting Information then under the Application Basics heading, click on the Open Containing Folder button and a window with your profile files will open.

If you are running an earlier version of Firefox it is best to upgrade. Otherwise the profile directory location varies depending on the operating system. If you still have a default installation it can be found from a search for a folder with random characters but ending in .default or a search for prefs.js which has changed recently.

Method 2 to grant privileges to the clipboard to allow cut, copy and paste operations - AllowClipboard Helper Extension

If you do not want to edit 'system' files you can use an extension for Firefox to manage these clipboard policies. It is called the AllowClipboard Helper Extension and can be found at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/852/?application=firefox&id=852. It warns you if any editing text box prevents clipboard actions by displaying a small yellow tab at the bottom of the box and if you click it there is a window opened which allows you to grant privileges for clipboard operations if you are convinced the site is not malicious - the OU site should be OK. Screenshots follow:

Clicking on the yellow tab leads to the next window which had the address in the box ready to click Allow. OK will complete activities by restarting Firefox (do not panic when everything disappears) even so it is best not to have too many tabs open and do it before you start editing. After the restart Paste will be possible.

 

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