1. OU VLE Programme Mobile Learner Support Project Input Session Wed 31 st Jan 2007 Podcasting, Course News and Alerts

2. Session Aims Explore current practice in creating and publishing podcasts Discuss news feeds, Atom and RSS standards Outline Student Services CAMEL SMS enhancement Refine project strand Define requirements for development

3. ‘mLearn’ Project Overview Use cases – supporting students and ALs: Offline and sporadic / expensive access Synchronising to desktops Connected, on-the-go

4. ‘mLearn’ Project Overview Project strands – refined scope ‘Offline Moodle’ Podcasting, Course News and Alerts Mobile Course Content Social and User Generated Content on-the-move underpinned by a ‘Mobile Learning Environment’ methodology

5. Podcasting Reusing existing chunked material for new blended learning opportunities, recording new topical episodes Audio creation/processing - Audacity  Audio Recorder Podcast publication - WordPress&PodPress  Moodle ‘Podcatcher’ - Juice, iTunes, FeederReader(PPC), QuickNews(Palm) Ensuring an intuitive web-based solution to assembly & publication. Supporting enhanced podcasts and video

6. Course News - RSS Course News already available as Atom feed e.g. http://learn.open.ac.uk/B615-06Khttp://learn.open.ac.uk/B615-06K RSS – Really Simple Syndication also popular Students can elect to receive news updates, prompts – subscribing and viewing on a news feed ‘aggregator’ Allowing for: –Course news, Programme news (possibly via OPML) –Personal news from blogs

7. SMS and Alerts Student Services planning to extend CAMEL system to include an elective mobile phone texting channel for students Students to be surveyed on the types of message they would like: –Start of course preparation and admin –Prompts on deadlines, in residential schools, tutorials –TMA scores, ePortfolio progress, Course results –Relevant course news updates, Tips during course

8. Further consultation 31 st January 2007 @ 2PM-3:30PM - Podcasting, Course News and Alerts 7 th February 2007 @ 2PM-3:30PM - Mobile Course content 14 th February 2007 @ 2PM-3:30PM - Social and User Generated content Contact: Rhodri.Thomas@open.ac.uk – VLE Mobile Learner Support Project LeaderRhodri.Thomas@open.ac.uk