EDIT 5370

Paul's Little Distance Ed. Cafe

Module 5: Asynchronous Tools

(Technologies Part II)

phpBB Forums | TikiWiki | WordPress Blogs

phpBB Forums

Summary

The FREE bulletin board forum tool known as phpBB is currently the world's most widely used open source forum tool, with confirmed millions of installations over the entire globe on every continent. Because of it's long history of usage and ongoing refinement, this tool has become very well developed in order to cater to the many requests for improvements and enhancements over the years. In addition, they have remained true to their original purpose and thus have not attempted to start over which a whole new set of objectives, but have instead chosen to continue to refine and enhance the small set of functions they already provide. As a result, there are very few solutions, even in the for-profit commercial sector who can compete with phpBB for easy of use, security, stability, compatibility, scalability, documentation, and support.

Who

Unlike the groupware or CMS systems which you find have developed around an initial core offering to enthusiasts of Wikis (as in TikiWiki) or of online courseware delivery systems (as in WebCT) the target market and most effective users of phpBB have been and remain essentially the same since it's introduction. If you are interested in hosting discussions of various issues in an asynchronous format for distance learners, and you are not requiring work which would need synchronous tools such as chat or whiteboards, then this is definitely the best tool you can find.

On the administrative side, this tool is equally an ideal fit, since it allows every conceivable administrative function, including creation of security groups with various permission levels, and delegation at the discussion thread level. For tech savvy instructors who have admin access to their own server space, this is an excellent addition to the instructional arsenal.

 

Interactions

At first glance, you might not realize just how far an essentially asynchronous tool can take you and your class in terms of interaction. However, phpBB is a 3rd generation class of collaborative systems and it has a vast number of specialized enhancements to the basic forum BB that you get in some other tools (such as MSN Groups).

Because of the greater power to bring users closer together through controlled and mutually consensual steps which reveal and connect users to each other, the ability to gradually develop a real community is enhanced. Interactions begin much the same as they do on other BB's, however, over time these have a tendency to become more meaningful and personally engaging.

Often times, through carefully controlled moderation by appointed representatives, discussion topics can provide a fantastic support system for the objectives of the topic at hand, whether that is a medical issue, or serious scholarly research.

Advantages

Clearly, there are advantages to a distance educator to using phpBB if they are interested in long term deep level (many thread responses) development of a knowledge and experience base of data for their users. Because you have a very fine grained ability to tune and customize individual threads, security capabilities, posting privileges, and blocking functions (either of users, computers, or word lists), you can often provide a highly targeted learning experience for those who are registered users.

Some of the advanced features must be drilled down into, in order to reach all the sub features they offer, however, many of the large categories of administrative control are grouped in a very organized manner so that you can still find them without much trouble.

Disadvantages

With a great number of features and powerful functions, often times you also experience the cognitive load of a steeper initial learning curve. For an instructor who is pressed for time, this will not be the tool to use in preparing their course materials.

In addition to an initial period of time which is critical in order to become familiar gradually with the many powerful capabilities of phpBB, there can be an initial surprise as how many things are are to learn. The panel at the right can be somewhat daunting to some instructors, but in fact, it is not all that bad.

If you compare the panel at right to the advanced view of the control panel in WebCT then you can easily see how well organized and simplified the panel at right (phpBB) really is. This part of the familiarization process is really just a matter of becoming accustomed to looking at the panel more often, so the eye becomes trained on where to go to quickly find what you need.

 

 

Distance Ed Uses

Most of the uses of discussion forums are well documented in published studies already. It might be difficult to therefore depart from the traditional uses in creative ways.

However, one option for distance educators would be to attempt to break up their curriculum materials into some small set of categories (like a taxonomy). At the right, you can see one example (from my own site), which separates the discussions based on their intended semantic structure (whether they are debates, discussions, or places to share personal experiences).

If you were able to delegate moderators for each of the discussion forums, then you could easily free up your time as the instructor to focus on course design at a higher level.

Lastly, with phpBB you could easily design an entire course around some of the specialized plugins that you can find from the main phpBB web site. For instance, if you have several different discussion threads that you wish to remain primarily for disseminating information, you could set up these threads purely as read only, so that none of the students can post to them. Instead, you could simply have the student subscribe to the RSS feed for that specific discussion thread, and then check back to the main thread on the actual phpBB site if they fear they have missed one of the RSS Feed updates.

Personal Reaction

My personal reaction to phpBB is very positive. I have used perhaps dozens of different BB systems on the internet going back to at least 1995 when I began working as the webmaster for www.PGATour.com. During that time, I eventually starting setting up my own BB Forums, and settled at last on the true leader, phpBB.

I have been using phpBB for several years and as long as you keep it updated, you will not have any security issues (such as people posting porn). The site is also easily modified, so if you want to use your own logo, it is a snap.

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TikiWiki

Summary

TikiWiki is a not properly a single tool. Instead, it is a very large collection of free tools, which are all easily turned off or on. For those customers who become members at a TikiWiki site, there is no need to write HTML code, because the editors are mostly WYSIWYG. For those on the admin side, there are easy user and group management features, as well as quizzes, surveys and polls which can be easily deployed. There is even an activity-based workflow engine for advanced users in business environments.

For those who may not be very familiar with some of this terminology, the TikiWiki main site lists examples of technologies by vendor name to help make these features more clear.

 

TikiWiki (Tiki) is your Groupware/CMS (Content Management System) solution. Tiki has the features you need:
  • Wikis (like Mediawiki)
  • Forums (like phpBB)
  • Blogs (like WordPress)
  • Articles (like Digg)
  • Image Gallery (like Flickr)
  • Map Server (like Google Maps)
  • Link Directory (like DMOZ)
  • Translation and i18n (like Babel Fish)

It's almost hard to believe that you get all this for FREE!

Who

In the case of TikiWiki this question really should be split into two questions. Who are the primary people within the distance education field who will be good candidates for (1) Setting up this type of application and administering it and (2) who will be the most likely users and will benefit from using this product in an educational setting.

The reason i feel a strong need to break up this question into two, is because of all 6 tools I am reviewing here for Module 4/5 (Synch/Asynch. Tools), I believe that this one is very different and stands out from the others in a few respects.

Of all 6 tools in module 4 & 5 which I am reviewing here, this is by far the most complex and difficult to master. Yet, it may also be the most powerful. Certainly, it is not for the faint of hear, and you can quickly become overwhelmed.

For those who use Firefox, you might be surprised to know that the primary support web site for Firefox (Mozilla) at http://support.mozilla.com is actually running TikiWiki groupware.

In the case of the actual instructor for a distance education site; unless you are quite experienced in programming techniques, and feel comfortable with networking and server side technologies, it might be best to use your resident IT staff to get this up and running, and for major configuration changes.

Interactions

Unlike the narrow category of intensely personal, but slow-to-build relationships you typically find on the more popular and well established phpBB forums, the TikiWiki CMS systems often appeal to those with a much shorter patience level.

The variety of tools which are all integrated means that the interaction types are quite possibly at the far extremes of possibilities. It all depends on what the instructor wants to do, and can vary anywhere from tracking and placing cookies to store content on the user's computers (which will require their 'allowing' this) to the ultra mundane management of RSS modules for various subscriptions services and possibly resulting live support to the users.

Advantages

As mentioned above, this CMS System is truly huge and has an extremely large number of plugins. Unlike some larger CMS or groupware products however, these plugins do not all have to be downloaded and installed separately. For an instructor who is leading a team of instructional designers, and who has access to programmers for support, this will be a huge plus, because it is all located centrally.

Disadvantages

For an instructor who is working all alone, or who is not very programming code friendly, this could potentially be a very negative experience for them. Sometimes keeping things simple, less is more, and other cliches are actually true. Not everyone wishes to be up at 3 am regularly working themselves hard for what might otherwise be a very minor difference in the experience of others.

 

Distance Ed Uses

In addition to serving as a CMS and groupware collaborative meeting ground, the TikiWiki system also can act as a customizable and individually modifiable portal where users obtain and send messages much like email to each other, store and share important calendars and calendar events with each other, and organize various other data they share with each other.

Students who are not already practicing these behaviors on their own, could learn much from even a single course (such as the NEW STUDENT ORIENTATION course offered at most Universities), where they are required to demonstrate use of these tools.

Personal Reaction

My personal feelings about TikiWiki are of what you might feel when in awe. I am completely amazed that a group of programmers could spent hundreds if not thousands of hours designing something like this and then just give it away for free.

If I were in a permanent position as manager, I might consider this as a tool for internal departmental collaboration. Otherwise, only the most completely savvy technology oriented trainer would probably benefit from this tool. It's just too complicated!

 

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WordPress Blogs

Summary

WordPress represents a new frontier in FREE stuff on the internet. It is widely cited as the simplest, easiest to learn (among professional blogging tools), and above all... most BEAUTIFUL of blogging applications.

The most interesting aspect of WordPress has been it's unparalleled growth on the internet. Many people attribute this to being correctly balanced between power (complexity) and easy of use (low learning curve). However, an equal number of people attribute this to nothing other than it's indisputable aesthetically pleasing designs, and the wide variety of well choreographed layouts which can be downloaded separately.

Student generally respond very well to WordPress for this reason along... because they just look good.

Who

Instructional designers who are lacking in skill with graphical editors such as Photoshop, Fireworks, or Illustrator will be pleased to find out easy it is to download the beautiful layouts from the main WordPress site and get them up and running on their own WordPress blog. In addition, you really don't need to know any programming language at all.

Students who register for the WordPress site, can receive (if configured) a confirmation email with their username and info, so that privacy and security are maintained. Generally comments are easily tracked and received at this same registration email address if you subscribe to the RSS feeds.

Interactions

The type of educational and distance learning interactions in WordPress are obviously asynchronous, so there is always a delay before you can get a response, even if you subscribe to the RSS feeds. However, there generally seems to be a sense that you are free to write without inhibition when you are blogging. People seem to become less formal, and to be more likely to read posted comments by their neighbors, since they are generally listed in a vertical stack beneath the original article.

Advantages

Some of the advantages of WordPress (and most other professional blogging tools as well) are that you can configure your site NOT to instantly publish all comments. Instead, you have the option of being notified, or just navigating to the site page where you approve or disapprove of comments. On that page, you can use batch processing by glancing at many posts and just checking the appropriate box beside each comment.

In addition to some of these convenient management features, as mentioned above, you do not need to know any programming code at all in order to use this tool. Below is an image of the WYSIWYG editor window (which expands if you resize your window to fill the screen). As is apparent from the tool bar, a teach could easily include links to other sites and properly format a section of 'references' at the bottom of their article if they so chose.

Disadvantages

The biggest disadvantage is that it does not appear that security permissions are very granular. Much like novice blogging tools, you can only make a user a moderator for all threads or none (the setting applies site wide). So there are only 3 levels of security and if you have a TA they will likely have an inordinate amount of power on your site to moderate many discussions.

Distance Ed Uses

There are currently many different plug ins. available for WordPress. One of the more popular ones is PodPress. This allows you to provide an RSS or Atom feed and to accompany it with a pod cast version via podfeed.

One of my close friends (Wes Fryer) currently uses this feature on his own site: www.SpeedofCreativity.org

Personal Reaction

My reaction to WordPress is somewhat mixed. Because the application is so geared to novice users, it is quite difficult to get to some of the inner scripting and to understand it. On the other hand, it is very compact and there isn't a whole lot of it.

But in my experience, it isn't very easy to modify things the developers of WordPress don't want you to change. This can be a little frustrating.

On the other hand, the appearance is very sharp, professional, and clean. I have been unable to find any other free tool that looks so good and has so many good looking layout plug ins.

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