 Thanks Zane and hello to everybody who's tuned in, great to meet you virtually speaking and I recognise a few names from last week so well done, you're back again. As we said, feel free to use the chat area as we go along in your little blue control panel or console as Zane mentioned that the mutes are mic'd for the minute, it's just a bit chaotic with quite a number of us in here virtually if we're all making noise at the same time but definitely time, time will be on our side and you know before we're done if maybe you can raise your hand and we will unmute mics at the end if you do really want and need to speak but yeah feel free to comment, ask questions, we'll go along and we'll incorporate that as appropriate just in terms of where we're heading in the next three-quarters of an hour or so if and when your organisation decides on a particular learning management system or LMS you'll need to consider the look and feel and that includes effective course design and how the users will interact with the system so I guess the the main purpose of this session this afternoon is to tackle those five aspects there as far as appearance is concerned we'll look at theming and how best to represent your school's brand in terms of navigation we'll look at key elements such as breadcrumbs menus and blocks accessibility wise it'd be a remiss of us to simply choose the look and feel of an LMS on the basis of desktop or laptop computers naturally there's a lot of us using mobile and tablet devices as far as personalisation is concerned we'll have a look at and we'll consider user profiles things called dashboards and how we can customise the system for individuals and lastly structure we'll get into perhaps what a an online course might look like look at settings formats and layouts so and it might be a good time to push that pile out and we'll get our attendees thinking from the get-go as far as what might be the top priority for your school as far as the learning management systems concerned so we'll see on screen in a short bit I guess options options that relate to appearance navigation accessibility personalisation and structure if you're not sure what your school's priority might be perhaps have an educated guess now are we able to push that push that poll out it's in progress so give you perhaps a little little moment to take your pick but no worries you might have to feed those back to me and me being in full-screen presenter mode I can't see the poll of the results that's good that's a relief I guess in terms of colours fonts and logos but as we'll see in a short while and and we might be able to pay testament to you know our younger audience they're pretty hung up on what the system looks like and may not be so hung up on how it actually works contrary to what we what we think thanks for that in and thanks for those people who pulled in look with respect to appearance as I've suggested perhaps too many users particularly those of the you know the I guess the teenage variety as far as system acceptance is concerned it's yeah it's a fair chance that what the LMS looks like is more important in their mind and their eyes than what it does that's not to say the other things aren't important I'm completely wibby as far as interactivity and formatting and compatibility for different sorts of devices is concerned but four things theme color font and icon set as far as appearance of concern so let's have a look at those so depending on the LMS you're using or you decide on a theme that language might vary somewhat might might also be referred to as a template or a skin or some sort of style I think you get the idea the advent of cascading style sheets or CSS it's it's a web programming language that's allowed us to separate function and form and by that I mean we're able to change the visual elements of a web page or a learning management system without editing the text of the content okay this is this is one such example it could be a learning management system we're in the administration configuration settings and we would come in there may be an array of themes or templates available and we pick choose the one that's most appropriate for our organization or alternatively we could we could design our own if we were quite savvy with CSS as far as color goes well I think it's fair to say we we can accept that's likely to be dictated by the colors of your school you know as far as I said a simple rule of thumb with respect to fonts or you know I guess the text font color and the background contrasts light on dark on light or light on dark works particularly well so by that I mean perhaps a dark font on a light background or a light font on a dark background bear in mind though with the latter if you use a dark background that can be pretty harsh on the eyes after not too long and it also it'll chew up a fair bit of print toner in a hurry another thing to consider with with colors as far as theming goes is color blindness it's not as rare as we think I was doing a little bit of a scoot around before the presentation and in Australia apparently 8% of the male population has some form of color blindness and about 0.4% of females so that might mean that as far as color blindness is concerned users may not be able to distinguish between the shades of either green and red or blue and yellow so something else for us to consider and Ian's made a valid point they're just keeping half an eye on the chat assuming we can print webpages and that's not always always possible again depends on I guess the functionality being inbuilt to the website of the system or the or the LMS and naturally the other said device being connected to a printer or a network okay I'll just I'll just forward through a few examples of some themes here for a for a typical learning management system and and naturally the colors the fonts styling the icons will vary somewhat the general layout the look and the feel the contents the same bear that mine as I said we're able to separate function and form or the design and the and the textual elements have a look at a few of these and I'll get you to pick your favorite I love each of these up maybe for 10 seconds okay I'll go back through those quickly and then I'm curious to know which of those themes I showed four of them there's white green orange or blue which was your favorite if I just toggle back through them quickly from first so white green orange or blue so if you just want to drop a few words in the chat area in the next minute feel free to do so in terms of your preferred theme and and why it's no right or wrong answer here incidentally they're all okay themes and it's it's certainly as far as you know theme designs concerned it's certainly in the eye of the holder I'm with me and I'm a bit of an orange tragic as well Facebook blue so I think that's an interesting point there perhaps from me again a teenager's point of view that color they can associate with and suddenly the LMS is hip and cool like a social network thanks Richard thanks William and Russell thanks Kelly Kelly makes a good point about the green and navigation and blocks on both sides Ruchi says blue found it clear didn't hurt their eyes I think the point I'm trying to make here is your preference come through and thank you to those who are giving their two cents worth there's no right or wrong answer as I said and you know if we've got four different options we're going to get four different responses you know it is certainly in the eye of the holder no right or wrong answer there but naturally we can see the different colors and styles layouts naturally with any of these in the header or the top section of the theme as far as good themes are concerned you ought to be able to drop your school logo again just a further kind of reinforcement brand and you know and have that out then and keep your marketing people people happy and then just again I guess to kind of kind of help identify your organization with the learning management system that should be very achievable with respect to fonts so that's the the textual content that the type that we saw on screen and need to consider as far as font goes more in particular the typeface there's really there's two types of typefaces and you may have heard of serif and sans serif the idea being serif serif fonts have semi structural details kind of appended to the strokes that make up the letters of the numbers and the symbols apparently as far as font experts are concerned serif fonts give us better readability relative to sans serif and they're often used in traditional print media so books newspapers magazines and so forth so your typical serif fonts include and I've got the list of their courier Georgia Times New Roman as far as sans serif goes my French is pretty savvy as shabby as I should say but I do know that sans sans is without so I guess sans serif is without serif it gives us a cleaner appearance as far as the font typeface is concerned but it does the trade-off is that it does mean I guess it's a font that's less readable in an offline sense so you know printed media being the you know the traditional example there on the same token the flip side being sans serif is often heralded as having better readability on screen and it's become the de facto standard especially for online you know sort of internet in particular so you know a learning management system is no exception to that you know in examples there again listed include Ariel Helvetica and Vodana and we've got a few coming through pet hate ends is times your Roman that's real old school and it's often a default you know it's a default font typeface Richard's pet hate font is comic sans oh I must confess Richard I've you know probably like quite a few people go through font phases you know different font every every term semester of calendar year and I have it's probably a decade ago but I did have a comic sans phase or period I grew out of that thankfully what a rubber unless you're a comic thanks Kelly what are other people's preferred on-screen font and why if you just want to drop that in the chat window I'd be curious to know again there's no right or wrong answer here but what's your preferred font typeface personally I kind of like Georgia but you know I use a lot a lot online but now strictly speaking it's a Sarah font and it's probably best served in a in an offline or in a traditional sense thank you Calibri Calibri Vodana for sans Sarah from Richard Ariel Ariel is very popular so too is Vodana excellent and some reasons coming through again it is the look the feel it's easy to read I guess read ability is the big thing but as I indicated the the the medium you know the medium in question can dictate if Sarah for a sense of font is perhaps most appropriate thank you for that again just something else for us to consider and you're not as far as theming goes you're not stuck with a single font you might use different styling for different types of elements so for example you know a heading heading headings one two three and four might be a Sarah font but then you know in in an online sense you may use sans Sarah fonts for you know your paragraphs or you are you're ordered none ordered lists so you can have a combination it's the best of both worlds and may keep more people happy with respect to icons and icon sets you know there's the odd adage that a picture can tell a thousand words and you know with the advent of graphical user interfaces we get our windows and menus and programs we also get icons so you know an icon being a small image served up as a system feature an icon set extension that I guess it's simply a series of small images that represent features system features so the idea being that icons are quick and they're an attuity of representation of functional feature within a system in this case a learning management system and more to the point if the usability is very good the icon should hype a link to that particular feature or function so it takes you somewhere as I said icons form part of a good geographical user interface as we know with windows and Mac in particular and those who are sort of less prone to command line appreciate icons and guis and more to the point icons help us understand they improve the use of a system and help us navigate it so there's all sorts of benefits to you know good iconography if you can call it I'm not even sure if that's a word it's all part of good system usability so I've got three examples of icon sets there that might relate to a learning management system again I'm interested in your thoughts there's no right or wrong answer feel free to use the chat area what are your thoughts what's your preferred icon set if we say we've got three on screen there so one two or three which do you prefer and perhaps a quick reason as to why so feel free to drop something in the chat area there there's a chat area won't bite incidentally it's a no right or wrong answer people saying set one easy to read and clear three doesn't look busy it's cleaner set one most distinct and clean like saying Brett and Kim three one very interesting interesting how some of us are referring to the icon set by color red or blue we're in fact that's the I guess the color of the text text to the right side of the icons one two three so it is again we've had three options and we've had three different different responses there unexpectedly Afso makes a good point about options icon set three looking bit jumbled together with icons so if I read that correctly what Afso means is that I guess the icon set doesn't flow doesn't seem consistent it looks like a bit of a dog's breakfast but perhaps in comparison relatively speaking icon set one or two has a bit more flow that's called a little consistency within the package of images I think that's what you mean Mac hi Mac recognize your name well it says that set two looks more familiar and I think that's the idea that's um you know as I said pictures can tell a thousand words maybe not a thousand but the idea would be if we took away text I guess they're sort of textal cues like chats choices databases feedback forums etc thanks and would we would we understand what what the icon meant as in with the image in our minds represent a system or a feature or a function without the text so that's kind of the aim of the ultimate icon set okay so bear that mind and with a theme for your learning management system you should have on offer a range of icon sets so which theme may or may not use the standard icon set it could well have its own okay so bear that mind and so it's another part of good system usability that we need to appreciate navigation well in a nutshell this describes how users are able to move around or you know find their way or you know get from one place to another learning management system so learners around users I should say more to the point I might just pause there for a minute I'm sorry I've just seen a couple things come through worth mentioning of soul asking whether with the icons we need to have the written word well if the icons are good enough they should stand alone without the text but you can't be sure and Ian makes a good point that many of us are visual learners okay certainly in an online situation it's far more effective and efficient to display images in when you've got limited screen real estate in particular versus just a big dump of text people have less tolerance for the text in an online context but look as far as and thanks for those points as far as navigation goes users have two options when getting their way around the web and in particular an LMS they can either click or scroll red crumbs we will have a look at in a short while you might or might not be aware of familiar with them menus you certainly you will be familiar with and things called blocks again the language might change depending on your LMS solution but we'll look at each of these things in turn as far as breadcrumbs are concerned it's a funny thing you know Hansel and Gretel I guess the metaphor there is Hansel and the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale and you know my recollection of fairy tales is a bit like my my grasp of the French language it's not that great but what I do know something along the lines of Hansel and Gretel went out in the woods from the cabin and they scattered breadcrumbs along their path as they went so that when they turned around to come back they would be able to find their way back to where they came from so that's kind of the idea of the essence of breadcrumbs in an online sense it's set that breadcrumbs aren't about history it's meant to be about hierarchy in terms of what page you're on in the context of the overall site or system so if you haven't noticed here breadcrumbs are the single line of text at the top of toward the top of the page and they show your location in the site or the system a hierarchy so you can see their home in the little arrow their courses how to moodle general news forum right that's where we are now they are meant to improve usability as a matter of fact they're becoming increasingly popular as a secondary navigation aid naturally the the primary navigation aid for most sites and systems on the web is a menu with a horizontal or a vertical menu it's typically textual maybe purely hypertext or it might be buttons or it could be CSS and sort of spill down menus or spill across menus so that's breadcrumbs as far as menus go as I said this is typically your primary navigation function with sites and systems you can see here the hypertext represents the site menu course topics and if we were to further down this navigation or perhaps on another block or together it might contain administrative functions depending if we were an LMS administrator or a teacher editing an online course now incidentally this particular menu is expandable and collapsible so you can see there within the navigation block we've got courses and that expands out how to moodle and then we've got all of these sub elements or items participants reports general and so forth so we can click in turn any of those little arrows that would expand out again and the reverse process without demonstrating it would be to click the arrow and it would collapse all of the sub elements so that's a fairly standard way to navigate a learning management system so look out for breadcrumbs and menu navigation in your preferred LMS as far as blocks are concerned again this is kind of part of the I guess the triumph for it with respect to navigation a blocks so blocks might go by different language for different LMS as it could be modules or widgets or sidebars or something of that effect they ought to contain contextually relevant information so if the if the block is very clever it knows who you are and where you are in the the system context so you on the front page or are you in a course index or in a course in particular or on the gradebook page or you use a profile page and it will quite possibly serve up different elements on the menu as a result of who you are and where you are in the system as far as blocks are concerned with this one this one as a case an example these can be moved they can be moved up or down a page within the LMS they can be moved up or down left or right they can be hidden they can be deleted in fact they can be docked these two blocks of as a matter of fact being docked to the left side of a course page you can see the navigation block and beneath it the settings block so a good LMS should allow you to move your menus and more to the point your blocks around your pages up or down or across a hide or delete them or to dock them like this to really declutter the course page and and give give a lot more white space and as far as the web is concerned and good design I think white space is good and have enough of it people people tend to clutter pages and it can overwhelm our learners so there's a few things to bear in mind now for those who tuned in last week you would have seen these trends and I won't I won't labour the point to greatly accept that it's kind of it's pertinent to where we're heading in a moment but look Australian Bureau of Statistics and Nelson online tell us a couple things about Australian Internet activity of late and it's important we understand these trends as educators we're going to embrace new technologies for the purpose of good learning online learning so there's four fit for I guess key trends that come to mind and if we sum them up it's wireless mobile broadband and tablet so these things are popularizing and becoming more commonplace all right so what that in turn means for us and again this pretty diagram if you were if you were in attendance last week and you're awake you would have seen this as well this is what a good learning management system might look like so the cloud represents the Internet the LMS is kind of the heartbeat of this particular diagram so you know there's a multiplicity of communication and collaboration and assessment reporting tools contained within a good LMS and we is we is users administrators teachers learners we connect to the learning management system via the Internet using various devices so it's anywhere any time learning by anyone about anything and it's not simply desktops or laptop computers we could be talking about as alluded to before tablet devices or mobile phones okay it becoming more commonplace not just in households and workplaces but as you would appreciate being teachers in schools just perhaps a quick a quick indication in the chat area if your school has either a some sort of let's call it mobile initiative either in place or in the pipeline could be for a tablet device like an iPad it could be a PDA or a mobile phone or something similar just indicate that quickly to us in a few words or less anybody I'll just wait 10 more seconds in case somebody is typing or we'll move forward and Farnie makes a valid point whether your school does or doesn't have some sort of technology initiative along the lines of let's say a notebook or a tablet program a lot of students have access to these technologies in any case whether they be without a school or the moment they're at home they can they've got the internet on tap and they could be connecting to your learning management system via a tablet device or a smartphone and Kim can echoes that sentiment thank you and Richard likewise and that's exactly right that's the philosophy behind the learning management system that we're not bound by the timetable in a Monday to Friday 9 to 3 or thereabouts it's anywhere anytime learning so learning without borders or boundaries let's say as long as you connected the internet and you got a you got a connecting device in it in a modern web browser so to that end we've got to we've got a designer good online learning that you know reflects this trend in this demand and thanks Oran makes a good point as well mobile for iPhone and iPad and Android it's also available that's right there's there's an app an app sadly that more HQ won't be supporting for much longer I think it's just been too cumbersome in its current form anyway it's sort of flash base form for iPhone but having said that there is now a default theme for Moodle that supports tablet and mobile devices and and there's a there's a global configuration within Moodle LMS incidentally where you can enable device detection so Moodle the LMS becomes clever enough to know what device the end users trying to connect to it with and serves up an appropriate theme and Afsal is just asking in terms of what version of Moodle's been used in schools well it could be a multiplicity if there's anyone you know if you want to drop that in the chat window as we go along feel free to do so you might be using Moodle 1.9 there's a lot of skills are schools are and perhaps you know a few iterations software iterations behind and that's that's understandable Moodle's now the latest stable release is 2.3.1 so if you want to tap into Moodle's mobile capability I think you've got to be using at least Moodle 2.1 2.3 naturally other learning management systems let's not just speak Moodle but other other LMS's good LMS's should support a multiplicity of devices not just desktop and laptop but mobile and tablet as well so look out for that if you're in the evaluation phase so this is it this is all about accessibility accessibility can mean a lot of different things to different people in in various contexts for what we're on about it is all about designing online learning with consideration for these different device types users might have access to right so as I said a desktop that could be the computer at your desk it could be the laptop that you take with you when you're not at your desk or even a thin client I suppose falls into that category mobile we're talking about smartphones web-enabled phones such as iPhones and androids and tablet devices iPads and maybe the iPad killer Samsung and you know the other and the other options there in the tablet market netbooks netbooks fit there somewhere as well not sure from netbooks we're just a bit of a passing fad but look at this this is a screenshot of what an online course might look like in a in a typical learning management system we've got the header at the top see that on login is yours truly we've got navigation horizontal navigation menu we've got breadcrumbs beneath that then we've got I guess in the left two-thirds of the page we've kind of got the the course content activities and resources XN and on the right side we've got the blocks and modules or widgets with things such as navigation and settings settings relating to the course and the site of the system at large globally speaking so this this screen shot shows a typical online course optimized for a desktop device okay you got a fair bit of resolution there with a bigger display generally a bit from 13 to 15 maybe up to 25 27 inch okay so you can fit a fair bit of stuff say for one of a better word I guess content images modules and so forth if we fast forward that's a mobile that's a screenshot on a mobile device in landscape display not a lot of screen real estate let's be honest okay so this is the same course naturally it's a touch screen so we've got button navigation there at the top with the screen real estate being so limited you know the residents you know we're operating at such such a small resolution with in fact it looks as though we've only got a single column layout okay so designers need to be really savvy for these low resolution you know small screen devices to to serve up an optimal user experience so we've got to bear in mind not all devices are created equal and from my experience you know I've used learning management systems on laptops desktops netbooks PDAs tablets mobile phones different different devices to be honest and and things like mobile phones and tablet devices perhaps better lend themselves to consumption than than authoring so that's that's something to bear in mind here's a few more screenshots so I've just put the ever a series of screenshots here this relates to again a typical learning management system as viewed from a tablet device such as an iPad okay you can see we've got a bit more screen real estate to work with and we then we saw back there for a smartphone but but a bit less than what we had on the desktop display things just made a point that I guess the draw he says the drawback of a touch touch displays by its nature must use more space for navigation than a stylus driven device yeah and that's a fair point a fair point I can think back to the days when I was using a PDA and the stylus is nice you can normally hit your target and that target little hot spot doesn't have to be as big as a button that I guess a touch display but but I guess the upside of smartphones and tablets and touch screens is that there's nothing Apple was on or winner I reckon when it invented those devices there's nothing more natural than a user using their hands or their fingers to navigate you know the moment you put a mouse or a keyboard or a stylus in the way it's kind of another you know it's a it's an intermediary it's a kind of a bridge or a barrier between the system and the user but I do get your point here's another screen this is a user we can see it's a two column layout that settings that settings button is huge it spans the width of the display we're in we're in portrait pardon me landscape mode incidentally and the student on the left in the left most column there we can see the student block has been expanded out they're kind of toggles I guess that's the language being used as far as this theme is concerned and we can either we can toggle to have the the second column visible or not so it's a real monochrome sort of thing I guess and that's kind of the way we've tablet and smart phone devices perhaps resolutions may or may not be showing as many colors in any case with the monochrome sort of theme you tend to get less less colors and sometimes duller themes so you can see here this is within the same course on a on a tablet device two column layout we've kind of got the two third two right most thirds of the page being dedicated to the topic and the content within this particular course and all of the blocks they kind of collapsed on the left side there and they can be toggled to expand to be expanded so the same course this is in portrait mode so we lose a little bit of real estate but again still very workable this is a different navigation element I guess then you might get in an on a desktop or mobile device and you may or may not see this where we've just clicked a button and then this sort of menu expands out and you can also see the other elements both from the header and the footer I guess the icons but there was the more than purely the icons they're kind of representing big buttons hyper hyper media that will take us to particular features or functions so some food for thought I might just go back one slide is anyone got any questions or comments with respect to perhaps theming for mobile or tablet devices or any experience their stories they want to share with us before we move forward what's worked what hasn't what your thoughts or feelings are aliens asked the question of Moodle does it allow a layout that you've designed to be turned into a template for other users to create a new space a lot of share point in a sense it does as far as the the theme is concerned I guess that's the design elements so the colors the fonts the icon set that's something that can be forced globally so every user gets the same look and feel in all courses or it can be granularized at a course level or you can open it up so every user can choose their preferred theme for the LMS if they prefer blue green or red for example to answer what you're asking I think you're asking me and as far as layouts are concerned if as far as moogle's concerned in a course if you've got a layout that you like so it's this is independent of theming and colors and fonts and styles but let's say the headings or where the blocks are positioned in a course or even some of the activities or resources contained in the course if you back those up in Moodle you can restore them as a new course and go from there so I guess you can quickly template or clone your courses and reproduce them or replicate them very quickly I'm glad that's what you meant in answer your question so yep and I would look out for that in in in any system it's a bit separate I guess from theming but any good LMS should allow you to quickly copy or clone a course and replicate it again it's sort of the parental thing I know for teachers in schools at the end of a semester or a calendar year you've got a U-Bute course in 2012 and you want to run a similar course for 2013 and you've garnered some feedback from your students had a meeting with your colleagues a deep part deep part mental meeting and I guess made the resolution to what you're going to do for 2013 but the easiest thing as far as your online course is concerned to do would be to back it up strip away the learners and perhaps all of their forum posts and quiz attempts and you know assignment submissions and restore a copy of that course as you know as a as a new version of it for 2013 so that can be done certainly in the case of Moodle after I was just asked a question on the side there perhaps for Ian or somebody else who's perhaps better versed with what SharePoint can do these days does it have a repository function or feature such as Moodle has I'm just going to move forward as I'm mindful of time with about 10 minutes remaining okay look as far as personalization is concerned it's got to be one of our key aims that's to make the learning management system and the online learning component of our programs and curriculum and subjects as relevant to each and every learner as we possibly can fortunately the good news is to that end you know with learning management systems it's quite simple to eliminate that one-size-fits-all approach with feast with features such as user profiles dashboards and the ability to customize or for individuals to customize their view of the learning management system so we'll have a quick look at some of these things this is an example of a user profile on a typical LMS you can see here a fair bit of information about this online user who they are where they're from perhaps a little biography an avatar or a picture of them this is their online persona if you like you can share your interests perhaps courses you're enrolled in even recent activity and you know the online user profile is it's critical it becomes gold and it's it's very important in non face-to-face situations but there's not a lot of personal contact and it's a very quick way to personalize the teaching and the learning and for people to get to know one another I mean even in a face-to-face situation I've used user profiles countless times as a teacher in a school you know where you have those parent teacher interviews very early in a term or a semester and you're still trying to put faces to names that sort of thing because we know it can get a bit embarrassing when you've you're meeting a parent for the first time and you don't even know their son or daughter's name so a profile is important and it's really one click away for any course participant or system user so it's a very easy way and effective way for you to tell other system users a bit about yourself and you know make a personal connection you can see some other information at the top there too this is this is a particularly sophisticated theme but under my name right at the top right there's a little there's a little arrow that allowed me to expand so we could see upcoming events and then things such as my courses private files calendar mail and so forth so some additional features that help personalize my view of the system this dashboard here is something I would look for in any good learning management system okay it's a I guess a dashboard in essence is a single page it contains a snapshot from an end user's perspective so in this case you know events courses activities things of a time relevant nature even grades and instant messages online users and importantly we should that well there should be the capability that allows users to customize their dashboard okay it's important it empowers them and they can take co-ownership of the system take co-ownership of their teaching and their learning space so it's an easy buy-in if you've got a dashboard and the ability for individuals to customize their view of the system can't let's face it with you know with good systems what people like about Facebook I guess as an example it makes it so popular for for a teenage audience is the fact that people can personalize it customize it call it their own they feel really connected to it so in some some kind of way if we can we can achieve that sort of sensation with an LMS we're on a winner okay lastly course structure so we as educators need to consider not only online course design but also how we we want our learners to engage with our courses that's all about settings format and layout so these are the sort of settings in an online course you should have it you dispose of if you are either an administrator or a course editor so the name of the course the summary the format layout how many weeks how many topics start finish date and so forth okay that's fairly stock standard so if we ran with the topics format and a lot of a lot of teachers and schools will use this sort of format you'll when you've populated a course with activities and resources it might look a little bit like this so you may have blocks on the left and the right most section of a course page course being like a subject example you might be a teacher of your 10 English and in the center area you have your topics so I guess these are the themes so that the key the ideas that relate to your course study and they're kind of sections that appear top to bottom down down your course page on the contrary if you went with a weekly format and I've seen teachers prefer this if you're running a very terminally or semesterized sort of program you might commit to putting activities resources up on a weekly basis and that gives not just you and your colleagues but also your learners a bit of certainty in terms of where you're at and what comes next you can see their date so for topic one or section one you can see that goes from 1st July to 7th next section 8th July to 14th so on and so forth okay and now that's a typical model adopted at university you know you're in week 10 at 15 and registered training organizations RTOs tend to use this sort of approach as well from from my experience the good news is we can eliminate that scroll of death that you can get from a weekly or topics format as I said users have two options navigating an online course they can either scroll or click so you can get rid of that vertical scroll quite quickly if we set our course up to display one section per page as you can see here and then the learner has a fairly decluttered view of any to-street topic within the course of study at this point in time and they can navigate back they're in course design at the moment as the topic but they can back you know they can go back to essentials or they can go forward to communication and collaboration or they can return to the main course page they've kind of got a truncated view of all the the topics or weeks or sections all right so we really want to try and eliminate that scroll of death as a matter of fact usability studies tell us that some people spend 80% of their time above the page fold so by that we mean I guess the web page fold you've got more vertical content on a page than is in the initial page fold it's often hidden from the from the user's initial view and they might miss it or disregarded or ignore it altogether so this kind of sums it up this was a it's all about I guess reading web content and let's face it users read web page content very differently to content read by traditional media such as books newspapers magazines now this is kind of I guess a synopsis of a 2006 study conducted by usability guru a chap by the name of yuck at Nelson so it was a study involving to over 230 people that looked at thousands of web pages and according to the results of the study the dominant reading pattern for web pages resembles the letter F so I guess F for fast because people skim a web page in a matter of seconds as I said more to the point this is a separate study but web users spend 80% of their time above the page fold so those two things in themselves are very significant so I guess in essence the implications for us are to locate important elements at the top of the page fold and probably at the top left and users won't read text online thoroughly what they would offline as I said they've got less tolerance online versus traditional media for text now you might read a book offline I've never met a person who read a book on a computer screen or a mobile phone a tablet tap device might be stretched you might be into that depending I guess on the font and the resolution the study I guess I guess in terms of implications again probably the first paragraph should state the important information and then you know headings paragraphs bottle points should carry the you know the the really pertinent information and key words right so all things for us to consider in terms of how how people read the web and use web pages and how we should design for effective online learning all right I'm going to wrap up there just just before finish time if there's any questions or comments feel free to drop them in the chat area or else stick your hand up and Ian will happily unmute your mic I can see that yeah in terms of the theme so the theme on the elements let me just have a quick look back there okay that I was demonstrating yeah it's sort of an adaptation of the theme by the name of ard but ardvark for moodle if that helps so it's a it's a third party third party thing we did what I was going to do that's fine I was going to drop it on our lms space which is a isq.net and incidentally for for everybody that's where I'll be putting the I guess the session presentations both I guess in PDF format and the in the video but yeah I'll drop it up there around and point a link at that for you so you can get it from there consider it done yep sure