MoodleNet/Beta testing

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We'll expand this page as we have more details. Right now, the plan is:

• January 2019:
  • Open applications to the beta testing programme
  • Create two HQ-run MoodleNet instances (English and Spanish)
  • Invite 100 people to take part in the testing, based on meeting certain criteria (language, location, experience, etc.)
• February 2019
  • Receive daily/regular feedback from these 100 testers, and improve MoodleNet iteratively
  • Once we're happy with progress, give 10 invites to each test user, increasing the number of people using MoodleNet to 1,000

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In January 2019, we're planning to test MoodleNet with 100 users. In order to get to this point, we need to have a clear plan which answers the following questions:

• Why? - why does MoodleNet exist?
• What? - what is the value proposition we're testing?
• How? - how are we going to test MoodleNet?
• Who? - who is going to be involved in the testing?
• When? - when will the testing take place? what comes next?
• Where? - where will users go to test MoodleNet and give their feedback?

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Why?

MoodleNet exists to better connect the existing Moodle community, and also to attract new educators. To date, the only Moodle-provided way for educators and other users to share content has been within their Moodle Core installation, backing up and importing activities, or by sharing entire courses. MoodleNet will be upgrade to this, connecting educators via a Moodle-provided open social media platform which focuses on professional development and open content.

What?

We have done some Value Proposition Design for different groups using MoodleNet and have decided that it will begin life as a place for educators to curate and share collections of resources. Our hypothesis is that the problem of discovery for educators cannot be solved by simply providing a more powerful search engine for the millions of resources already available. This is for at least three reasons:

• Learning is a social activity - and likewise teaching should be something that is not done entirely on one's own
• Search engines rely on already knowing what you're looking for - which is not always the case when planning a lesson, scheme of work, or course
• Individual resources exist in a wider context - including their relation to other resources, the educator's approach to learning, and where the 'classroom' is located

Initially, then, MoodleNet will be a simple web-based application allowing educators to form communities that curate collections of resources. Most of these, we imagine, will be free and openly-licensed, although MoodleNet will be resource-agnostic. Uploading resources directly to MoodleNet is out of scope for the first phase of testing, as we need to decide our approach to file hosting.

How?

The plan is to recruit 100 people to test MoodleNet. Although we need learning technologists, system administrators, and other techies to test it eventually, our initial focus should be on early-adopter educators. In early January 2019, we'll put out a call for testers. These will agree our Guidelines for Contributors and agree to give us regular feedback on MoodleNet over a three-week period.

We are interested in every aspect of how educators decide to use MoodleNet, including:

• The communities and collections they decide to create
• What type of collections they create (subject-based? topic-based? other?)
• The number and type of communities they decide to join
• How and when they use tags
• What kind of comments they add to resources
• How they respond to a 10-item limit on resource collections