#FLMobiGame Team Meeting Internet Pioneer - Dr. Vint Cerf

Dr. Vint Cerf (Google Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist) paid a short visit to the School of Systems Engineering, University Reading today (12th Nov 2013). Despite Dr. Cerf's busy schedule, #FLMobiGame team and some of the research students got the rare opportunity to meet him after he met the staff at the School. The whole #FLMobiGame team was delighted to meet him and even more excited when he said that he would enroll on our MOOC on FutureLearn for the next run! Karsten started off the discussion by explaining what the MOOC was about. Here are some photos of the event (Photo courtesy: Helen Fisher)

Karsten Describing #FLMobiGame

Karsten answering questions

#FLMobiGame Mentor Maitreyee asking a question

#FLMobiGame: How to Leave Feedback for FutureLearn Beta

This post is in reply to some of our participants who wanted to know how to leave feedback for FutureLearn.

Step 1: 
Log in to FutureLearn and go to your course.

Step 2:
Now you will see a screen similar to shown below. On the left hand side of your screen you will see the Feedback button. This is to leave feedback about the platform.

FutureLearn Feedback button

Step 3:
Clicking the Feedback button will take you to a screen similar to this.

FutureLearn Feedback form

Step 4: 
Now your feedback to the FutureLearn platform can be provided using this form. Fill in the form and click on 'Post idea' button

#FLMobiGame: Installation Guide and Corrections

We received lot of comments from our participants asking for a document guide on installation. In response to them we have created this guide (working document) in a hurry and sent the link via email to you on Friday (1st Nov 2013) afternoon. However, there was an error in the URL for downloading Game Framework and two of the screenshots have not been properly converted to PDF from the Word document. We are grateful for the participants for pointing them out to us and we have corrected this working document. However, currently we are unable to upload the document retaining the original URL to the platform so this blog will be used to direct our participants to the correct version of the install/setting up guide.

You can get the latest version of install/setting up guide from here.

#FLMobiGame: Using GitHub to share your source code

In a previous blog I described how to use Pastebin to share your source code. In this blog I am going to describe how to use GitHub Gists to share your source code. We need this work around because at the moment FutureLearn platform is in Beta release and does not support source code sharing in comments.

Step 1: 
Visit https://gist.github.com/
You will see a web page similar to this

GitHub Gists Website

Step 2: 
Select the source code that shows errors in your program and copy it (CTRL+C). Now paste it in the text box (CTRL+V). It would look something like this:

Paste your source code here

Step 3: 
You will notice that even though we see Java syntax highlighted in eclipse IDE here it is not. It is much easier to read the source code if syntax is highlighted. So let us make it so. Click on the down arrow near to 'Language' (shown in next figure). This will give you a drop down list. Select 'Java' from the drop down list because we are coding in Java.

Select Source code language

Step 4: 
Notice the syntax highlighting.

Syntax highlighted source code

Step 5: 
Now click on the 'Create Public Gist'.

Click Create Public Gist

Step 6: 
Now click on the 'Create Public Gist'. It will take you to the following screen

Copy Gist Link

Step 6: 
Now click on the select the whole text in 'Link to this gist' text box. (You can do this by clicking on text box and doing a CTRL+A). Now copy this link (CTRL+C).

Step 7: 
In your FutureLearn post (or comment) paste the link to your code.

Comment with GitHub Gist link

I hope this guide was useful, feel free to leave your comments.

#FLMobiGame: Using FutureLearn Platform - Viewing Comments

In this blog post I am going to share some tips about using FutureLearn platform comments. These I found to be useful in keeping an eye on what is happening in the MOOC.

Edit : This post was edited January 2015 to accommodate the changes in FutureLearn user interface

Viewing all recent activity:

Click on 'Activity'.

Click on Activity

Once the Activity is clicked it will show all recent activity in the course. So this view is what I use mostly to keep track of all help requests and other comments made.

Viewing all comments made by you:

Well.. almost all comments (as of 20th Nov 2013 only 100 comments are shown).
Click on your profile on the top right corner.

This will give a menu and from this menu select 'My Profile'

It will show all posts you have made in the course

This will be easier way to keep track of your posts.

Viewing replies to your posts:

Click on Replies

Click on replies

#FLMobiGame: Download Begin Programming MOOC's Videos

Edit Oct 2014 -The FutureLearn Platform has been upgraded and the blog on newer instructions can be found here

Begin Programming: Build Your First Mobile Game MOOC offered by University of Reading went live yesterday. We had lots of comments from our participants. Many of them felt it would be useful to download our videos, especially with slow internet connections it can be very frustrating to watch videos online.

We requested FutureLearn and they have given us the functionality already. So in this blog I am going to explain how you can download videos from our MOOC.

In order to do this you must be logged into your account with FutureLearn.

Step1:
Go to the video you want to download. In this example I am using the first video in activity 1.1 - Welcome to Week 1.

Step 2:
Select 'Download this video' link to download it. If you want to save it, right click and select 'save as'.

Now your connection speed will determine how quickly you can download the video :)

Story Behind My Engagement with University of Reading MOOC

In one of my previous Blogs I talked about Planning and Creating a MOOC. The first MOOC offered by University of Reading is Begin Programming: build your first mobile game. Despite wanting to blog about our MOOC I had to be abide by an embargo on publicizing too much information before the launch event. Since the FutureLearn launch event was held 18th September now I am free to blog about our MOOC, Begin Programming: build your first mobile game.
We had submitted our MOOC Systematic Review to IRRODL and shared it within the University among our colleagues. Actually it was Prof. Shirley Williams who initiated this sharing and discussion. At the same time the University was interested in MOOCs and because everyone now knew that we had an interest on MOOCs we got the chance to get closely involved in the University's MOOC work. Several departments/schools within the University were interested in offering MOOCs but with strong leadership of Prof. Williams the School of Systems Engineering team got the chance to go ahead with the first MOOC.

Then came the painful task of creating content, which I along with Dr. Karsten, who is the lead lecturer in our Begin Programming MOOC did. We had various templates to fill in, create content, get involved in the quality assurance process and so on. We met at least twice a month, I think, to monitor the progress and the back stage content was developed. All the time Shirley was there with us providing guidance. Then we started the video shooting. Luckily for us Luke Micallef in the Digital Development team at the University came to our aid. With the University venturing into MOOCs, he became the dedicated Open Online Course Developer at the University and we got lot of help from him. Karsten was great in front of the camera and you can see that from this course trailer. Almost all the scenes were videoed in front of a green screen as you can see here. Luke did all the nice graphics etc to make these videos.

So this is our MOOC team from the left it is Prof. Shirley Williams, Luke Micallef, Myself and Dr. Karsten Lundqvist.

(Official Group Photograph: UoR Begin Programming MOOC team)

FutureLearn is still in its Beta stage. Since launching MOOC on 18th September within a day our Begin Programming MOOC has hit the target and now the we are offering registration for 2014 to people who could not get registered in for 2013 run. Now we are looking forward to meeting our MOOC participants and facilitating their learning from 28th October 2013.

Planning and Creating a MOOC

I have taken part in 3 Massive Open Online Courses so far and have been thinking how much of an effort would the course creators have had to put into the course to get all the resources prepared for running a MOOC.

I am lucky to be in one of the teams at the University of Reading creating MOOCs to be offered under the FutureLearn partnership. At the School of Systems Engineering - University of Reading I am working in Prof. Shirley Williams’ team along with Dr. Karsten Lundqvist and Luke Micallef (from the University’s Digital Development team) to create a MOOC.

It has taken us a lot of time to plan this course.  We recently recorded the first video for our MOOC and I managed to capture a few moments on my iPhone.

This recording was done in the state-of-the-art filming studio owned by the University’s Department of Film, Theatre & Television. I was more than impressed by the facility but had little idea how to operate any of the equipment. Luke did all the technical stuff while Karsten was the ‘star’ in the video.