BIM – Feed Aggregation Management and Marking

Current status of BIM 2

Updated 12 May, 2013: BIM for Moodle 2.x is now available via Moodle CONTRIB (i.e. the plugins database). There’s even a (slowly evolving) BIM page in Moodle docs now.

What is BIM?

BIM is an activity module for Moodle that provides the functionality required to allow:

• Students to register feeds.
  Be they RSS, ATOM etc and from whatever source – usually a public blog.
• Students to use that feed to respond to questions set by teaching staff or to simply just blog.
• Teaching staff to track progress and, if so desired, mark and comment on student contributions.
• Coordinating staff to track and moderate marking by other staff.
• “Import” the marking into the Moodle gradebook.

See this post for an explanation of the differences between BIM and Moodle’s blog services.

There is a video of a presentation that gives an overview of BIM, including showing how it works for staff and students.

Earlier versions of BIM have been used mostly to manage individual student reflective blogs as described in (Jones and Luck, 2009; Reaburn, Muldoon and Bookallil, 2009).

The ELI Guide to Blogging talks about BAM, an early version of BIM.

Current status – BIM 1.0 (old)

The most recent version of BIM is always available from here. Look for the “download source” button. The same site also has a place for you to report issues

BIM is currently being used in courses at CQUniversity and the University of Canberra.

Related work

There is a range of related work going on. Some of it includes:

• The idea of a loosely-coupled gradebook from Jon Mott;
  A quote from here that illustrates the connection

  institutions should do what they do best (manage student data, facilitate secure communication between teachers and learners) while leveraging third-party, cloud-based applications for such things as personal publishing and collaboration.

• EduFeedr – “EduFeedr is an educationally enhanced feed reader for blog-based courses. The project is currently in the design phase. This website contains information about the design and development of EduFeedr. “
• The idea of a PLE as an alternative for e-portfolios as suggested here and here.
• The idea of the LMS moving away from a single, integrated system providing all functionality towards a platform that enables integration of a broad array of services. The LMS becomes a LMP.
• The major problem BIM tries to solve is the workload associated with managing, integrating, marking and sharing individual feeds. Another approach used by Rourke and Coleman (2009), was to restrict students to the use of Blogger and use its management dashboard.
• Moodle 2.0 will allow people to import external blogs which is somewhat similar. However, BIM provides a range of functionality associated with managing and marking that this doesn’t provide. Based on feedback from various folk, there is still a demand for BIM in Moodle 2.x
• Stephen Downes’ work around gRSShoper inspired/informed this approach.

History of BIM

• Early 2006 The Blog Aggregation Management (BAM) project commenced with an initial experiment.
• 2006 The experiment was written up in the ELI Guide to Blogging and said
  

  One of the most compelling aspects of the project was the simple way it married Web 2.0 applications with institutional systems. This approach has the potential to give institutional teaching and learning systems greater efficacy and agility by making use of the many free or inexpensive—but useful—tools like blogs proliferating on the Internet and to liberate institutional computing staff and resources for other efforts.

• 2006 through 2009. BAM use at CQUniversity includes:
  • In 26 different course offerings of 7 different courses.
  • By 2050+ students.
  • And 16000+ blog posts.
• 2009. Choice by CQUni to move to Moodle sparks the design of BIM – BAM into Moodle.

Some old presentations

This first presentation was given in early 2006 and outlines some of the early thoughts, rationale and design decisions behind BAM’s initial use. Important: use the controller at the bottom to start the video at 3 minutes 50 seconds into the video. The early part shows some set up of the on-campus presentation.

This one took place about half way through the term in which BAM was used for the first time. About 3/4 months after the above presentation. Important: use the controller at the bottom to start the video at 3 minutes 30 seconds into the video. The early part shows some set up of the on-campus presentation.

References

Jones, D. and J. Luck (2009). Blog Aggregation Management: Reducing the Aggravation of Managing Student Blogging. World Conference on Education Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2009, AACE: 398-406.

Reaburn, P., N. Muldoon, et al. (2009). Blended spaces, work based learning and constructive alignment: Impacts on student engagement. Same places, different spaces. Proceedings ascilite Auckland 2009. Auckland: 820-831.

Rourke, A. J. and K. Coleman (2009). An emancipating space: Reflective and collaborative blogging. Same places, different spaces. Proceedings ascilite Auckland 2009: 888-897.