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What is MUSO

MUSO, Monash University Studies Online, is now a suite of online teaching and learning tools. These include:

Blackboard (the upgraded version of WebCT Vista 3)

*Note: Sakai and Moodle are pilot projects being run by the Faculty of Medicine and being utilised by a few units in varying faculties. As Sakai and Moodle are currently pilot projects they do not officially form part of MUSO, and as such have seperate login pages.

MUSO Support will be providing assistance to students for Sakai and Moodle.

Blackboard

Blackboard (previously referred to as MUSO) is a web-based course management system that allows students to access information and assessment tasks related to units that they are studying at Monash. While not all units at Monash offer a Blacbkboard component, it is becoming increasingly popular due to its ease of delivery and accessibility to students. Please check with your lecturer or unit coordinator to find out if Blackboard is being offered for each particular unit.

Information such as lecture notes, important announcements, useful links, assignments, grades and unit outlines can all be made available on Blackboard. Assessment tasks can be administered in the form of online quizzes and communication can be facilitated with the MUSO Discussion tool.

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Sakai (Pilot)

The Sakai Project is a community source software development effort to design, build and deploy a new Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) for higher education. The Project began in January, 2004.

Sakai includes many of the standard online tools such as discussions, announcements, assignments and quizzes, but in addition, collaborative tools such as Wikis and Blogs (not yet generally available in WebCT Vista/MUSO).

A pilot was run in the Faculty of Business and Economics in semester 2, 2006 and semester 1, 2007. Sakai was used by over 600 first year marketing students as an alternative to WebCT. Students used Sakai to download course material (including Podcasts), interact with each other and their instructors (asynchronously and in real-time) and sit quizzes.

The Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, together with the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Information Technology are extending the pilot with Sakai initially undertaken by the Faculty of Business and Economics. Of particular interest in this project are the tools available in Sakai (wikis, blogs, podcast etc) that are currently not available through Blackboard. The program will commence during the summer semester 2007 and continue throughout 2009 and also 2010.

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Moodle (Pilot)

Moodle is an open source course management system (CMS) used by universities, schools, businesses, and even individual instructors to add web technology to their courses. Moodle is currently used by more than 2,000 educational organizations around the world to deliver online courses and to supplement traditional face-to-face courses.

The Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, together with the Faculty of Information Technology are currently Piloting Moodle in Semester 1 and Semester 2 2008.

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Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) @ Monash will be replacing the Monash University Studies Online (MUSO) environment as a joint initiative of the Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Learning and Teaching), ITS and the eEducation Centre. Parts of the Virtual Learning Environment are already with us, and you can follow the development of new elements on the VLE site.