2. Overview I took the Moodle training through LearnNC in February of 2009, so this was a great opportunity to put what I learned to use. I chose a course that I currently teach, Multimedia and Webpage Design. The course requires a computer whether it is taken online or not. I will likely be using a version of this setup to teach my course in the classroom.
8. Problems Encountered and Anticipated Time required for setup Overly cumbersome to update documents Keeping links current Changes in delivery method Students might not be as engaged as they would in a traditional classroom. Students may be less likely to look over feedback. I’m sure that I made mistakes and my students will quickly find them. (This could be a benefit?)
9. Expected Successes and Benefits Students will have access to course materials any time they have access to the Internet. It will be easier to keep students accountable because each of their activities will be time-stamped. Students will have an updated version of their grade online all the time. Shy students will feel more comfortable participating in class discussions. Students will have more opportunities to connect about the curriculum and technology in the course by utilizing discussion boards and peer reviewing.
Again, this is erinpickard, on teaching with telecommunication. Thanks for listening.
This is the view of the course that the instructor would see when they are logged in.Anything in grey wouldn’t be visible to the student.I broke the course up into the same sections that the curriculum guide does to make pacing easier. I could choose to each lesson (1.01, 1.02, etc.) after the class had completed previous lessons (with timing matching up to the pacing guide) or I could have it all available so that students could work at their own pace.
This is the view that students would see when they login to the course. I’ve taken online courses and taught hybrid courses where the online portion was provided for me. In both instances my biggest pet peeve was having material in so many places that you were never sure if you were missing something. I tried to make sure that things were organized logically and that users didn’t have to jump around too much.
Like I said, my students and I both tend to worry with online classes that we’re missing something. To help the students make sure that they were getting everything done, I provided student guides for each section. There is a brief introduction to the material that they will be covering and then a chronological list of activities with links. Since I’ve taught this class many times before, I know what students tend to have problems with so I could give them notes about what they should pay special attention to for each assignment. Having those things in writing where they can reference it may benefit students more than in a traditional situation where they might miss if it they aren’t listening when I tell them.
In order to take advantage of the fact that the course is online, I added quite a few activities to the curriculum guide that utilize the Internet and Web 2.0 tools. There is at least one discussion board in each section. I’ll discuss those a bit more on the next slide. I’ve also linked to videos that either go with activities, for extra reinforcement, or just to differentiate the way that instruction is delivered. I utilized some collaborative websites such as Google Docs and Prezi so that students can work together. In addition, there are a few activities where students upload their work to the Internet so that other students can provide them feedback.
One way that I provided for interactivity was the use of discussion boards. Like I said on the last slide, there is at least one discussion board in every section. I tried to mix up the goal of the discussion boards to keep them from being monotonous. Some have students finding and discussing current events, some have a question or video related to the content that students discuss, and some have students critiquing and discussing each other’s work. Even if I use this for a hybrid class instead of a strictly online class, I think that the discussion boards with be beneficial as far as helping to ensure that everyone participates in class and has their voice heard in some way.
Time required for setup – The course took a very long time to set up. Thankfully I already had digital copies of most of my worksheets, but I went in and put form fields in many of them to make them a little easier to type in. I had to set up the links for everything and make sure it was in an order that makes sense and that everything worked. Thankfully, the bulk of the work as far as setup goes is over now and in the future I’ll only have to make minimal changes to keep it updated.Overly cumbersome to update documents – If there is an error in the class, it is a bit of an inconvenience to fix it Related to that, I’ll have to make sure that links are current. I’ve never dealt with an online class that didn’t have dead links. It’s the nature of the internet to be constantly changing and that can be difficult you’re using static links. As far as things staying current, if for some reason Moodle goes away, I’d have to repeat all of this work somewhere else. I’m just going to pretend like that is never going to happen.From a students end, I know that it can be harder to be engaged in an online class. I’ve tried to deal with that by adding some interactivity, but I’m sure that after I’ve taught the class using this setup, I’ll be able to come up with more ways to keep students engaged.Like I said before, I’ve taught a hybrid class before and one of my main issues was that I’d spend in insane amount of time providing feedback on assignments and students would never look at anything but the grade. When you’re face to face, you have the option of talking to a student to make sure that they understand where they went wrong, but that’s a bit harder if you’re completely online. If I went completely online with this then I’d have to come up with a way to help fix that.Finally, I’m sure I made mistakes when I built the class. It’s always inconvenient when students find them for you and panic, but hopefully all the kinks will be worked out after I’ve delivered the course once.
Students will have access to course materials any time they have access to the Internet so they will have the freedom to work on their assignments or review whenever they have time.It will be easier to keep students accountable because each of their activities will be time-stamped. Both the students and I will know the exact mine that they turn assignments in.Students will have an updated version of their grade online all the time so they will know where they stand after each assignment.Shy students will feel more comfortable participating in class discussions because of the lack of face to face interaction.And finally, Students will have more opportunities to discuss the curriculum by utilizing discussion boards and peer reviewing.
Three things that have worked for me that I definitely recommend are DropBox, Quia, and being well organized. One of my biggest complaints about most online course delivery systems is how difficult it is to update documents that you’ve uploaded. I hate going through the process of logging in, reuploading, and making sure that all of your versions match. To help with this, I used DropBox. It’s cloud storage that has a super easy to use system where you can treat your dropbox just like any other folder on your computer by dragging and dropping files into it. Your personal dropbox has a Public folder where you can give people the link to what’s in that folder and they can access it. For my Moodle course, I linked all of the worksheets from my dropbox instead of uploading them to moodle. This way, I can quickly update worksheets in the dropbox and not have to worry about reuploading.Next, I already used Quia for all of my tests and quizzes. I could have retyped them into Moodle, but I like Quia’s other features (such as the ability to create games from the content and the reports that it offers me). The test and quiz links on the moodle site all link to the quia activities. The kids would still get instant feedback, I would just have to transfer the grades from Quia to Moodle which wouldn’t take long at all.Finally, I think it’s really important to plan out your course navigation in a way that makes sense to you and be willing to adjust that if it doesn’t make sense to your students because they can’t find what they need then they will get frustrated and won’t get as much out of the course.
Overall, I hope that this course will be beneficial to both my students and my self. They will benefit from the use of this technology as it allows them to interact in a more meaningful way more frequently and it provides them with access to far more material than a traditional class might. Furthermore, it will help me stay organized and allow me to make the class accessible for a wider variety of students.
