This is a presentation that I gave to education students at Ningbo Polytechnic. The pedagogical perspective relates to the three core Moodle functional areas - delivering content, collaboration & communication, and delivering assessments.

1. eLearning Pedagogy and Practice
Dr. Iain Doherty
Associate Professor
Director eLearning Pedagogical Support Unit
Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and
Learning
14th April 2012

2. Introduction
• About me
• Learning led and technology enabled
• Aligning technology with teaching
• 3 E’s
– Engaging students with course content
– Engaging students with one another
– Engaging students with assessment activities
• Concluding remarks
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3. About Me
• 7 years at The Faculty of Medical and Health
Sciences as Director of the Learning Technology Unit
• http://www.fmhs.auckland.ac.nz/faculty/ltu/
• 3 months as Director of the eLearning Pedagogical
Support Unit, Centre for the Enhancement of
Teaching and Learning, The University of Hong Kong
• http://www.cetl.hku.hk/elearning-pedagogical-support-uni
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4. Learning Led and Technology Enabled
• Learning led and technology enabled means thinking
first of teaching and learning and then about use of
technology.
• Technologies should be employed in the service of
good teaching and learning.
• Start with a perceived challenge or an opportunity to
be realized and think about how the use of
technology can help to meet the challenge / help to
realize the opportunity.
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5. Aligning Teaching with Technologies
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6. Aligning Teaching with Technologies
• Technologies used to help students to achieve the
intended learning outcomes.
• Technologies used to enhance / enrich the teaching
and learning activities.
• Technologies used to enhance / enrich the
assessment activities.
• Technologies used to increase students digital
literacy
• Technologies used to develop e.g. collaboration skills
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7. Engaging Students with Course Content
• Resources include not only content (digital media)
but also the tools that students will use when working
on a particular activity.
• When integrating digital media in your teaching,
consider that students should learn WITH not just
learning FROM digital media. This means that
learning activities must be authentic.
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8. Engaging Students with Course Content
• Here are some specific roles that resources play in
learning:
– Generic information (e.g., case story, contextual
information for inquiry, technical data);
– Content knowledge information (e.g., notes,
presentations, a journal article);
– Cognitive tools (e.g., a model of a concept, a
simulation); and
– Analytical tools (e.g., a special purpose calculator)
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9. Engaging Students with Course Content
• There are many functions in Moodle that can be
employed as part of a strategy to engage students
with course content:
– Documents
– Images
– Audio files
– Video files
– Simulations
– Interactive learning objects
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10. Engaging Students With One Another
• When students engage with one another in learning
activities they are exposed to multiple perspectives.
• This expands and enriches the learning experience.
• Engaging with other students also helps students to
learn additional skills such as how to work in a group,
how to manage task allocations and how to
negotiate outcomes and how to
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11. Engaging Students With One Another
• There are many functions in Moodle that can be
employed as part of a strategy to engage students
with one another:
– Blogs
– Wikis
– Forums
– Chat
– Workshops
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12. Engaging Students with Assessment
Activities
• From a teaching perspective assessment is always
important because it is assessment that provides a
measure of whether or not students have achieved
the intended learning outcomes for any particular
course. From a student perspective assessment is
important because any particular assessment
determines whether or not the student is successful
in the course.
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13. Engaging Students with Assessment
Activities
• However, assessment can also function in other
ways. For example, formative assessment carried out
during a course can be used to provide students with
an indication of their progress in the course.
Formative assessment also provides teachers with
an opportunity to provide constructive feedback.
Conceptually it is interesting to think in terms of
formative "feed-forward". That is, the purpose of
providing students with a perspective on their
learning is to help them improve in the future.
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14. Engaging Students with Assessment
Activities
• There are many functions in Moodle that can be
employed as part of a strategy to engage students
with assessment activities:
– Quizzes
– Uploads
– Advanced Uploads
– Forums
– Wikis
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15. Concluding Remarks
• When teaching and learning come first Moodle is a
powerful tool that can be employed to engage
students with course content, with one another and
with assessment activities.
• When this happens Moodle can be used to realize
teaching opportunities / overcome challenges in
teaching and learning.
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