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Using Moodle activities to present difficult concepts and new vocabulary to students
- 1. 1 Using the activities in Moodle to present difficult concepts and new vocabulary to students in HE Catherine Wasiuk and Nav Hundal E-Learning Support Officers Learning and Research Technologies Manchester Metropolitan University
- 2. LRT Student & Learning Systems Learning Innovation Senior Lecturers Classroom Technology Development Advisor E-Learning Support Officers Applications Architect Part of Learning & Research Technologies • Report to Assistant Head (Learning Innovation) • Physically located in Faculties but not managed by Faculties To support academic staff in the effective integration of learning technology to support learning, teaching & assessment • Focus on pedagogy, not technology • Help staff embed technology in the curriculum to enhance student experience • Roles cover all learning technologies, not just Moodle E-Learning Support Officers DO NOT provide • General IT Help, student support, admin/QLS support, technical support, helpline • Support for these is located in other areas of MMU ELSOs will help direct staff appropriately to resolve problems E-Learning Support Officer Role
- 3. Thursday, August 6, 2015 3 By the end of this presentation, we hope that you… • Have an understanding of how well designed activities in Moodle can support students in acquiring new vocabulary and understanding new concepts • See some real examples of how forums, quizzes and glossaries are used at MMU • Have an understanding of how a combination of all these activities can enhance the student experience Session Overview
- 4. Thursday, August 6, 2015 4 Moving practice forward What students liked best about their units… • Opportunities to learn online What students would like to see in their units… • More opportunities to learn online!
- 5. 5 Demo: Research Methods Thursday, August 6, 2015
- 6. Thursday, August 6, 2015 6 Demo: Foundations of Knowledge and Skills for Nursing
- 7. 7 Moodle as a solution Thursday, August 6, 2015 Activity based learning Forum Quiz Glossary
- 8. 8 Conclusion Thursday, August 6, 2015 Moodle Activities: Glossary, Quiz, Forum Curriculum Design
Editor's Notes
- Open Research Methods and log in as student Make sure the Poll works Good morning. My name is Catherine Wasiuk and this is my colleague Nav Hundal. We are E-learning Support Officers at Manchester Metropolitan University. I support Hollings Faculty, which is the department of Clothing, Design and Technology and Food and Tourism Management and Nav supports Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences and Law.
- To begin the session I thought it might be useful to give you a brief background to our ELSO role. In 2011, MMU created 8 new roles, E-learning Support Officers, 1 to support each faculty as part of the second phase of MMU’s Learning Technologies Review. Although the role of the ELSOs initially was to get staff up and running on Moodle and to support the transition to Moodle, we were appointed to act as a local resource to work with academic staff to support the effective implementation of technology within the curriculum. Therefore, our role is designed to focus on the pedagogic, rather than the technical or administrative elements, of the implementation of Moodle and other technologies. In our Moodle instance, an area is created for each unit and programme occurrence in the student record system. At my faculty, it is a requirement that all staff have a Moodle presence and as a minimum requirement staff must make lecture notes available and provide a link to the unit handbook. This may not sound revolutionary, however, WebCT was optional and at Hollings, we have almost 100% engagement with Moodle across that faculty. So we’ve come a long way in getting staff to engage with technology and an institutional VLE. However, our role is to develop this further to support academic staff in the effective integration of learning technology to support learning, teaching & assessment. In this presentation, we will explore some ideas of how to use a range of Moodle’s activities to present difficult concepts and new vocabulary to students in HE. Part of becoming a new student in HE requires learning new concepts and vocabulary quickly. Often experts in a field can talk and write in acronyms, abbreviations and shorthand and sometimes forget that some concepts are completely alien to students new to a subject or topic. In the past, it was likely that new vocabulary and concepts were introduced via lectures, seminars or just plain Word documents. However, within Moodle, there is a great opportunity to introduce new vocabulary and concepts using its inbuilt activities so that students can learn these new skills in a variety of ways. The activities that we will be specifically focussing on in this session are glossaries, quizzes, and forums.
- By the end of this presentation, we hope that you… have an understanding of how well designed activities in Moodle can support students in acquiring new vocabulary and understanding new concepts in HE see some real examples of how forums, quizzes and glossaries are used at MMU have an understanding of how a combination of all these activities can enhance the student experience
- So during the first year of Moodle, staff were mainly using Moodle to deliver knowledge despite the available activities in Moodle and a dedicated faculty ELSO. As stated previously, this was not necessarily a bad thing to begin with as staff were getting used to the system and getting used to new ways of working. Fitting in time to learn new things and attend staff development sessions is an issue I’m sure we’ve all come across. So basically, what we are trying to do is move from having a simple online presence (as a repository for lecture notes) to actually increasing the use of Moodle activities to make students want to use Moodle for their learning and will support staff teaching. So for staff it’s the lack of time to develop their academic practice coupled with the ‘unknown unknowns’ – that is, “what are these activities and what do these activities actually do?” As a result, I put together a blog post on which this presentation is based: How to use Moodle resources and activities to present difficult concepts and new vocabulary http://elearningathollings.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/how-to-use-moodle-resources-and-activities-to-present-difficult-concepts-and-new-vocabulary/. The purpose of this blog post was to encourage staff to take a look at some of the activities available to them in Moodle and focus on integrating this technology to enhance the student learning process and to enhance learning, teaching and assessment. The reason why the blog post focuses on difficult concepts and new vocabulary is that from the perspective of a student who is new to university, there is a lot of information to take in when they first start your course. New vocabulary may be introduced once at the start of term and new concepts introduced on a weekly basis. So what happens if a student wants to revisit this information later in the term? Where can they go as confident, independent learners to find this knowledge, test this knowledge and use this knowledge? Moodle is a safe online environment for learning, which can address these issues. As standard, students expect that their lecture notes should be available in Moodle. This is evident in our Internal Student Survey free comment sections (which I will refer to from now on as the ISS) . However, there is also evidence from our ISS that students expect more than just the availability of lecture notes on Moodle and value opportunities for more online learning. On your handout you will find some selected quotes made by students in the ISS about what they liked most about their units in Moodle along with some suggestions about what they would most like to be improved in their Moodle areas. As you can see, students valued the fact that they were able to test their knowledge on a topic via an online quiz. They also found that a discussion forum was very useful in allowing them to improve their work by communicating with teachers and their peers. Interestingly, the things that students would most like to see in their Moodle areas are more opportunities to learn online. For example students would like to see more forums to be able to discuss their work and assignments, more quizzes to help with their understanding of topic areas and prepare for assessment and glossary of terms to aid understanding of complicated areas.
- So as we can see there is a desire from students to be using Moodle for more than just a document repository for lecture notes. Moodle’s in-built activities can help to address the student voice for more opportunity for discussion, availability of key terms and testing of knowledge. The three activities in Moodle that can be used to address these demands from students are the glossary, quiz and forum activities. So now, I am going to show you some real examples of how forums, quizzes and glossaries are used at MMU. I will do a live demo of an area that incorporates all three activities and then show you an example of another area that uses weekly glossaries and quizzes. So we turn to our first example, a Research Methods Masters level unit http://moodle.mmu.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2826. I’m going to log in to this unit as a student. (Show the glossary). As you can see, this unit has a glossary with 137 entries relating to Research Method terminology. The tutor recognises that there are a lot of technical terms so she states that the aim of the glossary is to give a brief definition to each term that a student might encounter within the unit. As you can see by looking at this unit, the research terms from the glossary are highlighted in grey. The reason they are highlighted in grey is because the glossary uses auto-linking. This means that each time the word in the glossary appears in the Moodle area, a student can click on the word and a pop up window will appear with a link to the words. Students on this course have found that the glossary is a very useful source of information and that their learning “was enhanced rather than disrupted.” You can find the full students quotes on the second side of the handout. To support student’s learning in this course, the tutor has also set up a number of quizzes in the area. The purpose of the quizzes is to test students’ subject knowledge. For example, if we take a look at Quick quiz, you will see the type of questions that students can take to test their knowledge. The quiz is set up so that the quiz is open ended, there is no time limit, and that students can take the quiz as many times as they want (show the preview). Students on this course found that the quizzes have been a good way to test their understanding of a subject. The last activity used on this course are the forums (show forums). As you can see, the tutor has set up the forums for each topic area, where students can post their ideas and interact with their peers and tutors. Students have found the discussion forums very useful as it allows ideas to be shared between tutors and peers. As you can see, the learning process has been designed so that students receive new knowledge, test their knowledge and then share and build on their knowledge with their peers. This quote sums up how a combination of all three activities can enhance the student experience: “I found the use of all of these activities very helpful in supporting my understanding of a new topics and concepts. In particular, I have found using all 3 of these activities in conjunction with each other very supportive.”
- The next area to take a look at is Foundations of Knowledge and Skills for Nursing. This area uses a glossary for each topic area rather than one big glossary and a corresponding quiz for each topic (have screenshots). All the quizzes are 10 minutes long and students can retake as many times as they like. You can see that students have taken the opportunity to self-test by the amount of times that the quizzes have been attempted. There are only 89 students on the course and some of the quizzes have been taken over 200 times. Students have commented in the ISS that the quizzes have been incredibly helpful for assessing levels of understanding following each topic and as a result they have felt that they have learned a lot from the unit.
- As we can see from these examples, these activities shouldn’t just be added in adhoc to unit areas, but rather should be designed into the learning process. I know this is not a new concept as Moodle was built on this pedagogy. This is taken from moodle.org: “The main power of this activity-based model comes in combining the activities into sequences and groups, which can help you guide participants through learning paths. Thus, each activity can build on the outcomes of previous ones” (http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Pedagogy). However, teaching online is still a relatively new concept for staff and translating the learning process to online activities is a learning curve. However, incorporating these activities into Moodle areas can develop and enhance the student learning process, as well as develop staff skills. It’s important that staff structure the activities around education and not just have them there for the sake of it. So for example, a unit glossary containing new unit vocabulary can be an in-built dictionary of terms for students to check and understand new terminology. As the terminology is embedded within the unit, the use of auto-linking means they are able to see the new vocabulary in context of a sentence or paragraph which will help students better understand context and meaning. So this means that they won’t have to consult a Word doc or a dictionary or Wikipedia to get a meaning of a word. Building on the introduction of new words and concepts via the glossary, quizzes can be used for students to test their new knowledge that they have acquired. A carefully designed question bank means that students can continually test themselves on their new knowledge. For example, questions can be designed to weed out common misconceptions so students can use the quiz as many times as they want to self-test themselves. This can also highlight what students understand on an individual or class basis and can underpin further work on a concept or topic area. Further to acquiring and testing new knowledge, the forums can be used to construct and use that knowledge. For example students can discuss the application of a new topic or concept within their own practice. So not only are they building on their knowledge, they are also sharing their knowledge with their peers. So the way that these activities can be arranged can help students develop greater knowledge and understanding of a new topic. Students are engaged in active learning, and learning through doing, rather than passively receiving information online. Using the activities in Moodle provides a better learning experience for students and gives students a chance to practice their new skills. And as we saw from the ISS quotes earlier, students are eager for more information and opportunities to learn. Staff may initially see using these activities as a steep learning curve, and perhaps as a whole load of extra effort with little pay off. However, this is not the case. Incorporating these activities into a unit area can help staff track and monitor the progression of their students, and can easily see what students do and don’t understand. These activities are also re-usable learning activities that can be used year to year.
- So what have we learned? I hope by now that you… have an understanding of how well designed activities in Moodle can support students in acquiring new vocabulary and understanding new concepts have seen some real examples of how forums, quizzes and glossaries are used at MMU have seen how a combination of all these activities can enhance the student experience As E-learning Support Officers, we will be looking to increase the awareness of these three activities and suggest ways that they can be used within a unit area. The activities don’t have to be used all together, but they should fit around the curriculum, not the other way around. We will also be encouraging staff to think about how they design their learning online and how this can have a positive effect on the student experience, as seen in the comments from students in the ISS free comment sections. We already have the guides on how to create these activities available to staff in our Staff Resource Area. I think the best way to move this forward is to share ideas and good practice amongst colleagues and peers. I thought a nice way to end the session would be to share some ideas about how these activities could be used to introduce new vocabulary and new concepts to students new to HE. I have set up a text wall that you can post to with some of your ideas and then I will make it available to everyone after the conference.
- Press F5 or enter presentation mode to view the poll In an emergency during your presentation, if the poll isn't showing, navigate to this link in your web browser: http://www.polleverywhere.com/free_text_polls/MjA5Mzc1Mjc0Mg If you like, you can use this slide as a template for your own voting slides. You might use a slide like this if you feel your audience would benefit from the picture showing a text message on a phone.