Effective Teaching Strategies with Moodle Crystal Feil

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Effective Teaching Strategies with MoodleCrystal
Feil Doe KimCTER (Curriculum, Technology
Education Reform)

• Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

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Introduction

• CTER students profile
• Teachers, technology coordinators, and school
  administrators.
• 187 graduates between 1999-2007, 46 current
  students
• Over 75 work in K-12
• 85 live in Illinois
• CTER courses profile
• Web based classes
• Synchronous and asynchronous communication
• 32 credits (8 units) required to complete the
  Master program
• Project-based courses

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Introduction

• What do CTER staff do?
• Work with instructors to construct courses in
  Moodle (content, structure, interface, etc.)
• Provide tech support to CTER students.
• TA CTER courses
• Use Moodle data to analyze online-learning
  behaviors.
• Test and experiment new learning technologies.

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What is Moodle?

• Free open source course management system
  designed using sound pedagogical principles, to
  help educators create effective online learning
  communities.
• Already used widely in the College of Education.

Moodle (2008). Accessed on February
2nd, 2008 from http//moodle.org
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Moodle by the Numbers!
Large and diverse user community!
16,575,815 Users 1,821,314 Teachers 1,681,546
Courses 37,933 Registered Sites 196 Countries 70
Languages
Moodle (2008). Accessed on February
2nd, 2008 from http//moodle.org
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Why Use Moodle?

• Expanding the Audience
• Encourage larger contributing and receiving
  audiences
• Enhance student to student communication, in
  addition to the typical instructor to student
  communication
• Maintain a record of who said what and when
• Give time for a considered response (based on
  research, reflection and consultation), rather
  than off the top reactions in an on-site
  classroom discussion.
• Allow for a more audience bias-free response
• Has a research base of instructional
  effectiveness
• Empowers second language speakers to contribute
• Empowers disabled, or communication challenged
  students.

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Why use Moodle? (cont.)

• Easy management of the course materials
• Organize readings, discussions, and assignments
  by week, topics, or any structure you want
• Easy editing and modification of existing
  materials
• Easy control of distribution of the materials.
• Flexibility with time
• Online office hour
• Q A at any time
• Assignment submission
• Asynchronous discussion
• Efficiency
• No need to look through a huge stack of
  materials
• Grade book and auto calculation of grades.
• Resources for administrative/housekeeping work.

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Outline

• Several issues for the effective usage of Moodle
• Building user-friendly and easy to navigate
  course structure
• Resources to reduce administrative work to save
  instructional time
• Strategies to encourage communication in forums
• Simple ways to manage grades and provide
  feedback
• Using group function to manage large scale
  classes.
• The presentation will be followed by a
  demonstration in Moodle.

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Building User-friendly Course Structure

• Important considerations
• Linear structure
• by date lecture-based course vs.
• Students can see the date
• Starting date can be determined in the settings
• by topics topic-based seminar (do not show the
  date)
• For course with topics that cover more than one
  week

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Building User-friendly Course Structure

• Use indentation and label to organize resources.

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Building User-friendly Course Structure

• Collapse other weekly content to show only
  current week

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Building User-friendly Course Structure

• Important Resources block function
• What to include? (announcement, calendar, news,
  etc.)
• Interface structure right or left.
• Easy restructure drag drop

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Building User-friendly Course Structure

• Color
• Use color to emphasize important date or event.
• Text color background color
• Make sure the color and font of all the links are
  consistent.

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Building User-friendly Course Structure

• Different views Teacher Student
• Always double check by switching to students
  view
• Hidden items for instructors only what to hide
  and what not to hide?
• Accessibility for assignment feedback
• Provide a place for students to ask questions
  about the course Moodle
• A forum at the top of the course topics list.
• Monitored frequently, especially at the beginning
  of the course.

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Save your instruction time

• For instructor and TA only
• A hidden forum for discussion about grading,
  students difficulties, etc.
• A WIKI for weekly meeting topics, content, and
  record.
• A forum for announcements and for students to ask
  administrative question.
• Forced subscription (automatic email)
• Limit the number of forums for general questions.
• Keep the forum on the top.

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Save your instruction time

• Choices
• Small group choice
• Weekly presentation schedule
• Final presentation schedule.

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Forum for General QA

• About course methods and procedures
• Instead of email
• Instead of telephone calls
• Resist private conversations about these matters
• Instructor monitored, but students can respond,
  as well.

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Forum For Course Content

• Reactions to videos, lectures and readings
• Assigned essays and other assignments
• Peer review
• Share images or audios
• Small group discussion or critiques
• Randomly assign students to small group
• Assign students by their interests or research
  topics
• Assign a different discussion topic to each small
  group
• Control accessibility of each small group
  hidden or open to the whole class.

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Strategies to Encourage Student Discussion

• Make it convenient and necessary to get online
  and discuss. (e.g. making the forum available
  early)
• Make it a course requirement to discuss
  (participation point) . Check on personal
  accountability.
• Ensure that students experience the satisfaction
  of being heard, read and understood.
• Make sure that students experience the delights
  of scholarship and information dispensation/recept
  ion.

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Grades and Feedback

• Setting customized scales

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Grades and Feedback

• Choosing customized scale

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Grades and Feedback

• Assignment Activity
• Upload a file / Enter text / Offline activity

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Moodle Groups

• Good for large classes
• Can share some resources among entire class,
  while others are shared only among group
• Avoids the need to create (and update) separate
  Moodle courses for multiple sections

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Three Possible Group Settings

• No groups
• Everything shared among all enrollees
• Visible groups
• Students can see the activities of those in other
  groups, but can only respond to their own group
• Separate groups
• Students can only see and respond to those in
  their own groups

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Group Settings

• Group settings can be applied at the course level
  or at the individual activity level (e.g.,
  discussion forum)
• Course-level setting makes all activities group
  activities
• Single course with multiple sections
• Activity-level setting can override course-level
  setting for a specific activity
• Single section with multiple small groups

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Group Settings

• Decide ahead of time whether most course items
  will be shared across the whole class, or whether
  most items will be limited to small groups
• Its less work if you choose the most common case
  for the course-level setting.

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Course-level Group Setting

• Click on Settings in the Administration block

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Course-level Group Setting

• Choose the type of group that will be the most
  common in your course

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Activity-level Group Setting

• Click on person icon next to activity to change
  the setting for that activity only.

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Creating Groups and Assigning Students

• Click on Groups in Administration block

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Creating Groups and Assigning Students

• The administration screen which appears will let
  you create groups and assign students to them.

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Creating Groups
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Adding Students to Groups
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Demonstration

• Setting up sections
• Setting up multi-level/shuffled sub groups
• Important issues for TAs
• Communication
• Accessible groups (TAs belonging to a group has
  default group view but can view other groups)
• Assignment activity etc.

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Non-editing Instructor Role

• To maintain consistency, roles can be assigned

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Conclusion and Questions

• Moodle is more than a place to put PDF files and
  other resources for readings.
• What other functions do you want to know about in
  Moodle?
• What new functions do you hope to be included in
  Moodle?