Do Oodles With Moodle

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Do Oodles With Moodle

• Vicki DeWitt Director
• Deb Greaney Lead Trainer
• Area 5 Learning Technology Center

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Welcome!

• Presenters
• Workshop Goals
• Overview of Moodle features
• Opportunity to moodle
• Ground Rules
• Cell phones on vibrate
• Take care of yourself
• Questions, please!

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Moodle An Open Source Solution
MOODLE is an acronym for. Modular
Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment
It is also a verb that describes the process
of lazily meandering through something,
doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an
enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight
and creativity ..
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What is Moodle?

• A software package designed to help educators
  create quality online courses.
• A course management system (CMS)
• Learning Management Systems (LMS)
• Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
• Supports social constructionist pedagogy
• Open Source software
• FREE to download it, use it, modify it and
  distribute it ( GNU General Public License).

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.

• Supports a range of platforms Unix, Linux,
  Windows, Mac OS X, Netware and any other system
  that supports PHP, including most webhost
  providers.
• Data is stored in a single database
• MySQL and PostgreSQL
• Can also be used with Oracle, Access, Interbase,
  ODBC and others.
• Available in 40 languages

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Who created Moodle?

• Martin Dougiamas created Moodle!
• Martin is Australian, living in Perth.
• Moodle started out as a hobby for Martin,
• and grew into the subject of his PhD thesis"The
  use of Open Source software to support a social
  constructionist epistemology of teaching and
  learning within Internet-based communities of
  reflective inquiry."
• Moodle is now being used in many schools,
  universities and other educational communities.

Martin Dougiamas
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ConstructivismMartin Dougiamas

• This point of view maintains that people actively
  construct new knowledge as they interact with
  their environment.
• Everything you read, see, hear, feel, and touch
  is tested against your prior knowledge and if it
  is viable within your mental world, may form new
  knowledge you carry with you.
• Knowledge is strengthened if you can use it
  successfully in your wider environment.

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Overall Design Features

• Moodle is designed in a modular way, and allows a
  great deal of flexibility to add (and remove)
  functionality at many levels.
• Moodle upgrades very easily from one version to
  the next - it has an internal system to upgrade
  its own databases and repair itself over time.

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Overall Design Features

• Moodle requires only one database (and can share
  it with other applications if necessary).
• Moodle includes comprehensive database
  abstraction that supports many major brands of
  database.
• Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are
  all checked, data validated, cookies encrypted,
  etc.

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Managing a Moodle Site

• A site is managed by an admin user, defined
  during setup
• Plug-in "themes" allow the admin to customize the
  site colors, fonts, layout, etc to suit local
  needs
• Plug-in activity modules can be added to existing
  Moodle installations
• Plug-in language packs allow full localization to
  any language. These can be edited using a
  built-in web-based editor. Currently there are
  about 40 language packs.
• The code is clearly-written PHP under a GPL
  license - easy to modify to suit your needs

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Features of Interest to Educators

• Moodle promotes a social constructionist pedagogy
  
• includes collaboration, activity-based learning,
  critical reflection, etc
• Moodle is suitable for 100 online classes as
  well as supplementing face-to-face learning
• Moodle has a simple, lightweight, efficient,
  compatible, low-tech browser interface
• All grades for Forums, Journals, Quizzes and
  assignments can be viewed on one page (and
  downloaded as a spreadsheet file)
• Custom scales - teachers can define their own
  scales to be used for grading forums, assignments
  and journals

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Managing Moodle Courses

• A full teacher has full control over all settings
  for a course, including restricting other
  teachers
• Choice of course formats such as by week, by
  topic or a discussion-focused social format
• Flexible array of course activities - Forums,
  Journals, Quizzes, Resources, Choices, Surveys,
  Assignments, Chats, Workshops

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Managing Moodle Courses

• Full user logging and tracking - activity reports
  for each student are available with graphs and
  details about each module (last access, number of
  times read) as well as a detailed "story" of each
  students involvement including postings, journal
  entries, etc on one page.
• Mail integration - copies of forum posts, teacher
  feedback, etc can be mailed in HTML or plain
  text.

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Moodle Interface

• Blocks
• Different users will have different options

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Moodle Basics

• Log in to the site
• Click on Login above the language selection box
• If you have already been added as a user, just
  enter the user name and password

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Moodle Basics

• If you do not already have an account, you can
  create one

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Moodle Basics

• Once you have logged in, your user name will
  appear in the upper right hand corner
• Click on your user name to edit your user profile

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Looking at a Course

• Must have administrative right to add courses
• Courses have three formats
• Weekly Section for each week of the course
• Topics Section for any number of topics
• Social Single forum and discussion area
• Courses are built by adding resources and
  activities

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Lets Moodle!

• http//data.lth5.k12.il.us
• Log in in using User Name and Password on handout
• Click on your assigned course.
• What format is it? Weekly, Topic, or Social

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Review Course Settings

• Click on settings in the Administration block and
  review your course settings
• Category
• Full name
• Short name
• Summary
• Format
• Course start date
• Enrollment period
• Group mode
• Availability
• Enrollment key

• Guest Access
• Hidden sections
• News Items to show
• Show grades
• Show activity report
• Maximum upload size
• Your name for teacher/teachers
• Your name for student/students

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Editing Mode

• Click Turn editing on in the Administration block
• The editing icons will appear

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Block Icons

• You will use these icons throughout Moodle to
  customize the interface to meet your needs

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Adding Resources Activities

• Activities are interactive tools you can apply to
  your course

• Resources are static content you can add to your
  course

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Adding Content-Resources

• Compose a text page
• Tip Remember to turn on editing to add resources
  or activities

• Adding a web page
• Create sophisticated documents that can be
  displayed in any web browser

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Adding Content-Resources

• Create link to file or web site
• In editing mode select Add link to File or Web
  Site
• Choose or upload files
• Search for web pages

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Adding Content-Resources

• Adding a directory
• Used when students need access to many files
• In editing mode click Display a Directory

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Adding Content

• Creative Content
• Upload lecture notes (outline) before lecture
• External web sites
• Online newspapers and magazines
• www.merlot.org
• Community dedicated to sharing and evaluating
  educational resources, simulations, and other
  materials
• www.wikipedia.org
• Online encyclopedia developed by thousands of
  volunteers
• www.eoe.org
• Online repository of Java learning objects
  submitted by educators from around the world
• Reducing file sizes
• Save PowerPoint as RTF
• Scan articles as text, not images
• Reduce image size and use compression

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Activities
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Activities
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Assignments

• Assignments allow teachers to grade
  electronically submitted material or 'offline'
  submissions such as paper-based assignments or
  class presentations
• An Upload File assignment
• An Online Text assignment
• An Offline assignment

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Journals

• Encourage reflection about a topic
• To give feedback and grade entries
• Click the journal assignment in the content block
• Click View X journal entries
• Each entry will have a feed back area where you
  can type feedback

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Journals

• Effective journal practices
• Be specific
• Ask higher level questions Why, How, Which
• If graded, be specific about what grades are
  based on

• Creative journal practices
• One minute responses
• What was the muddiest part of the lesson?
• What was the most important part?
• How useful/interesting was the lesson?
• Reflection on content making personal connections
• Brainstorming, drafting, and pre-writing

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Chats

• The Chat module allows participants to have a
  real-time synchronous discussion via the web.
  This is a useful way to get a different
  understanding of each other and the topic being
  discussed.
• Chat is always open to students

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Effective/Creative Chat Practices

• Set ground rules
• Not everybody talking at the same time
• Keep on track
• Good moderation
• Online office hours
• Group chats

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Choices

• Here a teacher asks a question and specifies a
  choice of multiple responses. This  can be useful
  as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a
  topic, to allow the class to vote on a direction
  for the course, or to gather research consent.
• A Choice with anonymous results
• A Choice with non-anonymous results
• A Choice that allows you to update anytime
• A Choice with a limited number of responses
  allowed

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Forums

• It is in forums that most discussion takes place.
  Forums can be structured in different ways, and
  can include peer rating of each posting. The
  postings can be viewed in a variety for formats,
  and can include attachments.

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Forum Options

• 3 levels of permissions
• Discussions and replies are allowed
• No discussions, but replies are allowed.
  Students cant start new discussions
• No discussions, no replies. Students can read,
  but cannot post anything

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Managing Forums

• Make expectations clear
• How often will you be checking posts?
• How often are students to post?
• Behavior issues
• Rude or unruly comments can shut down a
  discussion
• Rating scales can sometime help if tied to grade
• Archiving forums
• Create a forum called Archive Forum and block
  posts/replies
• Enter discussion you wish to archive and move to
  Archive Forum

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Creative Forum Uses

• Interviews
• Debates
• FAQ
• Reading study groups
• Social forum

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Quizes

• Creating a quiz
• Choose type of question

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Quiz

• Question editing page appears for the type of
  question chosen
• Multiple Choice
• True/False
• Short Answer
• Numerical
• Matching
• Description
• Random Question
• Random Short-Answer Matching
• Embedded Answers (Cloze)

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Quiz

• Importing questions
• Moodle supports a variety of formats
• GIFT
• Aiken
• Missing-word
• AON
• Blackboard/WebCT
• Course Test Manager

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Quiz

• Adding questions
• Once questions are created, you must add them to
  the quiz
• Check the box in front of the question and click
  Add to quiz

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Quiz

• Effective quiz strategies
• Tie each question to a course benchmark/goal
• Ask multiple questions about each important idea
• Distracters in multiple choice questions need to
  represent common misconceptions
• Write questions that require students to think at
  varying levels
• Test your questions

• Creative quiz uses
• Chapter checks
• Test practice
• Data gathering
• Cheating and security
• If you display feedback and correct answers
  students can print and share
• Using the textbook
• Working with friends
• Have someone else take the test
• On the Internet, no one knows youre a dog.

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Hot Potatoes Quiz

• The Hotpot module allows teachers to upload Hot
  Potatoes quizzes they have created. Module must
  be enabled via AdministrationgtgtConfigurationgtgtModu
  les
• Makes available a number of reports which show
  how individual questions are answered and
  statistical trends
• http//hotpot.uvic.ca/

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Glossaries

• Each Moodle course has its own set of glossaries
• Main glossary editable only by teacher
• Secondary glossaries can allow student entries
  and comments

• Creative glossary practices
• Collaborative glossary
• Credit for word use

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Lessons

• The Moodle lesson tool is a lot like the Choose
  Your Own Adventure books.
• Each page in the lesson can have a question at
  the bottom of the page.
• The resulting page depends on the answer the
  student gives.
• You can create branching paths through the
  material based on the selections students make at
  each page.
• Two types of pages
• Branching table page
• Present the user with the option to select a
  branch
• Question page
• Requires an answer and takes the student to
  another page
• Can be graded

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Lessons

• Creating lessons
• Set up basic shell

• Create first question page

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Lessons

• Complete lesson construction page

• Creative lesson practices
• Flash cards
• Simulations and case studies

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Workshops

• Most complex tool
• Allows student work to be submitted and offered
  for review within a structured framework
• Provides a process for both peer and teacher
  review
• Easy to use interfaces for uploading assignments,
  performing self-assessments, and peer reviews of
  other students work
• Key to workshop is the scoring guide

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Workshop

• Adding a workshop
• Title description
• Maximum grade
• Grading strategy
• No grading
• Accumulative grading
• Error banded grading
• Criterion grading
• Rubrics
• Pick number of dimensions
• Allow resubmissions
• Number of assessments of teacher examples
• Number of peer reviews
• Self assessment
• Peer agreement
• Maximum upload size
• Deadline for submission

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Workshops

• Creating scoring guides
• Click on workshop created on main course page.
  You will be taken to the Editing Assessment
  Elements page
• Enter performance dimension, scale, weight

Accumulative grading scale
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Workshops
Error banding grading scale
Criterion scoring guide
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Workshops
Rubric scoring guide
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Workshops

• Managing the Assessment page
• Six tabs displaying the steps of the workshop
  setup and delivery process
• Set Up Assignment
• links to upload example work for students to
  review
• Allow Student Submissions
• When activated students can see teachers
  examples, upload their own submissions, and
  complete self assessments
• Allow Student Submissions and Assessments
• Adds scoring other students work
• Allow Student Assessments
• When activated students can only score teacher
  examples and perform self assessment and peer
  reviews
• Calculation of Final Grades
• Display Final Grades

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Workshops

• Effective workshop practices
• Important decisions
• Number of instructor examples
• How many peer reviews
• How long to submit
• How will you control quality of peer assessments
• Focus on peer assessment or instructor assessment

• Creative workshop practices
• Intermediate steps for projects or writing
  examples as part of the process
• Presentations and performances

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Wikis

• A collection of collaboratively authored web
  documents
• Allows entire class to edit a document, create a
  product, or each student can have their own wiki
  and work on it with classmates

• After you complete the basic shell, the editing
  screen for the first page will appear
• Additional pages can be linked using CamelCase

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Wikis

• 3 types of wikis which interact with the group
  settings of the wiki

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Grades and Scales

• Grade area is simple tool for tracking scores in
  the course
• Gradebook function is an automated tool for
  tracking scores in Moodle which allows you to
  download scores
• Scales give the student non-numeric feedback
  word or phrase

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Managing Your Class

• Adding students and teachers
• All users must be added to Moodle by an
  administrator
• Teachers can then select from the available
  students and add them to a course
• Click Students in Administration Block

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Moodle Links
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Thank You!

• Questions/Comments
• Moodel Links
• http//docs.moodle.org/en/Using_Moodle_book
• www.moodle.org
• www.moodle.com
• Presenters emails
• vdewitt_at_lth5.k12.il.us
• dgreaney_at_lth5.k12.il.us