Effective Teaching Strategies with Moodle Crystal Feil & Doe Kim CTER (Curriculum, Technology & Education Reform

1. Effective Teaching Strategies with MoodleCrystal Feil & Doe KimCTER (Curriculum, Technology & Education Reform) Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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

10. Building User-friendly Course Structure Use indentation and label to organize resources.

11. Building User-friendly Course Structure Collapse other weekly content to show only current week

12. 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

14. 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.

15. Building User-friendly Course Structure Different “views” – Teacher & Student Always double check by switching to student’s 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.

16. 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.

17. Save your instruction time Choices: Small group choice; Weekly presentation schedule; Final presentation schedule.

18. Forum: for General Q&A About coursemethods and procedures Instead of email Instead of telephone calls Resist private conversations about these matters Instructor monitored, but students can respond, as well.

19. 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.

20. 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/reception.

21. Grades and Feedback • Setting customized scales

22. Grades and Feedback • Choosing customized scale

23. Grades and Feedback • Assignment Activity • Upload a file / Enter text / Offline activity

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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 • It’s less work if you choose the most common case for the course-level setting.

28. Course-level Group Setting • Click on Settings in the Administration block

29. Course-level Group Setting • Choose the type of group that will be the most common in your course

30. Activity-level Group Setting • Click on person icon next to activity to change the setting for that activity only.

31. Creating Groups and Assigning Students • Click on Groups in Administration block

32. Creating Groups and Assigning Students • The administration screen which appears will let you create groups and assign students to them.

33. Creating Groups

34. Adding Students to Groups

35. 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.

36. Non-editing Instructor Role • To maintain consistency, roles can be assigned

37. 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? Conclusion and Questions