Welcome! Moodle: Your Course Management System in the Adult Education Classroom

1. Welcome! Moodle: Your Course Management System in the Adult Education Classroom Presenter: Penny S. Pearson, Project Specialist OTAN

2. Moodle* Sloodle#, Huh? • Open Source • Free~ • Customizable • Reasonable learning curve • Many modules available • Robust reporting features * Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment # http://www.sloodle.org

3. Distance Learning and You • How many of you have active Distance Learning programs now? • What form are they in? • If you do not have a Distance Learning program, why do you want one? • What are you hoping to learn here? (How can we help?)

4. What OTAN Offers • Provide a course to an Adult Education Teacher after they take initial training (F2F or web-based) • OTAN hosts the Moodle site (no cost to agencies) • OTAN supports teachers • OTAN provides additional training on specific modules (Journals, Assignments) • How can you get this for your site?

5. Quick Tour of Moodle • General layout • Some examples from current Moodle courses • Assignments • Use of multimedia & the web • Quizzes • Reporting

7. Assignments - 1 When a student enters a course, they generally see resources, activities, assignments and quizzes laid out in “blocks” either by topic, or by week.

8. 2.

9. 3.

10. 4.

11. 5. Teachers can opt to have email notifications sent to them once an assignment is completed.

12. Quizzes

13. Quiz 2

14. Quiz 3

15. Quiz 4

16. Quiz 5

17. Quiz 6 and Reporting

18. Quiz 7 and Reporting

19. Reporting results

20. Reporting

21. Student Collaboration • Moodle allows for many ways for students to communicate with each other and their teacher: • Forums (news and specific) • Internal mail • Chat module • Blogs • Synchronous “live meetings”

22. Forums

23. Internal Mail

24. Chat

25. Blogs

26. WizIQ (synchronous live meetings)

27. Moodle and You (and your teachers) • Moodle will not transform your DL program overnight. • Contrary to popular belief online courses are NOT ‘easier’ • For the teacher to prepare • For the student to participate • Research shows that online courses take significantly MORE time than a traditional face-to-face class* * Tomei, L. (2004, Jan) The Impact of Online Teaching on Faculty Load: Computing the Ideal Class Size for Online Courses. Retrieved September 22, 2008, from International Journal of Instructional Technology & Distance Learning web site: http://www.itdl.org/journal/Jan_04/article04.htm

28. Moodle and You (cont.) • Support for teachers • Create learning circles, or team up like-minded teachers to create a course together • Be a constant cheerleader and praise small steps • Find examples of other successful courses and see if the teachers or administrators have any suggestions One Example

29. Comments, Questions, Suggestions? • Do you have “techie” teachers that might be interested? • Use the TISA survey for distance teaching http://www.adultedonline.org/ • Teachers get a better idea of what it takes to be a good online teacher