SP 08: March II
Moodle Mania Quick Bytes
A Faculty Based Communication
March 28, 2008
April 9th: Open Moodle Forum: Talk to the “super-users” about their experience at this system-wide video-conference brown bag (bring your own) lunch from 12-1PM. Watch your e-mail for full details.
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What we love about Moodle
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One of the useful features of Moodle is the Recent Activity Block. This tracks everything (other than viewing) that has occurred on the class site since the last time you were logged in. “I find this to be the quickest way to determine what I might need to respond to when I login in. And on those rare occasions when the Recent Activity area is blank I know I’m done for the day!” ~ Siobhan O’Toole
Turn It In (plagiarism software) has now been integrated with our Moodle site and will be available for courses starting the Summer.
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How To!
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Want to Play? You will find a Moodle Sandbox course athttp://demo.moodle.org. The demo site allows anyone to have student, instructor, and/or administrator access to a course which is cleaned up and replaced hourly. You do not want to place your actual content here, but it allows you to play and experiment with all of the features 24/7.
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Best Practices
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Discussion Board Use – a few quick tips
Kick off the first week of your course with an ice-breaker discussion that allows students get familiar with each other and the process of discussion board interaction.
Throughout the semester use discussion boards to reinforce lectures with interactive discussions. This can create both peer to peer learning and facilitate greater comprehension of your materials.
Don't let students work ahead. Interaction with other students and with you is part of the whole learning experience.
Provide structure for your discussions. Off topic discussion can dilute the learning objective of the discussion. In Moodle if a student posts something that is off topic for a particular post, or that is moving the discussion into a new area, you can select “Split” from the bottom of the post and it will create a new thread making the train of thought easier for both you and your students to follow and find again for future reference.
Use e-mail for individual private and personal interaction only. All communications that can be public should be. Create a forum specifically for course questions. If a student e-mails you a question that the whole class should have the information for, direct the student to post that question on the discussion board. That will save you from answering the same question multiple times.
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Keep the discussion going
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If you have questions about Moodle you would like discussed please e-mail Siobhan [email protected] and we will research the answers.
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About Moodle Mania Quick Bytes
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Welcome to Moodle Mania Quick Bytes, an ad hoc e-news brief published every other Friday for the Alliant faculty community by the Alliant faculty community to discuss the benefits of switching to Moodle and some of the ways Moodle can be used to improve your online course delivery. This briefing is distributed to Alliant faculty and administrators and is a product of the Learning and Education Technology Committee of the Faculty Senate.
