Developing an activity for a Moodle course site is hard due to very the nature of all the choices. Different forms of communication facilitate different types of learning, and have the capacity to foster convergent, in depth thinking, or lead to more divergent thinking and promote creativity. I personally prefer, especially given the content but I’m presenting, to use screen recording and video recording of lessons to close on the site. 

The concept of flipped classroom is a trending topic amongst educators that use an LMS or CMS as a platform for their blended classrooms. Although flip mastery proposes that students watch lectures first and then come to class to do associated learning activities, I feel this also lends itself well to course that are facilitated completely online. Whether the subject matter is complex physics concepts, or how to create an online campaign for a digital production class, scree recordings can be very useful. Khan Academy, and sites like Treehouse have followed their entrepreneurial dreams to create start ups that provide this service. Both of these companies have found ways to create great videos that cover difficult concepts.

Going through highly technical aspects and step-by-step procedures can be very difficult and somewhat arduous for students that don’t have the aptitude or interest in technology. Step-by-step instructions via PDF or text format lack of personal touch and don’t allow for additional items for explanations that can be included in a screen recording format. Nevertheless, even companies like Khan Academy know that they need to provide anchors for the content being disseminated via their screencasts. Once they secured a backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the first move was to add question sets and tracking features to the Khan Academy site. This move was to help activate the material they passively received via the video and determine wether they mastered the concept or not.

Although these questions tend to be multiple choice, the inclusion of questions gets students to review the material they watched. However, this does not foster divergent thinking, nor does it facilitate deeper, more critical/evaluative thinking. This passive form of communication is not an effective method as a standalone activity and ensuring students have gone through the content and understand is difficult. To encourage this deeper learning the lessons need to be framed in a way that encourages more in depth thinking.

Sacrificing the synchronous dialogue for this more passive form of communication was a hard decision to make, and since I didn’t feel that quick multiple choice questions properly addressed this issue, I added in a basic discussion forum. The purpose was for the students to watch the material and then follow that up with an associated activity that had them apply what they learned in the video. From there they were encouraged to share their reflections on this activity with the rest of the class as well as reply to at least one other students post.

The beauty of the Moodle format is all the options that come along with posting any activity or discussion board. The administrative items that can be added are countless and offer an online facilitator the ability to create and enforce certain criteria before and activity is considered complete. This way tracking individual progress through these activities is easy with a simple view of the activity report throughout the duration of the assigned activity.

Conclusion:

In addition to this, I was also able to try out some new software this week. I was finally able to install Windows 8.1 and have it working as a virtual machine that I could switch back and forth with the OSX Mavericks with the swipe of four fingers.

This enabled me to start playing with programs like Camtasia and Articulate, which allow for the creation of SCORM packages. These products were astonishing with their features and built in tracking features. Additonally, I loved having the opportunity to insert quick matching, short answer, multiple choice and ordering question sets in the middle of my screen recordings

The main reason I found this valuable is that it removes that passive stigma from screencasts and envolves the student a little more as he/she runs through the video.  Additionally, being able embed powerpoints, and videos in one package that tracks whether or not the students went through all slides is all information that is useful to the instructor/facilitator. This feedback is amazing and provides the teacher with useful data they can use to monitor the progress of the students.

Instead of waiting for students for students to fall behind, the facilitator gets a great snapshot of what they have been up to throughout the course and their engagement levels with the material. Being able to step in earlier and provide assistance before students fall behind is a very value asset to have when facilitating an online course.

This enhances the teacher presence and ensures that all students are participating in the social / collaborative spaces provided that encourage more divergent thinking.

So far it has been a great experience to have my own sandbox to implement these new concepts and try new software. Looking forward to diving into this a little further over the next couple weeks.