Here it is after a journey that began in the middle of the semester.  My mockup of a course site that could potentially be used in the Spring when I commence my Space Unit.  It has yet to be fully completed to my satisfaction but the template is appealing that I feel comfortable with the submission.

Moodle: Space Site

I’d like to break down my experience into 3 different sections: The idea, the process and the product.

The Idea:

Traditionally, I have been a teacher that has enjoyed the dynamics that my students bring to the classroom and the lessons.  As a result, many of my greatest units have come from their questions, inspirations and reactions while I teach a unit.  My lessons are constantly being redesigned as reiterated upon as I assess how my students are responding to them.  Thus, trying to imagine a whole cohesive unit was difficult.  Mainly because I felt that once I had committed it to a webpage, I would feel more compelled to go through with the design.  I’m not sure this is the case, but there is a sense of finality once you click the “publish” button.  I’m well aware that the web actually allows you to change content quickly but imaging the course was a lot more difficult than I thought.  After several mock ideas, I settled upon designing it with using the “tools” in mind.  I will explore the tools in greater detail in the next section, but the benefit of the web wasn’t about pushing content, but having students engage and construct their own understanding of the Space concepts and ideas.  Once I had settled upon this it became much easier.  The first few units would setup the tools and introduce the students to resources they could use and the subsequent units would demonstrate how they could achieve the course goals.

The Process:

As I have never fully published a website before (I found the permanent nature difficult to deal with), I experimented with many different tools before I settled upon using iWeb.  I’ve used iWeb briefly in the past and recognized it as as a simple way to design webpages.  With limited experience in HTML (in high school when it was the “cool” thing to design your own page), I felt that going with an application would be a better way to go.  Moodle is very much a course shell and all for content to be placed but there is nothing aesthetically pleasing about it’s core functionality.  My webpages were designed in batches as a unit (I created two of them) and Moodle acted as the main hub.  The process was very constructivist and YouTube/Google and the forums became a big part in the learning process.  Almost every question that was Googled fed back a video response that was easy to solve afterwards.  The process reminded me of the first time I explored wiki usage and tinkered my way through.  It took time and patience to set the pages up and to place everything where I wanted it to be.  Underneath Moodle’s mundane UI was a large set of settings that could be configured.  The one’s that amazed me the most was the different ways in which a section could be released (ie. after completion of a section, after viewing a page, checking a box), it was overhwhelming at first but the Quiz Assignment came in handy to exploring these features.  In addition, it took a while to get use to navigating through the different menus to see how the developers envisioned Moodle.  It became more familiar towards the last few weeks.  The built in applications like chat functionality, wiki and message boards were all useful and provided upside and downsides.  Perhaps the biggest upsides to having these features in was that it was already built into the website.  I didn’t have to go elsewhere to find them (although, in some cases I did).  Another upside that I have noticed while exploring Moodle was that it would be easier as an instructor of the course to extract the data and particular participation of my students using different tools if I were to use Moodle built in features.  In addition, everything stays on the Moodle server itself.  The downsides came in bundles.  Many of these features (chat, wiki, voice) were very simplistic designs.  I appreciated this, but was used to many of the  more advanced features that were available in outside sources.  For example, I used both the Moodle Wiki and Pbworks.  I wanted to explore both and in one task have students do the same.  The later provides more features but this does take more time on the part of the user (as I found out when using Moodle) before they are familiar with the tool to use it effectively. In some cases — simpler interface is easier.

The Product:

My course with the first two units planned inside Moodle and ready to invite 2 or more classes to participate with one another.  This is a shell of the course that I would like to use in the Spring and it is ready to launch.  In addition, the way it is designed allows me to add to the units without feeling like I need to “redo” everything.  I feel as though, I am able to allow my students to explore the first two units freely and then design the future units based on their feedback.  As John, our instructor, had noted — using Moodle wasn’t the difficult part.  It was the design of the site that ended up taking more time.  When I designed a “website” for my class, it was teacher centric and wasn’t built for students to interact in.  This is a different example.  I also explored a bit with some accessibility issues.  I thought about my ESL students who weren’t as comfortable with reading.  I provided an audio link that they could simply click and review.  This only took a few more minutes of my time and I felt would really go a long way to ensure that all student are involved.

Final Thoughts:

This exercise made me appreciate LMS and what it takes to build an online course.  Setup takes a tremendous amount of work, but after that you are able to observe the students go through the process.  As the process is something I enjoy watching — online environments really allow for that to occur naturally.  The Moodle experience has also forced me to “rethink” how the material would be presented online.  Each page needs to be clean and instructions need to be clear.  Perhaps the biggest enjoyment was that it was practical.  If the course were to be extended in Spring — it would be exciting to observe and document how the students navigated through the site.  If they encountered issues…  It’s always the process that intrigues me and now it’s their turn.