This post should be subtitled “Moodle: No Lost Love This Week.” This week, I welcomed the opportunity to create a second subject-specific module for my course, and I relished the process of uploading content and formatting it. However, in meeting the design requirements for my course site, some parts were easier to achieve than others. I was able to find Moodle documentation that explained selective release (Moodle Docs). Pedagogically, I feel that adult learners should be able to look at all of the course content should they choose to, rather than parts, thus, I set up a non-existent third module for release when the summary of the module before was marked complete. After reading about (in Moodle Docs) and playing around with groups and groupings (the second term appears overly complicated to me), I was able to set up discussion groups. I designed my course upon principles of collaborative learning and Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) recommended second principle for good practice, so incorporating group activities made sense. I made my groups visible to all students, though only members could contribute to a particular group’s discussion forum. (Given the low stakes of the discussion participation mark in this course, perhaps seeing other ideas would help students expand their knowledge.) All of these tasks were straight-forward.
What lead to many hours of frustration over the past week was what in hindsight was a simple enough task: creating a splash page with four navigational components. I did a lot of research online looking for a solution here. I don’t know what to attribute it to, but after reading through countless posts (including ones from my peers) and sifting through video tutorials, I had no luck. Typing “splash page Moodle” in Google search was not helpful. I was at my wits end.
Through experimentation (and a chat with a passing colleague who works with another version of Moodle), I took a stab at creating a new page directly into the main course area where I had been creating my modules. It was a mindshift (as I thought only modules could be set up in this middle area of the course)! THEN, I had to figure out how to place my splash page icons and vaguely recalled reading about creating a table in Moodle for another purpose (which I cannot relocate!), so I decided to place my splash page icons in an invisible table for cleaner organization. I wanted my splash page icons to link to a hidden spot in my course (so that students could only access them through these main course page icons). It turned out that I couldn’t “hide” these linked pages or the page content would be unaccessible–I had to instead put them into a separate section (I called Instructor Resources) which I just didn’t include in the topics released on my Moodle course! Thus, in the end, I found what I needed to do for this part of my course design through trial and error.
Coming from an environment where we use one template for all online courses, for similar look and feel, it was refreshing to be able to select a unique (though basic) theme and landing page with images/icons (versus just text). It made the resulting course feel more personal to me as a designer. In completing the overall design of my course, I found that (given my new-found knowledge of linking pages and sections), I was able to move all of my discussion forums out of the modules and into a Discussion Board section, as well as poll and quizzes into an Instructor Resources area, which made my modules cleaner (one of my design goals).
With a second module, I was also able to better streamline instructions and content flow (as I had more of the course to work with) and include a Course Outline. Typically, I encourage instructors to upload their Course Outline last, as it should accurately reflect the finalized topics, readings, assignments, etc. For the scope of my work on this Moodle course, I found I needed to omit Course Outline elements such as learning outcomes and assignment details.
If I hadn’t been so (time-wise) challenged by the task to generate a splash page, I would have liked to research more on how to implement a navigation menu and a “next page” feature (alternative navigation options for diverse student learning styles). This is something I will experiment with in the near future.
If I were to apply two areas of the SECTIONS model (Bates & Poole, 2003) to my experience this week, I would first say that Moodle was not so easy to use intuitively. It took a lot of reading, viewing and experimentation to understand how to accomplish what I wanted to achieve. I spoke with another colleague (who is not a Moodle user either) and asked him what I was missing with regards to technical competencies, and he mentioned that the features I was trying to implement were quite straightforward and not so technically advanced that I would require HTML skills (which I don’t have). That is good to know, yet my experience makes me wonder how an instructor who was less tech-savvy would fare on their own.
However, I will admit that, once one gains this technical knowledge, the tool does allow for a lot of interactivity for engaging course design (with its range of activities and options). And, yes, all said and done, I think that I would most definitely like to “play around” in Moodle more. If anything, the feeling of accomplishment after overcoming my technical challenges this week has motivated me to further my working knowledge of Moodle, as this can only benefit me in working with other learning management systems.
References:
Bates A. W. & Poole, G. (2003). A Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. In A.W. Bates & G. Poole, Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education (pp. 75-108). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 4.
Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 39(7), 3-7. Retrieved from: http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm
Conditional activities settings (n.d.). Retrieved from Moodle Docs: http://docs.moodle.org/25/en/Conditional_activities_settings#Restricting_access_to_course_sections
Groups (n.d.). Retrieved from Moodle Docs: http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Groups
Groupings (n.d.). Retrieved from Moodle Docs: http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Groupings