Moodle Course Site Reflection
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Trouble Getting Started
The biggest challenge I faced with this project was determining what I really wanted to do.
Initially, in my project proposal, I was going to try setting up a pilot course that could be used primarily as a collaborative tool for college students to use while on co-op placements.
This is a real case that’s being looked at in our college in at least two program areas. The concept is that on-line collaboration can be used to share experiences and help the supervising faculty keep track of student progress while on placement. Students would maintain an electronic journal that would replace the need for a hard copy submission upon return to the college. It was also hoped that supervising faculty may be able to deal with problems and issues more proactively by being able to check in frequently with students, rather than just at snapshot times during the scheduled workplace visits.
As I began to look at the remainder of the assignments for this class, and took time to read in detail the Moodle course site project criteria, I began to get concerned about how I could meet all the criteria and still keep the project focus as intended. For example, I would not be including quizzes in the course, yet we were required to create a quiz in Assignment 4. Assignment 3 required at least two content modules, however, my course proposal was geared primarily to collaboration vs. content.
As a result, I decided to change the purpose and scope of my course site. Again, I had some difficulty deciding what to do. In the end, I thought about the purpose of the assignment (which I believe is learning how to design and put together a Moodle-based course). I decided to do a course on learning about Moodle. Not only would I get the chance to put a course together using Moodle, but I might also learn a little bit more by forcing myself to dig a little deeper into Moodleland.
Choosing the Course Format
The course I developed is really a mini-course (4 units), that would be offered to any Fleming college faculty who would like to learn about Moodle. It seemed appropriate to set it up by topic rather than weekly.
Choosing the Settings
The course setting feature was handy to select a theme, limit the number of topics shown, and describe the course in more detail.
Splash Page
I’m not sure if I did it the intended way but I added a graphical user interface of sorts by editing the start page and inserting images which I then set up as hyperlinks. Initially, this seemed easy but when I clicked on the links I saw that the users lost the ability to navigate within Moodle. What I wanted to have happen was to open the link in the same frame, so that the Moodle header would remain. To do this I had to make note of php id of the page (when opened in the frame), then set the link to that.
Adding Content
It took a little while to understand how to move entries around, however, after I learned how, the process seemed quite easy.
Creating Forum Groups
This was a little tricky as I had trouble testing whether it was working or not. Since I did not have any students enrolled in the course, the groups were empty. According to the project guidelines it was acceptable to leave the groups empty, however, I wanted to make sure it was working. Since I was set up as the teacher, I saw everything. My intention was to make only certain forums available to a specified group. In the end, I added myself to a group, then switched to the student view and was able to test it that way.
Other Issues
So far, the task of programming selective releases remains elusive. I believe that a form of selective release can be achieved in the lesson and quiz activities but I was not sure how to use this functionality to jump across modules/units.
Information found in the Moodle.org forums discusses ways to do this using groups but I wasn’t able to figure it out. I did learn though that a more flexible form of selective release will be available in Moodle v2.0 .
Conclusions
Since I’m quite used to WebCT, I found the Moodle interface a little awkward but that’s likely just from a lack of use and comfort level. Overall, Moodle seems easy to use and includes features that provide for consistency within and across courses.
I’m not sure if I will have further involvement with Moodle or not. WebCT is used where I work, however, exposure to Moodle has helped me recognize some strengths and weaknesses in both systems.
Also, I will soon be using the Blackboard LMS for some moonlighting with another college, so again, having had some experience with Moodle provides me with even more perspective.
