While structuring my Moodle course, I set up several activities using different kinds of communication tools.
One of the required assignments is designing a wiki. Every student can choose a topic that interests him and wants to explore to make his own page on the class wiki. The class wiki is called “Inventors and Inventions of city 1111 ac.”
Students will get a private password to edit their pages and then all the students will post a reflection in the discussion board about their work:
- How they chose the scientist or the invention.
- How they get the information and construct their page.
- The impact of wiki on their educational field. (What they have learnt).
- Students can give an opinion of their friends’ work and suggestion for improvement.
Wikis are asynchronous communication tools and they allow students to work on their own pace, re-edit the content, and revise it. Posting reflections in the discussion form will help students in enhancing their wiki content and can be considered type of collaborative writing process.
Also, the discussion forum is an asynchronous tool, and enriching it with interesting topics can stimulate students and engage them more in the course. From my personal experience, online learning depends a lot on the constructivist theory, which requires frequent contributions in discussion forum.
I also, suggested a date to make a live chat session in my moodle course. I announced it and suggested several points to discuss together. I don’t know if there’s a “recording” feature in moodle like collaborate in Blackboard.
These activities combine both synchronous and asynchronous communicating tools, which will help me in achieving the learning objectives and support the course methodology which is based on the constructivism theory.
Hi Osayma,
I wonder if the use of wiki in this case is the best choice, as the students, as I can see, are asked to work individually on their assignments. The most benefits of wiki is gained when you use it as a collaborative tool and a number of participants work on the same document. Since the students are not collaborating, you may think about using a blog, for example. You can still restrict permissions. For instance, you can have one blog with students having “author”s” role, which means they can create their own posts, but other people cannot change or edit the original author’s writing. They can leave comments. The advantage would be that the comments are also right there with the posting, so you can immediately see peers’ feedback instead of going back and forth from the wiki to the discussion forum. Wiki also has options for comments, but they are displayed in a different way. In blogs, the authors can still modify their content as they go. You can search by authors, so you can easily find everyone’s contribution.
How do you see reflections in the discussion forum being a collaborative process? Do you expect the students to change their assignment based on their peers’ feedback?
Natasha