As I set out to build an online course using Moodle, my primary goal was to develop something that wouldn’t be just an academic exercise. I wanted to develop something that could be useful in my employment context, and that might actually be used. I began by considering the nature of my own educational expertise; I’m an ESL teacher, so I know about the language and cultural difficulties faced by whose living in a new culture. Given my role in post secondary educational administration, it seemed like an easy fit: a language and culture course for international students. In order for it to be successful, it would need to have content that international students would find valuable; be conveyed in an easy-to-navigate design; and be straightforward enough that it wouldn’t add pressure to the already-packed schedules of full-time undergraduate engineering students.

In the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Waterloo, 11% of undergraduate and 44% of graduate students are international students (University of Waterloo, 2012,  p. 20). That’s roughly 1200 international students. International students face multiple barriers, such as culture shock, isolation, and language (Liu, 2011, p. 79). With the University’s recent focus on internationalization, a program of study designed to support international students seemed like an excellent fit.

Whereas the what and the why seemed like logical choices, the how was a stumbling point for me in more ways than one. The first hurdle was in proposing the selection of  Moodle when our institution had just made the move from Angel LMS to Desire2Learn Learning Suite. I had a hard time wrapping my head around why we would choose Moodle instead of our shiny new Waterloo LEARN But despite the shakiness of my Proposal, I’ve begun to consider Moodle as a tidy alternative. The first reason is that students would see it as unique – it wouldn’t be the same place they go for their blended or online courses; it would be their space, different from other courses; and the instructors would have more freedom to make changes to the course without having to involve course developers. The more familiarity I developed with Moodle, the more I came to see these as pro-Moodle arguments. But this was just the first hurdle – I hadn’t even started working in Moodle yet.

The next hurdle was my own limited Moodle experience. Enter the wonderful world of Lynda.com. I signed up for training courses and got a great start on understanding Moodle functionality. These lessons allowed me to see what was happening with each little box I checked on the various settings screens. As a visual learner, I found this most helpful. And where online training left off, the ETEC 565 community kicked in. While the information being provided by my classmates was helpful in overcoming some of my hurdles, I was also moved by the sense of community, and how eagerly everyone contributed to the success of others.

The penultimate hurdle was creating content in a web design application that I had never used before – iWeb – and then packaging and displaying it within my Moodle course. In the screencast that John provided, it seemed to work so smoothly – just a few clicks and you have an attractive, consistent design flowing through your Moodle course pages. But when I tried it, things went less smoothly. But with a lot of patience, a touch of persistence, and a pile of support, it all came together, and I’m pleased to have been able to pull it off.

The glitch monster loves to eat minutes.

The final hurdle was the number of technical difficulties. I’m talking about glitches – those inexplicable things that Moodle seems to do. Just like the power dots in a video game, many of my precious little minutes were devoured by ravenous glitches. But even this was a valuable experience. I feel like I’ve learned so much through this assignment, including the dangers of underestimating the time requirements of such a project. But more than that, I feel like all the work involved – coming up with a unifying theme, designing an easy-to-navigate layout, finding, creating, and modifying media, selecting and manipulating web 2.0 tools, designing assessment activities with built-in course feedback – has given me a great foundation for the tasks ahead in my educational practice.

References

Liu, L. (2011). An international graduate student’s ESL learning experience beyond the classroom. TESL Canada Journal, 29(1), 77-92. Retrieved from http://www.teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/view/1090/909