Assignment 4 Reflection
To best recognize our extensive work together throughout this project, we wrote a collaborative reflection. When we calculated our working hours together, we realized that we have spent up to four synchronous meeting hours per week to discuss, design, and edit all of the different aspects of Assignments 3 and 4. We will include an individual reflection portion at the end of each of our posts in addition to our collaborative reflection.
Our Course and working in Moodle
When we first met to discuss creating our course module, we knew we wanted to explore an LMS tool and content that would both utilize and challenge our complementary skill sets (Alexis’ experience as an instructional designer and Joyce’s teaching experience). Bates notes to adhere to best practices for online learning design teachers must “[work] closely with instructional designers and media professionals whenever possible” and that “teachers working with instructional designers will need to decide which media they intend to use on pedagogical as well as operational grounds” (Bates, 2015). Implementation of the SECTIONS model means collaboration between multiple stakeholders. We also wanted to work with an LMS with which neither of us had worked extensively. This left us with the two choices of Moodle or Google Classroom as we had interacted as students or administrators for the other LMS options. Our next step was to refer to each of our LMS Evaluation rubrics that we had created in Assignment 2 to assess Moodle and Google Classroom. Though neither LMS platform met all our expectations, we felt that Moodle best fulfilled our criteria for functionality. When referencing the LMS Evaluation Rubric (Cruz et al., 2018), Moodle met or exceeded expectations in the following areas:
- Fully supports user-intuitive actions, such as WYSIWYG drag-and-drop functionality, instant upload and auto-save, history tracking.
- Provides a comprehensive range of assessment and evaluation tools: standardized and non-standardized testing methods, assignments, and activities.
- Allows for a complete range of both synchronous and asynchronous modes of communication.
- Fully supports instructor-student, student-student, and third-party interaction..
- Allows for user-unique curation of course content including the integration of external learning tools.