My course site experience with Moodle.
Based on my proposal and the ETEC565 requirements regarding the structural components of this project, I began to fill in the frame of the course and develop and load lessons into it Here I will reflect on the structural components that I used – both their ‘construction’ and their compatibility with my project objectives.
Splash page with GUI
I anticipated this being a huge challenge, and was not disappointed. I chose to use a flash video to engage the candidates and, with the help of positive feedback from my classmates (and their highly successful endeavors) on Animoto, I managed to create one (initial attempt completed in 15 minutes; subsequent editing and retooling 1.5 hours) and load it up to the site. For the GUI, I chose to create items (documents) that I thought would be useful for the students to view both prior to starting and during the course. I decided to go with Powerpoint slides for this and ended up PDFing some and creating a flash presentation (Moodle does not like Powerpoint; it says it does, but it doesn’g) with others using a new (to me) open source tool that I found called ISpring Free. Acquiring the images, creating the slides and uploading everything was surprisingly low stress, but I found the formatting of both the splash element and GUI elements so that the ‘finished view’ was the right size was time consuming. Still, it was well worth the effort. While I would not have thought to create an opening to a course like this on my own, it is something I am considering keeping in the course as I continue to develop it and will likely do for other courses.
Two or more completed modules
I created 4 complete modules/lessons (Introduction plus lessons 1, 6 & 7) in an effort to try a number of different lesson structures and to see how well I could integrate some of the other ETEC565 assignments – particularly the quiz and the digital story – into lessons. These lessons fleshed out very smoothly around the objects I created.
One module programmed for selective release
I have chosen to hide all of the lessons and activities for the course, except the first. When I finish developing the course, I plan to ‘release’ the lessons on a weekly basis, but may ‘show’ all of the lessons and activities as this will save me having to go in and ‘unveil’ them every Sunday at midnight (although it seems I will have to do so for the activities so, perhaps I’ll leave them hidden). For ETEC565 I have set the ‘weekly’ release dates on the lessons based on a start date of May 3rd.
Two general discussion forum topics
All four of the lessons I loaded include a general discussion forum. I’ve also created 2 discussion areas – one social and one course related. Discussion forums are a ‘tool’ that I am used to creating and I have found that they have worked very well for my students – both course related, and socially.
One group discussion forum
I’ve included one set of group discussion forums in Lesson 1: Critical Incident, in addition to the general discussion forum. I think placing this group forum near the beginning of the course will allow the participants to get used to communicating in this context, before the course continues with mostly general discussion forums. I’ve also included a group chat option, as well a suggestion to work in Google docs to give the students a variety of opportunities to complete the activity. Group forum discussions (actually, any type of ‘group work’ option) should work really well with this type of activity and group work is something I would normally ask my students to do if I were teaching this type of lesson face to face.
Bells & Whistles
I’ve decided to add both an ongoing Wiki activity that will (hopefully) feed (through me) into a course Glossary. Also notable is that I went with a topic layout rather than a weekly layout so I could create a less prominent area (area 9 as opposed to the course start area) where I could house the glossary as well as an open chat area and the two, more open, discussion forums. I have never tried this option/layout, but I think it will work quite well.