as yvonne applies learning technologies…

Reflections on Communication Tools in Moodle.

My course site, Conservation Education, is intended as a resource for use by teachers and their students at the many schools throughout the lower mainland to whom I coordinate the delivery of free educational outreach programs.

The glossary activity is basically a wiki to which students will add during their exploration of the Marine Invertebrate Identification section of the module. Wiki building is a knowledge building activity that affords students the opportunity to participate in a community of learners (Kimmerle & Cress 2008). This field guide glossary is intended as an ongoing activity that can afford both formative and summative assessment for the teacher and an authentic learning activity for the students (Anderson, 2008)

Rather than simply relying on students factual knowledge and research, the criteria I am building includes having students forge connections by telling stories and providing notes and facts that connect to their own experience and prior learning. This is in keeping with the as yet unpublished draft B.C. Performance Standards for Science (I am helping to pilot and revise the document which should be available to teachers by the time the course site is ready).

Since the field guide will be available to (and created by) students from grades 2 through 7, it is important to use a tool that is intuitive for beginners yet one that would provide challenge and opportunity for more complexity for more advanced users.

I chose to set up a glossary rather than using the wiki function in Moodle for several reasons – from both a teaching and a student perspective:

• ease of use and formatting in the glossary vs. html in the wiki, yet it also affords more sophisticated functions and formatting in the visual editor
• sorting options – alphabetical, time and by contributor – entries are automatically added in alphabetical order and can be tagged so that they can be found under more than one letter heading; teachers can sort by contributor and time posted to track student participation;
• ability to comment on items within the glossary – I plan to allow both student comments and teacher comments to further encourage active participation and peer assessment. <i>(I’ve turned commenting on in the glossary, but don’t see the space for commenting yet…)</i>I’m also considering enabling the rating by students of the glossary items – not sure tho if i like the idea of a numeric rating by students – prefer the anecdotal comments as I can help develop this skill with some criteria for postings.
• ability of students to edit various entries thus encouraging knowledge building. <i>(this one is a bit tricky in the glossary – i haven’t figured out yet how to get a history of entries to help track just what an individual student has contributed)</i>
• upload of images and video <i>(I’m having a heck of a time with video upload still… as i’ve mentioned in a few posts… a work in progress!)</i>
• adding external and internal links – plus automatic linking within the glossary (<i>I haven’t fully figured this one out!</i>)
• ability of teachers to see averages and participation in the gradebook

I plan to employ a variety of communication tools in my course site. So far, I have experimented with synchronous chat, discussion forums, wikis and glossary. The nature of my site likely lends itself more to asynchronous interaction/communication as there will be no definite start date or enrollment. It is deliberately set up in a non-linear way to afford a variety of uses: from a prescribed course to be completed to a resource page to be accessed as needed. Having said this, I set up a live chat session that would involve the opportunity to “chat with a nat” (local naturalists and biologists) that many students and teachers would find motivating. I enabled archiving and the ability of guests to access previous chat sessions which might make for some asynchronous access… Perhaps I’ll work on making a dvd recording of a walk with a naturalist that can be uploaded to moodle and then have a discussion forum he moderates or simply an email link…

Problems I’m having: a couple mentioned in bulleted list above (in italics) plus, tried importing a ppt into a lesson to create a little ‘game’ of sorts called ‘Who Am I’ – no luck – doesn’t recognize the file etc etc. Lots to work on still. Thank goodness its spring break and I (unlike everyone else I know) am not heading to a lovely sandy beach anywhere!

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Context. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University.

Kimmerle, J. & Cress, U. (2008). A systematic and cognitive view on collaborative knowledge building and wikis. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 3(2) pp 105-122. Retrieved from Springerlink DOI: 10.1007/s11412-007-9035-z