LMS Reflection
This was my first experience building an entire course through Moodle. It was both challenging and rewarding at the same time. I decided to create a course site that could be used in the future for our students at Sino Bright School.
Background – Reasons Behind Creating the Moodle Site
Sino Bright is a BC Offshore School, and the courses offered to students are mainly core courses, necessary to meet the graduation requirements of a BC secondary school. Students in offshore schools generally have fewer electives than those in BC as they also have to take Chinese courses (such as Chinese History and Chinese Philosophy) throughout their senior years, to meet both the Chinese and the Canadian graduation requirements. Because of this, students are limited to mainly core courses in their Grade 10-12 years in order to graduate on time and meet university admission requirements in North America.
One of the most challenging aspects for students and teachers in a BC offshore school is meeting the language requirements. As most students are English as Second Language (ESL) learners, courses that focus mainly on reading and writing in English are usually the most difficult. Before entering our secondary school, students do not have the opportunity to study in an English environment, as they speak their first language (Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, etc.) at home and outside of school. Competing against Canadian native English speakers for admission into top Canadian universities, therefore, is challenging.
My Past Teaching Experience
Having taught English and Communications for both Grade 11s and 12s in the last couple years at the school, I feel that students who take both English and Communications courses fair better than those who only take English. However, as only one of these courses is required for graduation, and only English will be accepted by universities, students often have no room taking Communications as an elective course in their timetable. As a result, because students are weak in their English writing skills, they struggle through the English course and may not receive the best result on their exams – affecting their admission into the university of their choice.
The Moodle Course Site
As BC offshore students are unable to fit credit courses, such as Communications, into their regular time table, I felt that this could be solved by an online version of the course, taken by students who are committed to improving their reading and writing skills in English. I often hold non-credit exam preps after school, twice a week or on the weekend, for students who are looking for extra help. Students are always eager for extra practice, but because they do not receive credits for attending these preps, some students tend to drop out halfway through the semester to work on assignments from credit courses, and return just before their mandatory English Provincial Exam.
The purpose of creating my Moodle course is to offer Communications 12 to students who cannot fit the course into their regular time table, and offer them more opportunities to practice their English reading and writing skills. This course is designed as a pilot course, with the possibility to evolve into a full credit course in later years. With an online course, the teacher can access the course off-campus, saving time spent after school and on the weekends. The students dedicated to studying in post-secondary schools, but have no room for additional courses in their schedule, can now enroll in the online course and receive the extra practice needed.
Currently, the Moodle is just an introduction to my plans for the online course. I plan to continue adding modules, lessons, activities and other resources and have the course prepared for the new semester.
Moodle Design
All the resources on my Moodle are archived within the Moodle itself, with the exception of a link to the BC Ministry of Education, the source of my attached files uploaded to Moodle. The main purpose of the course is for students to share their original work with their peers, learn and practice different writing styles and techniques, and build their writing portfolio.
The Splash Page
Using the Block course format, the splash page is a note, welcoming students enrolled in the course. The brief introduction includes instructions to navigate and locate the modules set up for the course. The page is simple, without any other blocks to distract students’ attention.
Later on, I plan to include a short 1-minute video tour of the Moodle course site created by screen casts. I also plan to add an announcement box to give students updated news throughout the course. I do not plan to use the calendar function as assignments are due at the end of each week, and each week is dated accordingly. To address the tasks for each specific week, I felt the Learning Modules page was more appropriate, with more space to add necessary details to the assignments.
The Summary Page
The “home” page for my course is actually the Summary page, containing links to all the major sections on my Moodle course (not to specific tasks and quizzes embedded in the site). I used images as icons to make navigation easier for students. Each link within the Summary page will lead students to either a web page introducing parts of the course or take them to the actual task pages (Forums, Assignments, Wikis, etc.). To avoid losing pages or opening multiple pages, I created a navigation bar at the top of each web page that interlinks back and forth to different sections within the course.
The Modules
Setting high expectations for my students, I have designed many tasks within each week for the students to complete. The tasks for each week are designed with the possibilities of a full credit course in mind. If the course is offered as a prep course, fewer assignments will be assigned each week (half of what is available currently in the Moodle course).
Roles for Students and Teachers
Each module was created for students to learn materials on their own, discuss their ideas with their peers, and improve their writing skills. The main role for the teacher is to monitor students’ progress, provide timely feedback on written work, and facilitate the discussions if necessary.
Organization
Each Module is set up in their own Topic area, organized by the weekly tabs at the top of the course site. The dates for each week are marked for the students’ convenience. The pages are clean, with only attachments needed to complete the weekly tasks. The Topic section introduces the lesson and lists the necessary tasks to be completed that week. Below this list is a table containing the necessary material for each task. The links will guide students to content materials (web pages, documents, or PDF files), presentations (PowerPoint, Prezi, videos), discussions (Forum and Wikis), and assessments (quizzes and assignments). Each week is designed in a similar fashion to create unity in the course presentation.
The Writing Corner at the bottom of each weekly topic is dedicated to build students’ writing portfolio. The writing tasks in this section are designed to be ongoing individual projects and may span several weeks. The Writing Corner is designed to provide a short lesson on a specific writing technique each week for students to practice, revise, peer-edit, and polish their work. Depending on the amount of time students have for this course, weekly tasks will be to provide students adequate time to focus on their writing.
Assessment
The course is graded and each task is assigned to a specific category. The tasks are designed to be automatically graded whenever possible, with as much feedback as possible. Each week contains a short quiz to reflect the main ideas of the lesson covered that week. The immediate feedback provided is designed to guide students and ensure that they are correct in their understanding, or if incorrect, where they can find the correct answer. Immediate feedback reduces the students’ wait time for the teacher to mark and respond. Immediate feedback also reduces the teacher’s marking load and allow for more time to provide constructive feedback on written material such as essays.
Selective Release
Some activities within the Moodle course are set for selective release or selective access time. This means certain quizzes and assignments are only available to students at specified times. For modules, I have selectively hidden some topics and weeks from students (making these invisible). I will manually release these topics during the course. The option to selectively release content is useful to keep students on the same page.
Discussion Forum & Wiki
I created general forums and wiki pages for some topics and other forums and wiki pages specific for groups. Since I do not have participants, I did not assign anyone for the “student” role. However, I continued to create groups, Group 1 and Group 2, for some of the assignments. These tasks are designed in such a way that only students in their specific group can see the posts that are written by other members in that group. However, the teacher can always select to see all responses or ones from specified groups. This function is effective for group work and ensures that all students’ voices are heard.
Challenges in Designing Moodle
Discussion Forum & Wiki
Without actual participants to select into groups, this function was difficult to test out. This function will need to be tested before the course can be delivered.
Copyright
Some of my content is edited from actual provincial exam material, available for everyone online. However, due to copyright, I will remove these materials and create my own “scenarios” when hosting this Moodle in a live course. Alternatively, I will provide students with links to the resources online instead. I will explore the regulations regarding the use of resources (openly available on the Ministry website) to be shared with the class before uploading them to the Moodle course site.
Conclusion
Overall, the creation of this Moodle course was challenging, especially when deciding the format and the layout of the course. Links and pages were tested multiple times to ensure that they were working. As I do not have Front Page, Publisher, or any web design tools, I worked mainly with my limited knowledge of HTML and Microsoft Word. However, even with some minor setbacks, I think that my final design product is successful and ready to be used after more tweaking and experimenting. I will continue to update this Moodle and hopefully put it into use for my students in its original purpose as extra preparation for the exams; and perhaps with the school’s approval, I can develop this into a real course.